Creative Methods for Teaching Your Children Math – such as with Water Balloons!

Math has always been a fundamental part of children’s education, and is certainly not going anywhere, as much as some children might want it to! One of the struggles children have these days with understanding the importance of developing math skills is that we have computers, phones, etc that do our math for us. This can deter their enthusiasm about the subject.

ICAN Education programs are committed to ensuring that every child has the opportunity to grow, learn, and become excited about education. Math can sometimes be a difficult one for certain children, and math tutoring can become an especially dry activity for them to be engaged in after school hours; but there are creative methods that can make learning math fun!

An easy method for making math fun for children is of course to allow them to play games on their phones or computers that are math related. This is an easy method because children can sometimes be easily bored, and with all of our convenient electronics options, we typically have one form of electronics on us at all times that they can play with while we do something such as run errands.

There are other methods than through the use of electronic devices that we at ICAN Education like to adopt since these days children already spend a lot of time on electronics as it is. Especially since math tutoring is so much more fun when it becomes a game with human interaction.

Adopting new, creative methods and games that are fun for learning new skills is important. The water balloon math game is a super fun approach at teaching children, for example! In this game children throw water balloons that have math equations written on each of them at the “answer target” that shows the correct answer to their math equation balloon. One method for creating “answer targets” is to place hula hoops on the ground, each with a laminated (or page protected) paper with a number (the answer) written on it sitting in the center of each of the hula hoops. Then your fill up your water balloons and write math equations on them. This game incorporates other activities into the math, so it can be more entertaining and engaging!

Benefits of Creatively Teaching Math:

• children will enjoy learning & want to engage longer in the activity
• children will learn that learning can be fun
• better focus & dedication to obtaining the correct answer when it becomes a game