How to motivate your Child to enjoy Mathematics...

Father Blogger

PF Regular
Jul 17, 2008
62
0
0
Philippines
<r>Here is one of my recent articles and I hope this can help other parents with student kids like me.<br/>
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Mathematics is the subject most students are usually afraid of. Some parents were not also enjoying it during their school days. This is maybe because of the wrong impression about this subject. However, all students have to learn this no matter what dream job would be. So to be able for your child to be attracted with mathematics, here are some simple tips which I am also applying to my children. Some of them I learned when I was a still a student being a lover of Mathematics myself. <br/>
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Start on their early age<e>
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Let him play with numbers just like his favorite toy. Posters and building blocks with numbers can easily make your child familiar with basic numbers. Use mathematics in every possible way you can. Any countable thing can be use as a daily practice such as his teeth, toys, and members of the family. As they go along, you will notice that they will be eager to learn more. It will be hard for you if you start late, and your child will be bored about the subject. <br/>
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<B><s></s>Do not scare him<e></e></B><br/>
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Never show him that mathematics is a hard subject although it seems to be. If your child is in the primary school and saw difficult mathematical equations in algebra and trigonometry, he will be scared. Take one step at a time and make a convincing plan. Do not pressure him like an engineering student. Instead, find ways how he can learn it the easy way and teaching them how to use an analog clock is one of them. Mathematics is a friend, and can be a best friend.<br/>
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<B><s></s>Use friendly codes<e></e></B><br/>
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You do not have to be an engineer to be able to think about this. My Dear Aunt Sally means Multiplication, Division, Addition and Subtraction. This is being used to remember which operation to be made first when dealing with a mathematical equation with parenthesis and bracket. There are many other friendly codes, and you can even invent one to make formulas easier to remember. Be creative as children are amaze in fun ways of learning. Mathematics is hard if you do not know how make it easy.<br/>
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<B><s></s>Explain the good effect<e></e></B><br/>
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Money is the best example to use in motivating your child. When your child starts to understand the use of money, you can explain them what can happen if they do not learn mathematics. Tell them that there are a lot of swindlers around and learning mathematics is an easy way to avoid them. No matter what their other interests are, convince them that they will need it someday. Allow them to realize that even beggars need to know the basic of counting. Life will not be complete without it.<br/>
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<B><s></s>Practice it yourself<e></e></B><br/>
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If your profession is a writer that does not require practicing mathematics, the tendency is that you cannot teach your child to enjoy mathematics. Therefore, you must apply it in your daily activities. By simply computing your daily expenses, you can learn a lot of strategies about mathematics. To do this, avoid using calculators for simple addition and subtraction. Do not let your child notice that you are also not interested in it. After all, practice makes perfect.<br/>
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<B><s></s>Mathematics is logic, and logic is very important for our child’s development.<e></e></B><br/>
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Article Source: Father Blogger dot Com<e>
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Aviation4kids

Junior Member
Oct 2, 2008
12
0
0
USA
I am a father of an 8 years old boy and I live in USA. Math and Science are two of my objectives as a parent involved in my child education.I use every occasion to connect math with real life and here is a link to a useful site dedicated to this subject:

Archived: Helping Your Child Learn Math : Introduction

Motivating children with money might work but it must be done very carefully. You don't want your child to learn only for the financial rewards from his parents.I agree that this might work in certain condition and I prefer to "package" this motivation method in a game.For example,when my son had some subtractions homework to do I told him to bet with is colleagues that he can subtract 999,999,999,999.00 or another number of this format from any other greater number, faster than a pocket calculator.

That was enough to captivate his attention.I continued by telling him that Math is magic and that I can tell him how he can do this too if he will keep it secret.At this point he was over excited and ready for"delivery".First,I gave him an example,let`s say

6,463,890,547,906.00 - 999,999,999.00 = 5,574,901,658,017.00

He could not believe his eyes when he saw that it took me a couple of seconds to write the answer.Than,I asked him to observe a pattern.It did not took long until he realized that I have just added 1 to each digit from the greater number and subtracted 1 from the first one (which was 6).He was very excited to learn this "secret" and to try it at school in order to impress his colleagues a an to make some money.

In the end,I gave him another "psychological" advice:the bigger the numbers,the better because it will take longer to be keyed in the computer than it will take him to simply write the answer by adding 1.Also,he will have to write the answer from right to left in order to create the illusion that he actually did a difficult computation.

I hope this will help other parents to play math with their children.

George
Aviation for Kids
 

NinJaBob

PF Addict
Sep 29, 2008
3,015
0
0
48
Ohio
This will be a challenge for me. I am horrible at math and despise it with every piece of my being. I fear the day that my children come to me for math help. I could just never get the concepts even with experienced tutors I barely got by basic math in college.
 

Fatheroftwo

Junior Member
Oct 26, 2008
2
0
0
My eldest is a first grader and is pretty good at Maths. But recently I came across a Mental Arithmetic program based on Chinese Abacuss. It is called UCMAS. This is an unbelievable program. My first grader has been doing this program for about 6 months and we have seen tremendous improvement in her maths. She is taking more interest in maths and is ahead of her class. I strongly suggest that parents should explore this program.
 

Aviation4kids

Junior Member
Oct 2, 2008
12
0
0
USA
I have seen some unbelievable videos on YouTube about this.It` amazing what can be achieved through this method

<YOUTUBE id="s-EKxq1oTPw" url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-EKxq1oTPw&amp;feature=related">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-EKxq1oTPw&amp;feature=related</YOUTUBE>

<YOUTUBE id="a5yxOYZ-1XA" url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5yxOYZ-1XA&amp;feature=related">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5yxOYZ-1XA&amp;feature=related</YOUTUBE>

George
Aviation for Kids