Lately we had the conversation again, and the same pattern arose, math is all exams and very few explanations, so it looks like a random, endless following of tests and numbers. I made my point again that the system may be more the problem than math itself.
At this age kids aren't really able to see the big picture yet, and they are facing sometimes a rather unnatural way to teach things, so I believe it makes a lot of sense to step in their shoes and give a listening ear, rather than push our own worries to them haha.
I'm currently learning linux and writing scripts/vibe coding, when I reach a milestone like an automation that works or a project that finishes, she can run the raycast confettis and I explain why this job was great and important
(I'm assuming your kid speaks English. All my links have official translations to other languages, that may be easy or hard to find.)
* There is an word wide math Olympiad for kids, we participate here. After looking for a while, they have some free material in https://mathkangaroo.org/mks/practice/free-question-samples/ (There are other sites in other countries/languages. I'm not sure if there is a better link.)
* Duolingo has a math course
* There are some nice videos in https://www.youtube.com/@Numberblocks (The firsts ones are very simple (aimed to younger kids), but the last ones explore more deep topics like factorization, squares numbers).
* Another set of nice videos in https://www.youtube.com/@SmileandLearnEnglish (My wife found it, they have videos of different topics, like math, biology, language, ... They have a many videos about math including basic operations and also long multiplication and divisibility rules.)
* My daughter is participating in https://www.matific.com/ at school. They have some online activities, she likes it but I don't see a free tier.
wolfi1•1d ago
xyzzy123•1d ago
The very best environments will have other kids who are engaged. It is induction into a culture, with its own language, ways of thinking and values. If you can't find that directly, you have to do your best to create a mini version as a family.
You can turn almost anything into a little maths games, card or dice games provide an opportunity for probability puzzles, the environment provides things to estimate and count, you can challenge them on car trips with rates and distances, etc etc etc. How many sides does a circle have?