In the elementary years, students learn math using colorful blocks, fun puzzles and other engaging props. As the tough concepts come out of the woodwork in middle school, the helpful props disappear, far too often leaving dread in their wake. Math quickly becomes the least favored subject at that point and is seen as a useless endeavor, even viewed as unnecessary after high school. However, with the way math weaves itself through everyday life, nothing could be further from the truth. Here are just four of the many reasons your child should care about math — and how you can help.
Critical and Creative Thinking
While solving math problems, the brain lights up in four distinct areas — encoding, planning, solving and responding — showing its progress through the creative thinking process. Regularly working on math can help strengthen these areas to give kids the ability to effectively problem solve using sound judgements.
With every math problem kids attempt to solve, they must make a series of judgements based on their understanding of the underlying concepts. As they make these judgements, they learn how to think both critically and creatively to solve math problems. They can then use similar steps and brain power to find solutions to many of life’s challenges.
Emotional Health
In addition to strengthening the analytical side of the brain, math can help improve your child’s emotional health and resilience. Through the completion of mental math calculations, people of all ages can improve their brain’s ability to regulate emotions.
Both mental math and emotional regulation happen in the same area of the brain and require similar effort in processing information. So, as your child works on their math skills, their ability to process and handle big emotions in a healthy way may start to improve as well.
Life Skills
With a strong foundation in math, your child can improve many of their life skills from baking delicious treats to setting up a household budget. They can use their math skills to control their finances, for example, as they make purchases big and small throughout life. Their math skills will also help them accurately double recipes, take measurements and much more, giving them the ability to tackle many different types of projects.
Fun and Excitement
As understanding blossoms, mastering tough math concepts becomes a lot of fun. The excitement of solving a new math problem never wavers, leaving students stunned with the level of knowledge they possess. They can even share their fun and excitement for math by teaching their peers (or parents!) about the concepts they have previously mastered. Helping your child see the fun in math can help ensure they maintain a lifelong love of learning and excel in their studies — and it’s easy with Genie Academy.
How to Help Your Child Learn to Love Math
With help from Genie Academy, parents across New Jersey are helping their kids learn to love math — and you can, too. By enrolling their children into the program, these parents helped their kids go from struggling in math to the top performers in the country. Within just seven months, Esther jumped to the 91st percentile and continued on to 99 in 17 months. Continued progress at Genie Academy allowed Somer to go on and get a perfect PSAT and SAT score, landing her with immense educational opportunities and scholarships. If you want to see your child start down this incredible path, contact our team at Genie Academy to see how we can help.
