To encourage our children as they learned math, I introduced them to several math puzzles and shortcuts so they could impress their friends. It kind of brought math to life. Maybe I can give a simple example: What's the square of 65? Any of my children would tell you instantly: 4225. How did they do it? For any number ending in 5, take the previous digits, multiply by one greater, then put 25 after the answer. In this example, 6x7=42 => 4225. Then, in front of a friend, I'd ask them something like: What's 995 squared? Right away they'd respond 990025. (99x100=9900 => 990025) Sometimes, they'd give their friend a calculator so they could beat them to the answer. Another fun example is magic squares (a square in which numbers in all rows, columns, and diagonals all add up to the same total). It's very easy to build a magic square, as long as the number of rows/columns is an odd number. (I don't want to bore you, but if you're interested, just let me know and I'll explain later in the thread.) When math is fun, and when children suddenly believe, in the eyes of their peers, they are good at it, they can't get enough.
I agree. My kids love math and logic games and math puzzles. My husband and dd are very good at it. My son and I are a bit...well...not so good but we are improving. We sometimes play around with math on family night. I have a workbook called Family Math and it gives many activities for a variety of ages to enjoy. Math is a great subject to bring to live and make fun so kids can debunk the myth that math is too hard or boring. My son actually learned a ton of math from football! lol. He could multiply by 7s when he was in 1st grade. lol. Actually, alot of the math I have taught him came easy to him because of sports. I am not athletic but when I see my son love sports so much then learn so much physics and math from it, I learned to love it also.
Help! My 15 yo dd HATES math!!! She did terrible in math in PS and since HS she has improved some but her multiplication skills are still far behind. We worked on fractions, decimals, and percentages last year and I tried to just move into pre-algebra because, according to the "school experts" she should already be doing algebra. I guess I've been trying to keep up with the "school Joneses" instead of listening and paying attention to where my daughter is in math. I homeschooled my ds for two years before graduating him early and he failed rudimentary college algebra (a "C" at our local community college constituted failing) and had to repeat it twice, although the second time he didn't do any better that the first time. The common denominator in both of my children is me so it appears I must point the finger of blame on myself. Math has never been my strong suit and my students are no better than me; sometimes they have even been worse! :roll::cry: Any advice you can give me would be GREATLY appreciated. Thank you!
For a couple of my children, I pointed them to purplemath. I'm sure others can point to some other free math resources online.
