Making maths fun!

Research shows that anxiety caused by learning maths affects students
worldwide. It is caused by the constant frustrations associated with the
inability to understand maths concepts. Fortunately this is often quite easily rectified. Even at a young age children can learn to associate maths with fun! The more fun they have, the more they relax, then the stress goes and the understanding comes.

When we apply positive reinforcement in the classroom, we are helping to boost students’ confi dence in their ability to handle problems. Even while away from school during the holidays, it is important to encourage students to practise mathematical concepts to ensure they are not forgotten. Send children home with a few fun maths exercises to practice at least once a week during the school holidays. This will be very helpful to the children, since an average of 2-3 hours of active learning each week is enough to prevent the loss of maths skills. Here are a few ideas to help moms or teachers ‘sneak’ some extra maths lessons in.

Maths in real life

Not only in the classroom, but at home as well, maths can be brought into any situation. While driving on a long journey, count the white cars for 5 minutes, then count the red cars for 5 minutes; work out the difference. As the children get older make the problems more complex e.g. work out percentages or averages of trucks vs cars, or white vs colour etc. There are literally hundreds of things around us all day that can be used as fun maths learning props. Concepts like distance, size and time can be brought into every trip in the car from the quick trip to the local store to the 7 hour drive to the beach, or the 12 hour fl ight to another country.

Fun and games!

Here again the list is endless, not only can you purchase really fun maths and co-ordinations skills development games, (see the awesome selection at
Valencia Wholesalers Nelspruit) but your children can play games like hopscotch, hand tennis, lawn cricket etc, all of which develop maths and co-ordination skills while they’re having fun.

Use technology

This is one instance where the advancement of technology is really great for modern children. There are thousands of computer games that are really very good for developing maths skills. There are a variety of games for boys or girls of any age from pre-schoolers to highschool students.