How to teach your child Math without making it boring

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Some students do not like Math as it requires lots of calculating and practising. Furthermore, it has many concepts and formulas to remember.

However, you as a parent can turn that attitude around.

You can also set a positive mindset for the Mathematics learning that takes place at school. Parents cannot replace the school learning experience but they can influence their children’s developing attitudes towards Mathematics.

So, here are 3 tips to make math more fun for your child! 

Solve real life problems

Grocery shopping and other routine situations provide many opportunities for mathematics. For example, if you want to test your child on the percentage topic, you can ask your child how much is the discount or how much savings you had in this shopping trip as compared to the last shopping trip.

Or you can ask your child to do a calculation on average how much did the family spend on takeaway meals for the week. 

Do math as a family

You can arrange 1 night per week where the whole family plays board games or card games together. Playing such games makes math fun and your child can learn at the same time.

You can play games such as Monopoly, Sudoku or card games using playing cards. 

Some math card games are: 

• Fraction war: Students deal with 2 cards, a numerator and denominator, then determine whose fraction is the largest. The winner keeps all four cards, and play continues until the cards are gone
• Order of operations to get to 24: Each player is dealt four cards, then uses the order-of-operations rules to try to make a number as close to 24 as possible. 
• Order of operations to get a prime number: Flip two cards. If you can add, subtract, or multiply them to make a prime number (use one or all of these operations), you get to keep them.

For more Math card games, you can click here: https://games4learning.com/math-card-games/

Draw connections to more familiar situations

To make it less intimidating, you can help children understand more difficult Math concepts, such as fractions, by drawing connections to more familiar topics such as whole numbers.

For example, if the question is on fractions where A gives 3/4 of their money to B, you can use whole numbers and draw a connection to money. 

We hope these tips can change your child’s attitude towards Maths and make learning Math more fun for them!