5 reasons to fall in love with Maths

I fell in love with maths and I know many of you have too but maths really is the marmite of education- you either love it or you hate it! So many people say they hate maths or believe they’re not good at maths but it’s something I strongly disagree with. Nobody is intrinsically bad at maths. They may just not have had the right exposure, been shown enough ways or had the chance to spend the time needed to “get it” and fall in love with maths the way I did. Much of it comes down to having a parent who loves maths. I spent lots of time doing puzzles with my dad and solving problems that he would find for me, so I got good at maths, and being good at something usually helps you to enjoy it too.

My main aim as a teacher and tutor is always to encourage the love of learning maths- to not be scared of it and to be willing to persevere.

There are many reasons to encourage falling in love with maths. Here are my top 5!

Being in love with maths exercises your brain:

Your brain is not a muscle but you can still increase your mental fitness! Maths is the perfect way to really exercise your brain. The first way is by strengthening your  memory. The more maths you engage with the better your memory and the better your memory, the better you will be at maths. Having a good memory is brilliant for everything else in your life too. Maths activities also help with visualising. So much of maths is about holding thoughts in your head or being able to visualise what to do. Finally maths encourages lateral thinking- that is thinking creatively and being able to look at things in different ways. All of these skills improve the performance of your brain, which help in every other area of your life too!

Being in love with maths makes you better at solving problems and facing challenges:

When you engage with maths problems regularly, you build confidence in facing challenges. You build resilience, which means you don’t give up easily and can be strong enough to keep trying even when things seem difficult. That perseverance and ability to be able to keep trying again are skills that will again help you all throughout your life in lots of different areas.

Maths helps you understand the real world:

Maths is everywhere in the real world. You need to understand maths for cooking, whether that be measuring amounts of ingredients or scaling recipes up or down for more or less people. You need to understand maths when managing your time, whether sticking to a schedule or figuring out how long things take. If you go travelling, you need to understand maths for converting currencies, catching planes or buses and reading metric measures (kilometres) instead of imperial measures (miles). Converting units of measurement require understanding of how to multiply and divide by multiples of 10 and feeling confident with decimal numbers.  Reading statistics with an objective mind is also really important when dealing with advertising or persuasive arguments and we learn about this is in maths! Measurement is simply everywhere in our everyday lives and the better we are at it, the better we can understand the world we live in.

Being in love with maths helps you to save and make money:

Maths is really important when it comes to your finances (your money). It helps you find the best deals when you are shopping. It helps you to manage your money with budgeting. You can control your money best when you understand how percentages and interest works on your savings and on your debts. Having a good control on your own finances is essential for being able to have a good life when you are older.

It’s fun to solve puzzles and problems:

Last but not least, it’s really fun to solve puzzles and problems. It’s not always those that are best at their times-tables that are the best at solving puzzles and problems. Lateral thinking, resilience and perseverance that come from exercising your brain all help this to be more fun though. Some of my favourite maths puzzles are sudoku, algebra and visiting the good old Nrich site. Here are a couple of Valentines Themed Nrich problems to give a go: IT FIGURES & SITTING ROUND THE PARTY TABLE    They always share student solutions too so you can see how other children have attempted and solved each problem.

Falling in love with maths is not just about being good at a subject at school, it means you will develop lots and lots of skills that will help you throughout the rest of your life. The only way to get better and fall in love with maths is to simply do more of it!

Follow me on Facebook or Instagram for access to lots of puzzles and freebie resources to help you fall in love with maths. Click here for a free download of my Valentines Fractions- Decimals-Percentages jigsaw.