Helping Children with Arithmetic: The Early Grades

First, read a book on overcoming math anxiety.  Having a young child read the book may not be totally profitable.  A parent should read one, or more, such books, then make a plan for each child to follow, incorporating the things found in the books.  There is no need to explain why the plan is as the parent has made, just observe that it is followed.

Some children can grasp the arithmetic concepts as presented in a textbook, while others need an aid.  In the case of visual learners, having a resource filled with illustrations that show what is happening may suffice.  But other children need to be more physically involved.  For those needing to actually handle something in order to grasp a concept use manipulatives. 

If a child has a weakness, such as an understanding of addition or subtracting, there are a number of manipulatives available.  Some are designed for the very young children, such as having plastic objects like fish that can be moved from one pile to another.  Older children might not like too babied of a manipulative, so tiles might serve them better.  Tiles come as individual unit tiles, strips of ten, squares of one hundred, and blocks of one thousand.  Trading a strip of ten for ten individual tiles can be used for such things as carrying or borrowing.

This is just a single example, there are others.  Manipulatives can be found all the way to algebra.

The economical approach is to purchase a package with various grade appropriate manipulatives.  Also, having a manual on the use of the manipulatives is helpful.  Many manipulatives have multiple uses.

Learning math skills using manipulatives requires understanding how to get the most out of the manipulatives available.  Purchasing the best manipulatives and knowing how to use them for multiple purposes is important.  It is possible to learn from instructions included with the items bought, but those instructions may concentrate on one use and be inadequate to get the most out of the product.  Perhaps a good book on using mathematics manipulatives can help address any mathematics weaknesses. 

Having a child work at the needed level is important, even if there is a need that the child remediate after having fallen behind.  But saying this to the child can generate a feeling of failure.  Use words like “It is time to get ahead of where you are,” will better serve the child’s esteem than saying “You need to catch up.” 

Making the work fun and exciting can also be a benefit.  Have a willing participant and you have an engaged, willing learner. 

Mathematics, arithmetic included, requires different study skills than most other subjects.  Rote learning will not do.  One must practice.  This is common to most books on overcoming math anxiety.  Simply reading a mathematics book is not the way to study mathematics.

It may be difficult to determine if a child is a visual learner or a hands-on learner as quickly as is needed.  The good news is that using manipulatives serves both groups.  And, since these are in addition to a textbook, there is a positive potential for all students to be gained from incorporating manipulatives into the study program.

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The introduction image is allowed because it is my book.  Actually, in this case, I authored the book shown.