We are at last expanding our focus to include math resources especially designed for visual, active, right-brained learners. We’ve carried three books in the Kid Friendly series for five years now, and while our intent for some time has been to publish up-to-date versions of these books as well as add supplemental products, we felt it was critical to focus on reading as a first priority.
Because, after all, let's face it: while math is a critically important subject, if children cannot read, they won’t be able to read math problems or science texts, or decipher social studies lessons…you catch my drift. While we are not slacking off in our continued development of reading resources, we are so happy and proud to announce that we’re also beginning to focus on math in a more concentrated way.
WHY MATH?
During my early years (meaning all the years before age 22), math and I were not particularly friends. I often said “I’m not good at math,” which meant specifically that I did poorly and also did not like it. It is really hard to like something you do poorly in. In grade school I usually failed every math quiz; as a high school student I could cram for a quiz enough to make an A or a B, but I did not retain what I had learned after the quiz was over and I left the classroom. It was as though someone took a big soapy sponge and wiped my brain clean of anything that contained numbers or equations. I blamed my brain and its shortcomings.
What I did not understand is that I—as a right-brained learner—have a superior memory for visuals or any information, actually, that I am able to make links to memory for. These links could be a jingle, a discovered pattern, a body motion that had become automatic, and so forth. After college it took me a very long time to voluntarily sign up for a math class and when I did, it was because I had to. I had to either take the teaching of math courses or not complete a graduate degree in teaching. I cannot recall dreading anything more.
WHAT I LEARNED
What I came to realize during those classes was so eye-opening. I learned that math and numbers are fascinating. Oh, not the way I’d been taught math, but once I started noticing them, the patterns I found in numbers were so engaging. I already knew that I could not memorize, but I came to understand this in a much deeper way. Beyond that, I realized that just memorizing facts or equations would not help me know how to apply what I had “learned” in various situations. It was far too abstract. I suppose that other people might think in numbers like I think in pictures.
During graduate school I began to explore how to teach little kids with brains like mine to learn to read and to love math. Over time an approach has evolved that makes so much sense to right-brained learners. It is the practice of taking left-brained facts (such as I before E, or 1+1=2, or that 3x3x3 is written as 33) and embedding them in right-brained elements such as visuals and so forth. The research I have done with these approaches has demonstrated just how highly effective this practice is with those who naturally learn best through right-brained teaching methods.
NEW RESOURCES
So, back to Child1st beginning to create more math materials for visual and other right- brained learners...We’ve started with a book called Right-Brained Multiplication & Division: a Forget Memorization Book because learning these facts is onerous for so many children. The book is packed with color, fact families are embedded in images, stories explain the visuals, and explanations of procedures use color-coding to make it easy to see at a glance the relationships between numbers and what happens to those numbers when you multiply or divide them.
Rather than memorizing, children are able to store the visuals and the stories and recall them intact when they need them. The hands-on activities deepen the action in math and the processes that are taking place. The right-brained elements act as the glue that cements these facts in memory and as hooks that pull those facts out when the child needs them. If you have a child who glazes over when it is time to learn a new multiplication table, I'd encourage you to grab a copy of Right-Brained Multiplication & Division. You will see a big difference in your child’s engagement and long-term knowledge of the facts!
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