Gestures can help children learn mathematical concepts.
In addition to helping language, gestures can also help children learn mathematical concepts. Compared with pure listening to math class, one of the characteristics of gestures is that they can "turn static into dynamic". The brain will give priority to dynamic information, and children will remember images better.
A study found that when teaching geometry to children, only by increasing the action of letting them trace along the edge of a triangle with their fingers can children learn better.
Researcher Susan Cook and her colleagues did an experiment to teach several groups of children algebra. The first group of children just used linguistics to repeat what the teacher said to solve the problem. In the second group, children only use gestures to express the idea of disintegration with their fingers. For example, when doing equations, they draw between numbers. The third group of children used both linguistics and gestures.
The results show that children who use gestures and language at the same time perform better and remember the correct problem-solving methods better.