Helping your Child Learn Math
Introduction
Most parents will agree
that it is a wonderful experience to cuddle up with their child and a
good book. Few people will say that about flash cards or pages of math
problems. For that reason, we have prepared this booklet to offer some
math activities that are meaningful as well as fun. You might want to
try doing some of them to help your child explore relationships, solve
problems, and see math in a positive light. These activities use
materials that are easy to find. They have been planned so you and your
child might see that math is not just work we do at school but, rather,
a part of life.
It is important for-home
and school to join hands. By fostering a positive attitude about math at
home, we can help our children learn math at school.
It's Everywhere! It's Everywhere!
Math is everywhere and
yet, we may not recognize it because it doesn't look like the math we
did in school. Math in the world around us sometimes seems invisible.
But math is present in our world all the time--in the workplace, in our
homes, and in life in general.
You may be asking
yourself, "How is math everywhere in my life? I'm not an engineer
or an accountant or a computer expert!" Math is in your life from
the time you wake until the time you go to sleep. You are using math
each time you set your alarm, buy groceries, mix a baby's formula, keep
score or time at an athletic event, wallpaper a room, decide what type
of tennis shoe to buy, or wrap a present. Have you ever asked yourself,
"Did I get the correct change?" or "Do I have enough
gasoline to drive 20 miles?" or "Do I have enough juice to
fill all my children's thermoses for lunch?" or "Do I have
enough bread for the week?" Math is all this and much, much more.
How Do You Feel About Math?
How do you feel about
math? Your feelings will have an impact on how your children think about
math and themselves as mathematicians. Take a few minutes to answer
these questions:
* Did you like math in school?
* Do you think anyone can learn math?
* Do you think of math as useful in
everyday life?
* Do you believe that most jobs today
require math skills?
If you answer
"yes" to most of these questions, then you are probably
encouraging your child to think mathematically. This book contains some
ideas that will help reinforce these positive attitudes about math.
You Can Do It!
If you feel uncomfortable
about math, here are some ideas to think about.
Math is a very important
skill, one which we will all need for the future in our technological
world. It is important for you to encourage your children to think of
themselves as mathematicians who can reason and solve problems.
Math is a subject for all
people. Math is not a subject that men can do better than women. Males
and females have equally strong potential in math.
People in the fine arts also need math. They
need math not only to survive in the world, but each of their areas of
specialty requires an in-depth understanding of some math, from
something as obvious as the size of a canvas, to the beats in music, to
the number of seats in an audience, to computer-generated artwork.
Calculators and computers
require us to be equally strong in math. Theft presence does not mean
there is less need for knowing math. Calculators demand that people have
strong mental math skills--that they can do math in their heads. A
calculator is only as accurate as the person putting in the numbers. It
can compute; it cannot think! Therefore, we must be the thinkers. We
must know what answers are reasonable and what answers are outrageously
large or small.
Positive attitudes about
math are important for our country. The United States is the only
advanced industrial nation where people are quick to admit that "I
am not good in math." We need to change this attitude, because
mathematicians are a key to our future.
The workplace is rapidly
changing. No longer do people need only the computational skills they
once needed in the 1940s. Now workers need to be able to estimate, to
communicate mathematically, and to reason within a mathematical context.
Because our world is so technologically oriented, employees need to have
quick reasoning and problem-solving skills and the capability to solve
problems together. The work force will need to be confident in math.
Build Your Self-Confidence!
To be mathematically
confident means to realize the importance of mathematics and feel
capable of learning to:
* Use mathematics with ease;
* Solve problems and work with others
to do so;
* Demonstrate strong reasoning
ability;,
* See more than one way to approach a
problem;
* Apply mathematical ideas to other
situations; and
* Use technology.
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