Here’s how art forms can help spark math curiosity in your child

However, math is a language, a way of thinking, and an expression of humanity. We never look for math around us; instead, we leave math in the textbook. The true essence of math and math learning can be found in our everyday lives.

In this article, I want to talk about how art forms can help spark math curiosity in your child. This is contrary to popular belief that art and math are two distinct subjects.

Teaching math with music

Music is about recurring patterns and patterns are mathematical. Any kind of music intrinsically possesses a melodic structure and rhythm. The transition from listening to music to perceiving it as sound is absolutely necessary for students learning math through music.

Let me break it down for you. After we count to 10, a cycle repeats, now if you make the number 7 the last one, calling it a seven-based number system, the cycle repeats — that is literally how musical notes are visualized. Math and music are far more intertwined than people make them be. More importantly, there are a lot of fundamental mathematical concepts that are related to the kind of music that people regularly listen to

Exploring the artistic angle of math

Parents should encourage children to create artwork with math concepts like angles, shapes, parabolas, etc. In fact, the most beautiful of artworks contain complex mathematical intricacies. “Life imitates art” and there’s math all around us. Moreover, the moment children try to find systematic shapes and angles in artworks they make, their artistic endeavours become more meaningful.

Art is all about visualization, and visual art is one of the best ways to decode math in its truest form. For example, The famous painting Monalisa by Leonardo Da Vinci depicts the math concept of the ‘Golden ratio,’ and mathematicians have noted that Escher’s art frequently utilizes hyperbolic geometry.

Conclusion

I strongly believe inculcating mathematical concepts and giving a good reason for why things are the way they are through mathematics is absolutely vital. Particularly knowing why you’re learning a certain kind of math and what purpose it serves, makes things way more interesting.

Moreover, we live in a time where parents are constantly looking for alternate forms of learning mathematics and academics. Teaching math through various art forms helps parents spark curiosity for math among children easily.

(The writer is the world’s fastest human calculator & CEO of Bhanzu)

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