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NOVEMBER 19, 2020 | The Jewish Home OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home
Parenting Pearls
A Few Math Basics By Sara Rayvych, MSEd
I
will be honest that math is the subject that parents express to me the most fear about teaching. There’s something about math that strikes terror into parental hearts. Even children in school will often need a parent’s help at home with math homework. Doing math at home with kids can be very frustrating. As a parent, you may understand the math concept but each time you explain it you receive a blank look in return. Alternatively, you yourself may be a little unfamiliar with what’s being taught or what’s required for that assignment. This is frustrating for everyone and, sadly, can occur nightly. I’m hoping that something in this article can take away some of that frustration and give a bit of confidence to parents that may need it. I will not be addressing Common Core or how it affects math, despite how important the discussion is. In our homeschool, I do employ many of the traditional manipulatives that I used professionally and you’ll find in your child’s classroom. I have also added some out-of-the-box ways to bring hard math concepts down to a level my children will understand. I tried to include a few of those tricks that I use and that will ll hopefully make math a little easier and less stressful for you.
Making it concrete When teaching math, it’s important to remember that math is usually abstract concepts and children are concrete thinkers; the younger they are, the more concretely they think. Make every lesson as hands-on as possible. Saying to your child, “You have two cookies and I give you two more. How many do you have?” is still abstract. To us, it sounds easy but to a child it doesn’t make any sense since they can’t process that information. I think this is where parents often find themselves frustrated, explaining re-
peatedly to a child that still doesn’t understand. Even using their beloved snack won’t get them past the abstract nature of the situation. If they can’t see it and touch it, then it doesn’t exist. Try to make everything as concrete and real as possible. As they get older, you can slowly bring in slightly more abstract concepts. It’s always best to err on the side of concrete rather than abstract. Also, when introducing a new concept, it’s best to start with the concrete version as new concepts are something new to learn, even if you think they already know some of those concepts abstractly. There are many examples of transitioning from concrete to abstract. I’ll include some here using basic addition as an example. Put two cookies/spoons/buttons/anything into one of the child’s hands and two into the other (or in piles on the table in front of them) and ask them how many they have altogether. Allow them to count, touch and move the pieces. This is very concrete because they can see it, touch it and manipulate it. Showing them drawings of the items are less concrete but still not so abstract. They can see and count the items but they
can’t really touch them or move them. Anything involving written numbers will be more vague and abstract. When it’s time to move to written digits, you’ll often see pictures underneath for good reason. Those pictures are to concretely illustrate the abstract number symbols being taught. All this needs to happen before your child can ever be asked orally how many cookies they have in each hand. As a side point, they love to have cookies in each hand, but I digress.
Use what’s familiar Whenever possible, try to connect a new concept to one they already understand. I routinely introduce the concept of basic decimals as dollars and cents. They understand money and that 100 cents make a dollar. Before COVID-19, I would take my children shopping so they could understand money and use math practically in a store. Math concepts, such as decimals, are inherently abstract and hard to understand. By connecting the new concept to an old one, you’re basically taking something that is new and confusing to your child and saying, “You already know this,
let me show you where you’ve seen it before,” We often spend a lot of time teaching something from the beginning when we can compare it to what they already know. Fractions is a vague concept but children already know how to divide a cookie or chocolate bar into halves to share with a sibling, whether they want to share or not. Division is similar. They understand how to divide the pie of pizza up within their group or make sure each person gets the same number of cookies from the package. Many mathematical concepts are something they are already familiar with in their daily life. If you can make that connection, then you can build upon that. Not only does it make the math more real and useful to them but it’s taking a vague and abstract concept and bringing a concrete connection in. Once I’ve taught a concept using a particular method, I will then use that as a prompt to help them if they get stuck later on. For example, when using pizza pies to teach improper and mixed fractions, I will prompt them by asking, “Are you ordering by the slice (improper fraction) or by the pie (mixed fraction).” If a child confuses bigger and smaller denominators, I may ask if they’d prefer their chocolate bar divided into halves or thirds. These quick prompts remind them of the previous lessons.
Bring it into real life It’s always a bonus when kids get to see how they really do use math in the real world. I’ve had kids insist nobody ever uses addition in real life. As mentioned above, I teach basic decimals as dollars and cents. I recently had an older child tell me he/she couldn’t understand decimals because we don’t have thousandths of cents. I was able to give a real-life example that hopefully clarified everything. I explained that when we buy dozens of donuts for a Chanukah