I have a new podcast interview, and I think you’ll enjoy it!
Check out Pam Barnhill’s 10 Minutes to a Better Homeschool on your favorite podcast app, or listen on the website:
Here’s a couple of excerpts…
Continue reading Podcast: How to Transform Math Lessons without Changing your Curriculum
I’ve just launched the Denise Gaskins’ Playful Math Store!
The Grand Opening Sale runs through April 20 — add the discount code GRAND_20 at checkout to save 20% on your first order.
We have plenty of fun mathy goodness on hand, so I hope you’ll take some time to browse our collections. Don’t miss the math art collection, or the journaling resources, or my classic Math You Can Play series. And of course, there’s the merch.
Even better, we have both digital and print books, which is something my previous store couldn’t handle.
So many ways to celebrate the joy of mathematics.
May your family always enjoy the adventure of learning!
And so it begins: the Tabletop Math Games Collection is LIVE on Kickstarter!
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.
To give you a feel for the Tabletop Math Games Collection books, I’ve put together a free printable sampler file, with 4 ready-to-play card games you can enjoy today.
I think you’ll love it!
Continue reading Tabletop Math Games Kickstarter: Order Your Copy Today
Ah, math facts — the topic that just won’t stop giving grief to students and anxiety to their parents. So it happened that I got another question, but this one leaned in a more philosophical direction…
“I enjoyed your podcast interview on Cultivating Math Curiosity and Reasoning in Kids. I love the idea that we don’t have to make our children memorize everything in math. We can give them freedom to make mental connections for themselves.
“But on the other hand, we don’t have unlimited time for them to figure things out on their own, do we? What about children who can’t make these connections for themselves?
“For example, what about the math facts? If my kids aren’t picking them up, don’t they just have to memorize them?”
It came up again this week, one of the most frequently asked questions about homeschooling math:
“I believe it’s important for children to memorize the math facts, but my kids are struggling with mental math. How can I help them master these important number relationships?”
We all want our children to own the math facts, those basic relationships between small numbers that form the foundation of all arithmetic.
But I don’t think emphasizing memorization will develop the sort of fluency your children need.
The human brain remembers what it thinks about, so we want children using their brains and thinking as deeply as possible about number relationships from as many different perspectives as we can get, noticing patterns, finding connections, making sense of the math.
There’s a well-known quote attributed to tennis champion Arthur Ashe (and to President Theodore Roosevelt, and probably others):
“Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.”
Many homeschoolers fear that their students have fallen behind grade level in math and worry about how to catch up.
We have an educational myth that math is a steady progression of topics arranged by ever-increasing complexity with regular signposts like mile markers that identify what students must learn at each stage along the way.
For example, first-grade students can add one-or two-digit numbers, but three-digit numbers are beyond them. Second-grade students can add three- or four-digit numbers, but never wander off into millions and billions. And so forth.
That is one valid path to learning math.
Many homeschoolers hate or even fear math. It’s the topic most likely to bring our children to tears.
In my last several posts, I’ve indulged my theoretical muse letting my thoughts wander over topics that may seem esoteric to parents in the midst of a daily struggle to help their child learn.
So today, let’s put away the theory and get practical:
You don’t have to invest in a new curriculum to revolutionize your child’s experience of math. Just change how you use the math program you have.
Here are five tips that will help you and your child work together to build mathematical understanding.
We’ve talked about several types of math manipulative that homeschooling parents might use to help their children learn math (see part 1 and part 2), but we never stopped to ask the most basic question:
Why use math manipulatives at all?
Math manipulatives are a tool for solving educational problems, so we should first decide what problem we are trying to solve. That will help us know which tool to use.
Continue reading Homeschool Musings: Math Manipulatives Part 3
In my previous post, I examined fingers and found items (beans, buttons, leaves, and so on) as tools that can help our children learn math. This time, we move on to the kinds of math manipulatives you’ll find in stores or packaged with your favorite curriculum.
The standard base ten blocks consist of plastic or wooden cubes, a rod with the length of ten cubes, a flat shape the size of ten rods side-by-side, and a large cube equivalent to ten of the flat shapes stacked atop each other.
These are used primarily for modeling place value as a means of developing the standard arithmetic algorithms for addition and subtraction.
They can also be used for modeling decimals as a place value notation, without relying on fraction concepts. And with a bit of imagination (“Pretend the rods are stretchy, so we don’t know how long they really are”) they can model simple algebraic expressions.
Continue reading Homeschool Musings: Math Manipulatives Part 2
I stumbled across another blogger’s post on the common question, “What are the best math manipulatives for homeschooling?”
My answer to this question has changed over the years, as I’ve grown in my understanding of math and of education. As my current stance is far different from much of what I read from other homeschoolers, I’m going to lay out my reasoning below.
I’d love to hear your thoughts, especially if you disagree, because comparing ideas with one another is a great way to learn.
Continue reading Homeschool Musings: Math Manipulatives Part 1
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 