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Grace&Chaos
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We have been doing MCP math for the younger years from the begining. Not very creative or living at all. I'm not a creative person this way. I can read something and jump my creativity from there  .
I've heard people mention Family Math and Kitchen Table Math. I understand that these might not be complete curriculums but I'm curious. Can someone compare these?
I'm also looking at Math Lessons for a Living Education for my kindergartener, but I have a first grader and a third grader (we're switching to MUS for her) that I'd also like to find something for (besides the MCP) to become the primary math lessons.
My oldest finished LoF Fractions and is going through the MUS dvd/tests only for review. She actually is really enjoying this process and feeling much more confident about math. She wants to do the same with LoF Decimals and MUS Zeta.
Hope this doesn't sound too chopped up, I'm trying to figure out the best way to have the kids enjoy math but also have a solid understanding of the very basic math functions they'll need later without spending 30-40 minutes on a program.
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Jenny
Mom to dds(00,03) and dss(05,06,08,09)
Grace in Loving Chaos
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kristacecilia
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One of my favorite subjects right now!
I have been using the Living Math! website, in particular their book lists to start our own little Living Math library and do math almost exclusively this way. My kids LOVE it. I purchased the entire "I Love Math" series off Abe Books and just introduced them to my kids today. What a treasure! Each book has several games and multiple activities that cover a variety of math skills, but with a common theme.
You could really use one book for a whole week's worth of math lessons.
We also love the Greg Tang books, which I purchased (again, from Abe Books) cheap. We have all but one, which I somehow overlooked.
We get a lot of the MathStart books from the library, they all include games and activities that correspond with the lesson from the book in the back. We love those. We also have the book Family Math, which you mentioned, and my kids LOVE to do the games and activities from there.
Actually, all that plus messing around with math manipulatives like:
- Pattern Blocks
- Math Puzzles
- Teddy Bear Counters
- lacing beads and lacing cards
- snap cubes
is all we plan on doing for the first several years of 'school'.
I also occasionally throw in an activity from Enchanted Learning or another website that goes along with something we read in a book or observed in daily life.
My seven year old wanted a little more so we got him Teaching Textbooks 3, which he does whenever he feels like it.
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Krista
Wife to a great guy, mom to two boys ('04, '06) and three girls ('08, '10, '12!)
I blog at http://kristacecilia.wordpress.com/
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kristinannie
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I don't think it is technically living math, but McRuffy Color Math is a lot of fun. There are tons of manipulatives and it is easy to teach and a lot of fun for the kids too.
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John Paul 8.5
Meredith Rose 7
Dominic Michael 4.5
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Grace&Chaos
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kristacecilia wrote:
My kids LOVE it. I purchased the entire "I Love Math" series off Abe Books and just introduced them to my kids today. What a treasure! Each book has several games and multiple activities that cover a variety of math skills, but with a common theme.
You could really use one book for a whole week's worth of math lessons. |
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These look great!!
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Blessings,
Jenny
Mom to dds(00,03) and dss(05,06,08,09)
Grace in Loving Chaos
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AmandaV
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We have How do Octopi eat pizza pie? from the I Love Math series that I found at Half Price once. I'd love to hear your general review of the other titles, Krista.
We've been on the Living Math yahoo list for a while, but I haven't tried her lessons. There are great booklists on there, though. The MathStart books are great by Stuart Murphy, I agree, and are available at most libraries.
Family Math looks great and I got it, but I never have gotten around to making copies of the games (hard to get out alone and our 3 in 1 uses too much ink for copying.) I am hoping to use it more this year. Its mostly games and activities that provide concrete math experiences. I haven't tried Kitchen table math.
Mathemeticians are people, too looks like a great book, we are previewing from library.
I can't see exclusively using living books for Math understanding. I have always been a math person, though.. and need a little more structure with my very busy kiddos. So that might be just me. But they are great for reinforcement or introduction of math concepts.
Hope that helps. :)
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Amanda
wife since 6/03, Mom to son 7/04, daughter 2/06, twin sons 6/08 and son 7/11, son 1/2014
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Grace&Chaos
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AmandaV wrote:
| I can't see exclusively using living books for Math understanding. I have always been a math person, though.. and need a little more structure with my very busy kiddos. So that might be just me. But they are great for reinforcement or introduction of math concepts. |
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I understand what you mean. I could always just understand math, but my weakness is getting my kids to feel enthusiastic about it  . Maybe what I need is a guide to reinforce and pick a curriculum to master, so that their lessons don't feel too dry/boring.
Hmm, thinking out loud now. Maybe we can scatter our week and have one fun math day, one math history day and three math curriculum days.
How about drills, like calculadders? Do you use them, how often?
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Jenny
Mom to dds(00,03) and dss(05,06,08,09)
Grace in Loving Chaos
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AmandaV
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I have the old Calculadders (not cd). I haven't started using them. I really like MEP math so far, but my son does still get tired of the worksheets - probably because we zoom through a few at a time to move ahead. I didn't want to miss any concepts but his math understanding moved into multiple digits faster than they introduced them, so we'll probable skip to the middle of 2A when we pick it up post-baby. Right now I just throw out problems during the day for him to do in his head. MEP might be a good spine for you, as the problems are enjoyable. But it can be a lot of writing. We sometimes do some in our heads. Not "living math" per say, but definitely critical thinking and advanced brain-work.  I like the idea of a history day, but I think for me it would have to be afternoon reading, or pre-seat work as we need to hit math every day consistently. I think. With this program at least. But over the summer I have definitely added in the living math books and both 5 year old and almost 7 year old are enjoying. :) Hope the curriculum suggestion wasn't too off topic.
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Amanda
wife since 6/03, Mom to son 7/04, daughter 2/06, twin sons 6/08 and son 7/11, son 1/2014
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Grace&Chaos
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Amanda, Is this MEP that you mean? I actually was browsing through it the other day too. Did you start from the begining with the program? How do you set up your printing? This is another program I've been curious about. It just looked very parent intensive or maybe I got overwhelmed trying to navigate the site .
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Blessings,
Jenny
Mom to dds(00,03) and dss(05,06,08,09)
Grace in Loving Chaos
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Mackfam
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kristacecilia wrote:
One of my favorite subjects right now!
I have been using the Living Math! website, in particular their book lists to start our own little Living Math library and do math almost exclusively this way. My kids LOVE it. I purchased the entire "I Love Math" series off Abe Books and just introduced them to my kids today. What a treasure! Each book has several games and multiple activities that cover a variety of math skills, but with a common theme. |
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I fell in love with the Living Math website this past spring and really worked hard to incorporate more of her booklists into our days. We've been so pleased so far!!!
We also enjoy the *I Love Math* series a lot!!! My 1st/2nd grader is enjoying a combination of books from the Living Math booklists as well as Math Mammoth. My 6th grader is enjoying a combination of Math 7/6 (Saxon) and Living Math books. And, I've incorporated some GREAT suggestions for my high schooler from Living Math (we really enjoy Math Talk. Overall, we're very pleased this year with adding in more living math into our math days and coupling that with a more modestly paced (structured) math curriculum (ie....less required of the structured work per day...more days with living math additions). We enjoy Family Math on our more relaxed Fridays and we usually do something from that book together as well as playing favorite math games.
I'm considering a Zome Geometry program for my 6th grader. We already LOVE Zomes, but I haven't yet decided on this program.
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Jen Mackintosh
Wife to Rob, mom to dd 19 , ds 16, ds 11, dd 8, and dd 3
Wildflowers and Marbles
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AmandaV
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Yes, Jenny, that is the MEP I was speaking of. I am totally no expert. There is a great yahoo list for MEP and Kris of this forum has written about how she has used MEP. It is more parent intensive than some curricula.
Here is one post Kris wrote: http://scienceofrelations.blogspot.com/2008/10/mep-update.ht ml
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Amanda
wife since 6/03, Mom to son 7/04, daughter 2/06, twin sons 6/08 and son 7/11, son 1/2014
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Grace&Chaos
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So I'm obviously jumping ahead of myself. I haven't read about what CM says on Math yet. I found this article about it though. Interesting! The one thing I've always been horrible at: MANIPULATIVES.
And here again, I'm dealing with letting go of the traditional math paradigm. I've realized that I need to do this because I'm beginning to see how this subject is the one that keeps giving us some frustration as our other subjects have become so much more enjoyable and reasonable. Just some thoughts.
Here are her list of other living math posts.
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Blessings,
Jenny
Mom to dds(00,03) and dss(05,06,08,09)
Grace in Loving Chaos
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Mackfam
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Charlotte Mason does talk about math, and finds great value in math especially as it relates to a child learning to reason. She talks about not adding so much weight or lesson time to math so that there is more math than other reading. Specifically, she sees math/arithmetic as having a very important place in the curriculum, but she is very clear that it should be PROPORTIONAL.
See Home Education, Volume 1, p. 253 - 264 for her thoughts on arithmetic as well as a wonderful summary in Toward a Philosophy of Education, Volume 6, p. 230 - 233.
This is one of the areas I see Montessori ideas and CM ideas meshing so nicely. Montessori math ideas are so wonderful for illustrating the concrete with manipulatives, so that a child can touch 2 + 2 = 4...and then visualize it...and then use numbers. Of course, one does not need to use the *exact* same manipulatives Montessori proposed for every activity, though I do find some specific Montessori tools essential in my home. There are many easily found tools that can work in a Montessori way that also parallels so much of what CM advocated in teaching math.
Anyway, I think this works nicely with the direction you're considering, Jenny. It's about allowing the child the tools to work with the concrete ideas in math, to form RELATIONSHIPS with mathematical ideas, rather than just expressing the two dimensional facts on paper as the only way of *seeing* math.
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Jen Mackintosh
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kristacecilia
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Jenny,
Until last year, math was the bane of my homeschooling existence. I don't know how many hours I spent trying to ignore my son's constant mindless staring at his workbooks/worksheets. He would stare at a very simple page of 5 or 10 problems for, literally, two hours sometimes. My husband would get a very frustrated email about 'his son' several times a month while I was trying not to rip my hair out. We went through several programs- Saxon, MEP, MCP- it was always the same result after the initial 'ooooh, this is different' phase.
I finally ordered Family Math and he really seemed to enjoy just doing math games for a change. Then he started showing initiative to do math based activities on his own. That's when I started incorporating some math based literature books in with our activities and printing off some additional activities from Enchanted Learning and other sources to accompany it. He LOVED it. So did my then four year old son who has always shown a lot of natural mathematical inclination.
Finally, just this spring, I purchased Teaching Textbooks for my seven year old. He was looking for more math to do and I was running out of ideas. He is doing very well with it. He works ahead of grade level so I don't push him or have him doing a certain number of lessons per week (yet). He can just do whatever he feels interested to do. Whenever I bring new living math books into the house, they are snatched up and devoured by both my boys now. Today they pulled out one of the I Love Math books (the Space Math one) and worked through the book together, playing the games, doing the activities. I don't know how many they did, but they were having a ton of fun and I hated to interrupt them for lunch.
I was looking more at the I Love Math books tonight while I was waiting (blessedly alone!) at my son's baseball practice. You could easily use one book for a couple weeks worth of math. Each one covers a wide variety of mathematical principles- there will be a story or activity on probability, one on evens and odds, one on addition and multiplication, one on estimating, one on bar graphs, etc etc. I think this is what my math program is going to look like for the fall:
I Love Math book added to our Morning Basket as the LAST reading before we ease into school. It will be the perfect bridge into math. We'll read one activity/story and then do the activity. Two days a week we'll do some printable corresponding activity, manipulatives, or game from Family Math. That will be all my five year old will do for the week. I am going to try and get my seven year old to do three Teaching Textbook lessons a week in addition to our living math.
My goal is to make mathematical principles intuitive for them before going into a more formal study of math. Presenting the ideas of math to them for their digestion before getting them to build on them later. I can't promise it will work, but so far my kids are all working above grade level so I feel like I can afford to take the gamble and find out.
Also, in the back of Family Math there are pages and pages of typical topics covered in each grade in checklist form. What I have done is make a photocopy of the list for each child's respective grade and just keep checking things off when I notice that they have mastered that topic. That way I can keep an eye on where they are and make sure nothing is being overlooked.
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God bless,
Krista
Wife to a great guy, mom to two boys ('04, '06) and three girls ('08, '10, '12!)
I blog at http://kristacecilia.wordpress.com/
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kristacecilia
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| Posted: July 06 2011 at 8:28pm | IP Logged
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Mackfam wrote:
Charlotte Mason does talk about math, and finds great value in math especially as it relates to a child learning to reason. She talks about not adding so much weight or lesson time to math so that there is more math than other reading. Specifically, she sees math/arithmetic as having a very important place in the curriculum, but she is very clear that it should be PROPORTIONAL.
See Home Education, Volume 1, p. 253 - 264 for her thoughts on arithmetic as well as a wonderful summary in Toward a Philosophy of Education, Volume 6, p. 230 - 233.
This is one of the areas I see Montessori ideas and CM ideas meshing so nicely. Montessori math ideas are so wonderful for illustrating the concrete with manipulatives, so that a child can touch 2 + 2 = 4...and then visualize it...and then use numbers. Of course, one does not need to use the *exact* same manipulatives Montessori proposed for every activity, though I do find some specific Montessori tools essential in my home. There are many easily found tools that can work in a Montessori way that also parallels so much of what CM advocated in teaching math.
Anyway, I think this works nicely with the direction you're considering, Jenny. It's about allowing the child the tools to work with the concrete ideas in math, to form RELATIONSHIPS with mathematical ideas, rather than just expressing the two dimensional facts on paper as the only way of *seeing* math. |
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Yes... this. This is what I am trying to do. Jen, you always say it better than I could!
We do a lot of hands on activities and games to illustrate the ideas that are being presented in the literature, so that they can form those relationships with the ideas of math.
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God bless,
Krista
Wife to a great guy, mom to two boys ('04, '06) and three girls ('08, '10, '12!)
I blog at http://kristacecilia.wordpress.com/
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kristacecilia
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| Posted: July 06 2011 at 8:40pm | IP Logged
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Sorry, just one more post!!!
I actually wrote a blog post about using living math books and family math and took pictures and everything! Sorry, I was having a day of great accomplishment that day and now I can brag (right?) Anyway, if you would find it helpful, here is a link!
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God bless,
Krista
Wife to a great guy, mom to two boys ('04, '06) and three girls ('08, '10, '12!)
I blog at http://kristacecilia.wordpress.com/
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Mackfam
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| Posted: July 06 2011 at 8:47pm | IP Logged
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kristacecilia wrote:
| Jen, you always say it better than I could! |
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Oh nonsense!! I REALLY enjoy reading your perspective!
kristacecilia wrote:
| I was looking more at the I Love Math books tonight while I was waiting (blessedly alone!) at my son's baseball practice. You could easily use one book for a couple weeks worth of math. |
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I totally agree. I used Nature Math one year and it's one of our FAVORITE books from the *I LOVE MATH* series! Don't miss it if you can find it inexpensively! I found it because Melinda recommended it here. So then I tried some more from the series and we love them! I keep them on my term plans and work them in about 1 every 6 weeks or so.
And this is a fantastic idea:
kristacecilia wrote:
| Also, in the back of Family Math there are pages and pages of typical topics covered in each grade in checklist form. What I have done is make a photocopy of the list for each child's respective grade and just keep checking things off when I notice that they have mastered that topic. |
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Love that!  I can't believe I haven't thought of it! I'm going to photocopy and add this to my home ed notebook for referencing. I really find it valuable to keep a few checklists like this as part of our record-keeping. I have one I've copied and use in exactly the same way you do from Science Scope.
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Jen Mackintosh
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Wildflowers and Marbles
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Grace&Chaos
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I love the checklist idea. This is me, something to spring board from and make sure that the kids are getting it.
I ordered Family Math in hopes it will give me some inspiration. I've got lots of the books mentioned on my watch for list now.
Krista, I'm going back to read your post but I love the pictures, we need more of that!!
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Blessings,
Jenny
Mom to dds(00,03) and dss(05,06,08,09)
Grace in Loving Chaos
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Angel
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I'm enjoying this thread - and thanks for linking to your blog, Krista. I'm going to enjoy reading through it. Also, I think your oldest son sounds a lot like my oldest son, who is now 14. And we are still bouncing around the math issue! I wish I had been able to keep up the living math with which we started out when he was small, but as we added more kids to the family (the twins, in particular) and had other areas of difficulty to deal with, I was not organized enough to pull a decent curriculum together. I saw him slipping "behind", and so we switched to straight Saxon in the 4th grade. We have also tried Life of Fred, with mixed results, and now I am coming back around to living math for everyone. I spent a long time this spring on the Living Math website, and I recently bought her lesson plans -- for all levels.
I found these two posts helpful:
Living Math Curriculum Review
Transitioning to Living Math
The second one is a lot more general.
Here's another interesting post, with resources, to complement all the information on the Living Math site: Living Math
When my older kids were little and before I had discovered Montessori and before there was such a thing as the Living Math site, I would make up problems for them based on their interests at the time. My ds learned place value and regrouping through Egyptian math. I used a great OOP book called How to Count Like a Martian by Glory St. John. It's still one of my favorites.
Right now I am trying to collect more math readers for my little boys (ages 5, 5, and 7, plus a tagalong nearly 4 yo). One of my 5 yos loves math and is zinging through pretty much everything I give him at this point. I really don't want to damage his love of math! Right now we are talking about math as patterns and math in art. My 8 yo and 14 yo are interested in cryptography right now, so I need to run down some books for that interest. My problem has always been that I am good at running down resources to support interests and strewing them around, but I am less good at keeping up a regular program of study that will allow kids to acquire some of the standard math skills on a schedule. (Pregnancy, for example, will really throw a wrench in my ability to keep things going.) Therefore, I guess I will always have at least one purchased curriculum around to use as a spine or for when things get crazy, but I am really hoping to avoid using it as the ONLY thing my kids associate with "math". I've seen what happens when we do that, and it's not pretty. 
So starting out this year, this is what I have:
Montessori materials for the younger boys (A lot of these are packed up and I have nowhere to put them until we get our closet fixed, as it is now pretty much useless. But I do have some basic manipulatives out now, such as Base 10 blocks, some bead bars, etc.)
Singapore 1A and B for the 5 yos (who'll turn 6 in October).
Kumon maze and puzzle books
Patchwork Math
Various math readers
I'd like to add some math games to our daily work, but games can be hard to play around here.
I haven't decided how to handle my 8 yo. I have Saxon 3 and think we may use some parts of it, like keeping track of the temperature, etc. But I doubt I will use i as scripted.
My 12 yo will be using Fred Fractions and Decimals and hopefully PreAlgebra with Biology, plus Hands on Equations, with Saxon 7/6 and the Key to... books to turn to if she has trouble. She likes statistics and graphing, so I hope to support that interest, too!
My 14 yo will be taking a break from algebra with geometry. Maybe we're doing this concurrently, I don't know. He's going to use Jacobs for both. In addition, he'll be doing math reading with the Living Math lesson plans. I also picked up Tips and Tricks for Gothic Geometry (still waiting on it) and am thinking (like Jen) about the Zome tools.
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Angela
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Three Plus Two
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kristacecilia
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I just wanted to come back and say that I added I Love Math/Nature Math to our morning basket over the last two days and it is working REALLY well. We do it last and then either do a math activity or go outside and do a nature activity connected to what we read about. Today we read about patterns in nature and then went and looked for them in our yard. The kids had a blast and it was so fun to hear my three year old trying to say "concentric circles" and "tessellated hexagons!" 
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God bless,
Krista
Wife to a great guy, mom to two boys ('04, '06) and three girls ('08, '10, '12!)
I blog at http://kristacecilia.wordpress.com/
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lapazfarm
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Just wanted to come here and say THANK YOU to Krista and others for the recommendation of the I Love Math series. I picked up six of them (including Nature math) used from Abe books and they just came in the mail today---they are perfect!!!Just what I was looking for! I am sure dd will love them. THANK YOU!!!! 
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Theresa
us-schooling in beautiful Fairbanks, Alaska.
LaPaz Home Learning
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4Real Forums : Living and Loving Numbers
Topic: Living Math
