How can Maths become your child's favourite subject?

Maths was always easy for me. I do have a vague memory of having trouble in understanding addition when I was in kindergarten. I also remember that my teacher gave me individual attention and explained the concept to me: a bulb lit in my brain and I started understanding everything taught in my class. I guess I was lucky to have excellent maths teachers when I was completely dependent on someone else to explain the concept to me. My love for maths can be testified by the fact that I did my bachelor in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics. I assumed automatically that my children will inherit my love. Alas! I was in for a surprise. My world came crashing down when my firstborn told me that he hated maths. He was in grade 2 when he uttered these words to shatter me to my mathematics core!

It was time for some drastic measures. I didn't want him to "unhate" maths just to satisfy my innate desire for him to love the same thing that I loved. It was because I knew how difficult it is to professionally succeed in life without being good at maths. I know it is not impossible. Doctors don't really need to know maths. However, being a mother, I didn't want to restrict his professional choices.
Now, I will tell you about the exact steps I took for taking my son from the point of extreme dislike for maths to a point where maths became one of his favorite subjects.

1. Work on a child's basic concepts:

I sat down with my son and discussed openly why he hated maths in Grade 2. I knew that he understood the concepts of addition and subtraction. I also knew that he knew his multiplication tables quite well. I had made my Multiplication Flash Cards App just for this purpose i.e. for learning and testing multiplication tables and he used to get full marks in it. After discussion, I realized that he was getting confused in deciding when to divide and when to multiply in maths word problems. I worked on his concepts and gave him essential common sense tips about when to divide and when to multiply.

2. Make maths interesting: 

Once I knew that my son had the basic idea about handling maths word problems, I tried to make his learning experience fascinating and fun. We used color pencils, blocks and crayons to practice problems of multiplication and division. We talked about icecreams, cakes, candies, pizzas, etc. when thinking of word problems. The goal was to associate happiness with maths. I had to wipe his slate of fear clean and what better way to do this than to talk about the things he loved! 

3. Practice, practice and practice:

The essence of excelling in maths is practice. No one made me practice maths at home when I was younger and I did it on my own. However, nowadays, children don't practice as there are too many distractions in the form of Xbox games, cartoons, youtube videos, etc. Usually, a child does maths practice only when he/she gets maths homework from school. This is not enough practice! You need to do some maths every day so that it becomes a habit or second nature. I did the same with my son. I gave him just 2-3 sums every day. I didn't give him sums on the day he had maths homework from school but on all other days, I made him practice and do some sums. 2-3 sums are more than enough for a grade 2 child. More may overwhelm him/her! My son practiced every day and started finding maths easier and easier. Soon, he got over his acute fear of maths. He started excelling in maths tests and exams and I was a happy mom.
After a couple of months of regular maths practice, he started saying that maths was one of his favorite subjects.

Unfortunately, this is not the end of the story. My steps for making maths a favorite subject are kind of circular. Every time a new maths concept is introduced, you have to repeat the same steps. This way you will make sure that the child has a good understanding of his/her concepts, associates them with happiness and practices a few sums every day. Khan Academy is a good site for understanding maths concepts. You can make an account as a parent and add your children to it. You will have free access to maths by grades. Your children can look at teaching videos, do practice and attempt quizzes and tests.

For younger children, Khan Academy is amazing for practice but for older children, I still believe in the good, old paper and pencil approach. The reason for this is that in some countries, there are marks for actual problem-solving steps and not just for the answer. Hence, I normally use Khan Academy for helping me in teaching the maths concepts and I give the actual practice questions from the exercise in my son's maths book. Another reason for going for paper pencil instead of Khan Academy for practice is time management. You can read more about this here.

The following picture is the essence of what I have talked about in this blog. A picture is worth a 1000 words so I made a picture.

I started using exactly the same approach with my younger one when he started school and maths easily became his most, most favorite subject. I hope my steps help those parents who are devastated to hear that their children don't like maths. Please feel free to comment or ask questions. I would love to hear from you!

Special Thanks to: Freepik.com