Problem solved

I was bad at Maths. It didn’t excite me as English and Hindi stories would. My parents tried to coach me, sent me to tution class and even got a private tutor at an exorbitant cost. I barely made it through Highschool Maths exam.

So, when my daughter was born, I decided to instill a love for Maths in her so that she wouldn’t face problems like I did. She loves stories. So I started telling her stories that required her solving Math problems. Say, if she is studying Addition and Subtraction, I tell her stories that have such problems. Recently, I told her stories involving money, time and metric measurement. And she must answer the problems before we can move ahead.

For example:

“Once there was a banana seller who was walking through the forest, he sat down beneath a tree to rest for a bit. But there were monkeys in that tree who started stealing his bananas.

When he woke up, he saw 9 monkeys 🐒🐒🐒🐒🐒🐒🐒🐒🐒 (not 10 so that it is difficult to count), each with 3 bananas 🍌🍌🍌 in hand and one 🍌 in their mouth. How many bananas did he lose?

3+1=4*9=36 😤

Poor man was aghast. Each banana was worth 7 rupees 💰 each. He would lose so much money. How money would he lose?

36*7=252 😱

So he decided to do a trick. He started monkey dancing, 🕺so monkeys 🐒🐒🐒🐒🐒🐒🐒🐒🐒would copy him.

Then, he picked up a banana 🍌 and threw it on the ground. All the monkeys threw bananas 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 in their hands on the ground. How many bananas are on the ground?

3*9=27+1=28 😄

He picked them up. But they were squished from falling on the ground, so they were useless to him 🥴. So how much money 💰 did he lose?

28*7? No ❓

36*7=252? No ❓

252 + 7 (his own banana)= 259! 🤓

So he picked up his remaining bananas and walked to the market. He had learnt his lesson and brought a wooden stick to ward off monkeys the next time.” 😂😂😂

By the time I am done, my daughter is happily exhausted and ready to sleep.

I always pick the chapter she is currently on and pull in as many calculations and logic as a story can hold without being overwhelming. It instills a deep love for calculations within her and inspite her creative streak, she excels in Maths, which is a logical subject.

For a change, even I am falling in love with Maths a little bit now.

Though I wonder how I am going to insert Sin-Cos into monkey, giraffe stories… 🤣🤣🤣