If you have kids and you want to help them with maths you need to watch this short video. Actually, if you know someone who has kids you probably need to watch this.
It’s 11 minutes long. You might have to watch it a couple of times. And you might need to share this with your significant other.
The idea is that family culture matters the most when it comes to encouraging and developing maths skills in your kids. Or any kids. So we all better get started now.
As someone who is really interested in my kids’ education, I think I’ve done a good job of encouraging them to read. We all love reading at my house.
However, I’ve done an average to crap job of this when it comes to maths. Damon has the solution.
Here’s a summary of Damon’s tips from the video:
- Get a whiteboard and put it in the kitchen or other family area. If you have to, use your nice white Fisher & Paykel refrigerator (my idea not Damon’s).
- Don’t do arithmetic. E.g. don’t put up a bunch of + – / x problems. That stuff is boring.
- Make it easy at first.
- Get them talking. If they’re not talking then they’re not learning.
- Learning happens in the process of solving the problem. Learning ends when the problem is solved. Keep it going.
There are a bunch of ideas for five different kinds of engaging maths and numeracy problems that you can use starting at about 5 minutes in. You need to watch and listen for these.
But check out the whole clip here or here for his blog post.
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