Robin

I just found this web site posted on another unschooling list:

http://www.livingmath.net

Gives this beginner a much better picture of how to unschool math. I
thought others might be interested. It's chock full of resources and
examples of how others have shared math with their kids (and even
re-learned themselves). It's not exclusively an unschooling site but
alot of the approaches it suggests seem compatible in an unschooling
context. At least it seems so to this newbie.

I loved math as a kid and was rewarded for it, but I recently realized
that my boy has an internal understanding of basic algebra concepts that
I don't even try. One of the articles on the site reviews a book by a
women raised in China who writes about Chinese teaching
stressing/allowing a conceptual exploration of math whereas here we
stress just "doing it." I know how to solve algebra problems but have no
real understanding of why the systems I was taught "work". The boy can
look at a simple algebra problem and see the numbers and why they go
where. I just do the steps to "solve" it. Before unschooling (BU?) I was
trying to get him to learn "discipline" and "prepare for when the
problems get harder" and was trying to get him to do math the way I was
taught. So of course he went from loving math to finding it boring.

We are still deschooling so I may not even try exploring math for awhile
but I want to explore better ways to suggest it to them when they are ready.

Robin
--
Think you can't afford solar--Think Again! check out:
http://www.jointhesolution.com/livinggaia

Meredith

--- In [email protected], Robin <GaiaAlive@...>
wrote:
>> Gives this beginner a much better picture of how to unschool
math. I
> thought others might be interested. It's chock full of resources
and
> examples of how others have shared math with their kids

One of the most useful things you can learn from tooling around
various math sites is that "math" is a pretty complex group of
concepts! As a deschooling parent, its really helpful to let some of
those concepts sort of "settle" into your mind a little so that you
can start Look for the many wonderful ways your kids are learning
about math already. Its one of those things that (to quote Danielle
Conger out of context) "you'll see it when you believe it". If you
can believe that learning about math is something that humans do as
naturally as learning about language (it really is!) then you can
start to see the ways your kids are learning.

Depending on your kids' personalities it may not "look" very much
like math. In our house, unschooling math looks like: playing with
paper dolls, jumping on the couch, singing, telling jokes, spelling,
making a phone call, spinning a fire-staff, skateboarding, arguing,
turning on the air conditioner, rearranging the furniture.... Gosh,
this stuff is just everywhere. Because real-life math doesn't look
very much at all like "school math" it might take some practice to
see it! I adore math, so I can see it everywhere, relatively easily.

> We are still deschooling so I may not even try exploring math for
awhile
> but I want to explore better ways to suggest it to them when they
are ready.

Keep on deschooling and you might never need to "suggest" anything
at all. At most you may have to say "well, that thing you just did
was math" and explain a little. What do your kids love right now? I
bet I and some of the other experienced unschoolers on the board can
help you see the math that's right in front of you, if you like.

---Meredith (Mo 6, Ray 14)

A Perry

 
i consider myself one of the lucky ones who loves math, loves the logic, loves the tidy way it all fits together, both in the smallest picture and the biggest...and i might add that all through my frustrating school years i failed, failed, failed the subject. only through studying other things did math begin to make beautiful sense to me, much later in life. math was in stream ecology. math was in dancing. math was in playing the piano. and that last one, especially, is something i've been able to witness with both of my children. they play piano, cello, drums and guitar. they grasp math readily- useful math, so far, mostly, but also strange, almost esoteric math. a recent example would be my son, who is 6, explaining to me that there are seven days in one week, and forty two days in six weeks. and then later in the same day, after silently watching an hour long tv show about the solar system, asking me if we had solar systems in our blood.
that's math to me.
angela
--- On Thu, 7/24/08, Meredith <meredith@...> wrote:

From: Meredith <meredith@...>
Subject: [unschoolingbasics] Re: unschooling math
To: [email protected]
Date: Thursday, July 24, 2008, 7:14 PM






--- In unschoolingbasics@ yahoogroups. com, Robin <GaiaAlive@. ..>
wrote:
>> Gives this beginner a much better picture of how to unschool
math. I
> thought others might be interested. It's chock full of resources
and
> examples of how others have shared math with their kids

One of the most useful things you can learn from tooling around
various math sites is that "math" is a pretty complex group of
concepts! As a deschooling parent, its really helpful to let some of
those concepts sort of "settle" into your mind a little so that you
can start Look for the many wonderful ways your kids are learning
about math already. Its one of those things that (to quote Danielle
Conger out of context) "you'll see it when you believe it". If you
can believe that learning about math is something that humans do as
naturally as learning about language (it really is!) then you can
start to see the ways your kids are learning.

Depending on your kids' personalities it may not "look" very much
like math. In our house, unschooling math looks like: playing with
paper dolls, jumping on the couch, singing, telling jokes, spelling,
making a phone call, spinning a fire-staff, skateboarding, arguing,
turning on the air conditioner, rearranging the furniture... . Gosh,
this stuff is just everywhere. Because real-life math doesn't look
very much at all like "school math" it might take some practice to
see it! I adore math, so I can see it everywhere, relatively easily.

> We are still deschooling so I may not even try exploring math for
awhile
> but I want to explore better ways to suggest it to them when they
are ready.

Keep on deschooling and you might never need to "suggest" anything
at all. At most you may have to say "well, that thing you just did
was math" and explain a little. What do your kids love right now? I
bet I and some of the other experienced unschoolers on the board can
help you see the math that's right in front of you, if you like.

---Meredith (Mo 6, Ray 14)


















[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Pamela Sorooshian

Very well put, Angela. Since you have an eye for seeing the math
everywhere, you might think about blogging it, on a regular basis. It
would be really interesting and, I think, enlightening! Your kids are
young, so if you started now, you would have years to build up a
wonderful resource for parents who are not easy with unschooling math.

I'd LOVE to see someone do that - and you sound like just the person
for the job!

-pam

On Jul 24, 2008, at 5:18 PM, A Perry wrote:

> i consider myself one of the lucky ones who loves math, loves the
> logic, loves the tidy way it all fits together, both in the smallest
> picture and the biggest...and i might add that all through my
> frustrating school years i failed, failed, failed the subject. only
> through studying other things did math begin to make beautiful sense
> to me, much later in life. math was in stream ecology. math was in
> dancing. math was in playing the piano. and that last one,
> especially, is something i've been able to witness with both of my
> children. they play piano, cello, drums and guitar. they grasp math
> readily- useful math, so far, mostly, but also strange, almost
> esoteric math. a recent example would be my son, who is 6,
> explaining to me that there are seven days in one week, and forty
> two days in six weeks. and then later in the same day, after
> silently watching an hour long tv show about the solar system,
> asking me if we had solar systems in our blood.
> that's math to me.

lyeping2607

I always find money is a very strong motivator for anything. We use
money to teach DS (going to be 8 in Oct) from how to take control of
his "desires" for toys by working out how many weeks of pocket money
saving is needed to achieve that "purchase". Additions, subtractions,
multiplications, fractions, and decimals is all taught with money

Pocket money creates a strong need to learn how to add, subtract,
divide, multiply. Plus it makes sense of the need for the concept of
decimals.

£0.50 is the same as 0.50 = 50% = 1/2.
£0.50 x 5 = £2.00

Asking DS what is 1.5 + 1.5 will equal to a blank face. But ask him
what is £1.50 +£1.50, he'll imediate response with £3.00. And he
equates doing 4 basket of laundry to £2.00 at £0.50 per basket.

Fractions is about how many % of daddy's paycheque do the taxman takes
every month; how much tip should we leave for that lovely waitress;
and how many percent of our pocket money should we allocate into our
piggy bank for that month.

SharonC

A Perry

Oh, thank you, Pam! Those were very kind words. I have been thinking of starting a blog. I'll have to do a better job of either dividing (or better yet, multiplying!) the hours in my day, before I can fit that in. Thank you for the encouragement.
Angela
 


--- On Fri, 7/25/08, Pamela Sorooshian <pamsoroosh@...> wrote:

From: Pamela Sorooshian <pamsoroosh@...>
Subject: Re: [unschoolingbasics] Re: unschooling math
To: [email protected]
Date: Friday, July 25, 2008, 1:00 PM






Very well put, Angela. Since you have an eye for seeing the math
everywhere, you might think about blogging it, on a regular basis. It
would be really interesting and, I think, enlightening! Your kids are
young, so if you started now, you would have years to build up a
wonderful resource for parents who are not easy with unschooling math.

I'd LOVE to see someone do that - and you sound like just the person
for the job!

-pam

On Jul 24, 2008, at 5:18 PM, A Perry wrote:

> i consider myself one of the lucky ones who loves math, loves the
> logic, loves the tidy way it all fits together, both in the smallest
> picture and the biggest...and i might add that all through my
> frustrating school years i failed, failed, failed the subject. only
> through studying other things did math begin to make beautiful sense
> to me, much later in life. math was in stream ecology. math was in
> dancing. math was in playing the piano. and that last one,
> especially, is something i've been able to witness with both of my
> children. they play piano, cello, drums and guitar. they grasp math
> readily- useful math, so far, mostly, but also strange, almost
> esoteric math. a recent example would be my son, who is 6,
> explaining to me that there are seven days in one week, and forty
> two days in six weeks. and then later in the same day, after
> silently watching an hour long tv show about the solar system,
> asking me if we had solar systems in our blood.
> that's math to me.


















[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

k

Karl is musically inclined. Last night while plunking around on an a baby
toy (six note xylophone in the shape of a dog), he played 2 notes at a time
and said 2, 2, 2. I said 2, 4, 6. He looked at me and I said 2+2 is 4. 4+2
is 6. And I showed counting by skipping the numbers, which he didn't get.
But he loves to say the numbers. So he started the game that gets more
numbers. 2+2 is his turn and my turn is to say 4, 4+4 he says, I say 8, and
we kept on doubling numbers. He was feeling pretty happy once he got to say
one thousand twenty four, at which point he asked me to repeat the answer
for him so he could say 1024 +1024. It's amazing how the art major who used
to hate so called math is finding it so fun to stretch in so many ways.
Karl puts *me* through my paces. I don't mention math. All Karl knows is
that numbers are great.

~Katherine



On 7/25/08, lyeping2607 <lyeping2607@...> wrote:
>
> I always find money is a very strong motivator for anything. We use
> money to teach DS (going to be 8 in Oct) from how to take control of
> his "desires" for toys by working out how many weeks of pocket money
> saving is needed to achieve that "purchase". Additions, subtractions,
> multiplications, fractions, and decimals is all taught with money
>
> Pocket money creates a strong need to learn how to add, subtract,
> divide, multiply. Plus it makes sense of the need for the concept of
> decimals.
>
> £0.50 is the same as 0.50 = 50% = 1/2.
> £0.50 x 5 = £2.00
>
> Asking DS what is 1.5 + 1.5 will equal to a blank face. But ask him
> what is £1.50 +£1.50, he'll imediate response with £3.00. And he
> equates doing 4 basket of laundry to £2.00 at £0.50 per basket.
>
> Fractions is about how many % of daddy's paycheque do the taxman takes
> every month; how much tip should we leave for that lovely waitress;
> and how many percent of our pocket money should we allocate into our
> piggy bank for that month.
>
> SharonC
>
>
>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]