Yeah! We are not talking about bedtime stories, but Math time stories.
We all know the benefits of reading a bedtime story to children before tucking them in for the night. However, what if we talk about math before bedtime?
A research study with almost 600 first-grade children, suggests that parents and children who do bedtime math activities together during the school year learn more math. The study found benefits for math learning among both parent-child pairs where anxieties around math are present.
You can always find engaging ways to get rid of your kid's Math-Phobia like bedtime math stories, not needing paper and pencil. Start giving kids a light word problem to solve each night before tucking them in. You can even make them relevant to something the family had done that day. For example, "When we made milkshakes, we made two chocolate shakes and three banana shakes. How many milkshakes did we make altogether?" Once the kids start showing some interest, you can raise the bar, making the problems a tad more challenging, "If it took two minutes to prepare each milkshake, how long did it take us to make all of them?"
Bedtime Math activities related to number sense, addition, subtraction, fractions, geometry, measurements, time, etc., can develop real fluency and help even the most reluctant learners build confidence in their math skills.
So if you have young children and are anxious about their mathematical skills, this nightly routine could be your focus. If you have a bit of math anxiety and are not comfortable with numbers, you can start slow.
By simply including stories that include mathematical concepts and problems in nighttime routines, parents can feel more confident that they are contributing to the mathematical development of their child outside the classroom at the same time as creating a less stressful environment for discussing mathematics.
So tonight, let's take a few minutes and fall in love with Math!!