Create A Mathematical Rich Environment At Home To Help Your Child Love & Master Mathematics!

Raise a child who not just falls in love with letters, but also numbers. The idea is to encourage your child to keep learning numbers, by creating a ‘mathematical rich’ environment at home. Focusing just on letters, by using alphabet play mat, books, reading all just help with one aspect i.e. encouraging early literacy, but what about mathematics which is also an important set of skills your child must develop? In order to be able to make your child fall in love with numbers, you need to also include numbers as part of maths in your regular routine. Your goal should be to introduce mathematical concepts to your child, with as much enthusiasm and as little pressure as possible. The more you enjoy numbers, and the more you can show your child how maths is a part of everyday life, the more motivated he/she will be to learn. Here are some ways, how you can help create a mathematical rich environment at home.

4 Ways To Help Your Child Master Maths At Home:

1. Count With Your Child- Count out loud with your child during the day, when they’re eating a snack such as cheese sticks for example, when they’re out in the garden jumping, look for opportunities and make it fun and interesting.

2. Think Beyond Numbers- Maths isn’t all about numbers, it’s also about shapes, patterns, etc. You can therefore identify, draw & talk about shapes, be it on a shirt, a picture, food, on the TV, or a book. Likewise, you can pick patterns in everything, be it the ground, a shirt, in a pic etc. For example, a picture shows a blue square then a red circle followed by a blue square, let your child identify the sequence and answer what should be next in the pattern.

3. Use Toys Such As Abacus, Building Blocks, Puzzles & Shape Sorters, Board Games That Encourage Learning Maths- Abacus can help your child learn how to count and do mental maths, building blocks make amazing toys that help develop the child’s visual-spatial skills, as well as introduce 3D problem-solving. Your child is able to learn, for example, how many blocks to stack before the tower falls, or how to build and create. Puzzles encourage using strategy to find the right order and know which shape fits where, Shape Sorters teach your child all about shapes for example- a big circle can’t fit in a small square or a triangle can be pushed easily through a circle. Board games, such as snakes and ladders, can simply help teach your child to count as they make a move as well as identify the numbers on the dice as well as add them.

4. Have Mathematical Problem-Solving Conversations Daily- Ask your child to count the slices of banana on their plate or the number of orange coloured fruit loops in their bowl. You can also have conversations to solve maths problems such as “if you ate 3 slices out of 4 slices of apple, how many are left?”. Make it fun and interesting, so your child can actually enjoy as well as learn at the same time.