How to Make Maths Fun for My Child: Learning to Code and 5 Other Ways
Teaching maths to children can be challenging for many parents. This is because maths requires various intellectual skills, primarily logical thinking abilities, and focuses on complex, abstract concepts. However, there are numerous ways to make maths more relatable and enjoyable for your children.
You can transform complicated maths into a fun and exciting subject. Yes, parents, there is hope to make your child fall in love with maths! Ready to find out how? Here are six ways to make maths more enjoyable than ever.
1. Recreational Activities
Believe it or not, you can teach maths during any activity!
You can help your child learn fundamental counting skills, logic, and critical thinking through a simple walk in the park. Introduce them to different shapes in street signs or let them count the number of streets you pass. A quick hike in the mountains can help your child analyse angles or slopes, while a day at the beach can teach them about sequences and patterns through shells.
Leisure activities like sports also teach strategies and techniques for analysing and calculating. These activities shape their physical bodies and mould their intellectual minds, ensuring children never get bored.
2. Slime Recipes and Cookbooks
Maths learning can also happen at home! Engage your child in fun activities like slime making or baking, which promote measurements, mixtures, and following instructions. These activities encourage thinking, imagining, and solving simple equations.
Slime making might become a favourite as they create using art materials, while baking satisfies their sweet tooth with fun shapes of cookies or cupcakes. These indoor tasks capture your child’s interest without them realising they are learning maths.
3. Grocery Shopping and Savings
Turn shopping day into a maths learning day.
Let your child choose their favourite food or drink and compute its price. Give them money to teach practical math computations, helping them solve real-time equations and understand the value of money. At home, guide them in saving money through piggy banks and teach them about money interests to develop their mathematical skills.
These daily activities improve your child’s math skills and money-spending habits.
4. Scavenger Hunt with Math Challenges
Organise a math scavenger hunt for the kids for a fun and exciting weekend with family and friends!
Incorporate simple problem-solving situations and logical puzzles, making the game thrilling with clues and time pressure. This scavenger hunt helps your child and their friends practise math skills while playing games, either outdoors or in a breakout room.
Don’t forget to reward winners (and maybe losers) to drive them forward and enjoy more fun activities.
5. Online Games and Digital Puzzles
If you don’t have time for elaborate activities, use smartphones to download spectacular online math games.
Famous math games like Aplus Math, Math Cats, Sushi Monster, and puzzles like Sudoku, Kakuro, or chess boards can practise your child’s logical skills with appealing graphics and animations. Actual board games like chess, snakes and ladders, or monopoly also help older generations enjoy maths.
6. Learning to Code
Take math learning to the next level by letting your kids learn coding. Coding for kids improves math skills while enhancing other practical skills.
Coding is the backbone of programming, essential in today’s technology. Familiarising with coding at a young age can lead to an interest in complex concepts as they grow. Coding classes for kids include fun activities and first-hand learning experiences through robotics and programming.
These coding camps use popular games like Roblox, Fortnite, and Minecraft, making learning enjoyable. Through programming, children master math skills related to complex sciences, engineering, and technology.
Advantages of Teaching Maths to Children
Teaching maths to children prevents failing grades and starts their math journey, especially if they pursue STEM education. It prepares them for future roles as computer scientists, app developers, engineers, and more.
Math learning ensures well-versed and highly trained minds, bringing out the best opportunities for logical thinking and other life skills.
Key Concepts to Highlight in Math Activities
To effectively improve your child’s academic performance, focus on these key math concepts:
- Patterns: Introduce pattern recognition to enhance analytical thinking.
- Sequence: Develop reasoning, logic, and order through sequencing.
- Seriation: Teach making series to foster systematic and organised thinking.
- Spatial Relationships: Enhance real-world application and memory through spatial awareness.
- Sorting: Improve logical arrangement based on categories.
- Comparing: Develop the ability to determine similarities and differences.
- One-to-One Correspondence: Enhance the ability to relate prior solutions to new problems.
Tips for Introducing Math Concepts to Kids
- Make Maths Fun: Engage their genuine interest with fun and entertaining lessons.
- Ensure Real and Meaningful Lessons: Provide quality education with significant applications.
- Incorporate Reward Systems: Encourage interest and emotional stability through rewards.
- Provide Fun Competition: Enhance excitement and prepare them for challenges.
- Start Them Young: Introduce maths early to hone skills gradually.
Taking Maths Learning to the Next Level
Sign your child up for coding classes, the newest and most practical way to build math skills. Skill Samurai, a STEM education franchise in Auckland, offers coding classes for kids, enhancing their maths, science, and engineering skills. Skill Samurai also focuses on maths tuition in Auckland to help kids excel academically.
Skill Samurai welcomes boys and girls aged 7 to 18 to improve their maths, coding, and robotics skills. Take this opportunity to see more of Skill Samurai courses and help your kids shine in their future technological inventions. Visit Skill Samurai now.
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