5 Tips and Tricks to Become Better at Math When Homeschooling

The choice of homeschooling as a method of education for your kids is great. However, you must remember that children still have to compete with peers who attend brick-and-mortar schools. Ergo, you have to ensure that the lessons they get are as effective as those they would have gotten in class, especially in case of foundational subjects like math.

Besides ensuring that kids are getting an interactive math lesson from your chosen form of tutorship, you must pay attention to their growth to trace the improvements and challenges. You can also take steps to make youngsters better at math, and here are some tips that could help improve math skills of your homeschooled kids.

Identify weaknesses

One of the advantages of homeschooling over regular classes is the privilege of having one-on-one interaction with your kid. This advantage helps you easily spot weaknesses and challenges of the child. More so, interactive maths lessons encourage conversations instead of just straight-out teaching. 

Kids are good at hiding weaknesses when little or no interaction happens. Students with an introverted type of the personality can get away with not understanding a particular math concept when they are part of a larger group. And that is why many kids coast through school without learning as much as they should have. 

When you identify the challenges, you can focus on working hand-in-hand with your kid to decide how to face difficulties. The steps to overcoming the existing problems are not complicated. In short, you must dedicate more time to a difficult math concept until your child improves.

So, identify where the challenges manifest and dedicate extra time to fixing them. You can spot the issues by investing in math consultation for kids. So, these are some of the reasons that support the need to homeschool your kids.

Practice more often

The more time kids spend practicing, the better they get at a math concept. Your job is to ensure that a child is practicing as often as possible, especially if they are learning math on an online platform.

Some online platforms offer worksheets that are downloadable and printable. These worksheets contain practice questions on math for kids for all grades and levels. There may be up to 100 questions on one worksheet. 

Kids do not have to solve all the questions at once; if they attempt a few now and then, they will get better at solving similar math problems. Some of the worksheets for practice contain fun images to keep kids interested in whatever math concept the sheets contain. 

Proper materials can motivate kids to practice more often. Make sure to find the best math workbooks for their age and grade level. These workbooks can help develop not just math skills, but also critical thinking and problem-solving abilities.

Another way you can practice with your kids is by applying math knowledge in real-life scenarios. For example, on the week your child is learning measurement as a math concept, you could get them involved in cooking, especially baking. Learning how to measure the right amount of flour or baking powder is an excellent way to ensure that the lessons on measurement stay stuck in the kids’ minds. 

Use fun videos and games to teach

Children, understandably, do not have the focus and attention adults are used to, and they will zone out immediately after you start talking about numbers. This issue is the one that often defeats the purpose of teaching and demoralizes tutors. However, you can grab kids’ attention by using games and fun videos in the teaching process.

Making homeschool fun is essential to ensure that your kid does not entirely miss out on school experiences while homeschooling. There are numerous math games on websites that you can use as part of your teaching method. Some games are digital, some are printable, and some require a lot of physical activities, which may involve singing, dancing, running, and jumping.

Some fun math games include 

• Addition and subtraction bingo 
• Shape scavenger hunt
• Math twister 
• Guess my number 
• Math revolution 
• Around the world 
• Hot potato 
• Math fact race 
• Jeopardy 

These math games are available online with instructions on how to play them, like the fun videos you can watch with your kids in their spare time. Online math learning platforms usually use videos and games to help kids learn new topics more quickly and easily.

Make use of technology

Technology is now an essential part of our everyday life and is very helpful when teaching math to kids. Kids are attracted to technology, and parents have tried to pry them away for the longest time. Instead of taking the tab away from their hands, you can use a child’s fascination with technology to teach them math.

Another way to teach math is to take advantage of technology’s collaborative features. You can sign your kids up for some of the co-learning applications on the internet to allow collaboration with other kids. With technology, kids can definitely get better at solving math problems.

Some math games also include small competitions in which kids can participate to increase their scores on the leaderboard provided by the gaming company. 

Be positive 

You must understand that kids may want to pull away from something they deem difficult and uninteresting, which can frustrate you as a teacher. Instead of being confused and letting negative emotions seep out, you can try some positivity. 

Constantly remind the kid that they can carry out that task, answer that math question, and solve all these word problems. Your positivity should radiate enough to become the one thing that keeps your child going when things get tough. The more optimistic they are, the better they will become at math.

When your children approach every math concept, no matter how complex it is, with a can-do attitude, getting through the problem will be easy. Stay positive, and even when you feel negative about a math-related problem, never let a kid see it. Let your positivity affect the learning process in the productive way! 

Conclusion 

Teaching children math at home has become a reality for many parents. Thankfully, homeschooling is not the hardest thing to do, especially if you are using online math platforms to teach your kids and follow the five tips mentioned above.