If you struggled with math as a child, you probably don’t feel adequate enough to teach math at home in school. However, the truth is that we use Math all the time in our day and you can take advantage of those opportunities to share Math with your children. Help your children develop a love of math using these tools:

1. Play games: Card games and board games are great tools for teaching number concepts. You don’t have to say anything about numbers or math, just play and have fun.

2. Use your time in the kitchen to work with numbers. Have your kids count cutlery, cut pizza into fractions, measure liquids and solids in a recipe, count sauté items that come in packages, subtract items from a group as they eat them, and count anything else they can see there.

3. Show them in daily life how mathematics affects them. Show them how to look at a calendar and count down the days until a special day. When they receive money, help them know the value of the coins or dollars and show them how to count it. You can even divide the money into different envelopes with them.

4. Teach them that counting one at a time is not the only way to count. They can use skip counting to count by twos, threes, fours, fives, and more. We’ve made up our own stir fry counting songs with popular nursery rhymes we know. Now my 6 year old knows how to skip two, three, four, five and six, not because he is a super smart kid, but because those numbers have been put to music in a fun way.

5. Read books that reinforce math concepts. Books like “How Much is a Million” and “How Much is a Billion” can show children how huge numbers can be in a fun and entertaining format. For younger children, there are many counting books you can get from the library that teach them about numbers.

6. Use the calculator to show them how to add large numbers. They certainly need to know how to do the basics of math, but they can also have fun using a calculator from time to time for large numbers.

Use as many senses as possible to teach math. Different children will understand certain math concepts using different methods than others. You can use workbooks, manipulatives, math games, real life, computer software, and more. Attitude is everything. If you have a positive attitude towards math, they will be more likely to accept that attitude.