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What we need to do, and all we need to do, is bring as much of the world as we can into the school and the classroom; give children as much help and guidance as they need and ask for; listen respectfully when they feel like talking; and get out of the way. We can trust them to do the rest."
- John Holt, How Children Learn
Last night, we were driving home from the grandparents' when Mister 4 asked, "Can you cut a quarter in half?"
From the front passenger seat I told him "not evenly" and explained that if you divide 25 by 2 you end up with 12.5. I also quipped if you cut a quarter in half the stores won't accept it. I went on to say, that if he meant a quarter as in 1/4 of something you definitely could! You would get 1/8.
He was quiet for about 1/2 a minute then asked if you could cut 1/8 in half. Yes, you then get 1/16 and then 1/32.
"And then you'd get 1/64!" Miss 7 exclaimed, "I can double numbers up to 64!" Starting with 1x2 she went through the whole sequence of doubling numbers til she got to 128. Then Dad supplied the last number of the night: 256. All in their heads, and having such fun!
Before experiencing this kind of learning I would have said this sort of thing did not happen naturally. I thought a parent or teacher would need to lead kids to think about these concepts.
I was entirely wrong.
We don't follow a curriculum for math (or anything else actually). This love my kids have for mathematical ideas is too precious, seems to fragile and easily lost for me to monkey around with it. I have tried some curriculum. We attempted Life of Fred but found it boring and slow (I know many people love it...but not us - and Miss 7 and I really wanted to love it). I borrowed a 5th grade math box from our home school co-op library and the work was...boring. Not really even hard enough. Miss 7 didn't mind doing the work but I got tired of rewriting the workbook pages (the originals had been written in) and decided to drop it and find something better. Occasionally, Miss 7 and Mister 4 will want to do workbooks for fun and thankfully their Yaya keeps supplying us with workbooks she finds on sale for when the impulse strikes them.
I created a couple of workbooks with Miss 7 in mind that allow her to run a bakery and a beauty shop and I put them both on my Teachers Pay Teachers store. I don't make her do these every day. Sometimes she is interested in the game and sometimes not.
My kids count lots of things. They divide treats fairly with ease - even giving the remainders to mom or dad to keep things even among themselves. We play Chess, Battleship and other board games that require counting, adding, subtracting etc. Money is counted at our house nearly every day to see if they have enough money for a dollar store trip. Miss 7 likes to work on math problems in her head and play word problem games with me where we each take turns telling each other a word problem. She thinks this is fun. I remember disliking it in school but, with her, it is fun!
Mister 4 the other day was trying to figure out how long it would be until his birthday. I got down a calendar and we counted: 55 days! He asked me to make a paper chain...I got bored half way through and I said so. He wasn't willing to take over the rest of the chain so we figured out that if he only ripped a chain off every other day it would still work. Then he spent some more time looking at the calendar and he told me proudly that he could count by twos up to 11. He pointed to every other number and said them aloud.
So, this is why, for now, we aren't using any curriculum for their math learning. Next time, I will write about why I won't teach Mister 4 and Miss 3 to read. *gasp*