When children experience success in anything, it motivates them to do more. At Birchwood we have a saying, "Success breeds success." When talking to our students about how to get better at math, we sometimes use the examples of music and sports. We will pick a student that we happen to know excels in one of those areas and ask, "How did you get so good?" The typical response is, of course, practice. Practice, practice, and more practice.
Math is no different. Getting good at math takes practice; deliberate, focused, and frequent practice. Unfortunately, for some kids, practice in math is synonymous with boredom, distress, and even torment. This attitude can be tough on you, the parent, and make you feel like a hard taskmaster. On this page we give some suggestions for how to make math practice a little easier on both you and your child. Hopefully, implementing some of these ideas will make the difficult job of learning math easier on both of you.
Success with Arithmetic Facts
There are a few good websites that can break up the monotony of flashcards. These are listed on the Practice Websites page. Below are a few suggestions for making learning math a little more fun (or, at least, a little less painful.)
BASIC FACT PRACTICE
Mad Minutes
Kids like games. If you can make flashcards into a game, it usually makes them a bit more tolerable. One activity that we sometimes assign for homework is called Mad Minutes. In this activity, set a timer for one minute and see how many flashcards your child can do. Save the cards and record the time. Then repeat the exercise with the exact same cards, adding more as needed. Repeating the same cards both reinforces the facts and increases their efficiency. The goal is to help your child get faster and faster over a span of 5 sets of 1 minute each.
Math War (2 player)
For this activity a regular deck of cards can be used, minus the face cards. To play, deal out the cards face down. At the count of 3, each player takes the top card and flips it over to the middle. If playing addition war, the 2 cards are added; if multiplication, the 2 are multiplied. For subtraction, the smaller number is taken away from the larger. The first player to say the answer wins both cards, which go at the bottom of their pile. You can play until one player collects all the cards, at which time the winner is declared. Optionally, set a timer for a preselected amount and, after the time is up, whoever has the most cards wins.
MATHEMATICIAN'S TOOLBOX (WOODMATH) PRACTICE
Woodmath can be a grind for children, especially if they only see page after page of the same monotonous problems. As a parent, it's important to explain to your child that the purpose of woodmath is to master the skills that are presented. For some kids, mastery of a certain skill comes easily. For others, more practice is needed. That's why each section in their book contains so many pages. It's designed for kids who need lots of practice.
Let your child know that they DO NOT have to complete every page of every section. Sometimes, that alone is a relief. Remember, the purpose and goal is mastery. One way to check for mastery of a certain skill is to have your child do one whole page. Let them know ahead of time that, if they get every problem on that page correct, they might be able to skip the rest of the pages in that set and go to the next. When they have completed the page, use the back of the book to check their answers. If they are all correct, heap on the praise! If not, explain that they are not quite ready to go to the next skill.
There is one important thing to note about skipping children ahead. It's necessary to understand the importance of your child mastering a skill before moving on. Sometimes children (parents, too) get impatient and "cheat" a little. That is, they allow their child to move to another section even though the child's skills in that section are not solid. While it might be motivating to your child to do so, in the long run they will suffer the consequences in other ways. For example, we've seen children make inadvertent computational errors during math contests that cost them a correct answer.
Finally, when a child does demonstrate mastery of a skill and advances to another before completing an entire section, he should understand that the unfinished pages will be used at a later time for review. It is always a good idea, especially when children are advancing quickly, to take time to revisit unfinished sections for review. Most children dislike this kind of review because they view it as "too easy". In this case, you can tell him that he only has to do one row of problems. If he gets every problem on that row correct, he is done with his review. But if not, he has to do 2 more problems for every one that he missed on the first row. This exercise forces children to slow down and work conscientiously.
FOR THE RELUCTANT ONES
Some kids just seem to fight Woodmath tooth and nail. In this case you should aim for quality of work over quantity. Some parents insist on a certain amount of time. But a child who fights doing Woodmath doesn't care much if he gets the problems correct. He only knows that he will be done when the timer goes off. This can lead to carelessness, which can do more harm than good. When this happens you should use the above exercise. If your child can do one row or maybe two, perfectly, then they can be done for the time. But don't give in to mistakes. One wrong answer means 2 more problems, until all are correct.