Use your imagination to be good at maths

Although younger children can confuse the two, older children know the difference between the world of their imagination and reality. At what age does a child start to distinguish between them? At what age does a child compartmentalise the two? This may well be a reason why children, who are to go on and fail at maths, start to do so around the ages of 8 and 9. Maths being a subject studied at school, where you get praised for getting your sums right, and get told off for getting them wrong is clearly part of the real world. So children compartmentalise maths as being in the real world. But this is not helpful. Maths is all about the imagination, though this is a point missed by most people. I well remember an episode of “The News Quiz” on BBC Radio 4, where the chairman Barry Took made a joke about the comment passed by an academic regarding one of his post graduate students, who had subsequently become eminent in another field, “He didn’t have the imagination to be a good mathematician”. This observation was thought by Mr. Took, his scriptwriters and the audience of the show to be an absolute hoot, but I believe that they were all missing a vital point. Mathematics is all about the imagination. That so many people could find the academic’s comment ridiculous demonstrates how sterile and dry the mainstream manner of teaching maths is. We at Puppet Maths are committed to redressing this failing in maths education. Through the use of puppets to teach maths, we put mathematics firmly in the realm of the imaginative realm of a child’s life. When children are working with puppets they know that they have entered an imaginary world. The imaginative areas of their brains become active, and they become susceptible to learning. We tap into children’s imaginations while we teach, because we know that that is how they learn best.