If you find a free hour this week, you may enjoy listening to my latest Notice & Wonder podcast discussion with Sonya and Della about the power of playful math:
We share plenty of tips, stories, and practical advice for bringing a sense of curiosity and exploration into your math lessons.
Plus, the Best Math Game Ever!
I love this podcast, because it always feels like sitting down to chat over coffee with good friends who love kids and love teaching.
Can your students solve this problem?
There are 20% more girls than boys in the senior class. What percent of the seniors are girls?
This is from an old discussion of the semantics of percent problems and why students have trouble with them, going on over at MathNotations. (Follow-up post here.)
Our homeschool co-op prealgebra class had just finished a chapter on percents, so I thought my son might have a chance at this one. Nope! He leapt without thought to the conclusion that 60% of the class must be girls.
After I explained the significance of the word “than”, he solved the follow-up problem just fine.
When I was a novice homeschooler, our local Moms’ Night Out provided mentoring and kept me sane. We’d leave the children home with their dads and meet up at a local restaurant for a cup of coffee, a slice of pecan pie, and a robust discussion of educational philosophy.
This spring, my friend Sonya Post launched a new podcast called “Notice & Wonder” — and it captures that same feeling perfectly.
Sonya explains: “What is Notice, Wonder, Discover? It’s the development of cognitive skills, without which you have never learned anything in your life. We are developing the underlying skills that will make anyone more proficient at learning anything.”
I’ve had the privilege to join Sonya for three episodes of the podcast so far, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed our conversations.
Here’s a taste…
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!
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.
