Ren Allen

" So when I bring up "the next
step", that's
fairly contrived. Maybe it's a matter of perception."

But see, you're seeing math as "steps"....when it has no
natural "steps" at all. If you bring some interesting puzzle or
game or brain teaser to his attention, because you think he'll like
it, THAT might be broadening his horizons.
But pointing out some linear step, is really being stuck in school-
think to me. Math is chess and sudoku and cooking and building and
guessing and designing and art and.......
Where are the steps for that? In school, we are taught in a linear
fashion. You have to learn addition before subtraction, then on to
muliplication, blah, blah, blah. Nothing could be more contrived and
less natural than that.

For one, they never tell you that addition and subtraction are the
same thing (inverse operations is all) and multiplication and
division are again, mirrors of one another. I never knew you could
simply add to subtract until I was an adult. argh. Linear "teaching"
stunts the mind...I want my kids to have no part of that.

It's all part of our journey as schooled minds. WE have to see the
learning in everything and value it all before unschooling really
unfolds well for US.:) Kids get it quite well, if we just stay out
of their way.

I DO expose my children to new and different things than if I just
waited around for some interest to arise. They don't even know
what's available out there if we don't share enough of the world
with them. But sharing interesting people, places and events is part
of building a LIFE, I don't do it to try and get them to some
illusory "next step" or to cover some "gap" in their learning.

That's the difference between contrived and natural to me....I agree
with Deb on that.

Ren

Deb

--- In [email protected], "Ren Allen"
<starsuncloud@c...> wrote:
>In school, we are taught in a linear
> fashion. You have to learn addition before subtraction, then on to
> muliplication, blah, blah, blah. Nothing could be more contrived
>and
> less natural than that.
>
> For one, they never tell you that addition and subtraction are the
> same thing (inverse operations is all) and multiplication and
> division are again, mirrors of one another.
Of course, they do sort of mention that addition and multiplication
go together - but then again, my DS figured that out simply by
hearing, doing, seeing it in action without any planning,
contriving, lessoning. It's patterns and generally speaking kids see
all sorts of interconnected patterns that we've been trained out of
in our linear schooling. DS has learned/is learning addition,
subtraction, multiplication, and division all together because they
are all parts of a pattern of numbers.

Oh, and that 'sentence at the table' is to express something *I*
find interesting or intriguing or plain silly, whether or not DH or
DS follows it up. Last night I mentioned two things (well more than
two but I remember these two LOL): one was that sales of sauerkraut
are up because some study or other said that it can fend off bird
flu; the other was that Bill Gates' house has a trampoline room.
Random interesting to me tidbits. The sauerkraut got a chuckle from
DH and nothing from DS. The trampoline room had DS wanting to go
visit Bill Gates (and a brief discussion of where Bill Gates got all
the money to build it) and discussion of rooms we could have if we
had lots of money to build anything we wanted. Simply bringing bits
of the outside world into our home - the same as we have music and
movies and books and wire and batteries and legos and videogames and
recipes and shopping trips and computers and magazines and...it's
all part and parcel of life and we all 'snack on' whatever is of
interest at the time.

--Deb