Your Child's Math Skills Will Improve

Home is the best place to help your young child develop math skills.Math Facts and basic concepts can be a stumbling block for children. With the accountability standards in today's classrooms, even kindergarten and primary school teachers will just move on, even if  children haven't mastered the learning objective.

Children can develop and increase their understanding of math skills at home. Actually, it is a wonderful way to spend time with your child through math play.

1) Make math practical. It is so important for children to see the use of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division in the store, at the gas pump, in the kitchen, in the workshop, etc. Having this frame of reference is critical.

In everyday life, we use numbers to solve real math applications. Even young children can use a fun, made-for-kids calculator. Yes, your child will, depending on his or her age, need to learn "math facts" but if they don't understand when these skills are used, then use of math facts will remain a problem for your child.

2) Multiplication is repeated addition. 5+5+5+5= 5X4 = 20. This concept can be introduced in real situations when your child seems interested.

3) Show and experience fact families when your child is ready.
8x7=56
7x8=56
56 divided by 7 = 8
56 divided by 8 = 7
Write each of the factors, their product, and = signs on cards and have your child move them around to show the families

4) Use tangibles that your child can handle and move around. Candy and food items- Starbursts, M&Ms, Cheerios, Apple Jacks, Goldfish crackers, etc. can be used to demonstrate counting, addition, subtraction and later even multiplication and division as well as to illustrate basic story problems.

5) Make it multi-sensory by involving as many of your child's senses as possible. Visual learning is great, but so is auditory, and tactile learning. Create songs, put them to music and sing them together. Draw in the sand at the beach or in a sandbox or tray of sand. Create more physical games, such as throw and catch games, with math facts.

6) Create "Concentration" games or matching games with math concepts appropriate for your child's developmental level. This memory practice helps with recall and visualization.

7) Use colorful markers and paper, chalkboards, dry-erase boards, and other ways to show real life uses of math. "Take apart" word problems to show real life math uses like buying things. You don't have to be an artist to use any representation that can help him or her sort out the information in the story problem. Use stick figures, squiggles, boxes, arrows, question marks, .... any representations of what is actually being asked in the word problem. This strategy, once understood, can be used  later as a progression toward solving the problem mathematically.

8) Play Store with young children to make their math concepts real. Canned food, packages, boxes, etc. can be used to practice addition, subtraction, multiplication, an division in simulating purchases and making change.  Children enjoy using play money in their role play.

9) Don't forget geometry. Geometry! You say... yes, even young children can begin to see patterns in nature such as symmetry. Architecture in buildings and shapes in art can be explored in the child's environment to serve as a basis for understanding how geometry relates to real-life situations.

10) Whenever possible, make your fun "hands-on" math learning experiences. Your own child may come up with some ways to practice skills and solve problems, so prepare to be impressed by what even young children can do.


Explore together and be a math detectives! Find out how your child learns best. Rather than trying the same method over and over again and wondering why you child isn't "getting it"- approach from another direction. Pencil and paper has its place, but keep the activities age appropriate by using materials that are colorful, with varied sizes and textures.

Whether you are exploring the most basic math skills with a very young child or you are helping a child do his or her math homework, keep it fun and make your child feel success as often as you can.