Comments about ‘6 ways to sharpen your child's math skills this summer’

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Salt Lake City, UT

The best way to help your elementary schooler succeed in math is to have them memorize the multiplication facts. Most of my 5th grade students don't know them, and math facts are critical to everything we study.

Phoenix, AZ

Take them shopping? What, so they can count up how much money you don't have?

Barbara Anne
Los Angeles, CA

One of my math teachers of long ago would do mental math every morning before we did snything else in his class. No paper or pencils were allowed. I learned so much from that year. I would do the same thing with my own children years later while driving in the car. It was a game they liked. They all are quite good in mathematics.

Phoenix, AZ

I ask high school kids what the square root of a negative nine is (Ans: 3i).

I also ask them if they can recite the quadratic. To my amazement one kid did (ans: negative b, plus or minus the square root of b squared minus 4ac, all over 2a).

I am surprised and elated that they can tell me the answers because I know they love math and pay attention in math class.

I know it. I Live it. I Love it.
Provo, UT

Put them in piano lessons. Music helps us develop coordination, timing, sensitivity to sound and pitch and timbre, and emotional development. Not only will it contribute to better brain functions for math- it will contribute to their entire life's future.

People often say they wish they had stuck with the piano. I've never heard anyone say that about math. I'm not saying one is more important, just equally important. In an age of iphones, people need tactile, meaningful, and emotional experiences. Where music provides that and the features mentioned above, it always astounds me that people don't seem to see that so readily.

Many of the most successful people in the world attribute their learning a musical instrument to the development of key parts of their behavioral success.

To those of us who know from experience, it's a no-brainer.

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