If you struggled with Math at all when you were growing up, you probably don’t feel adequate to teach home school Math. The truth is, though, that we use Math all the time in our day and you can use those opportunities to share Math with your children. Help your children develop a love for math using these tools:
1. Play games – Card games and board games are great tools to use to teach number concepts. You don’t have to say anything about numbers or math, just play the game and have fun.
2. Use your time in the kitchen to work with numbers. Have your children count silverware, cut pizza into fractions, measure liquids and solids in a recipe, skip count items that come in packs, subtract items from a group as you eat them, and count anything else that they may see there.
3. Show them in daily life how math affects them. Show them how to look at a calendar and count the days until a special day. When they receive money help them know the value of the coins or dollars and show them how to count it. You can even divide the money into different envelopes with them.
4. Teach them that counting by one is not the only way to count. They can use skip counting to count by twos, threes, fours, fives and more. We have made up our own skip counting songs with popular children’s songs that we know. Now my 6 year old knows how to skip count by two, three, four, five and six, not because he is a super intelligent child, but because those numbers have been put to music in a fun way.
5. Read books that enforce math concepts. Books like “How Much is A Million” and “How Much is a Billion” can show children how enormous numbers can be in a fun and entertaining format. For younger children there are many counting books that you can get from the library that teach them about numbers.
6. Use the calculator to show them how large numbers are added. They certainly need to know how to do the basic concepts of math operations, but they can also have fun using a calculator occasionally for large numbers.
Use as many senses as possible to teach math. Different children will understand certain concepts of math using different methods than others. You can use workbooks, manipulative, math games, real life, computer software, and more. Attitude is everything. If you have a positive attitude about Math, then they will be more likely to accept that attitude.
