Math…love it or hate it?
It seems there are two strict sides to the math debate – it’s a necessary evil or it’s the most amazing tool on earth! Okay, I may be exaggerating here, but you get the point.
As a homeschool parent, you either love teaching your child math or you instantly have sweaty palms and feel nauseous. What it is about math that makes some of us feel instant heart palpitations? I think that it has a lot to do with how math was taught to us when we were younger. I also feel that there is a pressure to teach it “right” or we are going to mess up the whole math journey in one lesson. The beauty of math is that once you know the basics, you can approach any situation from many different angles.
I’m always intrigued by my daughter’s way of thinking. She seems to approach math from a totally different angle. For instance, in a basic math problem of
36 – 8 = ?
she will do it all in her head! (Bravo to mental math). Whereas I am old school, and I’ll pull out a paper and do my borrowing and all that jazz to get the answer.
We do a lot of “real-world” learning for math, such as cooking, gardening and carpentry. I find that it is so important for her to grasp her math facts before jumping into the higher-level concepts. So, this year we will be focusing on the multiplication facts. I’ve created an incentive program that we will use to step her through the facts. You can grab it here:
Each multiplication fact level has a different item for her to earn. After all have been accomplished we will have a party! I have two versions, but the basic concepts are the same. When I was a teacher, we would actually do this for a taco party, so the combinations are endless.
