Making math fun….on the Computer!

What’s more fun than math on a computer for holding the attention of a young learner!  

My daughter loves doing math on the computer.  One website I found particularly helpful is: IXL. 

It’s a subscription based website. It is possible to use it to a limited extent without paying for the yearly subscription.  I believe you can do 20 questions a day without a subscription.

I find it extremely useful even to see what skills to teach your child.

You can choose the country, province / state where you live to see a breakdown of the skills taught for whichever grade level your child is at.

Choose a skill you think your child could complete and let them answer the questions.  In my case I started my child at Junior Kindergarten when she was 2.  We completed Junior Kindergarten and half of Kindergarten in our one year subscription I purchased.

At 2 they obviously can’t use a computer by themselves, but I would let her tell me the answer or point to it, and I did the clicking.  Another option is using their app on an ipad.  This would help the young child work on it more independently as they would just need to touch the answer.

And as you can see all the skills needed, you can find ways to incorporate teaching a new skill as you go about your day, so that they would then be ready to tackle that skill on the computer.

Sometimes when I was at the computer with her and I wasn’t sure if she would be ready for a skill, I would take a minute to explain a skill to my daughter, maybe showing her with paper and pen, and then let her try it.  

If I saw she wasn’t ready for it, I would choose another skill that I felt she could probably do.  I would just try that skill again another time, usually by the third time, she was ready to do it.  

We would do what we felt were the easiest skills first and work our way up to the harder skills.  

If you get the subscription your child can get virtual rewards when they complete different things.  The subscription also lets you see the skills your child has completed and the ones they still need to finish.

Doing math on the computer is fun for kids, and they will want to do it.  My daughter complained (cried) every time I told her that was enough math for the day.