Argh! No no! Don’t crucify me! I am not
tormenting my toddler because she is in troublesome two’s! No! That’s not my
way of retribution for the agony and the pain my most loved and cherished two
year old brings upon me! That’s just what comes naturally to me..I am a Maths
teacher and a WFTM of a two year old sweetheart who belongs to a hyperactive
generation. Oh! By the way if you are wondering WFTM is working first time mom!
So I was saying that I have been ‘teaching’ my two year old fractions since she
was 18 months, probably even before that. Not that I plan her Masters in
Mathematics to be completed by the time she hits puberty.. it just happened
that my baby became interested in watching animations and cartoons on TV while
I slogged at my job as a teacher helping kids six times her age master
Fractions! Phew! So one day a flabbergasted me - a preacher of no TV for a
child, decided that it was time to take my daughter on a lifelong vacation to
the magical world of Mathematics called the Mathworld. We made a little
stopover in Fractionville! I showed her a Math cartoon, a video about
Fractions. It’s a little Fraction song that I encourage my young students to
sing, desperate to ensure that they like me and my subject Mathematics! She
loved the song, the vegetable cartoons dancing and telling about the Numerator
and Denominator. That was the start of my lessons to her on Fractions… today
she eats a quarter chapatti, some days a half, gives me 3 quarters and if what
is served are the super expensive Oreo biscuits she gobbles up a Whole 1 or a 2
or a 3! That’s the farthest I believe she can count with one to one
correspondence.
So you agree now that I do love my daughter
and am not trying to inflict any sort of pain to her by introducing her to a
field of study that forms a part of my passion and my ultimate calling in life.
This was one of my first shots (Cricket
Fever! It’s the World Cup season!) to help you understand that Maths is easy!
Yes! You heard that right! Maths is the easiest, simplest and the clearest
forms of thinking that God could ever help Man design. I am a not a Math
genius. I have never been nor do I believe I can ever be. the same I suppose is
true for my daughter, although I would not attempt to undermine her evolving
genius in any way. But being associated to Mathematics for over 30 years now, I
am quite able to discern that Maths when handled positively with a little
smile, humanity and in a real manner is essentially a part of who we are, what
we do and how we live. It’s as real as any one of us. The fictional MathWorld
that I have created for writing my Math stories used to explain math concepts
is in reality not just part of the creative writing and creative teaching that
I do in my everyday classroom teaching but very much near to the real world if
focused at using a magnifying lens based on real life examples.
I am sure each one of you uses Maths in more
than one way, we can imagine. As maths teachers and maths students it is our
moral and matheligious ( Maths is my religion and of all those who ever lived
in the galaxy Milky Way) duty to devise ways in which we can understand Maths
better and appreciate its beauty. Even all the parents need to play their part
in this universal aim, parents and would be parents too! You know research
suggests that pre-natal learning plays a major part in brain development of the
child. So let us all join hands and LOVE MATHS.
Ok! Enough of my appealing and convincing
because I love it and I want to do it! You don’t share my passion, that’s fine.
Just love and learn Maths because its so commercially viable. IT WILL MAKE YOU
RICH!
In my next blogs, I will share my Mathworld
stories which have been brought to life by few of my students who without
being great in mathematics have shared my passion and trusted my love for
mathematics.
Good Day! Be Happy! Be Healthy! Be MAD about
MATHS!
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