As a parent, you want to place your child in the right school with the right curriculum. However, making these choices is not as easy as it sounds. One of the subjects that you may want your little one to excel in is Mathematics. Many studies have claimed that students with excellent math skills excel in many subjects and even aspects of life. However, you need to pick the best math program for your little one to see great results.
Picking a math curriculum will go more smoothly if you narrow your choices down before you start looking around.
Here are some factors you must look for in a math program:
Difficulty
The majority of kindergarten schools have math programs that cover roughly the same topics; however, vary widely in terms of depth and pace. Some are focused on discovering math topics that go beyond written computations and simple word problems. They dive deeply into concepts and require children to think hard about complex problems. And others just stick to the basics. To help your child develop a positive attitude toward math, you must pick a program with a difficulty level appropriate to them.
Teaching Approach
Schools can have either conceptual or procedural curricular. Conceptual curricular concentrates on teaching the reason why math works the way it does such as why we must find common denominators to add fractions. The school’s approach is starting from the big picture then using these big ideas to work out the details. Meanwhile, procedural curricula concentrate more on teaching kids the procedure to get the right answer. They focus more on pencil-and-paper techniques.
Concrete, to-the-point kids usually do best with procedure programs. They benefit from working with lots of examples before they can try to generalize about the more abstract principle at work. Often, children who struggle with math do better with a procedural program. However, this does not mean this program is an easier choice. A conceptual program explains why the math works and offers children plenty of practice with how to do the math. However, this program is not always the best fit for each child. A child who likes to be told what to do can gain the most benefit from a procedural program.
Cost
Good math instruction is always worth the investment. However, some curricular are expensive or have hefty start-up costs. Luckily, you can also find moderately-priced programs out there. Thus, you don’t need to feel like you need to break your bank to teach your child math.