Anxiety or Excitement?

I’ve been doing 50 Word Friday for a while. But I’ve just stumbled across a thing called Five Minute Friday that has me excited.

My heart is racing!

Yup. Racing.

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And it’s not from the coffee overload this morning.

I have what’s called “test excitement” – which is the opposite of test anxiety. If you tell me to do something (for which I some level of mastery) and then say that it’s timed or a test, I just go nuts.

I’m all about getting the best grade, beating everyone else or creating the best whatever in the allotted time.

So this new challenge is right up my alley!

Starting tomorrow (or late, late tonight) I’ll be using this online timer and Lisa-Jo Baker’s Five Minute Friday prompt to write something about math.

Things might get a little crazy.

In this challenge, you don’t proofread what you do. How exciting!

And you only write for 5 minutes. So I’ll pick a photo before she gives the prompt.

Which means that what you, sweet reader, will get out of this, is anyone’s guess.

The one thing I’ll guarantee… it will be about math or math learning.

Anxiety or Excitement?

So what does this article have to do with math?

In order to excel you have to be out of the state of anxiety and into excitement. This goes for excelling in learning as well.

So try this little test with your children. Print this Anxiety or Excitement? sheet (or use a blank page) and have each of your children (and you) fill it out.

In one column write out everything that makes you anxious. Include all the things you avoid because of this.

In the other column, write down everything you love to do – anything you’re excited about doing and you want to do more.

Then take a peek at what you and your children have written.

What do you notice?

Use those filled out sheets as a guide to turning anxiety into excitement – like if your child is anxious about math but loves fairies, convert all word problems into fairy problems. Like this:

The fairy playground is about 50 twinkletoes wide by 120 twinkletoes long. There’s a border of pixie dust around the entire playground that’s 1800 square twinkletoes. How wide is that pixie dust border around their playground?

Does it turn anxiety into excitement? Maybe not immediately.

But perhaps if you let her draw it out – with glitter paint – it will start her down the right path!