5 Ways to Engage Schoolchildren in Math, Even If They Hate It

Math including related subtraction facts is needed in both school and life: Remind your children exactly where it will come in handy.

Business, corporate careers, even just independent living – you’ll need math to plan your budget, to choose the best job offer.

In high school, physics, chemistry, computer science, and economics classes will require the ability to think logically and calculate. These skills are trained in mathematics.

What to do if a student’s relationship with this subject doesn’t work out, and how to support a desire to study. Our methods:

Board games about subtraction sentences: true or false
Pre-schoolers and elementary school children benefit from playing the simplest of “walkers. Players move chips on the numbered cells or circles for as many steps as the dice rolled. If you use two dice, the child learns to add numbers within 12.

In the game “Cow 006” need to compare numbers within 106 and predict the progress of partners in the game.

Understand the composition of the numbers, learn to compare them and estimate the number of items helps the game “Turbocount.

Adult board game “Cow 006” is suitable as a simulator for school children. It requires comparing numbers within 106 and predict the course of the game partners.

For middle school students, too, are learning games about dividing shapes into equal parts in mathematics. They are not as interesting as the strategy, and they have no exciting plot or intrigue. But a teenager can play Monopoly or similar games with family or friends. They make you think several steps ahead and count the money. It’s a good incentive to study.

Math tricks.
A trick is a great way to get your child interested and make them puzzle their brains out. Teach yourself a couple of simple tricks and offer your child to solve your secret.

Play your teenager the popular TED lectures on math, or find interesting lectures on youtube.

For junior high school students, you could do this, for example: “Pick a number, double it, now increase it by eight, divide by two, subtract the number you want. The answer will always be 4. If the child is interested in such problems, he or she will want to solve some variants from the Internet, and then try to make his or her own.

The next step will be acquaintance with the properties of different numbers. With math tricks schoolboy can playfully learn about things that are studied in high school or at all are not touched on school lessons.

Books, movies, channels about mathematics and famous mathematicians
To do math, you don’t have to calculate the distance between points A and B. Sometimes you can just imagine different situations and think about them. Engage their imagination and delve into the world of mathematics preschoolers and elementary school students can on the pages of tales by Vladimir Levshin: “Traveling Notes of the Scattered Master,” “Three Days in Midget” and others.

Older students can be given a book by the famous mathematician Courant, “What is Mathematics?” or “The Greatest Mathematical Problems” by English professor Ian Stewart.

A win-win option is to get your high schooler to fall in love with science through its charismatics. Include popular TED lectures on math, find interesting lectures on youtube.

Olympiads and contests
Don’t think that math competitions are only for a select few. For example, the international Kangaroo contest is open to all students in grades 2 through 10.

To prepare for it, solve problems from the archive on the website.

Any Olympiad tasks will help your high school student discover something new about mathematics. Download and print out past years’ Olympiads “Squirrel”, “All-Russian Olympiad of schoolchildren”, and solve the online Olympiad “Plus”.

Agree with the teacher that the child does not need help with assignments or chasing the school curriculum, but a reboot of the relationship with mathematics as a science.

In a situation where a student doesn’t understand or hates math at all, games and tricks won’t help. The child will immediately realize that you are trying to give him a bitter pill of painful arithmetic under the guise of a sweet candy.

In this case, you need to choose the right teacher and like-minded people for your child. And show that math and mathematics can be different: with some difficult and boring, and with others easy and interesting.

Other math in the classroom company
Discover a new side of math for your child at a math field trip, an olympiad club, or a class with a tutor.

Agree with the teacher that what your child needs is not help with homework or chasing the school curriculum, but a reboot of the relationship with math as a science. A sensitive teacher will be able to find an approach to the student, but it will take about six months of regular lessons before the first results.

The younger a student is, the more he or she needs the support and guidance of an adult. Some parents are passionate about math and create a rich environment at home: backgammon, chess, puzzles. And it really helps children develop mathematical thinking and succeed in class.