How to improve a child’s performance in math

Is your child having trouble solving math problems? And in the diary every day getting worse marks in this subject? How can you help your child understand this difficult science and save money on tutors? Tell him about math magician addition.

So many children do not like math, many kids face this problem – dislike of math. And there is an explanation for this: all that is incomprehensible-complicated, and if it’s difficult, then it’s not interesting!

Basic operations with which the baby gets acquainted in school: addition and subtraction, division and multiplication. If he has any problem with addition or subtraction, it is like a balloon will accumulate into a problem with multiplication and division! So try to see if your child has a problem with these two actions! Write him or her some examples or give him or her a problem with these actions! If there is a problem, then the multiplication table or any actions with division are too early for you to solve!

It is important not to tell your child, “If you don’t understand, sit down and learn everything until you do!” It is important to understand – a child at this age is concentrated and absorbs information well for only 15-20 minutes! That’s how much time in junior high school students study new topics: 5 minutes are devoted to repeating what they learned at home, 5 minutes in the middle of the lesson – a physical minute, 5 minutes at the end of the lesson – repetition of what they learned earlier, 5 minutes roll call and talk about distant topics, and only 15-20 minutes are devoted to learning new material. And here’s the first tip: do not do more than 15 minutes, then rest, and we can continue the lesson again for 15 minutes!

Do not forget that the child was still in school, and he had lessons, and then he came home and started to study homework, and in between he has a few extra circles, and the baby does not have time to even go for a walk! Allow him to go to one extra club, not 3-4! Allow the child some free time, he should have time to switch from one activity to another! Ideally, if the child has free time and study with additional circles will be in the ratio of 50:50!

And it is important to know how to relax–the best vacation for a child is when he does what he loves, but it is not stressful. For example, relax in nature, ride bicycles, paint or play movement games. Arrange family picnics or walks, such a vacation is always good for the child, or play some light game with your child at home: assemble puzzles, play show-offs, you can also let him play on the computer, but not for long – 30 minutes at most!

To consolidate previously learned material on addition and subtraction touch math numbers, we suggest doing a simple exercise: everything you see, add up into one sum.

Game #1:

Mom: Sophia, how many bulbs in your room.

Girl: 3.

Mom: And go count how many in the bedroom!

Girl: 5!

Mom: And please count how many bulbs we need to buy?

Game #2:

Mom: Let’s boil potatoes for dinner! How many pieces do you want?

Girl: 2

Mom: Okay, and for me 4 and for our dad we’ll boil 6. So: 2 potatoes, 3 and another 5. Here’s a pot for you, put some potatoes in it for lunch.

The girl adds 2+3+5 potatoes and gets 10 of them into the pot.

The next step in improving the knowledge of mathematics of mental calculation is a game in which Mom herself must come up with the conditions, taking into account Sofia’s interests. The main idea is that this game should use simple mathematical actions.

Game #3:

I have a gift for you. But you’ll get it only after you find, pass “all the tests! Here’s a map that will lead you to the gift!

“Take as many steps to the couch as 12-6 , then do 5+2 jumps, turn right and go another 7-3 steps. In the closet, choose the thing that hangs by the count of 5-1. Put it on and then take another 10+6 steps from the closet. Yay! You’re on target.”

The whole secret is that the child didn’t feel like he was being forced to learn anything. To him, it’s just life as usual. Mom feels that way, too, when she’s going to the store and making a list or cooking a meal. The child feels responsible in this when he helps mom. Explain to him what is the cogat test used for.

Tip: Translate difficult tasks for the child’s perception into a game!

Let’s diversify the game: you are walking along the street and your child says: look how beautiful the car is!!!!! And you tell him: look what license plate number it has! Let’s put together the numbers on all the cars that we like. And that’s how we practice subtracting and adding. You can do anything with the 4 numbers on the license plates! Try it! The boys really like this exercise game. The main thing is that you are involved, too.

When your child is faced with division problems at school, how can you help him or her? The most important thing is that the problems in school textbooks are very far from the child’s mind! At this age, figurative thinking is poorly developed, so it is important to bring the situation described in the problem closer to the child’s life in order to better understand the task.

Mom: Sofia, we only have three apples, and today there will be nine guests, let’s share these apples between all equally!

I cooked 6 sausages, please divide them equally among all of them (there are 3 plates on the table).

Mom reads the problem: “For six identical dresses they spent 24 meters of fabric. How many meters of fabric went for each dress?”

Mom: Sofia, look, I have 24 buttons, let’s divide them into 6 dresses for your dolls so we can sew them on.

When a child understands what we are talking about, when the situation is close to him, when he can touch the object and do something with it, it is easier to solve the problem! First of all, note that at the age at which division is usually studied in the school program, the child is still in what is called the “formal-operational” stage of development. This means that he cannot understand abstract concepts, so behind each explanation there should be a real example, able to interest the child.

Tip: Adapt the situation from the task to life

Practice outside the home all the time. For example, you go to the store, buy apples, tell your child: we took 6 apples, let’s count how many apples each of us will get and whether it will be enough for us or we will take more! Or come to the playground, I give him 9 candies and tell him to divide equally among all his friends!

It’s such an unspoken, but practice! It works really well! Use all the items at hand to make it easier for the child, and that’s our advice!

It is also very important that the child can also use your methodology in school, to adapt all the tasks to life situations close to him. To do this, you need to develop the figurative thinking we talked about. One of the most useful for its development is drawing. That is why this subject is taught in school. Drawing is needed not only for the child to master skills in this area. Through drawing, we develop the ability to imagine in your mind a variety of situations. Offer your child to draw his or her favorite character who lives in the house. And let him come up with his own character, what kind of house he has, what kind of furniture, etc… A great way to develop imaginative thinking is to draw a poem! For example, choose the simplest poem in the alphabet and ask your child to draw pictures for it! This, by the way, is also a great way to memorize difficult poems in school!

Tip: Develop imaginative thinking.

We have one more activity left, I think it’s the hardest, or rather the hardest to sit down and learn all the examples from 1 – 9!

The multiplication table is a lot of material to memorize! So the first thing, dear parents – learn gradually! You do not need to force your child to learn all of the multiplication table in one day! Agree that today he will learn from 1-3, tomorrow 4-7, and then he will learn from 8 to 10. It is also very important to explain the action of multiplication to your child. As a rule, children starting to learn the multiplication table already have a concept of elementary arithmetic actions like addition and subtraction. It is this knowledge that will help you explain to your child the principle of multiplication: that 2 times multiply by 3 means adding 3 times the number 2, that is, 2+2+2. The child should be well aware of this in order to avoid many difficulties and misunderstandings in learning the multiplication table in the future.

Divide the whole multiplication table into four days, and then start to memorize it gradually! In addition, for consolidation, use “useful traps” – place around the apartment, hang out pieces of paper with individual examples from the multiplication or division table with answers, especially in the places in the apartment where children are most often. Children themselves look and check if the examples are written down correctly: on the wall, fridge, near the vase with candies, near the computer stickers with examples and their solutions are hanged. The children sometimes stop at the stickers and repeat!

To reinforce the material I have learned, I suggest playing MESSAGE. Prepare 10 houses of colored cardboard, on the roof of each fix a number.This will be the answer to the example written on a piece of paper.

– I will give you a letter, and you take it to the house whose number equals the answer on the card!

– 4*3 is 12!

– Find a house in our apartment with that number, and near it you’ll find a surprise for yourself.

Children of primary school age have a well-developed visual memory. Here is an example with stickers, hung around the apartment, perfectly helps, without fixating on a particular task, to remember the right examples. And what’s more important, in this way, the child learns the multiplication table in a scattered manner, which will allow him to easily navigate and not memorize everything in the correct order.

Another of our tips is to visualize the problems!

And one more very useful tip: Don’t be a mean teacher to your child! Be a friend! And play school! But this time the child will be your teacher! Ask your child to come up with a problem for you with different conditions: “that I would solve it in three steps”, that there are words “so much more, so much less”. Then he/she will feel like a “teacher”, in charge of the game. But he will not even suspect that he will have to think and solve the problem by himself! So you don’t fool him with the answer! Give in to him! Answer him wrong! This will spur him on and come up with more tasks for you!

How do you learn the multiplication table by 9 in 2 minutes? Ready?!

To learn it, we’ll need two hands!

To do this, put your hands palms down, fingers straightened. Now, to multiply any number by 9, simply bend a finger under the number of that number (counting from the left). The number of fingers before the bent will be the tens of the answer, and after – the ones. Here, for example, is 7*9. Count from left to right to 7. Curl this finger (7) and now count again – on the left we have 6 fingers and on the right 3 fingers. Write down 6 and 3, you got 63!

That’s it! Two minutes and we know the whole column for 9 from the multiplication table! Of course, now we will not be able to say that we know it by heart, but using such a cheat sheet, the child will very quickly remember the table by 9!

And I really hope that no one will shed any more tears because of school problems!

Dear parents, don’t scold your children for failing, because you can always find a solution to the problem, and most importantly, give your kids more time to relax and turn an uninteresting boring school program into fun games!