5 Ways to Make Math Fun for Kids

Your children are beginning to bring home math problems and some parents love math and some parents had a problem with it in school. It really depends on the instructor and if you can pass that mental block by feeling comfortable and asking the teacher for extra help or a student aid to assist you. Math takes quite a bit of work if one is struggling with it. Years ago Catholic schools were rigid, kids were afraid of asking the nuns for help because the schools were strict back then so they developed some mental blocks and took remedial classes in college and worked hard at math to overcome their hardship with it and went on and got Doctorate degrees. Your children should know that parents are teaching and helping with their math and if you have a child who doesn’t like math, here are five ways to make math fun for kids.

Many kids struggle with math in today’s world. This can be due to many variables, attention spans, the reliance on calculators, and impatience when it comes to learning math. It’s important to understand math in order to help kids build their critical thinking skills. If they fall behind in math, this subject will most likely affect other areas of the student’s school life and personal life.

Hope

You can start kids at a young age to help prepare their brain for math concepts that are important for their math skills in the future. Children love to play and are more motivated playing so why not make math fun to help them learn.

Reasons Kids Struggle

Some educators are not on board with how and when to teach kids the correct concepts of math. In addition, they are on a different page when it comes to evaluating kids abilities when they learn a new concept.  

Kids can learn one way in second grade, and the whole concept is changed and replaced in 3rd grade. The lack of consistency is the problem and makes math very intimidating for kids. Kids lose confidence in themselves and this doesn’t give children the foundation they need to go from the basics to the very difficult techniques, with no in between.

You can’t make kids love math and it’s definitely a huge challenge for parents.  Math is a skill that requires quite a large amount of thinking to overcome, and to kid’s, this can be very overwhelming and frustrating. Sometimes, it’s downright boring, so this is why you have to change your child’s outlook on math.

5 Ways to Make Math Fun

Parents can turn math into a game and use board games and computer games to make math fun again. Games like Monopoly, Snakes, and Ladders and Sorry!, including card games like Crazy 8’s help kids with the process of using their minds for math that is fun and entertaining. Parents can go the digital route and use web sites and phone apps for children of all ages.

Include Math into activities your Child Loves

If parents connect math with activities kids already enjoy, they will be interested and this will seem like no work for them. You can use cooking activities, baseball averages, and video game rankings. Anything they love with numbers included will help them to have fun with math.

Challenge them

Parents should challenge their children with math competitions. You can create math questions and take turns solving the problems with your kids. You can turn it into a contest to see who can get most of the answers correct! This is how you encourage kids to develop their mental math skills.

Reward System

This can be a good way to encourage your children to want to learn math if you use the reward system strategically. Rewards don’t have to cost a fortune, they can be as simple as an extra hour of any kind of screen time. You could also let them stay up for an extra hour on the weekend and do something they like to do.

Make math Alive

All people should take advantage of any and all opportunities for knowledge as they pass through their lives. There are always counting games when you are riding in the car and take your pick from gas stations with the same names to mailboxes. You can also teach them to use coupons and calculate your budget with the calculator for grocery shopping by adding up the items they put in the cart. You want to show your kids why math is used on a daily basis and the importance of it. Children have to understand that math is important in the real world and everything is based on scientific calculations including the universe.

Struggles in Success

The point is parents want to make math fun and easy for their children to learn. You want to replace the negative with the positive. There is no such thing as scary math, it’s now called “Math is Fun!”  It’s important to teach your children some practical word problems by using real-life applications and the earlier you start, the better. Once your child is talking, you should be teaching them how to count. Most kids, if they have a good vocabulary, should be able to count to 20 by the age of three. This may sound unrealistic, but many children can master this and master counting to 100 by age 4. It all depends on how much time you spend with your children and let them watch their learning shows and read to them.  

Flashcards may seem old fashioned with all the new technology, but if you get a deck of the ABC flash cards and a deck of the number flash cards and do this for 20 minutes daily before nap time and bedtime, your child will remember this information in no time and remember their letters and how to recognize their numbers. It’s important so they aren’t behind in school when they start kindergarten. Many parents are single and more are tired and slacking off and they expect the educators to teach them speech, numbers, letters, etc. parents have to help at home. If your child is struggling at age 3 and can’t talk, take them to the doctor and find out if they have a hearing problem or some kind of speech problem. Don’t wait until they go to preschool and say well they will get help with speech therapy. Start now so they can have that opportunity to understand their math and learn how to count and have fun in math.