How math develops brain muscles, especially for young children

Early childhood is when brain growth is at its peak. This offers parents a window of time to foster that cognitive development to its fullest potential.

Just like weight-training builds the muscles, mathematical thinking develops the brain. Your muscles must be strained and used to get stronger, but many people fail to understand that much in the same way, your brain requires mental exercise to keep your mental skills and memory at its best. Here, math can be a critical element of cognitive fitness, especially for young developing children.

New brain research reveals that through hard work and effort, you can improve your intelligence Today you often hear that it’s “nature” over “nurture,” and that people are either born with math aptitude or not, but research shows that this isn’t true. Differences in mathematics learning can be attributed to the experiences that you have had in life that have helped build the brain connections that allow you to think about complex math problems What does that mean for young students? Offering functional and positive math experiences at younger ages is key to architecting brain connections that can be built upon down the road.

Math requires you to create connections and recognize patterns This type of critical thinking builds the brain’s muscles, which spills over into other facets of life, academic and otherwise. Ever wonder why there is a correlation between music and math… there is part of the answer. Studying math can help to boost overall intelligence by developing important skills such as systematic thinking, problem solving, sequence and pattern recognition, etc. These skills not only make a positive immediate impact on children, but also can serve them well in all future endeavors.

So, when you hear parents using phrases like “my child just isn’t a math person” remember: people don’t do math because they are smart, rather, they do math because it makes them smarter. We are all born with an immature brain, so start building math muscles in early childhood when development is so important.

ALOHA Mind Math offers both enrichment and supplemental math programs that can foster development and academic performance in young children. Please contact your local center to learn more.