Do you want your child to be smarter in math?
Who doesn’t want their child to be smarter in math? Who wouldn’t like to see an A on the report card, instead of that version of a leg called an F?
Interestingly, it’s REALLY simple to make this happen.
However, before I tell you how to make this work, before I tell you the one-step method to make your child’s math grades skyrocket to an A, let me tell you the secret: You have to make your child appreciate math. math as a game
Hey, they can play video games like a world champion! And they can program their smartphone like an abacus! And the difference is that they want. And by having them play with numbers the game way, they will want and excel and their grades will go up.
To begin with, I taught at the school for several years. First as a teacher, then as the owner of my own private school. I used the method I am about to tell you about with great success and got the kids to use this method during ‘play time’. That’s how it is. Instead of them going out and playing, I asked them to do math and ‘think’ (heh heh) that they were playing.
Now, the biggest lack in the teaching of mathematics, IMHO, is the lack of basic knowledge. This is the multiplication table, the addition table, the basics of how to manipulate numbers.
When I was in school (I had to walk 20 miles, uphill both ways, through torrential snow) we had to do a page of charts every day. Rain or shine, all through elementary school, we did basic math.
Today they don’t. They give a few pages of a book and think that it is enough. It is not. And for the simple reason that it doesn’t make math intuitive. It remains, even through high school, something they have to think about. To think. Long, hard and laborious. Anyone wonder why they’re not doing well? The basics are TOTALLY out of the question.
So, a page from the Case family learning book. Cards.
Yes. Mama Case took out some decks of cards and we played. We learned to play solitaire and in a group. To this day I feel deep happiness when I remember four of us, my brother, me, my mother and even grandmother! slapping those cards, trying to beat each other up and laughing hysterically. Or crying badly when they hit us!
But the point is that we learned to look at number symbols and understand them. The speed at which we could differentiate a 4 from a 6, or a 9, or whatever, allowed us to win the game. So we wanted.
And, when the group wasn’t spending the night playing cards, we learned other games. Various forms of single solitaire. Hearts, Rummy, whatever!
And here was an interesting bonus: when we played monopoly with the neighborhood kids, we became experts at reading the dice, at adding up those six-digit one-full cubes face up!
What, do you think it won’t work? SAY OH! That’s like saying your child is immune to games. But if there really is a lack of enthusiasm, take another page from Mama Case’s book.
‘Oh, don’t you want to play? Geez, I was going to bet a cookie. But that’s okay. I’ll eat that cookie myself, and you can see those delicious crumbs sliding down the front of my shirt.
Guaranteed. Those kids of yours are going to make a game out of math, become adept at manipulating numbers, and when it comes time to learn a new math concept, they’ll be LIGHT YEARS ahead of the curve.