Active Math

Being a mother of three, I discovered that children love to move around all day long and find it very boring if they have to sit down for a long time to do an activity.  No matter how interesting that activity is to them, if it requires lots of sitting, they would rather give it up and do something more active.  Knowing that fact, we should be careful in how we teach those youngsters.  Physical activities must be included in all our lessons.

Some might find it impossible to teach math while keeping kids active.  We all think of math as a worksheet given to students to practice while sitting down.  Many educators are trying to change this belief now by icluding movements to teach many basic math concepts.  For example, the founder of a website called "math and movement", Suzy Koontz, illustrates many ideas where math and movement are done together.  That program proved that children, as young as pre-k, can participate in activities that enables them to learn about addition, subtraction, telling time, skip counting, and multiplication.  Such programs are successful because research have shown that moving while learning facilitates muscle memory.  It was also proven that cross body movement (i.e. when the left arms or legs are crossed over to the right side of the body or vice versa) integrates the left and right areas of the brain.

Hence, it becomes very important for every teacher or parent to engage kids in daily physical activities.  So why not use the children's natural abilities to enhance their love of learning!