How I teach math

Oh math. The dreaded math. I feel like so many people had a bad experience with math, and they end up passing that on to their children. It's almost like a foreign language that you don't speak fluently, so instead of speaking the language to your child and having them learn in a fun and natural manner, you give them the curriculum that says it will teach your child how to speak the language. That might work for older kids and college students who are learning math (or a foreign language) beyond arithmetic, but it's probably not such a great way to start young kids on the path to loving math.

So how do I teach my kids math? We've tried different approaches over time. We started out with Math Mammoth, which was fine. There was a lot of repetition, and my math-loving son was hating math lessons. I decided to move on to Life of Fred. That was okay. I didn't like that sometimes the questions didn't pertain to any of the information presented in the chapter or any previous chapters, and it left my son feeling bad about himself. (We got half-way through Dogs before we gave up on Life of Fred. Maybe it gets better after that?) Then, we came across Wild Math. I loved it! It was absolutely fantastic. The only problem was that when we're outside, my kids tend to prefer free-play over structured learning. I felt like I was taking the fun out of being outside. Maybe it was an error on my part in how I presented the activities, but I found myself adapting the lessons to be used indoors instead. That was all a bit exhausting. I tried different Waldorf math curricula and ideas for a few weeks. Again, too much structure to the play.

Then, I came across Mathematical Reasoning from the Critical Thinking Co. These are workbooks, so I wasn't excited. Every workbook we had tried up to this point was a flop. I was desperate for something open-and-go after all of the failed experimentation though. This turned out to be our Goldilocks math curriculum. It's simple, colorful, open-and-go, relatively inexpensive, and not so repetitive that it brings boredom and tears. My oldest actually chooses to do these workbooks on his own. Sometimes he'll do one or two pages, and sometimes he'll do up to 14 pages. My only complaint is that sometimes the instructions are a little bit vague, and I need to explain them more thoroughly to my kids. It really isn't a big deal though. I only hope that the workbooks continue to engage my kids' minds for the entire series (through 6th grade math).

Beyond the workbooks, we also play math games. We'll find different games either by searching the internet or from Family Math, which is a book that is filled with tons of different games and math activities. It was published in 1986, so it's a bit dated. (There's a page discussing the use of "microcomputers" that's rather amusing.) Most, if not all, of the math concepts you might need to teach your child through elementary school is covered in this book. We would definitely skip the workbooks if my kids didn't enjoy them and just play math games instead.