• Be positive about math. You don’t have to be a math whiz to help your children develop positive attitudes about the subject. Simply sitting with them and helping out when math homework seems difficult can go a long way toward getting them to believe in their mathematical abilities. Junior high is a time when children begin to seriously define who they are and learn about what they are skilled at. Success with math now can create a positive attitude about future learning. Get excited about what they are learning, help them ferret out the answers. If you have trouble with terms or need a math primer yourself, there are many Web sites that offer help, such as mathforum.org/dr.math/. Ask your children’s teachers what’s being taught in school and how you can help reinforce it at home.
   
• Help them see math’s connection to their daily lives. Math becomes more meaningful when kids see how important it is to everyday living. We all use math every day: banking, shopping for groceries, calculating how much paint is needed to cover the living room walls. Every sport uses numbers, whether for scoring, determining averages or figuring percentages. Artists use shapes and figures and need to understand ratios (fractions) when mixing materials like paint. Help your budding chef see the usefulness of math when measuring ingredients or doubling a recipe. Math skills are also put to practical use when spacing new plants or figuring out how many plants to grow in order to have enough tomatoes for homemade pasta sauce.
   
• Help your children understand the basics. Just because they’ve been practicing basic math skills for many years doesn’t mean they have mastered them. Children need a firm grip on the basics to be successful with the higher math they’ll study in junior and senior school. If your children have difficulty figuring math in their heads, encourage them to work problems through on scrap paper or with the help of math counters. Flash cards are a quick and easy way to help a struggling learner get a grip on addition, multiplication and fractions. Puzzles, like tangrams, are great for reinforcing shapes and size. Teaching supply stores and online sources like www.lakeshorelearning.com and www.etacuisenaire carry a variety of these supplies. If you are uncertain about what types of materials are best for helping your children learn, ask their teachers for suggestions.
   
• Sneak in a little math practice on vacation. On your next trip, pack a variety of board and card games that are great for reinforcing basic math skills. Having your children help calculate the distance between home and your destination(s) or gas mileage are also great on-the-road math activities.
   
• Have your children open a bank account. Most banks provide literature aimed at helping teach children to manage their money. The Web site www.kidsbank.com is an online resource that provides a kid-friendly primer on banking.
   
• Capitalize on your pre-teens’ desire to shop till they drop. Use the sale flyers from the Sunday paper to teach your children about comparison shopping. Math skills will also help them understand just how much of their hard-earned money they’ll have to fork over for a new pair of jeans or sneakers.
   
• Show the importance of math for career choices. Many jobs that once required little background in math now call for specific skills in algebra, geometry, measurement, probability and statistics. Virtually all of the fastest growing and highest paying professions listed by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics require a strong knowledge of math. How do you and other adults you know use math in your job each day? Think it over and let your kids know.

Math resources for families

• http://chamberlin.sbschools.net/users/twhiteford/gender.htm — This Web site is designed specifically to help junior high school and high school girls excel at math.
   
• www.figurethis.org/ — Mathematical challenges for families provide interesting math challenges that junior high students can do at home with their families.
   
• Why Do Buses Come in Threes? The Hidden Mathematics of Everyday Life by Rob Eastaway and Jeremy Wyndham

Books about mathematical ideas for kids

• The Number Devil: A Mathematical Adventure by Hans Magnus Enzensberger.
   
• The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.
   
• Sir Cumference and the Great Knight of Angleland: A Math Adventure and
  Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi: A Math Adventure by Cindy Neuschwander.
   
• The Adventures of Penrose the Mathematical Cat and
  Fractals, Googols and Other Mathematical Tales by Theoni Pappas.
   
• Math Trek: Adventures in the Math Zone and
  Math Trek 2: A Mathematical Space Odyssey by Ivars Peterson.
   
• G Is for Googol: A Math Alphabet Book by David Schwartz.
   
• The Man Who Counted: A Collection of Mathematical Adventures by Malba Taha.
   
• The Grapes of Math: Mind Stretching Math Riddles by Greg Tang.
   

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