How to get your child to love maths – part 1

If anyone is suffering from insomnia I have the solution. I can give you H’s maths homework. The maths games he is expected to do are so boring that they could turn anyone in to Rip Van Winkle.

Needless to say we gave up doing them a few weeks ago and the fact that I have not ticked and signed the relevant sheet to say we had completed them, is not because I forgot. We just haven’t bothered.

Instead we have been having fun with maths. We started off by suggesting a game of Sum Swamp and we play this from time to time. Sum Swamp is an excellent game you can play with all the family and is a bit like Snakes and Ladders but instead you have three dice – two with numbers on and one with a + or – on each side. Instead of rolling a dice and seeing a number, children roll three and have to add or take away the numbers.

Suggest a game of Sum Swamp in our house and you are met with cheers of “Yeessssssss!!” as they all run in to the dining room. A bit different from the response we get when we mention his homework maths games.

The only problem is he is getting a past this stage and the mental maths is more suitable for his five year old brother but it is still good for him and good for us as a family to play games together.

So now I have introduced him to two websites Topmarks and Tutpup. At parents’ evening we were told that him as his friends are competitive and like to compete to see who finishes their maths first so TutPup should suit him down to the ground.