January 2020 - Math Anxiety
- How do you react when you see a math problem? Do your palms start to sweat, does your mind go blank, do you start to feel physically ill? Approximately one third of children feel anxious when doing math - and the scary part is, this anxiety has been found in children as young as 5 years old. We need to help children see that math is more than just right and wrong answers or sets of facts and rules, so they can find the joy and beauty in it.
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Here are some tips for how you can help your child develop a positive relationship with math:
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December 2019 - Money and Financial Literacy
With the winter break approaching, there are many opportunities to discuss money and financial literacy with your child. Financial literacy involves all aspects of money such as budgeting, saving, investing, debt management, retirement planning, insurance and taxes.
November 2019 - Development of Executive Functioning Skills
When we support our children with math, we tend to focus on helping them with specific content areas - for example knowing their facts, measuring distances, how to calculate volume - but did you know that there are other ways we can support them in math? Recent research suggests that executive function skills play a critical role in the development of mathematical proficiency and by helping our children develop these skills, we will help them improve their math.
October 2019 - Spatial Reasoning
When we think of supporting our children with math, we tend to focus on number sense - understanding numbers and basic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division), but have you ever thought about working on spatial reasoning?
September 2019 - Talking About Numbers
Talking about numbers is important for children’s math learning. Number talks during daily activities and play has a positive effect on children’s math knowledge in future years.
Activities:
Primary/Junior/Intermediate
Estimation is an important part of our everyday lives, and in school, it helps students judge the reasonableness of their solutions.
June 2019 - Summertime Math!
Summertime Math!
Summer is a time for rest and relaxation, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with math. There are numerous ways to embed math into everyday summer activities. Here is a list to get you started:
- Monitoring temperature
- Outdoor scavenger hunts
- Gardening
- Cooking
- Grocery shopping
- Budgeting for a Trip
- Packing suitcases/Trunk
- Scheduling
- Mapping
Happy summer!
May 2019 - Visual Math
Visual Math
Mathematics is highly visual. Using visual representations will help enhance your child’s understanding of quantity, build fluency and flexibility with numbers and support the development of both spatial and algebraic reasoning.
Mathematical models can help support your child to think about numbers visually - improving both their understanding of quantity, promoting automaticity and flexibility with numbers.
Ten Frame
April 2019 - Financial Literacy
Financial Literacy
There are many opportunities to engage your children in conversations about money. From a very young age children are interested in learning about money and leveraging these conversations can have lifelong benefits. From learning the value of coins and dollars, to budgeting and finances, talking about money supports many different mathematical concepts (e.g., adding, subtracting, percentages and estimation).
March 2019 - Spring Math: Math is Outside Too!
Spring Math: Math is Outside Too!
Spring and nice weather make for a great time to get outdoors and connect with math. Whether you are taking a walk, filling compost bags with leaves or starting to build that garden shed, there are many opportunities to engage in rich mathematical discussions with your child.
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Here are some questions you can pose to your child as you engage with nature:
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What shapes do you see in that house?