5 Tips to Make Learning Math Fun for Kids

What can you do as a parent if your child develops math phobia? Every day after coming from school your child rants over doing his math homework or complains to you “What good is Math?” Or is it worse than this? He is never able to crack the Math test or thinks “Only nerds are good at sums”. It is undeniably a worrisome situation as numeral literacy is every bit as important as any other skill and you can’t let your kid remain a math phobic for the rest of his life. The more you dilly-dally the problem the worse it will be so you have to tackle the situation head-on. We’ve come up with 5 tips to make Math fun for your kid-

Tip1: Your first step is to assess your math skills: Does calculating percentage still sends you in frenzy? Chances are likely that you are unintentionally passing your math fear to your child. Do you quite often say “I was always bad at Math” and did your kid pick up on that uses it to his advantage? Your negative attitude toward numeric literacy can hamper your child’s progress towards learning math. When you start hearing your own negative words coming out of your kid’s mouth then start exploring alternative ways to make math fun for your kid.

Tip 2: Storytelling in Math: Kids love stories. Tell fairy tales and ask your child to count the characters or you act out the story and count the characters together. Sounds fun, isn’t it? There are many interesting math story books for children that make different math skills enjoyable and easy to learn.

Tip 3: Play Math:Temporarily shift from the text books and math worksheets. Take out some dominoes, blocks, a deck of cards or a pair of dice to practice math skills. Remember that children have to be willing to develop their numeric skills so make the lessons more interactive, interesting and fun. You can also try playing board games that require logical thinking, adding, subtraction and more.

Tip 4: Help your kid notice Math in everyday life: Tell your kid that Math is a part of our daily lives. As you plan meals, clean your house, order food from the local restaurant or keep score during games, emphasize the necessity of math skills to your kid. Make your child understand that Math classes are not intended to make his life boring but they enable him to learn a skill that is a practical necessity.

Tip 5: Study together system: Arrange a weekly study together. Kids can explain things to each other in a way that makes them comprehend the math facts better. It will be learning cum fun activity that kids will definitely look forward to every week.

Preview Learning Math with Albert to help your child to start off with Math.

Home Schooling for your child?

Secrets to homeschooling:
• Homeschooling can be complete fun, if you enjoy learning with your kids. You can try to make boring things more enjoyable like providing exciting examples to your child. Let your child learn the way he/she feels comfortable because that is the way they will love to enjoy learning.

• It is essential to devote your valuable time to your child’s learning. Avoid doing your tasks while they are studying because it will help them to concentrate on their studies. Your concentration towards them will be rewarded later. Keep your child’s learning time sacred and do not involve yourself with your friends when they are studying.

• If your child is not doing well, or you are messed up with some problems at home, don’t give up, just try reading. Reading is the best way for your kids to learn and retain. Reading aloud delights little ones. You can record your reading and the toddlers can listen to them again and again while you complete your household tasks.

• Make use of educational products to enhance your child’s capability to learn faster. Such products help your child to gain self-confidence and have a better learning experience. Moreover, practical learning helps your child to judge better and make them good test-takers.

• Many of us believe that children are empty vessels waiting for the information to be poured into them. This is a wrong perception. Homeschooling parents should sit with their children and explore each of their textbooks to get the bigger idea of the picture. Try to understand the purpose of the textbook, chapter by chapter, heading by heading and word by word. Once your child is doing chapter by chapter work, you can bring them back to the big picture and then relate the importance of the information given in the textbooks.

• It is suggested to keep in touch with home school mentors and researchers. These people are a great help to mothers’ homeschooling their kids for the first time. Involve yourself with a group or some good library. Even a good education magazine can do wonders.

• Get into some social outings and trips to enhance the learning power of your child. But do not overdo it, as it might kill interest of learning at home.

• Observing your child helps you to know your child’s best capabilities and talents. Children thrive in an environment that encourages independence and autonomy. Thus proper surroundings and tools should be provided to the child.

Total Development Program will be a good program to start off to home school your child.

Is your child gifted?

Signs of giftedness in a preschooler
Your 2- to 4-year-old may be gifted if he:

• Has a specific talent, such as artistic ability or an unusual facility for numbers. For example, children who draw unusually realistic pictures or who can manipulate numbers in their head may be gifted.

• Reaches developmental milestones well ahead of peers.

• Has advanced language development, such as an extensive vocabulary or the ability to speak in sentences much earlier than other children his age.

• Is relentlessly curious and never seems to stop asking questions.

• Is unusually active, though not hyperactive. While hyperactive children often have a short attention span, gifted children can concentrate on one task for long periods of time and are passionate about their interests.

• Has a vivid imagination. Gifted children often create a vast and intricate network of imaginary friends with whom they become very involved.

• Is able to memorize facts easily and can recall arcane information that he learns from television shows, movies, or books.

Other signs of giftedness may be a little harder to discern. By age 3 or 4, for example, some gifted children begin to realize that they are "different" from their peers. This can make them feel isolated and withdrawn; it may also make them likely targets for bullying.

They may begin to experience intense frustration because they can think more rapidly than they can express themselves, verbally or physically. If your child appears unusually angry or frustrated, you may want to consult a mental health professional.

Choosing the right reading material for your child.

So your child has started to read. She may be slow and stumble over a few words but they can manage. Fluent reading will not be far behind. Here are some tips for selecting the appropriate reading matter


Children enjoy reading texts that are aimed at their age and interests, whether it is about football, fairies, ghosts or outer space.
Those with illustrations add to the interest and are often the quickest way into the text.
Your child can choose from different types of text. For example, story books or factual texts, depending on the appeal to his/her imagination and his/her character. Story books provide a way into reading through a combination of words and pictures. Factual texts will interest the curious reader who wants to find out about the world. Some high-quality magazines contain an attractive combination of fiction and non-fiction and create a continuous relationship with a young reader.
It can be reassuring for a child to reread a picture book that is familiar from a very early age.
A good book does not have to be long.
A good book can be put down for a while, but will be easy to pick up again later.
Let him/her choose books which you yourself may not find very interesting

What makes a gifted child?

The battle between nature and nurture – at least in terms of how they affect intelligence – is far from over.

An Australian study, which was published in the journal PLoS Medicine earlier this month, found that children born to older men did worse on intelligence and cognitive tests from infancy to seven years of age when compared to children of younger fathers.

Whether the legacy of nature outweighs the latter-day efforts of nurture or the other way round, Dr Joanne Staunton, a cognitive psychologist from the Thomson Paediatric Clinic, identified five things parents can do to help develop their child's intelligence.

Teach your child to approach things in a systematic, or step by step, manner.

Encourage your child to group similar items together so he can learn to discuss and explain their similarities and differences.

Teach your child to follow instructions.

Show your child how to complete patterns.

Develop your child's language skills by reading to him and asking him questions.

A person's intelligence is most commonly measured by an IQ, or intelligence quotient, test.

Average scores for children range between 80 and 119.

Those scoring between 90 and 109 form roughly 50 per cent of the population while children who obtain a test score of more than 130 are described as "of very superior intelligence" and make up the top 2 per cent of the population.

The concept of a gifted child was mooted by Stanford University's Lewis Terman, who developed one of the first tests to measure intelligence, in the early part of the 20th century.

However, paediatricians Mind Your Body spoke to do not advocate putting children through IQ tests unless required.

Dr Chong Shang Chee, an associate consultant in the division of paediatric neurology, developmental and behavioural paediatrics at the University Children's Medical Institute in National University Hospital, said: "IQ is not the best measure or predictor for everyone or for success."

IQ tests measure a child's verbal comprehension, reasoning, working memory and information processing speed.

Dr Staunton said that parents should take their child for an IQ test only if they suspect he or she has learning difficulties, high intelligence or low intelligence.

She said: "At the moment, the IQ test is viewed as the best measure of intelligence although there are many who say that intelligence tests do not fully measure intelligence.

"All IQ test results need to be viewed with caution as they do have a margin error in the score and need to be interpreted in relation to your child and not as an isolated score."

This article was first published in Mind Your Body, The Straits Times

Ms Tan shares how she start to read to her child from young!

Teach your child to read

You can start teaching your child the building blocks for reading before they ever step foot in a classroom. Once your child enters school, you can work with your child and their teachers to help aid the learning process. Teaching your child to read will involve dedication and patience.
Make reading an important part of your child’s life before they can even speak. Read to your child as they develop in the womb and when they are babies. When your child is ready, start to read out loud to them while they follow along by looking at the pictures. You can then start to point out words in the book to your child while you read their favorite stories.

Read your children books with rhymes as well. The rhymes are easy for your child to remember and as they grow older they can learn to recognize some of the words in their favorite rhymes.

Start to introduce your baby to the alphabet from a young age. When your baby is just a couple months old you can start singing the ABC’s song to them. Between twelve to eighteen months, your little one will start to sing parts of the song on their own. A few months after that, you can start showing them the letters of the alphabet on a chart as you sing through the tune.

A Book Is a Child's Companion

If we want our children to enjoy the companionship of books, we must allow the child's contribution to the relationship to be wholly salient. We want the child to know that he is relevant to the book. So as we look at a book with a child, we are flexible about how that process goes. We forget that we know it has a beginning, middle and end, and we allow the child's pleasure and interest to dictate what it is to which we will attend, and of what the interaction will consist. We attend to the child’s agenda. We do our best to explicate the demands of perspective the illustration demonstrates, and we spend the time we need to cover and uncover, make disappear and reappear, our own faces and hands, until this loses its interest for the child. Only then do we proceed in the book. It is not unlike taking our child to the beach to view the vast ocean or to admire the sunset while acknowledging that the tiny sandcrab that scurries over the toe of his sneaker and totally captures his attention is a wholly worthy competitor for our intent and deserves our closest mutual attention. We are flexible, and we care about what our small friend's interests are because only then can he bring his whole self to the encounter. And that is what we want. We want the child to know that he is relevant to the book.

Babies and toddlers are enriched by books. Even more important, the relationships between very young children and their parents are enriched by books. Books provide a source of mutual pleasure for parent and child that is likely to last a lifetime. We introduce infants and toddlers to books not simply because of what they will learn from them, but so that they will grow to love them. It is a gift beyond measure.

Talk About Books

Talking about the books you read is just as important as reading them. Discussing a story or a book with your child helps your child understand it and connect it to his or her own experience of life. It also helps enrich your child's vocabulary with new words and phrases.

Here are some ways to help your child acquire skills in comprehension, reasoning, and critical thinking:

Ask your child about the kinds of books he or she would like to read.

Talk to your child about your favourite books from childhood, and offer to read them.

Encourage your child to ask questions and to comment on the story and pictures in a book – before, during, and after reading it.

Look at the cover and the title of a book with your child, and ask your child what he or she thinks might happen in the story.

Encourage your child to think critically about the story. Does he or she agree or disagree with the author? Why?

Think out loud about the story as you read, and encourage your child to do the same. For example, ask, "Does this make sense? Why or why not?"

Give your child time to think about the story, and then ask him or her about it again a few days later.