Christmas Maths

Whether it's summer or winter in your part of the world, you've probably noticed your children's learning has decreased in intensity in anticipation of the Christmas holidays. However, the break will not be favourable towards the students' progress in maths.

Fun sheets to the rescue! Have a look at these magnificent ways of capturing your child's imagination and enthusiasm for learning this Christmas season:

• Count and Trace for preschoolers
• Number fun for children in their first year of school
• Numbers 10-99
• Multiply double digits
• Multiplication and fractions
• Christmas games and puzzles

 +  = ???

Useful Maths Tricks

How many of these super-cool maths tricks do you know? Have a look.

Incidentally, did you know that your child's ability to do maths depends, among others, on their Learning Style:

• If you ask a child who needs movement to sit still and memorise a times-table, you’re unlikely to get good results. You would do far better if you allowed them to walk around or play hopscotch on a makeshift map of times-tables.
• Tactile children, would love to use Koosh balls and learn better by using self-correcting learning tools (flip chutes, electro boards) and other hands-on activities. 
• Auditory children benefit from making tapes of their lessons (either recording their teachers in class, or reading the material themselves out loud).  E.g., chanting the times-tables.
• Kinesthetic children may make schoolwork more interesting by miming the lesson or staging a production.

What is your child's Learning Style? Discover it today.

9 x 8 = ???

7 x 6 = ???

30 degrees C = ??? F

Fun Maths and Logic Problems

Children whose learning style is analytic should have a lot of fun with these problems.

1. An old puzzle. A flying goose met a flock of geese in the air and said: "Hello, hundred geese!" The leader of the flock answered to him: "There is not a hundred of us. If there were as many of us as there are and as many more and half many more and quarter as many more and you, goose, also flew with us, then there would be hundred of us." How many geese were there in the flock?
2. Three ducks and two ducklings weigh 32 kg. Four ducks and three ducklings weigh 44kg. All ducks weigh the same and all ducklings weigh the same. What is the weight of two ducks and one duckling?
3. There are three houses one is red one is blue band one is white. If the red house is to the left of the house in the middle and the blue house is to the right to the house in the middle where is the white house?
4. Uncle Henry was driving to Halifax when he spotted a big green gorilla on the side of the road. He screeched to a stop, jumped out of his car. He saw the outline of a number on the gorilla. He couldn't quite see the number, but he knew it was a 4 digit number. And:
   1) He remembered seeing a number 1.2) In the hundred's place he remembers the number is 3 times the number in the thousand's place.
   3) He said the number in the one's place is 4 times the number in the ten's place.
   4) Finally he said the number 2 is sitting in the thousand's place.
   What is the number?
5. Some octopuses, some fish and a few mermaids were happily frolicking in a rock pool. Altogether there were 38 arms, 24 eyes and 8 tails all swimming in the pool.
   How many mermaids were there?  
   
   
   Children whose learning style is holistic might prefer these problems: 
   
   
   • You are in a cabin and it is pitch black. You have one match on you. Which do you light first, the newspaper, the lamp, the candle or the fire?
   • Imagine you are in a room, no doors or windows or anything, how do you get out?   
   • A boy and a doctor was fishing.The boy is the doctor's son but the doctor is not the boy's father. Who is the doctor?
   • What happens only in the middle of each month, in all of the seasons, except summer and happens only in the night, never in the day?

Excelling at Maths with Learning Styles

There are two kinds of people, we're told: those who excel at maths, and those who don't. But if you read this excellent article (http://qz.com/139453/theres-one-key-difference-between-kids-who-excel-at-math-and-those-who-dont/), you'll notice that research suggests something quite different.

It turns out you can exercise your "maths muscles" until you improve so much, you can pass high school with flying colours! And guess what the most important learning style element you need? I'll give you a hint: it's not analytic thinking. It's persistence.

Do your children have what it takes to exercise your maths muscles? Check it out here: http://www.creativelearningcentre.com/Products/Learning-Style-Analysis/Junior-Mini/.

Maths, Girls and Learning Styles

What can stay-at-home parents do to help their daughters (or sons, for that matter) get ready for school with their basic maths concepts? Encourage them to play with blocks, according to Dr Maureen Woodhams. Listen to her brilliant interview here for other ideas.

Naturally, some children will be more inclined to play with blocks than others. It's all up to their unique Learning Style. If your child is tactile and doesn't require mobility to learn, blocks and boardgames are probably a good starting point. But what if your child requires to move around in order to absorb new information?

• Play detective: take them for a walk around the neighbourhood and read the numbers on the letterboxes. Ask your child to anticipate the next number on this side of the road and on the other side.
• Sing children's songs with counting and pre-counting themes.
• NumberJacks is a great video to watch with your kids... if they are visual. Allow them to jump around the room while watching to satisfy their need for mobility.

Find out what your child needs by assessing their learning style.

Learning Styles and the Times Tables

Even though the world we live in has a calculator built into every phone and iPod, our children are still expected to memorise the times tables. Depending on your child's learning style, they may accept the idea, or they may rebel against the task's inherent boredom.

Paradoxically, the problem deepens for those students who are good at maths. Because they know that 8x7 is the same as 8+8+8+8+8+8+8, they don't want to memorise the answer. Instead, they want to work it out every time, because it's more interesting. 16+16+16+8, this is the same as 32+24, so the answer is 56. Much more fun for an analytic brain to do the calculation than to learn by rote. The problem comes when the teacher needs an instant answer.

So, if memorise they must, what's the best way? Depending whether your child is visual, tactile, auditory or kinesthetic, here are some ideas on how to drill the times tables:

• Put up a poster with the times tables on the inside of the toilet door.
• When you're driving or cooking with your child, ask them five to seven times-table lines, like 3x3 and 7x6.
• Let the child use cuisenaire rods to illustrate the answer. 
• Write the question on the child's back and let them write the answer on yours.
• Create a colourful worksheet to fill in.
• Put the question in context: Anna's chocolate box has 4 rows of chocolates and each row holds 5 chocolates. How many chocolates are in the box?
• Make up a song: Six times four is twenty-four. Or look for a ready song, for example,

To multiply by ten



you take the number then


Add a zero to it


And that’s the end. (http://www.songsforteaching.com/)

If you use the wrong approach for your child's learning style, you might put him off maths for a long time. Check their learning style today.

Teaching Maths Another Way

I was watching a mathemagic show the other day (that's a magic show in which the magician does multiplications in his head faster than you can do them on the calculator). Right at the end, the performer revealed to the audience the trick he used to square 57683 (i.e., to multiply 57683 by itself). It's not a trick in the magical sense of the word, it's a formula for calculating (x+y) to the power of 2, which we all learned in high school, except he figured a way to make it useful beyond the final exam.

So many of us learn to ace the test without thinking of everyday applications for the things we learn. Isn't it a sign that we should change the way we teach? Remove the notion that math is the same as learning to do sample problems or calculating answers. Maths should be about solving problems, turning an unknown problem into a known one, thinking what data you need instead of having it supplied on a plate. Maths should be about tricks like the ones the "mathemagician" used to break down the problem into manageable chunks.


Not many Western schools teach the Vedic Maths of simplifying calculations, for example, and yet there is something inherently beautiful about the fact that the square of a two-digit number that end in 5 is always the product of the first digit and one more than the first digit, followed by 25. For example, the square of 75 is (7x8) followed by 25, or 5625.

Or the trick for multiplying by 11 (see tutorial 6). This is not calculating - this is playing with patterns.

In another excellent video clip, Dan Meyer suggests how to make maths problems more challenging and more fun for our students. TV has trained us that any problem can be solved  “in 22 minutes, with three commercial breaks and a laugh track”, and his dream is to teach a patient way of solving problems.

For sure, not every learning style is suited to patient problem solving. Not every student will have a natural ability to perform complex calculations in their heads. But if these ideas improve the school experience for even one student, they are worth trying.

Creative Kids - Maths

Learning Style

Your child's learning style holds the key to your child's attitude towards maths. If they find maths boring, chances are, they have a non-preference in analytic information processing as well as a non-preference in high persistence. Fortunately, their learning style assessment can offer clues as to how they can improve their maths skills.

Creative Maths Ideas - Online

 If your child's learning style exibits preferences in the following LSA Pyramid Elements:

• visual (external)
• tactile
• learning alone
• stationary

then they are well suited to online learning. Try these sites:

• http://www.mathcats.com/
• http://math-and-reading-help-for-kids.org/creative_math_games.html
• http://www.learn-with-math-games.com/

Creative Maths Ideas - Traditional Games

 If your child's learning style exibits preferences in the following LSA Pyramid Elements:

• tactile or kinesthetic
• learning with a friend or friends
• stationary

then they are well suited to learning through traditional games. Try:

• 
  http://www.ehow.com/info_7949025_card-games-second-graders.html
• board games like Snakes&Ladders, Monopoly

Creative Maths Ideas - Outdoor Games

 If your child's learning style exibits preferences in the following LSA Pyramid Elements:

• kinesthetic
• learning with a friend or friends
• mobility

then they are well suited to learning through outdoor activities. Try:

• http://www.kidsrunning.com/school/krschool0526fractions.html
• http://www.kidsrunning.com/school/geteven.html
• treasure hunts with maths problems as clues

What learning style preferences does your child have?

 Find out today.

Maths and Tactile Learning Styles

How do you teach counting to a child whose Learning Style is tactile?

• Tactile learners love plastic counting beans - they are colourful and smooth and a pleasure to touch.
• You can also use coins, board game tokens, dry beans, M&Ms, raisins... anything with an interesting texture.
• Board games are good for tactile learners. Try Snakes&Ladders played with two dice to practice addition.

How do you help a tactile learner with multiplication, division, fractions?

• Cuisenaire Rods are a great visual as well as a tactile learning tool.
• Create your own Bingo board game where you read out a multiplication problem (3 times 4, or "John has 5 rows of 5 marbles, how many marbles does he have") and your child covers the answer on his Bingo Board.
• Tactile people prefer writing, sculpting or carving the answers. Allow your child to write them in glue and pour sand onto the wet glue to make the grains stick. He can shape them from play-dough. You can find him an old piece of soft wood (a plank) and let him carve in the answers with his pen (remember the old days when "naughty" children wrote on their desks? it feels sooo good to sink your pen into soft wood!!!)

What about problem solving?

• Tactile learners love computer games. Computer games are both a blessing (educational games really do aid education) and a curse (they are addictive), so it's your choice whether you'd allow it, but have a look at http://www.mathletics.co.nz/ and http://www.coolmath-games.com/.
• For other hand-on maths tools, please see http://www.ehow.com/math-manipulatives/.

The thing to keep in mind, though, is that you can't always teach everything only in a tactile way. Some topics need to be presented visually, or verbally, or by taking a field trip. The idea is to use as many senses as you can to teach your child, but concentrate on always providing him with a tactile outlet (let him play with his pen or with a coin or with a Koosh ball). Also pay attention to his other needs: the time of day, intake, learning groups, authority, routine versus variety, imposed structure versus self-structure, motivation, etc.

Is your child tactile? What are his or her physical learning needs and environment preferences? Find out.

Maths is Fun with Learning Styles

Maths is fun. If your child thinks it’s not, the education system’s at fault for not presenting maths in a way that’s palatable to the students.

Every child has their own unique Learning Style, in other words, every child learns in a different way:

• some need to picture what they’re learning in their minds,
• some need to touch learning tools and aids, trace the answers with their fingers or simply write the answers down a few times,
• some need to hear the lesson explained,
• some need to work it out for themselves.

All in all, there are 49 Learning Style Elements that affect your child’s ability to concentrate on their school work. Please have a look at the LSA Pyramid to see what they are.

If your child is kinesthetic-external, for example, take them for a walk and:

• count your steps,
• skip-count the cars that pass you,
• identify the numbers on the houses as you walk,
• add the registration numbers of the parked cars,
• stop to buy a healthy snack and ask your child to count the money, work out the change, etc.

A tactile child will enjoy making and using learning tools such as flip-charts, electro-boards, models and wrap-arounds.

Do you know whether your child will enjoy playing a maths-based board game or baking a cake? Find out here.

Numeracy and Learning Styles

In the news today: “Only a third of students are numerate going into secondary school, and the process of teaching mathematics needs to be addressed, an Auckland University maths lecturer says.” And the problem is not limited to New Zealand.

So, if the experts say that the process of teaching mathematics needs to be addressed, the most important thing is to begin with teaching according to the students’ Learning Styles.

A Learning Style is the way in which a student understands new facts and memorises them best.

Some students need to visualise what they’re learning. Others require a tactile tool to help them absorb the lesson. Holistic students will benefit from math jokes and anecdotes.

Depending on your students’ learning strengths and needs, here are a few ways to make numeracy fun:

• Play a board game that requires number skills (“Snakes and Ladders” for counting from 1 to 100, Junior Monopoly for addition and subtraction).
• Bake a cake, measuring the ingredients and working out the cost of the cake based on the price of the flour, eggs, etc.
• Make flip-cards for your maths times-tables.
• Watch “Number Jacks” on TV.

Bear in mind, however, that you have to match the activities to the students’ Learning Styles. Ask yourself:

• Do your students concentrate better in the morning than in the afternoon?
• Do they get hyperactive when you switch on bright classroom lights?
• Will they become more engaged in the lesson if you let them do hands-on activities?
• Have a look here to find out.

Learning Styles and Maths

Mathematics is probably the only school subject that has a reputation for being “difficult”. Although most children of school-going age can count comfortably from one to ten, some of them will not understand that the rhyme onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineten actually refers to the action of counting, and they don’t know that “two” is more than “one” even if they understand that “two lollies in Jane’s hand” is more than “one lolly in my hand”.

Thus, some children begin their first lesson in Maths on a sour note of “I don’t understand” and “it’s too difficult”. And even if they manage to sail through the arithmetic side of things, there are things like Geometry to trip up those good at numbers.

Children with a preference for sequential information processing will probably tend to do better in arithmetic, which is usually introduced at the beginning of the child’s maths career. By the time they hit concepts more easily understood by a simultaneous mind (geometric patterns, abstract algebra and imaginary numbers), they probably firmly believe that they are “no good at maths”.

This is why it’s so important to get help as early as possible. As soon as your child turns 5, you can use the Learning Style Analysis Junior MINI tool to determine whether they are sequential or simultaneous thinkers. The tool will also show you whether they are good at absorbing visual information (a very useful skill when it comes to geometry and trigonometry), whether they would learn well with word sums and real-life examples, and how best to motivate them in their learning.

The Learning Style Analysis Junior MINI report will also show you how to do revision and homework with your child in a way that’s most beneficial to them. Click here for more information: http://www.creativelearningcentre.com/products/learning-style-analysis/about.html.