Primary school Maths: helping at home

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Some children are mini mathematicians, others see it as a completely foreign language, but no matter how your child performs during their maths lessons, as a parent you have a role to play in supporting the learning process.

Maths, along with English and science is one of the core compulsory subjects your child has to study from the age of five, right through until they are 16. Having a strong foundation in mathematics will help your child in many other subjects as well as performing everyday tasks.

Maths on a chalk board

It is your job as a parent to support what happens inside the classroom at home. This can be through helping your child with his or her homework, setting tasks of your own or using learning aids, plenty of which are downloadable from direct.gov.uk. Maths is a subject that often gets viewed as boring and/or hard. It is a subject in decline among college and university students and the government is investing more money in its teaching and in encouraging students to continue with this highly rewarding and engaging subject past GCSE level.

Making maths fun

Learning in the primary ages has to be about fun. You will need to engage your children otherwise they will lose interest and won’t want to take their learning any further. There are several ways you can do this. Play number games, simple ones such as dominos and Yatzee are fine for younger children. As your child gets older, you can try harder, more challenging games.

Making maths real

Some children ask why maths is so important. Adding and subtracting in the classroom needs to be backed up by real world experience. There are several ways you can show your children the real world value of maths.

When you go to the supermarket, get them to help you weigh things and add up the cost of multiple items. When you come to pay ask them to work out how much change you will receive. Ask them to check through the receipt to make sure it is correct.

You should let your child handle money; show them how much you spend – pay for one of your grocery bills with cash – then tell them how much money people make per week/month and get them to work out the difference. This also helps them to appreciate the value of money.

Homework

Your child will probably start with around 60 minutes per week of set homework. However, in the final two years of primary school this will normally rise to approximately 30 minutes per day. There will be times when your child directly needs your assistance, for example with a quiz or if they get stuck. However, even if your child seems to be doing fine on their own, it’s still worth checking up on them to ask them how its going and what they are learning about.

It’s important you stay on top of how much homework they are doing and whether they are managing to do it all by themselves. Remember; never give your child the answer straight out. Go through the issue, outline scenarios and come to a conclusion together. You can then explain the outcome in more detail.

Your child should be able to relax when doing homework. Set somewhere quiet aside just for them, but where you can easily check up on them. Homework time should not be coupled with watching the TV or using the internet. However, you should reward your child for doing their homework successfully and in good time.


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