Math Made Fun!

Right off the bat, the article I found said "Making kids love math is a challenge."

Isn't that motivating?

NOT.

            Math is a difficult subject, one that can cause a lot of stress and frustration to both the child attempting to learn it and to you, the teacher, tutor or parent of this child, who is attempting to make this learning process easier. This article states that, "Math is a skill that takes a lot of brain power to master, and this can be experienced by kids as hard work.  A University of Chicago and Western University 2012 study even shows that for some people, doing math is similar  to experiencing physical pain. Also, parents tend to tell their kids that “math is hard”, as they relive their own experience as kids struggling with formulas, exponents and equations.  Consequently, kids pick up this attitude and live their lives believing that math is a horrible monster that they have to face in their academic lives."

 

Isn't that reassuring!

Again, NOT.

            In order to help these kids understand math you must first begin with your own attitude. It is necessary for you to have a positive attitude when helping kids with math. Every child may be different, but more times than not, children will become discouraged and try to give up when "the going gets too tough."Teaching kids that it is acceptable to give up on math is a huge problem. In today's world it is necessary to have a good understanding of math. For example, "we use math to figure out personal finances, construction projects, as well as doing everyday chores such as cooking and shopping.  Engineering, high technology, finance and other in-demand careers require above average math skills.  Even non-math careers require that employees have sharp analytic and reasoning skills – skills that are acquired when brains are trained in math."

        "Since kids are more receptive to learning when it is associated more with play than with work, it is a good idea for parents to expose kids to math in fun ways." This presents a challenge to educators: How do you make math fun?  In this article there were some tips presented to help kids "grow to associate math with fun, pleasure and parental love and attention...The secret to successful math education is to make it so much fun that children don't even realize they are learning something that will help them later in life."

Some of these tips include:

·         Make the children consider math not as work but as a game that can be played like computer games, sports or fun board games.  Use digital games, apps and numerous websites as resources for making math a game.  There are numerous activity books that make math fun, as well as websites where you can download fun, early learning printables.

·         Find out what games or activities your students enjoy, and integrate math into it.  For example, if they love to bake or cook you can have them measure ingredients in wholes or in parts, or count and estimate objects such as number of chocolate chips. One way to integrate subtraction problem, for example, is to ask them, “We need to put five eggs, we already placed two eggs, how many more eggs do we need?”

·         Point out to your students that we are surrounded by real math problems in the form of money, measurement, time and others.  This includes checking and comparing prices at the grocery store, driving down the street counting mailboxes, reading recipes, calculating coupons, or even measuring food or drink at the dinner table.

Source: http://www.raisesmartkid.com/all-ages/1-articles/53-how-to-make-math-fun

Sink or Swim

When Not Knowing Math Can Cost you $15,000


Admit it, you watched this video and you picked 16, too. Initially, I did!


            Math can trip you up in all sorts of ways and it can be very sneaky, which is very apparent in this video. However, it is one of the most useful tools you can use in your life. Math is a skill, much like the ability to swim, that a lot of us take for granted. Math is a lot like learning to swim: some of us grew up with it, eventually learned it on our own and continued to develop our abilities.

            There are some of us, however, that have not been as fortunate. Some people grew up with little knowledge of math. Because math became a "mysterious unknown" to them, they learned to fear it. Think of it this way, math can be as scary of an experience as falling head first into a pool with little ability to swim.

            This is what it all comes down to: Will you sink or will you swim? This means that in a situation where you jump head first into math, will you let it get the best of you or will you persevere and learn to get better? In the case of the man in the video, he allowed himself to go with the flow and let others answer for him, but if he hadn't been so afraid of math and took his time to truly weigh his options, he could have possibly been $15,000 dollars richer!


            Let's reevaluate the problem given. It was:

"Which of these square numbers also happens to be the product of two smaller square numbers?"

            The correct answer was 25. As she explains at the end, the reason this was the correct answer was because four squared plus three squared, (aka sixteen plus nine) is equal to 25. It meets the criteria because it contains two smaller squared numbers, but you can get tripped up on the wording easily and believe that 16 is your best shot at that fortune.

 
            Math is difficult; it is not easy, it can be overwhelming at times, but it is one of the few things you will actually use in your everyday lives. Sure, you may not need to know what numbers are made up of  other square numbers on a regular basis, but having this knowledge doesn't hurt! It may even help you when you least expect it! So don't let math intimidate you and do not let it get the best of you! Remember, when the going gets tough, just keep swimming!