Maths ideas

[nward]

Hi, I read such an interesting article lately about Maths and promoting maths confidence with children. Basically, it was highlighting the fact that we promote literacy as 'fun' by reading stories to our children from a very young age, but we don't do the same with numeracy. The article recommended a great site that I've subscribed to and started doing with my son called 'Bedtime Math' bedtimemathproblem.org/ which gives a differentiated maths problem each night, put in the context of an interesting fact or little story. Thought I would pass it on here- it's really helped me to support my son with numeracy in a more interactive, confident and fun way.

I do agree with the theory of making maths more fun to gain DCs interest - we did this when DD was tiny - not any great plan as such, but just the way it happened instinctively - out & about with things other than DD to concentrate on had me giving her little maths problems to solve - we soon realised we had to up the anti as she was too good & fast - this has gone on to be something she still loves now & is considered exceptionally good at, at nearly 10 - so I do think making it fun & very much part of the early days helps keep an interest, but theres lots of ways you can achieve that without subscribing to websites - if the website is free, then great by all means give it a go, nothing to lose, but if not & you can't afford it, you could well be wasting money, so not so good - especially when your posts sounds like potential self promotion of your website - apologies if thats not right, but the wording you use makes it a bit suspect -

that said my DD now LOVES Manga Maths & it's usually her first port of call with any computer time she has - but thats a free site used by her School :)

I agree.

I think we do bring "fun" to maths in the same way as reading a book anyway. Certainly I found it was natural from an early age to count the steps as you went up, count flowers on one page of a book and see if there were more/less on the next page, weighing ingredients to make cake, counting pennies to see if they've got enough, counting on in snakes and ladders, money in monopoly...

I think there's plenty of books, games, and free computer stuff out there without paying for anything.