5 Ways To Help Your Kids Do Math

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5 Ways To Help Your Kids Do Math

(c) Copyright 2003 by Murdo Macleod

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Uh oh.

Your kids arrive home with their school reports and it's
poor marks from the math department. Now what do you do?

You may not be a math teacher, but thankfully there are ways
you can help your kids improve their grades.

Studies have shown that children are much more likely to
perform well in a subject that interests them.

So here are 5 ways to get your kids excited about math and
actually looking forward to the next math class:

1. Inspire them.

Some kids don't enjoy math because they just can't see the
point of it. Unlike reading or painting, all those
mathematical symbols and numbers don't seem to mean
anything.

What you need to do is show them how important math is in
the real world.

Tell them stories about the great engineering feats
throughout history. From building the great pyramids of
Egypt, to the Hoover dam, to the latest space missions to
Mars, nothing would have been achieved without mathematics,
and mathematicians.

2. Get practical.

Involve your kids in some real world math away from the
classroom. Find something your child is interested in and
relate it to math in some way.

For example, do they like baseball? Terrific. During a
game, ask them how many points the losing team has to score
to beat the other one. And how many games do they need to
win before they have enough points to win the league?

If they enjoy helping around the home then let them do the
"clever stuff". Ask them to work out the sizes for that
wood you're going to cut. Or get them to measure out the
ingredients for the cake you're about to bake.

When you're in a store, ask your kids to add up the prices
and keep a running total while you shop. Then ask them how
much change you should expect at the checkout.

3. Take life "step-by-step".

Success in math - as in life - is largely about breaking
large projects down into manageable, bite-sized pieces.

Many kids feel overwhelmed when they see a list of math
questions, and it's at this point they may decide that math
is "boring" or "hard".

Show them the magic of taking one question at a time, and
breaking it into tiny steps that make it easy.

4. Encourage creativity.

Kids may become mentally "stuck" on a topic because they're
only looking at it in one way.Perhaps they need to step
outside the box and see it from a different angle.

Show them the beauty of alternative viewpoints. Help them
to see situations from other people's perspective.

Get them into the habit of exploring different ways of
solving a problem. Even something simple like tidying up a
room can have several possible "solutions" or ways of
approaching it.

Crosswords and lateral thinking puzzles are good for this
kind of flexible thinking.

5. Be positive.

Eliminate negative statements like "math is hard" (even if
you thought of yourself as a math dunce at school!).

Explain how everyone has a natural ability to do math and
that solving math problems isn't so different from solving
other kinds of problems in life.

Above all, inspire confidence in your kids. Teach them
persistence and how there's always a solution to every
problem.

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We all perform better when we enjoy what we do, and getting
kids interested in math is the real key to success.

They may not turn into mathematical geniuses, but they'll
thank you in later life when they enter the world of work
and start counting their salaries.

Now who said your kids couldn't do math?

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to do mental math. Visit the site today and find out what
you didn't learn in the math class.
Click here ===> http://FunWithFigures.com/
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