Children often consider maths to be ‘boring’ and ‘difficult’. This stigma is especially applicable to young girls, who may associate the subject as purely for boys. It is important to create positive connotations with maths in your child from a young age, transforming their opinion of the subject so they approach learning with positivity and enthusiasm.
Below, we recommend of ways you can increase your child’s enjoyment of maths outside of the classroom:
By transforming maths problems from the page into real life, children will be able to see the issue first hand and logically solve it. For example, if your child is learning about financial maths, you may want to use monopoly money to bring the question to life. Or, if your child is learning about measurement, you could pour water or juice into measuring instruments to help them visualise. You may even want to use maths to measure the ingredients of a cake!
Children are far more likely to engage with their maths problem when it is transformed into a story. You can incorporate their names, and those of their friends and/or family, into the question so they feel personally involved in it. This converts ‘boring’ maths equations into storytelling.
If your child enjoys arts and crafts, encourage them to bring their creativity into maths. Drawing, colouring and highlighting are fantastic tools to break down and better understand the maths question. You may want to approach fractions and decimals with coloured pencils so, for example, your child can decorate one third of a circle.
Finally, if your child is especially struggling to understand and enjoy maths, we are here to help. TutorTime can find you a qualified maths tutor for children of every age and ability.
Need to find a tutor? You can book a tutor if your child needs some one on one support. We have face to face online tutoring, home tutoring and group tutoring classes mapped to the Australian curriculum. We specialise in HSC tutoring, NAPLAN tutoring, chemistry tutoring, maths tutoring, English tutoring, Japanese tutoring, science tutoring, history tutoring and more!
