So, as many of you know this year I “threw off” the traditional textbook routine and embarked on a new journey for us. Homeschooling without textbooks! We moved to more of a school year round schedule that allows us to take more time to enjoy life and embrace family time as a priority. One of the advantages that I see to this type of learning is that I put off certain concepts that are often repeated each and every year through the earlier grades. I wait until the children are older and more mature and able to think more “concrete”. Then I teach the concept once and move on. It gives me more time to focus on the basics and to establish a love of learning and reading while the children are young instead of being bogged down with lessons that we have already done three times over. But I have had so many questions as to how I am still teaching the 3 R’s and beyond without having books to follow I thought I would do a post with some of my favorite ideas.
Websites – I use websites for our written work. We don’t do written work everyday but I like to have it to document their practice and to have a record of their lessons. These are probably my top three websites for math.
Unit Studies – I have fallen in love with unit studies and just this year I am trying them out in math too. We have done a fraction unit, a graphing unit, and a money unit with lots of concept work in between. During our graph unit we came up with 3 questions that the children thought would be fun. To make the answers easier to graph we made them multiple choice. And then the children got busy making calls, asking at church, talking to our neighbors and gathering their “data” from anyone that might answer. Then we took our questions and created a different type of graph for each question. We did a bar graph, a circle graph, and a picture graph. For our fractions unit we spent several weeks coloring fractions, cutting pizza into fractions, and determining what fraction of each color of candy we got in our handful. I have been so pleased with how the children have learned and retained this information. The concepts that we have covered during these units won’t have to be repeated year after year because their understanding of them is firmly established and this is my ultimate goal.
Games – While we do use some online games (THIS is my favorite math one) we also play a lot of other games too. We play dice, cards, and even money based games such as Monopoly to help teach math right now. The score keeping, strategy, and thinking skills that go into these games is great at building skills and the mental processes needed to advance in higher math. We also do flashcards, timed math fact races and even play “games” in the car with our math facts. The children learn so much through play because they don’t even know they are learning. They are focused on fun so they aren’t so easily frustrated when they don’t know the answer and they aren’t so intimidated by the “math” lesson.
These are probably the three things that we use the most to make homeschooling without textbooks work in our house for math. I do keep some workbooks on hand and even some math books from trusted publishers just for my peace of mind still. I use them more for reference on how to explain something or we use the reviews in the back of the book to make sure we are on the right track. But more and more I truly believe that just because some book says that my first grader should be able to count money of mixed coins if he isn’t ready then why do I HAVE to force it. Not all children are the same so they are not going to all learn in the same time frame and sequence. And thus was born my desire to personalize my children’s education to meet their needs and interests. And, it is working beautifully.
What is your favorite math activity/workbook to use in your home? Got a favorite online site for printables or games? I am compiling a list so leave a comment and I will add it to the upcoming post. Thanks!
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