Kids absorbing math naturally!
When it comes down to the big “yes or no” answer whether to public school or home school, most everyone’s stumbling block is math. Given the fact that most parents home schooling today received their math education from a public school, it’s no wonder there is so much fear.
Most of us learned or didn’t learn math in an artificial environment. It was instructor-led and if he moved forward before you understood the lesson, you were lost. If you missed a day or two, catching up was a challenge to say the least. If you happened to miss an entire week, you were toast. Usually each week there was the dreaded math test. Remember those? Time to show what you know. Whatever problems you got wrong, that was your grade and you never looked back. The same was true with the daily worksheets. Remember those blue mimeographs that were still damp and smelling of alcohol? Sometimes the math problems were smeared and difficult to read. The teacher had used her original worksheet so many times to make copies that it was simply worn out. They made us use the poorly printed worksheet anyway.
We were measured on how well we took tests, not whether we understood the math. You were either at 95{5b6c00ae8a31f44c65b344f315968efbd322bfc6ea45e4e8cca9716c4473fad8}, 85{5b6c00ae8a31f44c65b344f315968efbd322bfc6ea45e4e8cca9716c4473fad8} or 75{5b6c00ae8a31f44c65b344f315968efbd322bfc6ea45e4e8cca9716c4473fad8} and were labeled an A, B or C student and lived with the results as if it were set in stone. You knew what you knew and that was that. The good news is your child is not locked into the same method of learning. Math does not need to be “taught.” That’s right. You don’t have to “teach” math in order to successfully home educate your children in mathematics. Don’t duplicate what doesn’t work.
Developing a love for math
My kids are self-educating themselves in math as with thousands of other children around the world. A firm foundation is prepared in the early years by focusing on developing excellent reading and comprehension. As the child nears math readiness, memorization of math facts is acquired. Don’t worry, just because a child turns 5, 6, 7 or even 10, he doesn’t have to be working on Math K, Math 1, Math 2, Math 3. We don’t begin formal math until reading and facts are accomplished. It is absolutely useless to have children struggle through four or five years of the same math over and over. It is unnecessary pain for the student and the parent. There are many children who have whizzed through math suddenly at 8, 9 or 10 even quickly passing their counterparts who have been painstakingly doing workbooks for years.
The key to success is using a curriculum that is thorough and created with the self-educator in mind. The math curriculum we use was specifically written for the self-education process. Every detail is laid out in an effort to correct teachers who were not teaching math correctly. Little did the author realize that he wrote it so thoroughly the student doesn’t even require a teacher.
“Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.” — Albert Einstein
I leave you now with three key components to develop a love for math.
1. The child must think he is good at it.
2. The child must find value in the everyday use of math.
3. The child must be allowed to struggle through the pains of early self-teaching until he can reach the “ah-ha” moment when he solves it for himself, building self-confidence!
In living an Inspired Education, we take you step by step through how to implement self-education and how to mentor the child to teach himself math. Remember, thousands of children are doing it every day, and that means it can be done, and now you can too. Living an Inspired Education is about using the tools that allow for academic excellence while following inspiration. Take time as a parent to understand the wisdom of the ages when it comes to education. A true and excellent education does not have to be painful or feared. And that’s what I love about home education; it’s for the whole family. As you provide for your children you’ll increase in your learning and personal development beyond your expectations. Stay inspired to love more, live more and learn more.