Who doesn’t want their child to be smarter in math? Who wouldn’t want to see an A on the report card, instead of that one-legged version called F?

Interestingly, it is REALLY easy to make this happen.

However, before I tell you how to make this work, before I tell you the one-step method of making your child’s math grades skyrocket to an A, let me tell you the secret: you have to get your child appreciates math as a game.

They can play video games like a world class champion! And they can program their smartphone like an abacus! And the difference is that they want. And by having them play with the numbers in the form of games, they will want, they will excel, and their grades will go up.

To begin with, I taught at the school for several years. First as a teacher, then as the owner of my own private school. I used the method that I am about to tell you with great success, and I got the children to use this method during ‘playtime’. That’s how it is. Instead of them going out and playing, I had them do math and ‘think’ (hehe) they were playing.

Now the biggest lack in math education, IMHO, is the lack of basic concepts. This is the multiplication table, the addition table, the basics of how to manipulate numbers.

When I was in school (I had to walk 20 miles, uphill both ways, through the snow) we had to make a page of tables every day. Rain or shine, throughout elementary school, we did basic math.

Today they do not. They give a few pages in a book and think it is enough. It’s not. And for the simple reason that it doesn’t make math intuitive. It’s still, even in high school, something they have to think about. Think. Long, hard and laborious. Any questions why they are not doing well? The basics are TOTALLY out of the question.

So, a page from the Case family development book. Cards.

Yes. Mama Case pulled out some decks of cards and we played. We learned to play solitaire and in groups. To this day I feel deep happiness when I remember four of us, my brother, myself, my mother and even my grandmother! hitting those cards, trying to hit each other and laughing hysterically. Or cry badly when they hit us!

But the point is, we learned to look at the number symbols and understand them. The speed at which we were able to differentiate a 4 from a 6, or a 9, or whatever, allowed us to win the game. So we wanted.

And when the group wasn’t spending the night shooting cards, we learned other games. Various forms of individual solitaire. Hearts, Rummy, whatever!

And here was an interesting advantage: when we played monopoly with the neighborhood children, we became experts in reading the dice, in adding those cubes filled with one of the six digits face up!

Do you think it won’t work? SAY AH! That is like saying that your child is immune to games. But if there really is a lack of enthusiasm, take another page from Mama Case’s book.

‘Oh, don’t you want to play? Fuck, I was going to bet a cookie. But that’s okay. I’ll eat that cookie myself, and you can see those yummy crumbs dripping down the front of my shirt.

Guaranteed. Those kids of yours will make math a game, they’ll become experts at manipulating numbers, and when the time comes to learn a new math concept, they’ll be LIGHT YEARS ahead of the curve.