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What can I do at home to improve my child’s Maths?
What can I do at home to improve my child’s Maths?
September 21, 2017
Parents with children of Primary school age regularly ask us: “What can we do at home to help our child improve in Maths?” Well on top of completing regular Maths homework, the steps outlined below will help to strengthen your child’s numeracy in the four basic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division). One of the best gifts in life you can give your child is helping them to practice and become secure in the four operations. This way, Secondary School Maths will become a lot more easier when it comes to learning methods for working out tougher topics, such as: Angles, Surds, Pythagoras, Algebra, Trigonometry and a lot more topics. Here are the steps you can take at home to make learning Maths fun:
1
In order to help children under the age of 6 to become familiar with number bonds to ten, regularly (preferably for 2 minutes daily) ask them to add in their head: what is 9 + 1; 7 + 3; 6 + 4, etc?
2
Memorising times tables by focusing on one set of times tables per week. Every day for seven days to write out 3x times tables three times per day (in one sitting); by the fourth day of the week, randomly ask your children, what is: 8x3, 4x3, 7x3, etc?
3
Repeat the above process for each set of times tables that need to be memorised up to 12
4
To kill two birds with one stone, ask your child to write out and learn the opposite operation beside each multiplication sum. E.g: 1 x 3 = 3 so 3 divided by 3 is 1; 2 x 3 = 6 so 6 divided by 3 is 2; 3 x 3 = 9 so 9 divided by 3 is 3, etc
5
To make maths learning fun, do what we used to do when were kids – during family time, play board games and cards which involve numbers, such as: Snakes and Ladders, Pontoon (21), Monopoly, Darts, etc in order to speed up mental maths addition and subtraction. By playing games they will enjoy themselves and not realise they are learning Maths
6
When your child rolls the dice, gently ask them to tell you to calculate in their head what the two numbers add up to. Assuming the roll of the dice adds to 6 and your child’s figurine is on number 8 on the board, ask your child: “where will you land in 6 spaces time?” This way, your child can avoid moving their figurine one space at a time and just jumps by 6 spaces to land on number 14 on the board
7
Starting from any point on a 100 square (a grid with numbers from 1 to 100), ask your children to shade / colour the numbers every four spaces (or every 6, 9, 7, etc); this will help them to begin spotting patterns in numbers
8
Please repeat the above process for addition and subtraction; say to your child, “what number pattern can you spot when you start at 100 by shading the numbers you land on when you take away 5 each time?”
9
When shopping, give your child £5 and tell them: “feel free to buy as many sweets or small toys as you want as long as they add up to a maximum of £2.75 or less. When you return, I need you to add up how much each item costs and to tell me and show me how much change you are returning to Mum /or Dad”