The “back-to-school” signs throughout stores these days remind parents and children to stock up on school supplies. As you pick out lunch boxes and folders together, it is a good time to start a conversation about how your children feel about the upcoming school year.
Buying School Supplies Brings Up Many Emotions.
Children experience a variety of emotions when thinking about the new school year. Some students feel excited about making new friends, trying a new activities, and learning new skills. Other students mourn their carefree summer days. Many feel anxiety about changes and an increased workload. Children who have struggled in math in the past to keep up often feel anxious. Children not being properly challenged in math often feel bored.
As you shop, ask your children “How are you feeling about next year’s math class?” If they respond using words like, “hate,” “boring,” “stupid,” “too easy,” or “too hard” they don’t feel engaged in their math education. Those feelings and attitude will impact their effort and achievement in math. If they say “I’m just no good at math” it’s a crisis. If you agree, and say “I was never any good at math either,” you should declare your house to be in a state of math emergency. https://www.youcubed.org/think-it-up/parents-beliefs-math-change-childrens-achievement/
How to Turn Negative Math Emotions into Positive Ones
You can’t buy a box of “math confidence” or a bag of “math enthusiasm” like you can buy a calculator http://www.mathnasium.com/back-to-school-shopping-for-calculators1, but enrolling at Mathnasium of Mt. Laurel is a great way to increase math skills, confidence and achievement. 82% of parents with children attending Mathnasium report a positive increase in their children’s attitude and confidence. http://www.mathnasium.com/mtlaurel/results
Your child may not think math enrichment is as cool as the trendiest tennis shoes, but as parents you know math confidence will have a more lasting value. Plus, kids actually like coming once they recognize the benefits and start earning rewards. Confidence and enthusiasm does increase a child’s cool factor -maybe even more than cool tennis shoes!
Perhaps you are thinking about hiring a traditional math tutor for your son or daughter. If so, consider these benefits of our math center over most math tutors:
Sometimes students need to go backward to work on skills like multiplication and division before they can tackle percentages.
Tutors rarely trace difficulties back to the root cause of the problem. Just like you can’t fix a foundation built on sand, you can’t help a student struggling with math without identifying their learning gaps. Our assessments ferret out any foundational weaknesses and then we target our instruction to address them. Plus, going to a center dedicated to math instruction really sets the right tone for concentrating.
Who Benefits Most from Adding Mathnasium to their Back-to-School Shopping Cart?
So when you write your back-to-school shopping checklist, don’t forget to include math confidence on it. It’ll be the most important thing on the list. If you want to learn more about us, give us a call to set up a no-sales-pressure 5 minute tour. 856-441-2356
If you are one of our summer students, talk to us today to get some great deals on extending your membership. But hurry these deals don’t last forever.
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