When you think of Maths, do you picture numbers on a chalkboard or do you conjure up memories of learning fractions while eating pizza or standing with your siblings, measuring your heights against the doorframe? While Maths involves numbers and can sometimes be a source of frustration for kids and adults alike, there’s no reason it can’t be engaging! There are plenty of ways to make Maths fun, while still being educational. 

 

Your children’s teachers will be doing a brilliant job of teaching the fundamentals of Maths, and as the parent, you get to help share the message at home that Maths isn’t scary.

 

Here are two rules to remember:

1. Don’t compartmentalise - to make Maths fun, it can’t only be something your children do at school or while doing homework. Incorporate Maths into everyday life and it’ll start to feel less daunting!
2. Make it hands-on - imagine sitting through a presentation and how your mind may wander. It’s exactly the same for kids. Find ways to keep Maths interactive and engaging, so your kids don’t feel bored.

 

Take a look at our creative ideas for making Maths fun:

 

Find ways to celebrate

Everybody loves to be celebrated and cheered on! When it comes to learning, being praised and affirmed is a helpful way to encourage excitement. Come up with interesting ways to commemorate your child’s Maths accomplishments. For example, once they grasp their multiplication table, take them out for ice-cream. Or whenever they answer a question correctly, give them a high-five or do a secret handshake. For older kids, consider more age-appropriate rewards, such as higher pocket money or more phone and internet time.

 

Let the celebrations continue for Maths events, like Pi Day (14th March) or World Maths Day (23rd March). Use these occasions to show them that Maths is fun! 

 

Encourage friendly competition

Competition doesn’t have to be a bad word. In fact, friendly competition makes us all better! In this instance, the competition doesn’t have to be against a sibling or a peer. Encourage your child to set personal goals and compete against themselves. Their Teach Me 2 Maths Tutor will have a clear understanding of measurable goals your child can work towards and will use creative and innovative learning methods to reach your child at their level and help them achieve their goals. 

 

Make Maths relatable

A crucial step to make Maths fun is to make it relatable.

Here are three ways you can do that:

1. Act it out - use real life objects to demonstrate a word problem to help your child “see” what’s happening. 
2. Find creative ways to teach measurement and distance - measuring height as they grow up and talking about distance as you go on family holidays are just two ways to do that.
3. Keep it fresh - take the problem (ie addition) and help your child solve it with different materials (ie lego blocks). 

 

Turn it into a game

Children love games and what better way to inject fun into their Maths experience than with games and activities!

Here are two ideas to try:

1. Dice War - each player rolls a die. The player with the highest number gets a point. This game will allow your children to practice subitising and addition at the same time! And if you’re tallying marks to keep track of the score, they can practice one more Maths skill while having fun. You can make the game more complex by adding in more dice as your child gains confidence.
2. I Spy - using a regular deck of cards, remove all the picture cards (there will be 40 cards remaining). Place the cards face up in a 10 x 4 or 8 x 5 grid. Player One will begin by saying “I spy with my little eye, two cards that add up to X”. Player Two will then search for two cards that add up to that number. The cards need to be next to one another, horizontally or vertically. Player Two will pick up any other cards that add up to that number too. If Player Two misses any combinations, Player One can claim those cards. The winner is the player who has the most pairs of cards once the grid has been cleared. 

 

Add food

Have fun adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, measuring and graphing your children’s favourite foods. Pizza is a creative (and delicious) medium for learning fractions, grapes are perfect for adding and subtracting, and baking is an interactive activity with lots of opportunities for measuring, ratios and timekeeping. 

 

Encourage Maths talk

Kids love to talk, so model how to have meaningful conversations about Maths. While solving Maths problems together, ask open-ended questions, such as “Why did you choose this strategy to solve the problem?”. Ask Maths questions that could have more than one answer. Here’s an example of a Rounding question: “I’m thinking of a number. When I round the number to the nearest hundred, it equals 200. What numbers could I be thinking of?”. Questions like these will keep your kids motivated to find all the possible answers. 

 

Get a Tutor

Maths won’t feel fun if your child feels frustrated, confused or disappointed.These feelings can also be a source of anxiety for parents. This is where experienced Teach Me 2 online Tutors come in! Click the button below and our team will put you in touch with the perfect Tutor for your family. We will find a qualified Tutor with experience in Maths for your child’s age group and abilities. A Teach Me 2 Tutor forms part of a team ensuring your child rebuilds their confidence and ability, which will ultimately lead to them enjoying subjects like Maths, which they struggled with before.

 Click here to find the perfect Maths Tutor for you and your family!