By Sandra Meyer
The new school year will bring many challenges for children as they get used to more difficult work in all their classes, and few subjects build on the prior year’s work as much as math. Many children simply aren’t ready to pick up where they left off.
“Taking the summer off is good for children in a number of ways; they come back to school relaxed and refreshed. However, they also come back rusty in their academic subjects – none more so than math. Kids who have spent the summer without solving problems, calculating answers and checking their work, not only need to refresh their memories on key concepts, but need time to build their math muscles back up. For many children, this can result in poor performance in the early part of the academic year,” said Becky McDaniels, Owner/Center Director of Mathnasium of Brandon.
One solution is some additional math work prior to the start of the school year and into the early fall months, which helps children warm up their math muscles and recall those important concepts from the prior year they may no longer remember. Mathnasium provides students with customized programs that, with two or three hours a week of study, can shake off the fog of summer and prepare them for the rigors of their new math curriculum.
Mathnasium students have shown significant increases in performance on standard-based tests in 20 sessions or fewer, the equivalent of a few months’ work.
Mathnasium held a Family Game Night on Friday, June 13 with Club Radical. Club Radical is a way to support the community, build confidence in students, and build new friendships. During this event, Mathnasium collected soda can tabs for the Ronald McDonald House, as well as non-perishable food items for Emergency Care Help Organization of Brandon (ECHO). The final weight of collection of tabs for the Ronald McDonald House was 67.6 lbs. and was delivered the last week of July. It is also more than half way to its goal of collecting 200 lbs. of canned food for ECHO, currently with 104 lbs. The winner of the $100 in the 100 percent test score drawing was Tyler Coleman, a fourth grader at Cimino Elementary, who has been going to Mathnasium since November. Ashley Jones from Newsome High School was the winner of Best Score Yet.
Mathnasium is located at 1048 Bloomingdale Ave. in Valrico. Call 655-6284 or visit www.mathnasium.com /Brandon for more information.
