Ideas to Make Math Fun and Exciting

As parents and educators, we know how much we all care about our children and how much we want them to succeed. Here are some helpful tips we have found that promote achievement among students and make math an exciting subject that everyone enjoys.

1) Praise effort and not ability
When you praise ability and children have difficulty, they feel that they are not able to meet the challenges, which lowers their confidence and their achievement. It also puts pressure on them to succeed. However, effort is something a student can have control over, as opposed to ability. She can always try a little harder or put in extra time. By honoring your child’s work ethic, you are saying that she can take ownership of her studies and make a difference. Over time, she will feel more confident.

2) Engaging in math should feel exciting, challenging and fun.
Teach your child to think of math as a great puzzle, where numbers have almost magical powers that she wants to learn. For instance, practice breaking a part numbers and putting them back together again in different combinations to build mathematical flexibility. Try problems of varying levels of challenge so that students learn to persevere despite obstacles. This is a way to build mathematical expertise.

3) Help your children become independent with mathematical thinking and interested in talking about their strategies. When your child is solving a math problem, try having her tell her strategies to you. Let her prove her points. By describing her process, she is strengthening her mathematical understanding and raising her self-confidence.

4) Children need math tools that make them feel like mathematicians who do real work. These tools should help them feel empowered and joyous. When looking for mathematical products for your child, seek out ones that foster independence, have a good theoretical background, and ones that promote active learning. With such tools, your child is able to be in control of the learning process. The child should be the focal point of the work, not the tools.

5) Einstein believed that love of learning was the best teacher. Products should instill that power in children so that they may grow with wonder. When products instill curiosity and motivation to learn, the child’s ability to develop mastery increases, which promotes achievement.

Matthew Mandelbaum and Jamie Cohen are parents and learning specialists and are the creators of Jumping Joey’s Number Line. Jumping Joey’s Number Line is an innovative, child-centered, multi-sensory arithmetic learning system for Pre-K through Elementary. Jumping Joey’s Number Line fosters enjoyable, engaging, effective and efficient mathematical experiences, where students are motivated and build a strong math foundation with long-term understanding. Students feel successful and excited about learning opportunities, and confident in their emerging abilities.