How to Make Maths Fun For My Child - Learning to Code and 5 Other Ways
Teaching maths to children could be challenging for many parents.
Why? Because math requires various intellectual skills, mostly logical thinking abilities. It focuses on complexity, abstract and non-realistic concepts which cause your child to have a hard time understanding everything. But, don’t worry, there are still lots of ways to make math more relatable for your children.
You can still make your magic as you transform complicated maths into a fun and exciting subject. Yes, dear parents, there are considerable hopes to make your child fall in love with maths!
Ready to find out how?
Here are the six ways on how to make math more enjoyable than ever.
1. Recreational activities
Would you believe that you can teach math during any activity? That’s possible!
You can help your child learn fundamental counting skills, logic, and critical thinking through a simple walk in the park. You can introduce them to the different shapes of the street signs or even let them count the number of streets you just pass through.
With a quick hike at the mountain, you can let your child analyse angles or slopes. You can also introduce them to math sequences and patterns while swimming at the beach if you notice a shell.
Besides that, leisure activities like sports can also teach your child strategies and techniques to analyse and calculate things. Besides shaping their physical body, you are also able to mould their intellectual minds. Sounds fun? Well, children never get bored with outdoor activities.
2. Slime Recipes and Cookbooks
Other than activities outside the house, your child can still learn math in the comfort of your home! While enjoying your family time, you can create fun activities like slime making or baking. Both these exciting activities promote measurements, mixtures, and following instructions. It even makes your child think, imagine, and solve simple equations.
Of course, slime making may become one of their favourites as they begin to create using art materials. As for baking, it will entice their sweet tooth while enjoying making fun shapes of cookies or cupcakes.
Through these two indoor tasks, you can capture your child’s interest without noticing that you are teaching maths.
3. Grocery Shopping and Savings
You may also use your shopping day as your math learning day.
How?
Let your child choose their favourite food or drink and ask them to compute its prices. Hand them some money that will teach them practical math computations. Through simple maths, your child will learn how to solve equations in real-time while understanding the value of money in life.
Once you get home, you can help them save money through piggy banks. Afterwards, you may start guiding them about money interests which will develop their mathematical skills.
These daily life activities can both improve your kid’s math skills and money spending habits.
4. Scavenger hunt with math challenges
A weekend with your family and friends will be fun and exciting if you organise a math scavenger hunt for the kids!
How?
You can add simple problem-solving situations as you incorporate logical puzzles. Giving some clues or hints would be much thrilling for them to think very well during the game. Other than that, time pressure would make the game even phenomenal.
This scavenger hunt with math challenges can help your child and their friends practise their math skills while playing games. You may do this activity outdoor or inside a breakout room.
Don’t forget to give awesome prizes to the winners (and maybe losers, because, you know, kids!). These awards will drive them forward and enjoy more fun activities.
5. Online games and digital puzzles
If you don’t have time to prepare crazy stuff like the scavenger hunt or don’t have any board games at home, you can use your smartphones. Yeah, downloading spectacular online games related to math sounds perfect for you.
Some of the famous math games online are Aplus Math, Math Cats, Sushi Monster, and more. You can also use puzzles like Sudoku, Kakuro, or even chess boards.
These online games and apps will practise your child’s logical skills while enjoying appealing graphics and animations.
However, if you have your actual board games at home, a chessboard, snakes and ladders, or monopoly wouldn’t hurt at all. These games let older generations practise math. It would also help your child enjoy math too.
6. Learning to code
Other than the everyday activities stated above, you could also try a more modern and upgraded math learning experience for them. You can let your kids learn coding. Code learning for kids can improve your child’s math skills while it enhances other practical skills.
Also, coding serves as the backbone of programming, and programming is the primary source of today’s technology. It means that once your child familiarises and learns to code while they are young, they can enjoy programming's wild and complex concepts until they grow up.
Coding classes for kids do not just improve their minds but also lets your child enjoy the learning process. It includes fun activities and first-hand learning experiences through robotics and programming.
These kids coding camps for kids will also use popular games your child loves, such as Roblox, Fortnite, Minecraft, and others. It will never be boring or tiring for them as these games are enjoyable. Through learning programming for kids, you can start them young by mastering math skills related to complex sciences, engineering, and technology.
Advantages of teaching maths to children
Once you successfully prepare their young minds with maths, you might prevent them from having failing grades. It will also begin their math journey, especially when they want to pursue STEM education. Then eventually, they will be the next computer scientist, app developers, engineers, and so on.
Math learning will give them a brighter future, ensuring that their minds are well-versed and highly trained. It will bring out the best opportunities for them as they know how to think logically. Besides that, math concepts would also enlighten their other life skills.
To make the learning process more realistic, see the concepts that would empower your kid’s math skills.
Things You Must Highlight in Math Activities
After you try the following challenges and tasks suggested above, you can now begin exploring things about maths. If you are familiar with the goals you need to teach your kid, you can prepare their minds before every activity smoothly.
Introducing maths concepts to them using the mentioned tasks earlier will guide you to your kid’s learning track. It will assure a better understanding as they develop their maths skills.
In this case, you are helping them target special maths skills to help them in the future. So, here is the list of the things and specific concepts you need to consider in improving your kid’s academic performance.
Patterns. One of the primary concepts for maths is pattern recognition. You need to introduce this concept, even for children as young as toddlers. Kids need to understand how to make logical and predictable methods. Through the very first concept, your child would master analytical thinking.
Sequence. Another vital concept for maths is sequencing. Children would develop their abilities in reasoning, logic, and order. Even a step-by-step way is also part of the sequence from which the kids introduce rational and coherent decisions whilst young.
Seriation. Besides sequencing, your kid also needs to learn seriation. It helps them know how to make a series. It will help them become systematic and well-organised to various things they will face in the future.
Spatial relationships. To make your child more interested in maths, they should learn about spatial relationships. It will help them see how math concepts are capable of applying in the real world. It will also help them become aware of their physical self and relation to reality. Moreover, it would enhance their memory for relating things to objects.
Sorting. One easy concept but the necessary concept that would improve your child’s maths skill is sorting. It would help them know how to do things without skipping or interchanging the proper order. Besides that, your kid would also learn how to arrange items based on their category, classification, type, and kinds.
Comparing. It is also a must for a kid to know how to compare and contrast. These skills would allow them to determine the similarities and differences of things, making them more aware of the issues. It would also teach them to recognise things depending on their size, properties, size and even compare objects.
One-to-one correspondence. A math concept that no one should miss is a one-to-one correspondence. Through this concept, your kids can have the ability to relate prior solutions to other problems. They will excel in associating things according to their qualities and features. Furthermore, kids who can apply this concept have a higher chance to connect items.
If you successfully input these maths concepts into your kid’s mind, you will have a bright and wise child! It would help them figure things out independently whilst doing it according to comprehensive and logical thinking. Most importantly, they are becoming prepared for the future as a successful individual.
Tips on Introducing Math Concepts to Kids
The top 6 suggested activities above will give you an excellent maths teaching and learning experience for your kids. However, you also need to ensure the following things to guarantee a more effective learning environment.
Make maths learning fun. If you conduct a maths lesson or activity in a boring way, you would expect your kid to do something else. So, all the work you prepare will be wasted. Therefore, you need to put more effort to bring out fun, unique, and very entertaining maths lessons.
Remember, it is not supposed to be expensive, but you only need to get their genuine interest.
Ensure real and meaningful math lessons. Of course, you are not just going to focus on entertaining them, but also to give an excellent quality of education. So, whilst you conduct the suggested activities earlier, you may include a significant application.
Incorporate reward systems. In all aspects of learning, it is highly effective to give rewards and recognition. It will help your kids become genuinely interested in the activity. They would also feel love, care, and acceptance, making them more stable emotionally and mentally. When doing any maths activities, never forget to give additional gifts or anything that would make them feel appreciated.
Provide fun competition. Besides the rewards, healthy competition is also recommended for child learning. It would help them feel the excitement whilst preparing themselves for different challenges. You can do maths learning with their siblings or even with their friends and classmates. In this case, you are helping them to experience extra challenging tasks.
Start them young. Another tip to make maths learning incredible is to introduce it to maths whilst these kids are young. It would hone their skills at a very young age, and they are gradually improving through various tasks you offer to them. Once you introduce them to a simple lesson, you may make it a little more complicated next time. Through this, you are helping their minds practice easy maths concepts to broader maths levels.
As you follow these essential tips, you are now ready to input maths into your kid. But then, it is not the end. Your kid’s learning is a continuous process, so you need to provide a stable and effective learning environment to ensure their mental health development.
How to make their maths learning to the next level?
Sign them up with the newest and most practical way of building maths skills - learning to code. These classes bring out the best in them in mastering math, science, and engineering skills. Help them learn these while they are young, so they will rise and shine their brilliant technological inventions in the future.
In Sydney, Australia, parents reach help to a code school, Skill Samurai. Skill Samurai is a STEM education franchise that has certification and accreditation. This code school offers coding classes for kids, which is one secret for improving maths skills. Other than that, Skill Samurai also focuses on maths tutoring to help kids excel in their academic performances.
Skill Samurai welcomes boys and girls age 7 to 18 to improve their maths, coding, and robotics skills. Take this excellent opportunity for your kids as you start to see more of Skill Samurai courses here.
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