PRACTICAL
PARENTING
GUIDE
MATHS
At sixes and sevens…
There are those moments as parents that stay with you long into life. When your child
is born, when they take those first steps, when they star in the Christmas nativity…
and when they bring their first maths homework home.
OK, that last one wouldn’t make the list of ‘momentous’ memories –
The reality is that parenting is not an easy job. And in today’s world, the demands on
parents to help your child learn, grow and prepare for life can be stressful and overwhelming.
So when little Jonny or Jenny brings home increasingly complex maths homework
(that may well prove complex for parent and child alike), it can easily add to the stress.
What if there was a way to help your child learn
maths in a fun, playful way?
The solution is simple, yet in today’s serious world, we often forget it exists. By bringing
educational games and play into the home, children are able to get to grips with challenging
subjects – and discover joy in learning.
Imagine exchanging hair-pulling maths homework for maths games and exercises that
involve the wider family and leave everyone laughing and smiling. What could be better
than that?
Within this special BrainBox Practical Parenting Guide, you’ll find…
• Why we need to break maths out of the classroom
• Maths games for staying in and going out
• Tips for turning a maths hater into a maths lover
• Great maths games to play while travelling
So let’s cut down a bit on the seriousness and start generating
some maths smiles and laughs for everyone around!
Yours playfully,
Gary Wyatt
Founder of The Green Board Game Co
Brainbox Practical Parenting Guide | Maths
2
Breaking Out Of
The Classroom
Steve Humble (aka Dr Maths) explains how
maths needs to escape the confines of the
classroom if it is to take root in the minds
of our children – and gives some starters
on how parents can bring maths into
everyday life…
Learning mathematics outside the classroom is not enrichment,
it is at the core of empowering an individual’s understanding
of the subject.
Mathematics educators have suggested that students should
receive opportunities to use and apply mathematics and
engage in mathematical modelling.
Maths teaching outside the classroom is meaningful,
stimulating, challenging, and exciting for students.
Importantly, these experiences invite all students, irrespective
of their classroom achievement level, to participate successfully
in problem solving activities, gaining a sense of pride in the
mathematics they create.
Students’ mathematical eyes are opened as they discover
real-world examples of shape, pattern, number, data,
symmetry, and reflection, to name just a few. Students
become mathematical detectives as they pose questions,
solve problems, and document and communicate their
discoveries in various ways.
Mathematics is very much alive in the world around us and
students come to appreciate this very quickly when real world
triggers are used.
Renowned Mathematics Professor Jo Boaler states: “Students
do not only learn knowledge in the mathematics classrooms…
students that engage in mathematical modelling can develop
a deeper, conceptual knowledge of mathematics…that can
have value beyond the classroom.”
I am a great believer in taking maths onto the streets to
confront people’s fears and anxieties, believing that the
classroom can at times create only boundaries for many
students to real life maths.
Brainbox Practical Parenting Guide | Maths
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Breaking Out Of
The Classroom (continued...)
Finding the pattern
There are a great variety of patterns which have been
discovered over the centuries by mathematicians.
One of my favourites has to do with triangular numbers.
A natural number is defined to be any positive whole
number (for example 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7…etc)
By looking at a few natural numbers you can see how they
can be made from triangular numbers and you can start to
see how Gauss’s idea works.
2=1+1
5=3+1+1
12=10+1+1
1
1+2 = 3
19=10+6+3
25=21+3+1
You may like to check some more natural numbers to see
how the pattern continues, but we cannot check them all!
Mathematical proof can, and this shows the true power of
maths as a subject.
3+3=6
6+4=10
Each subsequent number in the triangular number sequence
is created by adding a row to the bottom of the triangle.
So the next two triangular numbers are fifteen (10+5)
and twenty-one (15+6).
On the 10th July 1796, when he was 19 years old, Carl
Friedrich Gauss wrote in his diary ‘I have just proved this
wonderful result that any natural number is the sum of three
or fewer triangular numbers’
Let’s go for a walk
Here are some ‘puzzle walk’ questions you can drop
into everyday life with your children:
• How long, short, tall, high, deep, heavy?
• How much do you see?
How much more is hidden?
• Can you find 5 of these….?
• Can you continue this pattern?
• What if we change this?
• What if we add a line?
• What if we add a shape?
Brainbox Practical Parenting Guide | Maths
4
Making
Maths Fun
Gary Wyatt, Founder of The Green Board
Game Co, recalls the little games he used
to play as a parent to help make maths
fun for his children…
I’m all for providing a well-balanced education to my children
but I must admit that if a child doesn’t like a particular subject,
they just won’t apply themselves…and if they don’t apply
themselves, they don’t learn.
However – there’s a solution! Yes – you guessed it…turning
learning into games can have a drastic positive impact on a
child struggling within a particular area.
Below are a few games that have worked for my family and
many of our friends. Give them a go – or modify them to best
suit you…but make sure you make it fun!
Supermarket Add-Up
Maths with Menus
Whenever you go to a restaurant that offers paper menus ask
if you can take one home with you. Offer your child a menu
and tell them that they have £20 to spend and they can’t go
over that amount. Explain that they can get dinner, drink and
a dessert if they have enough and then let them work out
what they’ll get and how much they’ll have left. You can
expand this game by telling your child to order for the whole
family – offering a higher amount. This game allows children
to use maths in a real world context.
Mathematical proof can and this shows the true power
of maths as a subject.
Whenever you go to a supermarket create a contest to see
who can guess the total cost. For each item you put in the cart,
give the price and let your child work on adding everything up.
Whoever is closest can win a prize.
Go Fishing
Cut out some paper fish and put the answers to questions on
the flash cards on the body of the fish. Also attach a paperclip
to each fish. One person shows a flashcard (or asks a maths
question) and the other goes fishing to pull out the correct
answer. For my children, I made a fishing pole out of one of
my garden bamboo rods. I just drilled a hole in the top, put
some string on it with a magnet at the end. For some reason
my son asked to play this simple little game despite his initial
lack of interest in maths. Sometimes it’s something very easy
that can create a massive change in attitude!
Brainbox Practical Parenting Guide | Maths
5
From Maths Hater
To Maths Lover
Dave Vann, writer for The Green Board
Game Co, recalls his unexpected maths
journey and gives parents some ways
to help non-maths loving children discover
a joy for the subject…
So your child hates maths. I get that, I really do. I was that
skinny, playful little boy who just wanted to get outdoors
or get stuck into a great book.
Anything but maths.
Wind the clock forward 25 years and you’ll find a young man
happily poring over budgets, analysing survey data, devouring
website statistics, and calculating odds.
So what happened to turn this child who languished in the
bottom maths group at secondary school into a self-confessed
maths ‘lover’ who loves getting stuck into the numbers?
2. I realised money mattered!
I remember standing at the sweet shop – sweets counted
and in the bag, coins in hand… and not having enough of
one to pay for the other. It was gut wrenching, embarrassing
even. I had made a miscalculation – a schoolboy error, if you
will – and my sweet tooth would end up paying for it.
It was the beginning of a dawning realisation that there was
a point to maths: budgeting. Since that early coinage faux
pas, I’ve learned to master the money I have in my hand in
order not to be caught out - whether pocket money, student
loan, early marriage budget, or workplace sales forecasts.
Here are the 3 BIG things that helped me gain a new
perspective on maths…
I’m pretty sharp on the numbers now, because I know that
they matter – for my stomach, and other important areas
of life.
1. I got friendly with sports stats
3. I saw the beauty in data
Want to know what made me first realise that maths could
be friend, not foe? Baseball. Strange as it might sound,
growing up in America as a boy with a natural interest in
sports meant that before long the numbers behind the
game began to capture me.
On my bookshelf at home is a book called Information is
Beautiful. It’s a collection of some of the most beautiful, clever
and interesting pictorial depictions of data. Sometimes called
‘Infographics’, at their best these depictions bring to life cold
forms of data with the help of warm forms of art.
Watching the rise and fall of batting percentages, tracking
win/loss percentages, working out the Average Earned Run
ratio (you get the idea) – it was all part of the fabric of the
sport I loved. When my focus turned to football (of the round,
kickable variety), statistics followed me too. Now it was about
points needed to qualify for Europe, goal difference, goals per
game ratio, etc.
These infographics serve as a reminder that the world of
maths, when given a touch of art, can in fact be beautiful.
It’s a revelation that has allowed a number of people I know –
those who see the world in picture form, especially – to find
a doorway into the world of numbers.
Because of my love for sport, I learned to love statistics.
Brainbox Practical Parenting Guide | Maths
So, if outbursts like “I hate maths!” are common in your
home, perhaps these tactics might help your child follow
a similar trajectory to mine – from maths hater to maths lover.
6
Maths On The Go...
The school holidays don’t have to be
the time when learning stops. Maths,
in particular, lends itself to learning on
the go. Here’s how…
Just because school’s out for summer/Easter/Christmas
doesn’t mean your kids’ learning needs to grind to a halt.
With the possibility of long car journeys ahead, or the inevitable
delays waiting for planes or trains, why not grab the moment
and sneak in some fun but educational games.
Steve Humble, aka Dr maths, believes that it’s important
parents try to keep the learning process going when kids
are out of school:
“It’s a great opportunity to show kids that maths is all around
them,” he says, “and not just something that they have to learn
at school. Numbers, patterns, shapes, they’re all there outside
of the classroom and in the real world.”
So as well as packing one of Dr Maths’ books, or the fantastic
BrainBox maths game, what else can you do to while away
those long journeys?
Here are a few ideas…
1. Countdown Game
One simple game, not unlike the numbers round in the Channel
4 programme Countdown, is to spot a number with at least
four digits – it could be a flight number, a shop sign saying
when a firm was established, that kind of thing – and then try
and use the individual numbers to make a target value.
Targets with lots of factors like 24 and 36 are good ones to start
with. So, for instance, the challenge could be to use 2651, the
numbers on the side of a train, to make exactly 36, with a bonus
point if you use all four numbers.
2. Spot That Shape
Another game Steve suggests is to see how many different
shapes you can spot. Squares, circles and rectangles are easy,
but what about more obscure shapes like pentagons, or even
all the different types of triangles such as equilateral, isosceles
and scalene*. Set a time limit and the person to spot the most
is the winner.
3. How Many…?
Basic counting games can also help the time fly. In the car,
everyone (best not to include the driver!) picks a colour and
then records how many cars of that colour they see over a ten
minute period. This also touches on issues of probability, with
those looking for yellow cars, for instance, unlikely to be as
successful as those spotting silver or red ones.
You can also play this game in the departure lounge, spotting
people with different coloured coats, wearing glasses, on the
phone etc. And if the kids are really into it, they could even
illustrate the results with a simple graph or pie chart.
This is, of course, a variation on pub cricket, a game for the
back roads which wend their way through the countryside,
when you score runs each time there are ‘legs’ on a pub sign,
and are out when there are none. So the White Hart would net
you four and the Dog and Duck six, although it was never clear
what you scored if you happened to drive past the Beehive…
So there you have it – a few, fun ways to keep childrens’
maths brains switched on during holidays. Enjoy!
* To save you a Google search, an equilateral triangle has three equal sides,
an isosceles has two and a scalene none.
Dr Maths (aka Steve Humble) A freelance mathematics consultant who has advised a number of education groups on the importance of maths across the curriculum. He is also the author of our BrainBox Logical Learning Series.
Gary Wyatt The founder of The Green Board Game Co, and the inventor of over 30 innovative, education games for children and families.
Dave Vann A writer for The Green Board Game Co, as well as a father of two with first-hand experience of the education sector in four countries of the world.
Brainbox Practical Parenting Guide | Maths
7
Brainbox Maths
A few sample cards from this
much-loved BrainBox – enjoy!
Brainbox Practical Parenting Guide | Maths
8
Brainbox Maths
A few sample cards from this
much-loved BrainBox – enjoy!
Brainbox Practical Parenting Guide | Maths
9
Times Table Snap
Some sample cards to whet
your maths - playing appetite.
Brainbox Practical Parenting Guide | Maths
10
Number Shape
Magic Explorer
A glimpse of what this maths-based
Logical Learning book features.
Brainbox Practical Parenting Guide | Maths
11
YOU CAN ORDER EACH OF THESE
MATHS GAMES AND MORE AT
WWW.BRAINBOX.CO.UK
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Unit 112 Coronation Road, Cressex Business Park
High Wycombe, Bucks HP12 3RP, UK