Most of us were never taught how to teach. And we certainly weren’t taught what to do when NOTHING is working.
My friend Sonya Post is offering a free orientation course that will help you rethink how learning actually works, how you can stop second-guessing yourself and start seeing real growth.
I’ve taken the earlier iterations of her course, and I’d recommend it to all parents.
Truly wonderful insights!
Continue reading Notice, Wonder, Discover: The Foundation of Learning Well
The question hits my inbox whenever parents start planning for a new school year:
“Hello! I am on the board of a homeschool co-op. We have had requests for a math club and wondered if you have any tips for starting one. We service children from K-10th and would need to try to meet the needs of as many ages as possible.”
There are several ways you might organize a homeschool math club, depending on the students you have and on your goals. I think you would have to split the students by age groups — it is very hard to keep that wide of a range of students interested. Then decide whether you want an activity-oriented club or a more academic focus.
When I started my first math club, I raided the math shelves in the children’s section at my library (510-519) for anything that interested me. I figured that if an activity didn’t interest me, I couldn’t make it fun for the kids. Over the years we have done a variety of games, puzzles, craft projects, and more — always looking for something that was NOT like whatever the kids would be doing in their textbooks at home.
Let’s look at the possibilities by grade level…
Over the years, in my public writing and in personal correspondence, I’ve tried to help younger parents by sharing the things I wish someone would have told me forty years ago. Oftentimes, I will answer a question but never hear back what the person ended up doing or how their family got along.
It leaves me feeling as though I could have done more to encourage them along the way.
In the past few years, I’ve watched a professional writer I admire organize several more formal mentorships for younger indie authors to grow their writing and publishing careers. I think a similar program could be helpful for homeschooling families.
So now I’m offering two new Patreon membership tiers that give you a direct one-on-one connection with me through email or email-plus-video.
My goal is to help you think about math as a creative, playful investigation where you and your children explore concepts together using the math program or curriculum of your choice. This is not a tutoring arrangement. I will help you understand and teach math, but I will not do the teaching for you.
Continue reading New Membership Tiers: One-on-One Mentorship
“We know that algorithms are amazing human achievements, but they are not good teaching tools because mimicking step-by-step procedures can actually trap students into using less sophisticated reasoning than the problems are intended to develop.”
— Pam Harris, Math Is Figure-Out-Able Podcast
Whether you work with a math curriculum or take a less-traditional route to learning, do not be satisfied with mere pencil-and-paper competence. Instead, work on building your children’s mental math skills, because mental calculation forces a child to understand arithmetic at a much deeper level than is required by traditional pencil-and-paper methods.
“If you stay with meaningful mental arithmetic longer, you will find that your child, if she is average, can do problems much more advanced than the level listed for her grade. You will find that she likes arithmetic more.
“And when she does get to abstractions, she will understand them better.
“She will not need two or three years of work in primary grades to learn how to write out something like a subtraction problem with two-digit numbers. She can learn that in a few moments of time, if you just wait.”
—Ruth Beechick, An Easy Start in Arithmetic
ALL my math game books are on sale now at the Playful Math Store.
What a great way to prepare for a summer of mathematical play!
We were eclectic homeschoolers back in the Dark Ages before there was an internet. Our primary curriculum was the public library.
As we went along, I noticed how many of our homeschooling friends felt uncomfortable with math, and even hated or feared the subject.
Math anxiety runs rampant in Western culture. By one researcher’s estimate, more than 90% of adults experience some level of math anxiety — that is, discomfort, avoidance, and even emotional pain when faced with a math calculation.
So I became a sort of “math evangelist” in the homeschooling community, spreading the news that we can find beauty and fun even in math.
If seven people meet at a party, and each person shakes the hand of everyone else exactly once, how many handshakes are there in all?
Our homeschool co-op held an end-of-semester assembly. Each class was supposed to demonstrate something they had learned.
I threatened to hand out a ten question pop quiz on integer arithmetic, but instead my pre-algebra students presented this skit.
1-3 narrators (or more, if you have a large group)
7 friends (non-speaking parts, adjust to fit your group)
Each friend will need a sheet of paper with a number written on it big and bold enough to be read by the audience. The numbers needed are 0, 1, 2, 3, … up to one less than the number of friends. Each friend keeps his paper in a pocket until needed.
[An addendum to my earlier Charlotte Mason Math series.]
“Our business is to give [children] mind-stuff, and both quality and quantity are essential. Naturally, each of us possesses this mind-stuff only in limited measure, but we know where to procure it; for the best thought the world possesses is stored in books; we must open books to children, the best books; our own concern is abundant provision and orderly serving.”
— Charlotte Mason, Toward A Philosophy of Education
Most homeschool teachers, whatever our curriculum or schooling approach, understand the importance of teaching with living books. We read aloud biographies, historical fiction, or the classics of literature. We scour library shelves for the most creative presentations of scientific topics that interest our children, and encourage our high school students to go back to the original documents whenever possible.
And we teach math with a textbook.
Not that textbooks are inherently bad, because math is an abstract science. We need to meet the ideas — the “mind-stuff” — of math on their own terms, and textbooks can help with that.
But it’s not enough.
When I was in school, math was something each person did on their own for homework, quizzes or tests.
Even when the teacher sent us to work on the chalkboard, each person did their own problem. We would never think to collaborate on math.
To look at someone else’s answer was considered cheating.
