A new year has begun and with it, an opportunity to start fresh. Mathnasium in Niceville has a few suggestions focused on building and strengthening the emotional, social, physical, mental and financial aspects of a math learner that can help you and your child navigate the next 365 days for overall “math wellness” and success.
1: EMOTIONAL
How is your child feeling about their grade-level math so far?
Math presents parents with the opportunity to build emotional-learning skills for their children, including identifying and managing their emotions, recognizing sources of stress, coping with challenges, maintaining positive motivation and perseverance, and developing self-awareness. Growing children require emotional guidance, and you can help your child manage their emotions when math seems too difficult, too boring or even too easy. If anxiety has been a normal part of your child’s math discussions, consider how you can change that this year. Inspiring or even maintaining a love of math will mean incorporating a healthy mix of challenges.
Consider some of these strategies:
1. If math has often been hard and challenging, help your child identify one good thing about their math experience so far. With every challenge, there is growth.
2. Incorporate a “feelings chart” or “feelings thermometer” into your child’s math work.
3. Allow your child to sit with their emotions and to reach out for support.
4. Relieve stress through physical activities, including physical math walks (more information below).
5. Reframe negative thoughts about math by making a pros and cons list of the facts.
6. Inspire self-compassion by helping your child acknowledge when they have worked hard, tried their best, and been brave.
7. Register your child for a math competition.
Remember that strong emotional-learning skills will lead to successful academic performance in all subject areas and will build a healthy member of society.
2: SOCIAL
Incorporate more “math talk” into your child’s life. Math understanding deepens when we share our learnings and “families are perfectly situated to talk about quantity, counting and shapes anywhere children and families are — at home, in the park, or in the grocery store.” Encourage your child to speak to someone else about the math they have learned, be it through a math lesson or informal sharing around the dinner table. Your child can take this a step further and challenge themselves to help someone who has a math question.
If your child is already attending sessions at Mathnasium, have them invite a friend to the next Math Night or game night. Math games are collaborative opportunities to practice fundamental number concepts, strategy and logic.
3: PHYSICAL
Exploring math through physical exercise can provide another opportunity to share learnings. Consider taking your child on weekly math walks to discover the mathematics that exist in everything around us: in the park, the neighborhood, the mall, the library and more! Customize your math walks to be spontaneous trips, or planned events that include trail maps and guide points where mathematical problems are presented such as:
1. Investigating floor patterns.
2. Exploring the shapes of street signs.
3. Studying bus schedules.
4. Estimating the height of a tree.
5. Counting the number of windows on a building.
4: MENTAL
The foundation of math is number sense. This ability cannot be replaced by calculators or computers — it requires exercising “math muscles.” Encourage your child to solve math problems in their head, without writing them down. Have them start with simple computations and work their way up to complex problems. Your child’s confidence will grow when they realize they can not only solve math problems all in their head, but also do so a lot more efficiently and quickly than relying on traditional algorithms. Here’s a few suggestions:
- 99 + 99 +99 = ___
2. 99 x 7 = ___
3. 667 – 99 = ___
4. 12% of 25 = ___
5. Half of 31 = ___
6. 9 ÷ 11⁄2 = ___
7. What number is halfway between 3 and 21? ___
8. Count by 75s: 0, 75, ___, ___, ___, ___, ___, ___, 600, ___, ___, ___, 900.
5: FINANCIAL
Financial literacy is an essential skill for children and adults. Consider getting your child started with a piggy bank. This task is filled with skills such as counting money, financial planning and goal setting. For older children, consider building a budget.
It is not uncommon to feel reluctance when discussing financial topics with your child.
Mathnasium’s curriculum introduces currency early on to ensure a strong foundation in financial math. We recommend that young children work with real money in today’s age filled with credit cards and digital transactions. Feeling money and observing the physical movement between dealings can help young children recognize the impact of purchases and sales on their savings.
For example, share receipts. Take a moment during shopping trips to speak to the amount paid for the items bought is an effective way to introduce money and instill a useful habit.
CONCLUSION
Whether you start implementing all of these suggestions — or perhaps just decide to tackle one resolution at a time together, remember it is perseverance that we want to master.
Mathnasium of Niceville serves students from Niceville, Bluewater Bay, Shalimar, Valparaiso and Fort Walton Beach. Local schools include Niceville High School, Bluewater Bay Elementary School, Plew Elementary School, Ruckel Middle School and Rocky Bayou Christian School.
Mathnasium of Niceville | 1538 E. John Sims Pkwy. | 850-987-MATH (6284)
For Valentine’s Day, Mathnasium of Niceville has created a Valentine’s Day origami heart activity to help you and your child get into the occasion. Visit the Niceville location at the Publix shopping center to pick up your free sheet today!
