How We Do Math
Long, long ago, back when our first student was in Grade 1, we did math workbooks every day. This was comfortable for me, something that could be set in front of him, and a very measurable piece of “school” to do every morning. We had our commitment not to spend any money, so our choice of math curriculum was limited to second hand workbooks. But it wasn’t long before math also became our main point of contention each day.
A few years went by with daily struggles before we read Teaching the Trivium by Harvey and Laurie Bluedorn. Beyond changing our perspective on education as a whole, we also read the appendix "History and Research on the Teaching of Math". In it, they describe research that indicates a benefit to young students who learn math concepts only through life experience and not through formal bookwork. If this was true, what were we doing fighting with our little son over pages of arithmetic? With some trepidation, we set aside the workbooks, which were the most formal learning we had followed up until then, and embarked on a new journey.
So, what does math look like now? Our kids only start formal math between the ages of 10 and 12. They start with Saxon 6/5. A few of the concepts or vocabulary might need to be explained, but they learn very quickly and carry on with Grade 5 math. We’ve had four students who followed this pattern and successfully navigated through high school math. Each student spends an hour or less each day doing a math lesson, or corrections, or getting tutored by Dad.
Recently, we’ve started the slow shift away from Saxon toward Life of Fred. Beginning with the high school years, we wanted something that would not dominate so much of their study time. Life of Fred does that, with practical story-based lessons and only a few questions to answer.
Since we have a late reader who’s eleven and hadn’t started any formal math, we are now doing the Elementary Series of Life of Fred with our 9 and 11-year-old together. This is pure fun: we read the adventures of Fred aloud and write out our answers to a few simple questions. If we’re stumped, the answers are on the next page.
What were these youngsters doing for math up until now? Normal life stuff: counting their money and buying things, making charts to show their yearly income and spending, doubling, tripling or halving recipes in the kitchen, measuring and cutting lumber for projects, playing Monopoly and myriad other games with shapes, patterns, adding and subtracting, daily talking about what so-and-so would equal if we multiplied it, and reading aloud about math.
Our early math read alouds have included: Mathemagic, a childcraft book that compiles a bunch of short stories about math, Champions of Mathematics, which is biographies of mathematicians, and Mathstart picture books by Stuart J. Murphy, which are picture books about kids who ride elevators up and down or argue about whose room is bigger (thus learning subtraction or finding area).
For those who want more challenges, I recommend reading up on the Thomas Jefferson Education methods here. There are ways to take informal math all the way to the top through a mentorship education. Here’s to keeping it fun!
