Math is something that everyone needs to learn as it plays a major role in the rest of our lives. Children need to know the joy and value of maths. Even though children learn a concept, they might forget it soon. You should enhance the learning process for a student and make learning maths fun. Refer to the NCERT Books for Class 1 Maths as it forms the base for the higher classes. ‸
This article will provide innovative ways and methods which will help your child grasp math concepts quickly.
- Help your child use math every day: Look at the surroundings. You can see maths everywhere. Try to draw a connection between math and the real world. Make your child learn maths through activities like shopping, cooking, gardening, or playing etc. It becomes more meaningful when you show your child how math is applied in real-world situations. If you go to a supermarket, ask your child to find the total price of two chocolates. Like this, there are many more activities where you can make your child understand the concepts, numbers, facts etc.
- Encourage Questions: It’s the child’s nature that makes them curious about everything. This is when they will ask so many questions while learning maths. Sometimes, they may even ask the same question repeatedly. Try answering them with patience. Make sure you clarify their doubts and clarify them. And you should encourage them to ask more questions. When they start asking doubts or questions, that is when they can understand the concept.
- Repetition is Key: The best way to grasp a concept is through repetition. Practising what they have learnt and repeating it will quickly help them grasp core mathematical concepts.
- Use Physical Manipulatives: By using physical manipulatives, children can easily grasp the maths concepts. There are so many physical manipulatives that will help your child. They are:
- Fingers: To teach children how to count, try using the fingers.
- Base 10 Blocks: Make use of the base 10 blocks. It will help the children to understand concepts like place value. They can also use it to learn to add and multiply small numbers.
- 2D and 3D shapes: To make children easily understand the basic geometric shapes, show them 2D shapes like squares, circles, triangles and 3D shapes like triangular pyramids, spheres, and cubes.
- Food: Food also plays a great role in making the kids grasp concepts like fractions. For example, pizza, pie, apples, and oranges can be cut into pieces and it becomes simple to make them know what fraction is.
- Clock: Almost all the children love to wear watches. It becomes not so worthy if they aren’t able to tell the time. Use a clock and teach them in a fun and interactive way about seconds, minutes, and hours.
- Money: Children spend money to buy chocolates or other snacks. Give them money and teach them to count and the value of money in the real world.
- Play Math Games: Every child loves to play games. You must remember that there are some games through which math concepts can be learned. This is an innovative and effective way for the children to grasp the concepts quickly as well as make them feel maths more exciting. Some of the fun maths include board games like Monopoly, chess, math bingo, Sudoku, pizza fractions, card games etc. Playing monopoly will help the children to learn to add and subtract larger numbers. If you find more games which your kids love, they might not even realize that they are having fun as well as learning.
- Math Tricks: There are so many math tricks and shortcuts for children to memorize and remember math facts and concepts. Children will love to learn tricks because it makes them feel that they are learning cool methods rather than the normal methods they learn in schools and from textbooks.
- Colouring Charts: Allow the children to colour their math charts as it is a fun activity. It will help them easily remember how things look visually. Allow the kids to find math fun and interesting. This will make them more eager to learn more.
- Flash Cards: Teach the children to make flashcards. It will be fun as well as effective as it helps them to learn facts. They would like to use them often since they made it
- Songs: Many children are fond of songs, and they tend to listen to a single song multiple times. In the same way, convert the math facts into a song. Make them listen to it multiple times as they don’t get tired easily by listening or singing so many times. This will help them to grasp the facts and remember them quickly.
- Use different teaching styles: Sometimes, a child will feel hard to understand or grasp the maths concepts due to the teaching style. Try to change the way you teach. Come up with different ways to teach. Some of the teaching and learning styles which the kids feel are best for them are:
- Visual learning: Children get more engaged and will learn better through visual learning. Teach the concepts through pictures, videos, or drawing etc. they can easily grasp the concepts when they see them.
- Auditory learners: Some children learn and grasp best by hearing the concepts. Explain step by step verbally. Provide examples.
- Working in groups: Group learning is one of the best methods to learn maths. Make children form small groups with their friends. So, what you must do is explain the concept to them and make them solve a simple question. This will allow the children to discuss the ways to solve it. This will make learning maths easier.
- Take advantage of the serious mood: Kids are not all about playtime. There will be times when they are in a great mood to study and be serious about it. Identifying this opportunity and seizing the moment before it fades is critical if you want to discuss a math concept with your children. When they are in this condition, ensure you have accompanying resources that help define math concepts easily, such as Revision Village.
The above methods will help your child memorize and grasp math facts and concepts easily. Whatever they learn at this young age builds blocks for more advanced math.
