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Ideas for Parents to Assist Children with Mathematics at Home
The Numeracy Project aims to raise the level of student achievement in mathematics. It is based on research about how children learn and is designed to teach children to think mathematically. There is an emphasis on children developing a sense of number that they can apply rather than learning by rules.
You can support your child's learning in mathematics by:
· Being positive and enthusiastic about mathematics yourself,
· Discussing mathematical experiences with your family,
· Recognising the stage of development your child is at (see below) e.g. if your child needs to use fingers to work something out, accept this way,
· Not feeling you have to know everything. Be a learner too. Get your child to show you how. They will love having you ask and will learn from explaining.
Basic Facts
Children should be able to make sense of addition and multiplication before they try to memorise their tables. When they do understand, it is important that they learn these basic facts and recall them instantly. Each of the basic fact families are linked to the stages mentioned previously.
Ask your child's teacher when or how they feel it is appropriate for you to support your child in learning these facts. These will include the traditional basic facts as well as others such as facts to ten, doubles and 'teen' numbers.
Learning Basic Facts
· To practice your child can:
. Draw the fact.
· Record the results in their own way.
· Record the fact as an equation.
· Write it out 5 times.
· Image it. Talk to someone else about their imaging.
· Show the facts with materials e.g. milk bottle tops or counters.
· Use the Hundreds Board to find what comes just before and just after it when they skip count.
· Discuss the related family of facts and record using tens frames to help them.
· Write a number story about it.
· Practise the fact in their mind at a spare moment.
Incidental maths in everyday family life
As adults, we use math all the time—as we shop, figure out how much time to allot for tasks, and schedule time for cooking, eating, and cleaning. Often, our children are with us during these tasks. Perhaps they are even helping out. Why not involve them in the maths?
The everyday math activities can be built into the things most families already do—ordinary routines such as figuring out ways to save money, to share fairly, or to get somewhere on time. With these activities, children practice adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, and using other important math skills while doing tasks that are a regular part of life.