FAQ: Can I Use Your Books as a Math Curriculum?

I recently listened to you on Cindy Rollins’ podcast, and I was captivated by your perspective on math. It was exciting, freeing, and wonder-filled. I would absolutely love to be able to teach in the ways you described.

We use early-elementary Saxon Math right now, which is thorough, but has SO MUCH to do that I’ve always struggled to do it all. Then I feel like I’m missing things, and I never know quite what is important. And yet, the actual lessons move so slowly that my kids get bored with the repetition.

I use a published curriculum because I have no idea of an appropriate scope and sequence, or similar flow of learning. With your playful approach to math, how do I know where to start, and what to do each day?

Do you have a suggested order to approach your books to have a full math approach? A sort of curriculum, per se, using your books.

[For those who missed my chat with Cindy Rollins about a Charlotte Mason approach to math, you can listen to it here.]

Your Easiest Question First

My books are not a complete curriculum, but rather supplements that work alongside any math program. But your children are still young. In the early-elementary years, it doesn’t hurt to set aside your math curriculum and just play with numbers, shapes, and patterns.

A good way to start: Ask your local librarian to help you find creative, interesting books about math.

As for my own books, I would recommend starting with Let’s Play Math: How Families Can Learn Math Together—and Enjoy It. (Buy the ebook or paperback here, or check your favorite online bookstore.)

Let’s Play Math is my foundation book for parents/teachers, combining practical tips, educational philosophy, and a few games. It aims to answer the questions, “What is math really all about? And how can we teach it so it makes sense to our kids?”

Then all my other books build on that foundation, getting down into the details with specific games and activities for different ages and interests. After you’ve read Let’s Play Math, you’ll be able to judge for yourself which of these meet your needs.

Thoughts on Saxon Math

I’m not familiar with Saxon math these days. Back when we were homeschooling, Saxon only had their older-student books. I tried looking for information online, and I found a table of contents for the third grade book, so I’ll use it as an example.

Below, I’ve copied about two weeks’ worth of lesson topics. If you were ready to study these weeks, you could look over the list to see which topics your students already know and which need some particular study.

I’m guessing that most of the topics will be at least somewhat familiar from previous experience, but a few might be new. So then, you can use the new lessons with your children as written, if you like, and play with the other topics in more creative ways.

[“Writing Checks” in third grade?! That lesson I would skip, unless your kids really enjoy playing store.]

This way, you can keep using the curriculum you have, but make it your servant, not your boss.

You don’t have to do all the practice problems you find in a Saxon lesson. Through the process of playing with these activities, your kids will get a lot of math practice, and you can throw in a couple of games during the week for extra review.

(Check out my favorite math games to get you started.)

Lessons from the Middle of Saxon 3

70. Reading a Chart, Rounding Numbers to the Nearest Ten, Creating a Bar Graph

71. Writing Three-Digit Numbers Using Digits

72. Identifying Ordinal Position to Twentieth, Multiplying by Five

73. Writing Numbers to 100 Using Words

74. Measuring to the Nearest Millimeter

75. Multiplying by Four

76. Drawing a Line Graph

77. Reading and Writing Money Amounts to $100, Writing Checks

78. Writing the Date Using Digits, Subtracting Nine from a Number

79. Finding Square Roots of Perfect Squares

80. Making Reasonable Predictions by Collecting and Analyzing Data

And What You Might Do Instead

Here are some ideas to play with these topics — not all in one day, of course, but over the course of the two weeks:

(1) Find something to count or measure that will give you a reason to make a chart and graph. (Daily high and low temperatures, survey friends about their pets, birth years of extended family members, nutritional information for different snacks, lengths or heights in mm of different toys, etc.)

Decide whether exact numbers or rounded numbers work better with your data, and why. Decide whether a bar or line graph makes more sense to display your findings, or which you like better, and why.

Analyze the data you collected and make predictions. (What will the temperature be like next week, or how many pets would there be in your whole city?)

(2) Pretend you are rich, and you have $500 allowance to spend this week. What will you buy? How much is left after you go shopping? Will you save any of it, or give anything away?

(3) Do a few rounds of choral multiplication by skip-counting around the table, taking turns. Or play a math game that involves multiplication.

(4) Play the oral story problem game. For multiplication stories, think of things that naturally come in sets of four or five: “You work in a glove factory, making the fingers to attach to the gloves. You need to finish 7 gloves today. How many glove-fingers do you need to make? Do the thumbs count, or is that someone else’s job?”

Take turns, so the kids make up problems for you to solve.

(5) Arrange items in squares (3 rows of 3 items per row, or 4 rows of 4, etc.), or draw squares on graph paper. How does the length of each square’s side relate to the area? Look for patterns. The whole area is the “square number,” and the side of the square is that number’s “square root.” How many squares and square roots can you find?

One More Thing

Finally, I suggest you listen to another podcast, where some friends and I talked about the question of how to plan homeschool math with your kids, when you aren’t even sure how to get started.

• From Right Answers to Adventure

[You don’t have to understand all the references to different curricula or math topics to pick up a lot of great tips.]