According to Kalita S. (2019), every child’s first teacher is their parents. As the first partner of your child’s academic life, it’s essential to help them in their school work. Even at home, there are still many ways to help every child or student in their school work.
This is true, especially in the world of Mathematics since it’s one of the most significant and complicated subjects that every student will tackle during their academic life.
How to Help Your Kids in Math at Home?
Helping your children in mathematics doesn’t mean you have to be a mathematician or as good as the math teacher of your children. You just need to be an average parent in helping them, and here are five tips on how to help them in math at home.
Step by Step
We all know how complicated the world of mathematics is, right? In helping them at home, we should do it step by step. Start by assisting them with the easy problems first and slowly moving them forward to the more challenging ones.
This can help the level of comprehension of each student in mathematics while staying or studying at home. Thus, it will make the student quickly adapt to how math works.
Use Motivational Words. Always Be Positive!
A parent’s words to their children are very important. Don’t say bad and negative things that will make the child or student discourage himself/herself. Avoid saying the phrase “you’re bad at math.” This will break the child’s concentration in studying the different problems in mathematics.
Instead of saying those words, you should say these words: “keep it up,” “good luck,” “you can do it,” and “you’re amazing.” In doing so, it will motivate them to study more since they are aware that their parents are supporting them.
Let Them Teach You Math
This is a great way to help them learn mathematics. “A better way to understand the math problem is to teach it to someone.” That is what most of the math teachers will say. You can surely know if they understand the problem if they can explain and teach it to you in a perfect way.
Also, ask them what they don’t know and can’t answer regarding the math problem. This will challenge them to answer that problem and motivate them to understand the situation more so that they will know how to teach it to you in an easy way. Through this, it will slowly enhance their knowledge of mathematics.
Don’t Rush Things Out
Always remember to slow down, kids are not robots. Adults need some time to understand something, which goes for children too. Rushing them in doing and understanding their task in mathematics may pressure them, which will commonly lead to having a mental block.
That’s why you need to take it easy on them when it comes to mathematical problems or solving. Because this will significantly help them comprehend it more as a result of not getting pressured by their parents. In other words, take it easy to focus on what they are doing. Have patience, and don’t rush things out.
Handle Numbers in a Creative Way
Excitement is the best way to inspire someone to study, compute, and solve math problems, especially the kids. We know how almost all of us are getting bored in mathematics when it’s long and complicated; the same goes for kids.
So as a parent, you should create something fun for your children while teaching them something about math. Doing this will help the children avoid boredom while studying the world of mathematics.
Always Keep In Mind
Parents play a significant role in their kid’s educational life since they are their first instructors at home. However, parents don’t need to be perfect teachers for their children. They mostly just need to guide and teach them the basics in answering and learning some things.
In terms of math, the parents should always try to stay calm. This subject involves calculation, computation, summations, and estimation of numbers, which can make us all crazy! Take it easy until the children genuinely understand it and can answer the problems independently. Always remember that “Everything in life takes time.”
Hi, my name is Elena Jones, and my full-time job is a teacher. Through teaching, I have discovered that children learn in many different ways, and have seen the positive impact both STEM and Montessori toys have on children.
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