Customer Reviews

Math Power: How to Help Your Child Love Math, Even if You Don't, Revised Edition

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Math Power deals with some tough issues. This book actually delivers much more than it promises. Professor Kenschaft is a great writer on a complicated subject. NO, math is not the complicated subject. But the politics and culture which gets in the way of learning math is complicated. There are lots of ideas on encouraging and teaching math to children. However, she also removes some of the myths of math, such as making problems easy to build self-esteem. This book has a lot of good ideas (age appropriate), for making math interesting, and exciting. She also makes a good distinction between boring arithmetic and math, (the study of patterns and use of patterns to solve problems).
You will also obtain a better understanding of how professional mathematicians work and solve problems.

This book provides much insight not only into math instruction, but teaching children in general. The author is a well-seasoned, successful and well-loved educator, full of wisdom for those who want to learn to teach. I am a homeschooling mother and found this book to be invaluable to me in helping me come to a right understanding about WHY we learn math. The author makes fantastic argument that math is a tool that helps us enjoy life to the fullest. Too bad most of us were taught it in such a way as to dread it. I used to push my children to learn math. Now, we sit and enjoy it. We play math games, and "talk" math. A key point the author makes is that we want our kids to "talk" math in the earlier years, more than just get them to say the right answers. The right answers will come if they feel that they can fail and then think about it in a safe environment...basically, learn at their own pace. This woman is brilliant.

I bought it to be able to help my grandson. Ms. Kenschaft changed MY 60-year-old attitude against math. Her clear presentation in ordinary words sparked an interest and gave me hope that I just might be able to understand more. She is a master teacher and a master writer.

The book gives practical illustrations, examples and hints that coach even the most handicapped in math dare to believe that there is a way to understand math and use it.

I gossipped so excitedly about the book that two people bought their own copies and three people checked it out of the library.

This is a book that will be helpful to classroom teachers and homeschool teachers.

...the title is totally misleading...I bought the book searching for ways to make math more interesting and accessible to my kids...the first hundred and twenty pages offers up some ideas...however, most of these are directed to preschool math experience; only about twenty pages offers any advice for school age children...and what advice is offered is really not directed towards making math interesting but more towards alternate methods of teaching various concepts...and then the next TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY pages consist basically of nothing but a rant against the current educational system and its methods along with recommendations for improving the system...aside from a chapter that very vaguely recommends games like "war" and dominoes, I basically found no useful advice for making math interesting...and the only practically useful chapter was one regarding the linguistic causes of math confusion -- e.g. recognizing when children don't understand a problem because they can't interpret the instructions correctly...I was very disappointed and don't recommend this book to anyone seeking ways to make math interesting.