Since the time is drawing near to send our children back to school I though I would take the time to write about quite often from my niece. I am sure there are several parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and teachers that have heard the same question from children. That question is "Why do I need to do my math home?"
Our first response is usually to tell them about some of the careers that use math, such as, an engineer, a carpenter, scientist or a teacher and this usually gets us the answer but I am not going to be any of those. Then, we normally go to because you use it every day and that leads to more questions. Soon we just get frustrated and give up trying to explain and either yell just do it or go get an aspirin.The whole episode can be avoid if instead of trying to point out what math could be used on in their future we focus on what they use it for now.
The next time you are asked that question pick one or two things that child does on a daily basis and point out where the math comes in to play. An example might be a tablet computer and ask him or her how they figure out if there is room to download a new app (program or application) that a friend told them was killer. Another example might be that if they play games (anger birds is big right now) how they judge how far to pull the slingshot back to fire the bird at the pigs. There might be other ideas that come to mind but the point is find something they enjoy and show that the knowledge of math is neccessary.
No comments:
Post a Comment