Easy Ways to Learn Math for Kids
Maybe you've always loved math, and you're excited to be teaching it to a child, but you are looking for some creative ideas. Perhaps you've always dreaded that this day would come---the day your child asks a math question and you feel your stomach churning with nervousness as you struggle to answer her. Understanding the processes of cognitive development and how they relate to math learning, as well as what resources are available to you, will help you help children learn math effectively and enjoyably.
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Developmental Stages
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One of the first things to consider when helping a child learn math is how old she is, and what math she knows already. No matter how bright your elementary school-aged child is, she cannot learn calculus without learning geometry first.
Jean Piaget, the Swiss child developmental expert, places children into four developmental stages. The first is the sensorimotor stage (from birth to age 2). At this stage, your child has some understanding of the concepts of numbers and counting. You can provide activities that incorporate counting and thus enhance children's ideas of what a number is. For example, teachers and parents can help children count their fingers, toys and carrots. Questions such as "Who has more?" or "Are there enough?" are appropriate. Children at this stage love to be read to, and lots of children's books include mathematical ideas. Children at this stage can link numbers to objects, so kids can learn by seeing pictures of objects and their respective numbers at the same time.
The second stage is the preoperational stage (2 to 7 years old). The characteristics of this stage include an increase in language ability, rudimentary understanding of symbols and limited logic. In this second stage, children can engage with problem-solving tasks that incorporate available materials. You can ask them to solve questions like "How could you put all these objects into categories?" While the child is working on a problem, have him explain what he is thinking. This way you can see how he is addressing the problem and also suggest alternatives to him.
The third stage, the concrete operations stage (from 7 to 12 years old), is characterized by remarkable cognitive growth, when children's development and basic skills accelerate dramatically. Children at this stage use their five senses in order to know. They can also think about two or three dimensions simultaneously instead of one after the other. The importance of hands-on activities cannot be overstated. These activities provide students with an avenue to make ideas real and physical, allowing them to get their hands on mathematical ideas and concepts as useful tools for solving problems. Kids using materials build their mathematical confidence by giving them a way to test their reasoning and see if they were right.
Kids at the last stage of child development, the formal operations stage (12 years and up) are able to form a hypothesis and deduce possible consequences, which allows the kids to construct their own sense of what math is. At this point, children can begin to understand pure symbols without needing to see a visual aid or put it into concrete terms.
Resources
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There are myriad constantly changing Internet resources for different aspects of learning math---different mathematical ideas for different ages of kids, and different styles of learning math (see Resources).
You can also ask a librarian or teacher for resources like math coloring books and computer games for your child to play.
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The Math Around You
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The most important tool for learning is to talk to your child about the math concepts you see around you. Encourage questions, and if you don't know the answers, help her develop resources---like searching the Internet (for older kids) or asking her teacher (for kids of all ages)---so she can find them herself.
Bringing up math concepts can be as easy as cheerfully saying "Let's count all the red cans" in the supermarket, or as difficult as helping your child measure the angles of balls bouncing when you're tired and don't feel like getting down on the floor. It can require some patience to allow your child to painstakingly count your change when you could do it so much quicker yourself, but it helps her learn, and you don't have to do it every time.
It's not important to push learning on her; what's most important is just helping her realize how math is all around you both.
Review
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It's always important to review. Many times, parents think a child understands something, only to be shocked later on by his (sometimes adorable) misunderstanding. It's important not just to lecture, but to listen to what kids think is going on with the world around them. You'll get to watch mathematical skills develop along with kids' understanding of the world.
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References
Resources
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