We’re Counting Down the Hours!

Posted on by Denise Gaskins
family doing math together

Charlotte Mason's Living Math bookAre you a parent or teacher? Here’s how to:

  • Feed your children’s minds with big ideas.
  • Give them confidence they can learn and make sense of things.
  • Develop intuition and creative thinking about math.

You’ll love how Charlotte Mason’s Living Math transforms your children’s experience of math, awakening their imagination about numbers, shapes, and patterns.

It’s a fun way to enrich any math curriculum, and great for unschoolers, too.

But you have to ACT FAST: The Kickstarter campaign ends Thursday night!

Order Your Copy Today ❯

Quotation from Charlotte Mason: Of all his early studies, perhaps none is more important to the child as a means of education than that of arithmetic. There is no one subject in which good teaching effects more, as there is none in which slovenly teaching has more mischievous results.

Why I Love Kickstarter

Posted on by Denise Gaskins
Charlotte Mason's Living Math

Charlotte Mason's Living Math bookOver the next two weeks, you’ll be hearing a lot about Kickstarter and my Charlotte Mason’s Living Math project. I’m proud of the book, and I want to spread the news as far and wide as possible.

You’ll love how Charlotte Mason’s Living Math transforms your children’s experience of math, awakening their imagination about numbers, shapes, and patterns.

But I know there are many readers who don’t know much about crowdfunding. Some people even think that a campaign like this is just online begging.

So I want to share what I totally love about Kickstarter and how much it offers you, the customer:

(1) It’s the “New World” of publishing.

In the old days, traditional publishing companies paid writers in advance to write the books the publisher wanted to see. In this new world, you get to choose and support the writers creating books you want to read.

Continue reading Why I Love Kickstarter

Math Prompt: True-False-True

Posted on by Denise Gaskins
girl writing in a notebook, sitting on couch with her corgi

Book, Charlotte Mason's Living MathOne of the stretch goals for my Charlotte Mason’s Living Math Kickstarter campaign is to add a math journaling prompt to the end of each chapter. So, I’ve been playing around with ideas to get readers writing.

Since the book’s all about how to build mathematical reasoning, I’m looking for ways to prompt creative thinking and flexibility in math calculations.

Check Out the Kickstarter

I found some fun ideas in Guy Gattegno and Martin Hoffman’s Handbook of Activities for the Teaching of Mathematics (which you can download here), including the following riff off a puzzle created by Lewis Carroll.

Continue reading Math Prompt: True-False-True

Charlotte Mason’s Living Math Launched: Order Your Copy Today

Posted on by Denise Gaskins
dad helping girl with math homework

And so it begins: Charlotte Mason’s Living Math is LIVE on Kickstarter!

Check It Out ❯

⭐ Don’t delay! ⭐

To have a successful campaign, we need plenty of people to back the project early. The more supporters we get in these early days, the more likely the Kickstarter platform folks will help spread the news for us.

Continue reading Charlotte Mason’s Living Math Launched: Order Your Copy Today

Can You Help Me?

Posted on by Denise Gaskins
family doing math together

I’m finishing up my plans for the new Charlotte Mason’s Living Math Kickstarter project and pledge levels, which launches early in March.

And I’d really appreciate your help.

Could you please take a few minutes to look over the project page and give me some feedback?

  • Preview & Comments Page
    (NO account required to see the preview, but you may need to log in if you want to leave a comment.)

Having new eyes on the page helps make sure everything makes sense.

Continue reading Can You Help Me?

Coming Soon: Charlotte Mason’s Living Math

Posted on by Denise Gaskins
Charlotte Mason's Living Math Kickstarter

Coming Soon! In March, I’ll be launching my newest book, Charlotte Mason’s Living Math: How to Apply the Principles of Education to Help Children Develop Mathematical Reasoning.

And the Kickstarter prelaunch page is now live. That means you can sign up to get an email from Kickstarter as soon as the campaign launches:

Visit the Prelaunch Page ❯

(If you back the campaign on launch day, that encourages the Kickstarter folks to share it with more people.)

Continue reading Coming Soon: Charlotte Mason’s Living Math

Mental Math: Advanced Division

Posted on by Denise Gaskins
Father and daughter working mental math

The farther we go in math, the more division disappears. It ceases to exist as a separate concept.

Instead, we learn to see division as:

  • an inverse multiplication
  • a fraction (ratio)
  • a proportional relationship

Each of these perspectives offers us a new way to think about and make sense of our calculations.

Continue reading Mental Math: Advanced Division

Mental Math: Advanced Multiplication, Part 2

Posted on by Denise Gaskins
Father and son celebrate a mental math answer

The methods in last week’s Advanced Multiplication post only work for certain numbers, but we have another, more powerful multiplication tool: We can always use a ratio table to make sense of any multiplication.

Ratios are the beginning of proportional thinking. We can systematically alter the numbers in a ratio to reach any quantity required by our problem.

Students begin working with ratios in story problems that help them visualize and make sense of a proportional relationship.

Continue reading Mental Math: Advanced Multiplication, Part 2

Mental Math: Advanced Multiplication, Part 1

Posted on by Denise Gaskins
Mother and daughter working mental math together

Mental math is the key to algebra because the same principles underlie them both.

As our children learn to do calculations in their heads, they make sense of how numbers work together and build a strong foundation of understanding.

Remember that while mental math is always done WITH the mind, reasoning our way to the answer, it doesn’t have to be only IN the mind. Make sure your students have scratch paper or a whiteboard handy to jot down intermediate steps as needed.

Besides, math is always more fun when kids get to use colorful markers on a whiteboard.

Continue reading Mental Math: Advanced Multiplication, Part 1