I love this (and most of your) columns! So many insights I can apply to my wee class of 2 kids. Will you write a column on your thoughts on homeschooling? Or how might approach individual instruction? Thanks for sharing all your math thoughts!
Thanks! I will think about it but I honestly don't know what I have to offer on the individual/homeschooling front. When I do one-on-one instruction, it's typically meant to get kids up to speed on skills that will help them make the most of full-class teaching. Very different from full-on homeschooling. I will think about it, though.
As a homeschooler, I come back to newsletters like this one again and again less for specific ideas to implement (though I get those too sometimes) and more for the love of engaging with academic material alongside students that shines through their writing. I'm deeply convinced that our own willingness to do hard things alongside our kids while finding weird joy together is the best tool we've got. Just like we model having fun with literacy via reading novels and playing word games we should model having fun with numeracy. There is an impulse among some homeschoolers (and to be fair also many the teachers I had growing up, though none of the teachers whose writing I read) to view students as people who need to do hard things because they are not yet adults. But of course if we say "I don't need to do algebra because I already put in my time and I'm an adult," the thing we are modeling is not in fact successfully learning algebra but instead refusing to engage with math.
Some ways we like playing with math together:
- Beast Academy's free daily All Ten puzzle. We used to do this collaboratively, but then the kids decided they wanted to race us. Now they almost always win, unless there is a number that can only be made with clever use of fractions. In response to which my partner is currently writing "Oops All Fractions." I am not very good at Oops All Fractions yet.
- Board games! One of our favorites is Canvas, because it combines spatial reasoning and point maximization from competing goals with a beautiful and fun creative element. Blokus, Project L, Prime Climb, Set, Proof, Pyramid Arcade, and Zendo are some of our other mathy favorites. The pyramid pieces from Pyramid Arcade are also great for designing your own games.
- Alcumus has a ton of free and often clever math questions spanning pre-algebra to pre-calculus. Adults working tricky math problems on the white board is magic. I have a PhD in engineering but tons of gaps in trickier Algebra concepts and working through them has been not only good for my kids to see but so satisfying! I especially love how Alcumus incorporates things like simplifying radicals and evaluating negative exponents into lots of problems that aren't just targeted at those areas since those are the sorts of things that many people never get enough sustained practice with.
- Smart games single player logic games. Tons of games with different mechanics and difficulty levels.
Well said and it really resonates! The kids have gotten into math contests and this is now a shared hobby. Really appreciate the links, will go through them. Thank you!!
LOL! Love that fierce baby picture with the drool and the haunting weirdness of the photo from the chromebook and how you insist on words having their originally intended meaning and not letting them be destroyed.
I love this (and most of your) columns! So many insights I can apply to my wee class of 2 kids. Will you write a column on your thoughts on homeschooling? Or how might approach individual instruction? Thanks for sharing all your math thoughts!
Thanks! I will think about it but I honestly don't know what I have to offer on the individual/homeschooling front. When I do one-on-one instruction, it's typically meant to get kids up to speed on skills that will help them make the most of full-class teaching. Very different from full-on homeschooling. I will think about it, though.
As a homeschooler, I come back to newsletters like this one again and again less for specific ideas to implement (though I get those too sometimes) and more for the love of engaging with academic material alongside students that shines through their writing. I'm deeply convinced that our own willingness to do hard things alongside our kids while finding weird joy together is the best tool we've got. Just like we model having fun with literacy via reading novels and playing word games we should model having fun with numeracy. There is an impulse among some homeschoolers (and to be fair also many the teachers I had growing up, though none of the teachers whose writing I read) to view students as people who need to do hard things because they are not yet adults. But of course if we say "I don't need to do algebra because I already put in my time and I'm an adult," the thing we are modeling is not in fact successfully learning algebra but instead refusing to engage with math.
Some ways we like playing with math together:
- Beast Academy's free daily All Ten puzzle. We used to do this collaboratively, but then the kids decided they wanted to race us. Now they almost always win, unless there is a number that can only be made with clever use of fractions. In response to which my partner is currently writing "Oops All Fractions." I am not very good at Oops All Fractions yet.
- Board games! One of our favorites is Canvas, because it combines spatial reasoning and point maximization from competing goals with a beautiful and fun creative element. Blokus, Project L, Prime Climb, Set, Proof, Pyramid Arcade, and Zendo are some of our other mathy favorites. The pyramid pieces from Pyramid Arcade are also great for designing your own games.
- Alcumus has a ton of free and often clever math questions spanning pre-algebra to pre-calculus. Adults working tricky math problems on the white board is magic. I have a PhD in engineering but tons of gaps in trickier Algebra concepts and working through them has been not only good for my kids to see but so satisfying! I especially love how Alcumus incorporates things like simplifying radicals and evaluating negative exponents into lots of problems that aren't just targeted at those areas since those are the sorts of things that many people never get enough sustained practice with.
- Smart games single player logic games. Tons of games with different mechanics and difficulty levels.
- Catriona Agg's geometry puzzles at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hVP8tLURVDphmHsphz5BQLVzHCeTts29/view
- Which One Doesn't Belong puzzles, in which each of four elements can be excluded for a different reason https://talkingmathwithkids.com/wodb/
- Zome tools, and the accompanying geometry text for the nerdiest building toy experience you could ever want
Well said and it really resonates! The kids have gotten into math contests and this is now a shared hobby. Really appreciate the links, will go through them. Thank you!!
Love this so much, stay weird!
LOL! Love that fierce baby picture with the drool and the haunting weirdness of the photo from the chromebook and how you insist on words having their originally intended meaning and not letting them be destroyed.
Thanks! Kids are pretty talented at destroying the meaning of words, I definitely lose many of those battles...
LOL I relate