My older sisters and younger brother always loved math, but I never liked numbers much growing up. My siblings, even my cousins, are all accountants and engineers. The rest of my family seemed to like numbers for numbers’ sake.
Me? I always liked the creative stuff—teaching, storytelling, singing, writing novels and articles, and now Brain Stages with Jackie to help people raise smart, happy kids.
With math, I went through the motions—I did what I was told to solve problems, usually got the right answer, but didn’t understand how I got there.
And forget figuring the cost of something at the grocery store in my head, or any other real-life reason for using math. Without paper and pencil or a calculator, I was lost.
Then I started teaching kids — and I wanted them to understand math better than I did. A fellow teacher showed me the Names for 10 game, and I learned the same number patterns repeated over and over.
I learned to apply patterns to larger numbers as well as decimals—in my head!
Before I knew it, with friends, I’d pop out how much a collection of things we’d need for a party would cost. I’d add sales tax (I lived in California then, where they have sales tax—go, Oregon, where we don’t!), and come up with the amount each person would need to contribute.
People used to widen their eyes at me and pull out their calculators. I have to admit that my smile got a little smug sometimes.
Did I somehow get smarter? Heck, no. Ha!
In playing the Names for 10 game with kids and showing them how to count coins like in the video below, where Eli counts coins and puts together different combinations to make the same amounts, I developed and reconfigured neural pathways in my brain.
And so can you!
Your kids can too!
Coin Video from Kirdy Molan on Vimeo.
How do your kids earn money to toss in a piggy bank and count it later?
If you know another helpful math game, please share it with us!
Happy counting!
Trish W.
Coauthor Brain Stages
