(courtesy of Scholastic):
Make math part of your child's everyday life.
Leave the flashcards, workbooks, and other skill-and-drill stuff to the teacher. At home, the best way to help your child learn to love math is to play with numbers, and to frequently point out the various ways in which math makes our lives easier. By working with tangible objects, and counting, sorting, estimating, measuring, looking for patterns, and solving real-life problems, children learn to think in mathematical terms, without worrying whether or not they’re “smart enough” to do math.
Almost anything you do that involves numbers and/or problem solving will build your child’s math skills. Here are just a few ideas to get you started:
• Have your child set the table (counting and sorting the sets of plates, napkins, cups, and silverware).
• Post a running countdown of the days until her birthday. Let her change the number each day.
• Challenge him to guess at things, and then find the answers. For example: How many bowls of cereal do you think we can get out of this box? How many M&Ms do you think are in your (snack size) bag? How many minutes do you think it will take to clear off the table? Which of these cups do you think will hold more juice?
• Play a copycat game, where one person creates a pattern (pat your head, touch your knee, clap three times) and the other person has to repeat the pattern three times in a row.
• Ask your child to help you create a pattern for a quilt square or an abstract picture using markers and paper; construction paper in different colors, cut into square, triangle, and other shapes; or shapes cut out of different fabrics.
• Ask your child to measure things in non-traditional units. For example: Let’s see how many footsteps it takes to get from here to the door. Why do you think it’s more for you and fewer for me? How many action figures (or Barbie dolls) long is this table?
• Have your child compare things: Which do you think is heavier — a cookie or ten chocolate chips? Who do you think is taller, mom or dad? Which carrot is longer? Fatter? Crunchier?
• Give your child problems to solve — and let her work them out by touching and counting actual objects. For example: I have four cookies here, but two people want to eat them. How many should each person get? If we invite six kids to your birthday party, and put two candy bars in each kid’s treat bag, how many of these candy bars will we need?
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