Teach Your Kids Math

It is no secret that there is a lot of math in personal finance. Raising kids to be confident in their math skills can have many positive results, including a better understanding of their personal finance. To that end, I strongly recommend anyone with children in their lives check out www.bedtimemath.org.

Several years ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics launched the 20-minutes-a-day reading campaign. This has been an effective endeavor, and most parents have heard of the idea of reading each day for 20 minutes to their children in order to yield stronger literacy skills and a lifelong love of reading. The same can and should be said for teaching children about math.

Five minutes each day is all you need. In this short period of time, you can build your child’s confidence and their excitement for math.

Each day, bedtimemath.org publishes a few paragraphs on an interesting topic and 5-7 math problems of different skill levels based on the topic. You can access the math problems in several ways, including the Internet or joining the email list. In my house, we access it through the free iPhone app.

Math has become a part of our nightly bedtime routine. Each night, my wife reads our kids a story and I take them through a math problem. They have grown to love their math problems and they get upset if they don’t get to do their math on a given night. They also get a real kick out of the “silly” delivery of the answers that happen every so often on the app.

As a dad, it is satisfying to see this love of math so early on and to feel that I have played a role in developing their confidence toward math. If you have children at home, I highly recommend that you invest a few minutes each day in Bedtime Math.

-Marshall Rathmell-