Thursday, November 13, 2014

Why Talking Math with Your Kids is so Important!

My husband and I have made a point of doing mathematics verbally with our kids since they were young.  Now that they are in third and sixth grade we are seeing some of the positive effects of this practice.  I hope that some of you will seriously consider Talking Math with Your Kids.

I don’t want you to think that we sit around at home and constantly ask our kids to solve math problems.  We do it in a more subtle way.  The best part for us is when our kids say, “Do you want to hear how I know this is true?”  Of course, our answer is always an emphatic “Yes!”

The other day when my third grader was doing her math homework, one of the problems required her to add 7 and 8.  She wrote down, 7 + 8 = 15, and then said, “I know that 7 + 8 = 15 because 7 + 7 = 14 and 8 + 8 = 16, so it has to be in the middle.”  My response, “You just found the average!”  Then, as any proud parent would do, I tweeted about it.  My Twitter is connected to Facebook so a few friends commented on it there, and then yesterday the tweet got lots of attention on Twitter thanks to Tweeps from the mathtwitterblogosphere.  Christopher Danielson, author of the blog Talking Math With Kids, said, “Follow up question:  what is 7 ½ + 7 ½?”  I still need to ask her that question and I will!

Why am I making such a big deal about what my child said?  As a parent am I bragging about her?  Well, yes, to some extent.  However, as a math educator, I am more intrigued by the fact that she thought about the problem, used knowledge of ‘double sums’, and from her knowledge of ‘double sums’, found the solution.  And the best part for me was that she freely explained her thinking—without my asking!

This is not the first time nor the last time that this will happen with her or with my sixth grader.  Why?  Because we make a regular habit of Talking Math with Our Kids.  I strongly believe that this has led our children to become better problem solvers and critical thinkers in various situations beyond mathematics.  These are the skills that our children need to be successful in life! 
Now for some bragging, here are some other ‘math stories’ from our kids:

  • When my sixth grader was in first grade, he came home one day and said: “I asked _____ what 7 minus 10 was and he said it was 0.”  My response, “What is 7 – 10?”  He said, “-3.”  Then he proceeded to say that the other child said that there was no such thing as negative numbers, but he knows that there is such a thing.
  • Last year as we are walking to a WNIT basketball game hosted on our campus, my children say, “Why don’t we ever get to sit in the chairs?”  I respond, “Those tickets cost $20 each.”  My second grader says, “That would be $80!”  Not only did she know the answer, she knew that her parents are too cheap to pay that much!
  • This year during a MathCounts practice our 6th grader was given the following problem.
Instead of figuring out how far the front wheel travels in 100 revolutions, our child took 30 divided by 4 and then multiplied that answer times 100 to get 750 revolutions. His answer was correct, and he was able to do it quickly, which is important in MathCounts.  My husband, who was helping with MathCounts that afternoon, was impressed and did explain to the students how to solve the problem two ways:  using the distance traveled by the front tire and finding how many revolutions the back tire would need to make to travel the same distance and one using our child’s method.

Some of you are going to say, “Your kids get this because their parents both have PhDs in Math.”  While that is true, you don’t need a PhD in math to talk math with your kids.  We likely do it more because we love mathematics and problem solving and we see its importance.  More parents need to talk math with their kids so that the kids build their math confidence and become better problem solvers.  We have seen first-hand that it really works!

Here are some resources that will help get you started:


Please share ideas on how you Talk Math with Your Kids!

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