It’s time for my monthly blog post! This month I’ve decided to share with you one of my favorite math resources: Math Aids. This website allows users to create worksheets for essentially any math skill for free. You can customize each sheet and they’re great for basic skill practice.
Worksheets should be used a supplemental tool to quality math instruction and child-centered math discovery and exploration. The purpose of a worksheet or workbook is not to instruct or introduce a skill, but rather to allow the student to gain proficiency with practice. Here are some of the reasons I love this website:
- You can determine the number of problems you want on the sheet. I have some students for whom too many problems on a page is visually overwhelming. Even for children who don’t have a learning disability, seeing a page loaded with math problems can be daunting. With this website I can customize the number of problems for many of the worksheets.
- It’s not all about the numbers! I like that Math Aids is not just a resource for computation math problems, but also offers word problems. More than half the children I work with face a reading based learning disability. Some of these students are quite proficient in math and have a strong number sense, but when it comes to applying those skills to real world situations or word problems, they are at a loss. I can use this website to create word problem practice.
- It has a wide range of math concepts. Math Aids has worksheets for simple mental addition to Algebra II. This allows me to get resources for all of my math students in one place. I work with kiddos as young as 6, and as old as 17. Their ability levels vary quite a bit and as my students progress and face new challenges, I can quickly make worksheets to fit their changing needs.
This website is a super tool for homeschool parents and teachers, but it can also be useful for parents of children attending traditional school. If you know your child is struggling in a particular area, it’s worth checking out Math Aids to find some practice work to supplement the one-on-one work you are doing with your child at home.