MrsDTB wonders, can Maths be fun whilst building functional skills?
It is a fair question! Many of us were not fans of maths when at school. For me, it was both a combination of the way that it was taught and the fact that very little of it was then applied in day to day life. So the subject became both boring and irrelevant in my eyes at a young age #epicfail!
It has only been in adult life that I have identified how certain maths skills help me in my work and pastimes. I now see maths applied when measuring in the kitchen or adapting recipes. When I am gardening figuring out growth times and whether I will have the space that I need for crops is essential for planning. In my musical fun, I can also see maths come alive in a way that I never did when at school.
I have no idea whether current school policy is to integrate maths or not, but it is still taught as an isolated subject leaving MasterKAF to question what the point of it all was too.
Fast-forward to now and we have a very different approach at home in our learning. Yes, we use a program to help with functional skills in a fun way and after trying many possible options we settled on DoodleMaths which is excellent. We also have a lot of fun with Cool Maths Games, a site that has exactly that content. So MasterKAF feels like he is playing but also knows that his mind is being expanded at the same time and we chat about where the maths actually “is” in the games that he chooses to play. Maths and its application is all around us if we look for it and following this path has meant that MasterKAF and MrsDTB for that matter, are no longer maths haters.