Creativity Boosts Mathematical Thinking in Young Children

Ever experienced while climbing boring stairs of your building, suddenly somehow you subconsciously end up counting the stairs. Alternatively may be while staring at a beautiful decorated garden you end up counting the stepping stones kept there. Its because we have evolved with time doing maths and number of new ways to do maths. Our ancestor used maths to hunt for food, like keeping the count of number of arrows they are left with, or number of footsteps to know places around. Similarly, we use maths to keep a count on money, syllabus left, number of days, hours left and much more. Maths is in our genes, no matter what we do, we have to start and end our day with maths and most of all we are designed to do maths.

Relating things around us boosts up our maths and this is best applicable on kids, using a creative manner and creativity we as an educator and parents can boosts the maths skills  of our kids, easily and in a fun way.

Here is how to achieve it.

-  Encourage Students to Question and Observe

 

As kid are always at the top scale of their curiosity they always love to discover how thing work. So while presenting a new concept a teacher must always make space for the students observation and imagination and encourage to ask the question, may be by using a phrase such as “How else do you think it can be used?” or “What do you notice about this (design, story, number, or shape)?”, this will help the students to built a habit to be creative.

-  Shot Up, Open-Ended Questions

Teachers can develop a habit of posing questions in an inventive manner. Basically the job of the teachers is is to make sure that all their students have the correct tools that they need to solve a problem and encourage the students to ask logical and clarifying questions during while solving the problem. Usually when teachers ask a question in which a student struggles and need to think creatively, in those questions students not just get more engaged, they are also able to understand the concept with a clear insight. Along with this it also gives teachers a chance to be able to assess the understanding of their student by observing them by how they use their maths Skill.

-  Involve Students in a Rich Conversation

Conversing with the students one-to-one, first of all it takes the fear and nervousness out of them and encourage them to open up their mind before teachers. This helps teacher as well, as the get a clear entry inside the thought process of the students and they are able to explain all the concepts well by improvising the way of explaining that suits that particular student. Teachers can take following steps to get students talking, like asking them “How, according to you, will this get solved?”

Role of Parents

In nurturing a child’s analytical and calculative mind, parents play a key role. They are the one who spends most time with the kids then teachers, and so making the child interacting with the daily stances and environment, and making them see through the maths around them allows them to be more receptive towards maths.

Parents can do these following things like:

-  Finding a Pattern

Always stay on a hunt for how can you use normal daily stuff as a pattern to make the child observe it and apply maths in it. It can be anything like toys, plates, spoon and flowers around your house and then observe its size, shape, colors, number and types of quadrilateral and all. This will also help in improving observing skills.

-  Have a Maths Mania
 

Play a fun game with kids, ask many questions and then ask if they know a better way to solve it. Encourage them to beat you in maths, and then let yourself be beaten to develop a new confidence in them. Make the questions more challenging as they improve in their performance and never forget to ask them to explain himself how he figured it out, ask him to explain the concept he applied, and this will make his concepts base stronger. Exercising this activity two to three times a week is enough. While they are bored like in the car, or in subway or while waiting in the doctor’s office, kids are more interested to do maths when they bored.

Children finds math more simple and interesting, when educators and parents use creative mode of engagement with maths.

 

About Author:

Yash Khara, a content writer and blogger by profession, is following his passion for writing and counselling aspirants from different streams with all the aspects of digital marketing after completing his Engineering. Currently exploring digital education at Byju’s- The Learning App, his other interest includes composing music and fashion designing.

Mail Id- yash.khara@byjus.com | LinkedIn Profile