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are clues to your solution? Why?

The trick is to get your child to feedback to his brains what he thinks he knows and by answering your questions aloud, he is actually providing feedback to himself and rethinking the issue.

You can ask him to demonstrate his knowledge and understanding using concrete items. Math is about counting. A seven year old can memorize that 3 plus 4 gives 7 without a single clue as to what that means. He is safe only if he can count out 3 items in one group and 4 items in another and then demonstrate the meaning of 'plus' by putting the items in both groups together and saying that they add up to 7 or counting to show a total of 7. That is not all - he should also be able to demonstrate the same process given any other 2 numbers.

Any formula in math is closely related to something solid and countable that he can manipulate. Use real life examples to demonstrate it..

You can concretise demonstrate Algebra - very simply!
Let a be the number of apples so produce apples. Let b be the number of bananas so produce bananas.

2a simply means 2 x a which means 2 groups of a apples in each group.
So if a is 4 apples in each group, 2a means 2 groups of 4 apples and that makes 8 apples altogether.

I can only show you what I will say. But as I say, I will demonstrate using the apples and bananas and grouping them on plates or trays.

To show 4a + 3b, where a = 5 and b=7, I will lay out 4 plates of apples, each plate holding 5 apples, and 3 plates of bananas, each plate holding 7 bananas. Ask lots of questions like what the numbers 4 and 3 mean (number of groups of a or b) and what a and b mean (number of items in each group) and finally, what the operation plus means (counting the total number of FRUITS on all the plates).

Knowing your child's MI (Multiple Intelligences) strengths and weaknesses as well as his learning style help manifolds too. If he is a tactile learner, let him manipulate the plates and fruits first, then ask the questions. If he is linguistically inclined, write down 4a + 3b and work the plates, apples and bananas in from what is written. You might choose to draw before you give him the actual items to manipulate.

Math is closely related to the emotions and self-esteem too. It is easy to kill a child's interest by saying 'You are so stupid you will never pass math' when you are the one not teaching well. It will take a million 'Yes, you are great. See, you can do it!' to negate any killed interest.

So find opportunities to praise your child in Math by breaking down a seemingly easy problem down for him (as in the Algebra example above) and praising him every little step of the way, instead of putting a big cross at the end of a 10-step problem and branding him 'stupid' and letting him figure on his own that all he did wrong was to copy the given number '5' as '8'.

Finally, be real. Don't expect a child to know how to read a clock face when all he has at home is a digital alarm clock - kept in his mother's bedroom, no wristwatch and no clock in the classroom. It is not all in the mind when it comes to learning Math but what you do!

Learn more about this author, Lokemun Magar.
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