Helping Your Child With Maths (For Parents of Primary Students)

Since childhood we teach our children maths. Learning to count becomes an integral part of our learning process. Maths is everywhere around us. Talking to your child and letting them take part in everyday activities like accompanying you for shopping, cooking, or even setting the table, will help your child with maths. Easy to learn nursery rhymes, learning to take turns or enjoying while playing pretend games, such as working in a post office or a restaurant will help your child to understand numbers, patterns and shapes, measuring and sorting. Everyday activities like teaching them how to share sweets equally, making sure everyone gets a spoon at dinner table, or by helping them to measure out enough paper to wrap a present, can help your child to solve maths problems.

Here are some tips on how you can play a key role in helping your child to understand and enjoy maths.

Please note that different tips will suit kids of different ages. You can choose among these for the tips most relevant to your child’s stage of learning.

1. Get containers for your child to play with. Talk about what holds more/less or empty/full. Try these activities with sand or water. Baking can also be a fun option here.

2. Encourage your child to collect their toys after playing. Teach how to compare them: This toy is heavier/lighter or bigger/smaller than.

3. Teach patterns using buttons or clothes pins. Think about pattern in colour, size and shape.

4. Give your child objects to play with, like measuring tapes, rulers, phones, watches, jugs, weighing scales.

5. Teach your child to look at the clock and see time for school, bed or playtime.

6. Look for different shapes around. Ask them questions like, how many circles can you find in the kitchen? Look at books and pick out various shapes.

7. Draw attention to the days of the week and time of the day: today, yesterday, tomorrow, morning, night.

8. Measure your child: How tall is he/she? What is their shoe size? Use words like big/small, wide/narrow or tall/short.

9. Look at numbers on cars, buses, shops. Play a game of who can hunt most numbers.

10. Play counting games while climbing up or down the stairs. Simple games involving dice can also be played.

11. Create simple counting rhymes. For example, One Two Buckle My Shoe.

12. Draw shapes using pasta, sand, crayons, cardboard cut outs, etc. Use words like round, curved, straight.

13. Make a pretend shop using tins and packets of food. Use real or pretend money. Talk about: How many? How much? What change did we get?

14. Teach your child to help you sort out matching socks or putting things in the fridge.

15. Ask your child to divide toffees, sweets or chocolates equally among their friends or in family.

We hope you’ll enjoy doing these easy to do activities with your child and have fun at the same time. 🙂