Math in the Wild
It's so easy to be intimidated by math or think we have to teach it the school way or our kids won't learn it — but that simply isn't true.
Numbers are everywhere!
They are all around us and naturally part of so many of our conversations.
As homeschooling parents, the best thing we’ve done for a happy homeschool is learning to trust that our children were born to learn. To trust that they are capable of learning without explicitly being taught every little thing.
To do that, we’ve had to train ourselves to see and hear differently. To notice the learning everywhere and in all aspects of life.
Once we started doing that, we realized that home education didn’t have to look anything like “school at home”.
Ninety-nine percent of the math we’ve done with our kids (10 & 6) has been through conversation.
That’s right. Not pencil & paper.
Conversation!
I used to teach elementary school and realized long ago that so many people- even the ones who are “good” at math (like I was!) -don’t necessarily have strong number sense skills.
They memorize how to calculate equations, but don’t know how to use numbers in practical and meaningful ways.
They lack the experience of seeing numbers and their value in everyday life and struggle with how numbers operate outside of these equations.
For these reasons, I intentionally focused on teaching math through conversations with my kids and relying on their intuitive understanding of numbers and numeracy.
“More than anything, we want our kids to understand numbers and math concepts in real world contexts. ”
And as a homeschooling parent, the joy in teaching math this way is listening for when our kids start talking “math” and they have no idea they’re doing it. They don’t talk about height or weight or distance because we just did a lesson on it. They talk about it because kids are naturally interested in these things - so they figure out the “language” people use to talk about them.
They see, hear, feel, taste and speak math in everyday life because it’s right there in front of them to experience.
We don’t need to overcomplicate math by taking it out of its natural contexts for kids. We need to see differently. To hear differently. And to trust that they’re learning in whatever way suits them best.
Here’s a great sample list of some of the ways fractions come up in everyday life:
“It’s three quarters full!” (gas tank)
“We’re two-thirds of the way there!” (bike ride, road trip)
“There’s a quarter left.” (pizza, cake, etc.)
“You each get two-eighths” (candy bar)
“We have to double the recipe and it calls for 3/4 of a cup of flour. How much is that?” (baking)
“It’s at 20% battery” (devices)
“There’s a 60% chance” (weather, baseball, so many things!)
Numbers are EVERYWHERE! You don’t have to plan lessons and make it hard for your kids to understand math if you learn to see differently and have real conversations about what’s happening all around you.
Take what you find in life and just talk about it. The talk is real. And so is the learning!
Last month, I had the joy of being a guest on the Virtual Kitchen Table podcast for an episode about unschooling math. That conversation made me realize how much fun it is to look back on our weeks and see all the fun learning threads hiding in there amongst the chaos.
And when they're learning these skills in the context of their own lives and their own interests, the learning matters and it sticks.
The lesson for me as their mom is to keep honing my noticing & listening skills! The learning is already happening. The opportunities are there in front of me. My job is mostly to ask the right questions, help connect the dots and avoid interfering with their natural way of learning in the context of their own life experiences.
Want to see more examples?
Here are a few of our past social posts that illustrate some of the ways numbers and math come up in everyday life:
