How to Help Your Child With Math: Overcoming Struggles and Boosting Confidence
It's not easy helping your child learn math, since the way they teach it is not the same as it used to be.
Many children and adults have problems with math. And for many people, mathematics causes a great deal of anxiety. If you'd like to help your child improve at mathematics, how can you help him or her? It's not easy helping your child learn math, since the way they teach it is not the same as it used to be. But if you feel you are not the best at math, there are some ways you can encourage the child, and the school, in helping with math.
Even if children struggle with mathematics, it doesn’t mean they're bad at it. Even excellent math students may have a hard time with certain sections of math. Children need different skills for different subjects, so they may need support in one or more of these abilities. Various types of math problems within a subject can require different skills. For instance, some children might be excellent with numbers, but struggle with adding fractions.
Some children face the most difficulty when it comes to math anxiety. If it's their problem, they may have problems with math itself or stress about taking the work and taking math tests. They may feel that they don't deserve to do well in the subject even when they actually may. Additionally, fear of failure may prevent that success from coming. There are lots of stress-free approaches that can help your child with math.
Here are some ideas on how you can support math education at home:
Use sports to help children practice math concepts.
Read story books to children to help them learn mathematics.
Play board games that help children practice math concepts.
Cook and prepare things with your child to help them learn mathematics.
Discover items around the house that you can use to help to teach math in a concrete way.
A popular method to improve a child's math abilities is by having them use all of their senses. You can use smell, sensation, taste, and touch to assist students understand different math concepts. For instance, dried beans, cereal, or beads are all ideal ways for kids to learn to do math problems. As an example, they might solve an addition problem by putting a couple of these items together. Or they might determine how many are left after subtracting a few of them. Youngsters may also band together various amounts of these products for multiplication and division.
There are also many technological resources that can aid in math. There are a number of apps and computer software resources available to both privately and inexpensively help at home. Most of these resources not only assist in building skills, but they also lessen the challenges and frustrations students feel. One free program that you can use is Mathshare. It has a step-by-step problem-solving workspace and math-to-speech capabilities.
With Mathshare students are prompted to solve multi-step math problems by breaking the problem into smaller parts. Students can also explain their thinking on each step via typing or dictation. This allows the teacher to see the student’s reasoning and identify which steps the student has and hasn’t mastered. Also, students can hear each step of the math solution read aloud accurately.
Ultimately, if you want to help your child improve at mathematics, there are a few things that you can do. First, make sure that your child is practicing regularly. You can also help by practicing math concepts with your child. Finally, try to make math fun for your child. That will go a long way in building their math confidence and reducing any anxiety that they might have around math.