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You may believe that you need to be a maths genius in order to give your child a good head start in maths. However, this really isn’t true. Parents can help their children to develop their numeracy skills by simply applying maths into everyday activities.
Here are some top tips from an independent school for girls in Surrey, to help your kids improve their maths skills at home…
Everyday learning
To help make maths more fun, try to incorporate it into your everyday life. For example, include your child in lots of home activities that might involve numbers. This could be measuring out ingredients when cooking or counting money for shopping. By practicing maths in this way, your child won’t even realise they are learning!
School maths
It can be helpful to understand how your child is being taught maths at school. This will help you to practice the same techniques at home and teach maths at the correct level for your child. Speak to your child’s teacher to find out what they are currently working on and what you can do to support your child’s learning at home.
Online learning
There are many useful online resources that can help your child to improve their maths skills. Again, you can ask your child’s teacher for recommendations, or have a look at online activities aimed at your child’s age group. Many of these are free and often include games, which can help to make learning maths much more exciting.
Family fun
Role play games are great for youngsters. Play shopkeepers with your child and use pretend money to teach them how to count. For older children you could ask them to pretend to be the teacher and explain their maths lessons to you. This will not only help you to keep up with what they are working on at school, but it will also help your child to remember what they have learnt by repeating it. Board games are also great learning tools; for example, Dominos and Monopoly are ideal for practicing maths and reinforcing key STEM skills.
Support
Finally, when your child says they need help with their with maths homework it is a good idea to give them space and time to work things out on their own first. Try not to do the work for them. Encourage them to give the work a go before asking for your help. You can then check their answers and talk through any they found difficult.