Writing to Learn Math: You can spark creative thought by removing any need to worry about spelling or punctuation rules.
Do you want your children to develop the ability to reason creatively and figure out things on their own?
Help kids practice slowing down and taking the time to fully comprehend a math topic or problem-solving situation with these classic tools of learning: Notice. Wonder. Create.
Over 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:
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.
Writing to Learn Math: Research prompts help students view math as a human endeavor.
Do you want your children to develop the ability to reason creatively and figure out things on their own?
Help kids practice slowing down and taking the time to fully comprehend a math topic or problem-solving situation with these classic tools of learning: Notice. Wonder. Create.
One 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.
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.
And so it begins: Charlotte Mason’s Living Math is LIVE on Kickstarter!
⭐ 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
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?
Having new eyes on the page helps make sure everything makes sense.
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:
(If you back the campaign on launch day, that encourages the Kickstarter folks to share it with more people.)
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:
Each of these perspectives offers us a new way to think about and make sense of our calculations.
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 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
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 