When Malini's daughter Shivani was in first grade, she brought home a new book to read aloud each night. She also brought home spelling lists each week. But math homework never found its way into her backpack. Malini’s first reaction was relief. Math was never his strong suit, and he dreaded the day Shivani would sit at the kitchen table puzzling over long division. His second reaction, however, was concern. Maybe if Shivani were assigned math homework in first grade, long division wouldn’t be so hard a few years down the road.

“Kids struggle later on if they don’t have those rudimentary math skills mastered,” says Payal. “Not having memorized the times tables, for example, comes back to haunt them time and time again. It breaks my heart when I see my students using their fingers to do math; those kids lack confidence in other areas too.”

Payal had similar concerns for her own son’s math education when he was in second grade. So she encouraged him to join his Farmington Hills elementary school’s Mathematics Pentathlon team.

Math Pentathlon is a program of interactive problem-solving games through which students develop and practice important math concepts (for details, go to www.mathpentath.org). After learning and mastering the 20 games through after-school practice sessions, teams go on to compete with students from other schools at local, state and national tournaments.

“I like Math Pentathlon because the games teach different thinking skills and show that there’s more than one way to solve a problem,” says Payal. Her son, Jake, now in sixth grade, likes Math Pentathlon because, he says, “it’s fun!”

Payal helped out with a Math Pentathlon program last year in her daughter Aastha’s first grade class, taught by Kavita. “Expectations for what first graders should know have changed since I began teaching 10 years ago,” Kavita says. “The bar has been raised tremendously.”

Kavita says a major difference is that educators don’t just want students to do math operations but to really understand the process. “Our current approach to teaching math creates more (curious) kids,” she says. “It makes math fun and more practical in day-to-day life.”

Kavita says parents can easily find at-home math exercises as well: “If you’re making cookies, count the eggs. Measure the flour. How many tablespoons equal a quarter-cup? Math is so broad. It doesn’t come simply from a book. It’s all around us.”

Divya, a Waterford fifth grade teacher, suggests parents play the “silly question game” with their kids. “If your child asks you, ‘What time are we going to the park,’ you might say, ‘What time is it now?’ And then, ‘We’re leaving in 20 minutes. What time will it be then?’”

Divya says the game can occur outside the home in places such as the grocery store: “We have Rs. 100 to spend on treats. How much are those cookies? Can we afford cookies and ice cream?” She adds, “Make it part of your regular day, every day. Doing that makes it seems less like teaching and more like problem-solving.”

When it comes to parents helping with actual math homework, however, Divya offers a different approach: “Sit with your child one-on-one and ask him to work out the problem. If he says, ‘I don’t get it,’ tell him to take it as far as he can go. Once you see where he’s getting stuck, explain that step, work through the next problem together, and keep sitting there and watching until he can do it on his own.”

Divya says there’s no shame in parents asking their child’s teacher for a quick refresher course in, say, decimal division, if their memories are a little hazy.

Kavita adds that parents should be on the lookout for signs that a new math concept isn’t clicking for their kids. “If they’ve been shown two or three times how to do something and they still don’t get it, or if they seem to have it one day and it’s gone the next, you need to be aware that they might need some extra help,” she says. “Helping them grasp math now sets the foundation for later success.”