Going back to school is not just a mission for children. Books, uniforms, calendars, menus … I’ve been remembering the past year and the many situations we went through for days and a mental note has crossed my mind: Be careful with the math!
Mathematics is a constant in our lives, although we have it so integrated that it goes unnoticed, and it will be even more so on the horizon of our children, becoming the essence of many future professions. How to make them like how to read or write?
And it is that mathematics is in all situations of life. When you ask the children to set the table, they have to count cutlery and napkins, or when they share dessert and we give each one half an apple… isn’t that fractions?
Shapes like circles, squares, or triangles are also part of mathematics. We can, for example, invite them to discover circles in the elements that we find on the street on the way to school or triangles in the food while we prepare dinner.
Thus we turn them into a game and, since they can practice it anywhere, children will integrate it into their routines without realizing it and will always have math in mind.
And the best thing is to learn by playing and, as neuroscience has recently discovered, that there is an emotion that fixes learning in memory. If movement is incorporated on top of it (that’s why taking advantage of the way to school, especially if you are walking), we have already reached the ideal learning.
All of the above “mathematical habits” can help our children understand math much better than before but as they get older, it’s not enough. They need mathematics education that is tailored to young children and in Singapore, we have no problem with that.
There are many educational institutions that offer mathematics training with modern concepts and an emphasis on children’s play habits. One of them is the E Singapore Math homeschool program. This is a virtual program developed by Singapore’s experienced maths teachers and professional education development providers in the country. The virtual program is adapted to the Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract (CPA) curriculum approved by the Singapore Ministry of Education.
What are the educational principles promoted by E Singapore Math?
Basically, this homeschool program works on three principles of learning mathematics as follows:
- Visualize numbers
- Solve word problems
- Make and break numbers
This is a global program
This virtual program is indeed developed by teachers and education developers in Singapore but its use is not exclusive. So far E Singapore Math has been used in no less than 40 countries. There is a good reason why this program is so trusted by so many parents around the world. One of them lies in the “Singaporean identity”. To note, The TIMS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Studies) consistently ranked Singapore as one of the top countries for top math students from 1995-1999.
At the end of the day when we expect our children to have good math skills, a combination of “math habits” and the best math education programs like E Singapore Math is absolutely necessary.
