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Motivation for Maths
Primary Times explores some fun ways for families to make maths exciting and engaging for all ages.
How to make MATHS more exciting?
As a subject that focuses on calculations, shapes, and numbers, maths isn't necessarily something that every child naturally gravitates towards. Pupils don’t always find addition and subtraction, multiplication, or fractions to be the most fun or fascinating topics to learn about. With that being said, maths definitely doesn’t have to be boring! If approached positively and tailored to individual interests, maths can be enjoyable and rewarding for children and adults.
The importance of maths in childhood
Why is maths important? It's all around us! Maths is linked to lots of other school subjects and various life skills that we use day to day.
Maths is thought to help children with:
• developing critical thinking and innovative problem-solving skills
• recognizing and understanding patterns
• improving spatial awareness
• the development of key cognitive skills like concentration, reasoning, and memory
• offering a range of transferable life skills
• opening doors to a wide variety of educational avenues or possible future career fields
M - Make it memorable Show your child the real-world applications of their learning and relate maths to their personal interests if you can. Use fun maths games and quizzes with interactive elements to capture your child’s attention. By making learning more engaging and enjoyable, your child’s confidence and familiarity with maths should hopefully continue to improve.
A - A creative and accessible approach Children learn in many different ways. Painting the different geometric shapes in bright colours or building 3D models might be helpful for visual learners. Take your learning outdoors and count the birds you can see. Draw numbers or solve addition and subtraction problems on your patio with wash-away chalk.
T - Tutor groups and tuition centres Maths tuition centres and focused study classes that provide children with additional support can be a fantastic option. Not only do they offer enthusiastic, qualified, and friendly staff, but it also gives children a new, fresh environment to learn in. Parents wanting to improve their own maths skills can lead by example by looking into local adult learning services and the variety of courses available! Master the basics together.
H - Hands-on activities Why not bake a cake together and talk it through step by step as you explore quantities and measurements? Make some paper plate clocks to help with understanding telling the time. Create an imaginary customer and shopkeeper scenario and encourage your child to practise counting out their money to pay for their shopping. Have a go at fun activities as a family and get your children excited about maths!
S - Social opportunities to learn Spend time with other parents and your child’s friends if you can, playing fun board games together that also involve problem-solving and critical or logical thinking. Encourage your children to solve maths puzzles or riddles together as a group or to sing some songs to try and make certain maths concepts seem more approachable. Playing sports is also a great way to get children’s minds thinking about angles, working out the scores and understanding more about measuring and judging distances too.
Are you ready to discover a new motivation for maths?