The world is evolving and only those who have what it takes will not be let out of the beauty we see every day.
There is no single technology today in the world we live in that does not have its foundation in the mother of all subjects – mathematics.
I used to think that everyone knew maths until a lawyer came to me and asked me to teach her maths, especially percentages. She didn’t take mathematics as a subject in senior high school because she struggled with it and it was not a compulsory subject. However, the realisation came when she had to sit logic test papers which involved maths, when she was applying for job positions.
Beyond her story, to be able to live successfully in this generation, we must have a sound understanding of mathematics. There is a way mathematics has been found to enlarge our mental reasoning capacity.
Mathematics skills that we teach children in primary stage is needed to progress successfully as they pass through further stages of education. From preschool to the end of primary school, children are setting the foundation for future life skills.
An educational study of 35,000 preschoolers by Duncan?? showed that the place of math skills training in early life cannot be over-emphasised. According to the research, students who start school with primary math skills have been found to excel more than students who had none.
Duncan stated:
Although there are times when we see some exceptionally gifted children who have the capacity to take more complicated math no matter where they are coming from or what they have been exposed to.
Maths is all around us and in the first few years of a child’s life, he or she can use without knowing it even while playing games, sorting out crayons, trying to sort out the number of clothes he or she has, picking his or her candy sweets from the jar, trying to remember how many days a week has and the list goes on and on.
Elementary math skills helps in teaching logical and critical thinking, life skills, supporting continuing education and careers, etc. Having a good foundation in math has also been shown in making good healthy decisions because there is a way your math helps your mental capacity to reason things out. Primary math has also been found to help in strategic counting, magnitude comparison, solving simple word problems, number recognition, retrieval of basic arithmetical facts, etc.
