Unschooling Voices #4: Unschooling Math

Welcome!!

The 5th Unschooling Voices will be out on November 1. If you'd like to participate, click here for the details. The new question for the month and past editions of Unschooling Voices can be found there also.

If you post a link to this months installment on your blog or site, please let me know (by leaving a comment here) so I can thank you with a link back. :-)

A small request...when you e-mail in a submission, please include a short description of it. I would much rather use your words, instead of mine to describe what you wrote. Thanks! Just a sentence or two is fine.

This month there are 15 participants who submitted 18 entries. As you click the links that take you to the different blogs and sites, I encourage you to comment on the ones that you particularly enjoy (tell 'em we sent ya!) or maybe offer some words of wisdom to someone at an unschooling crossroads. As you read, keep in mind that everyone who participated is at a different place in their unschooling journey.

The (always optional) question for October was on the topic of math and I'd like to start off with a quote from the post that Schuyler submitted.

"If you look at the world through schooled eyes your vision will be a fractured vision. School has taken a system of interconnected processes and ideas and separated them and stuffed them into a vacuum, leaving the learner with no sense that there is an applied relationship between what they are being taught and the rest of their lives."

The question for this month was, how do/did you get to that mindset. Lots of really good posts were submitted on this topic.

Paige submitted this blog post titled, "No Textbooks Required".

Michelle shares her thoughts on "Math or Living in the World without a Math Education".

Mama Chaos shares a small rant about math.

Cher submitted her thoughts on unschooling math.

Chris submitted an interesting exchange about math on an unschooling list.

Ron shares this thoughts on this months topic.

JoVE blogged about how her "struggle has been to get her (daughter) back to enjoying math, something school knocked out of her". She also shares how games are part of their lives.

Annalea (what a pretty name!) talks about living math.

Stephanie talks about a few of the fun math resources that her family has enjoyed lately from DVDs to entertaining books. Math does not have to be “drill and kill”…sometimes it can be (and should be!) about fascinating stories!

Leonie give us a glimpse into her life with a week of math.

Maureen shares a quote, and the link to Living Math.

Dharmamama updates us on her life with her new daughter and how she's been asking to learn math.

Laura e-mailed me two submissions and I posted them here.

My own two submissions are a collection of thoughts and ideas from a now defunct unschooling message board. I originally posted them because I didn't want to lose them but they go in with this months question, so here they are. Be warned-they're very long. Here is part one and part two.

There you have it! Thank you to all who participated this month. I really enjoyed reading all your thoughts on math. :-)

Related Tags: unschooling carnival, unschooling voices, unschooling

Member submission-Unschooling Voices #4

Laura submitted the following two entries to Unschooling Voices #4:

1: For our family unschooling math is an extension of this life we live.
Our oldest child who turned 15 yesterday attended PS for 3 years. He struggled with the new math and showing his work. When he left school he was left with not much math interest and a sizable dislike for it's teachings.
It's been just about 7 years since he left school and school styled teaching. I can say now that though he may still not be fond of math he does use it everyday.
Dustin, our teen mentioned above, uses math in an online game that he plays called Runescape and he enjoy's cooking, buying and selling on Ebay and shopping.

This week we discussed how much drivers ed was, how many weeks the class were and how much it would be weekly for the class. The class cost is $420.00 for 5 weeks. He was gifted 60.00 for his birthday along with a muzzle loader. His focus wasn't driving with friends or rushing to get the drivers ed over with. More so it was how many days until his 16th birthday so he can drive to his favorite hunting spot without having to wait for his Dad to get out of work or the weekend(he can go alone at 16). He has hunted with his dad since he was 4 which was when I met Dh. In that 11 years he has never shot at a deer.
He has also asked me to plan some hikes with the kids so he can get his strength up to walk through the woods when the season starts. This radically unschooled child has shown me over and over how right leaving mainstream parenting was:)

To get back to his birthday and math I asked for several days what he wanted to do for his 15th birthday. In the past he choose movies with friends, a party or sleep over. The day before his birthday he said, "I just wanted to spend the day with the family."
He mentioned dinner out or in and then opted for dinner in. He's taken an interest in cooking this year so off we went to the meat store. He chose and helped cook prime rib (based on the family size and our eating habits:) with broccoli & cheese, onion rings with spicy dipping sauce, green beans and salad. Without discussion of math or limits on cost he figured out what it cost us compared to what we normally spend a Bugaboo's. Math without the lesson or yucky stuff. Everyone had a wonderful meal and our son shared that with us. Pretty cool!

2: As a family of 6 using math as part of life happens each day. Having three smaller children who have no school experiences and one who had 3 years of school math seems much more natural for the littles. Some conversations I have had with my almost 7 yr old were had at midnight or random discussions over the years.
One example I can offer is one of puppies and breeders. Cassidy asked how many puppies we could expect from our dog. I told her how many she had in her last litters and Cassidy averaged what we could expect. She then went on to other conversations about dogs we purchased from other breeders and things we use everyday and how many are left if we take a few away. By the time she was done she had figured out addition, subtraction and multiplication without the labels.

When she was 4 we were in the driveway and she observed something that hit me like a brick. She understood math deeper than I had known. She said, " Mom, we have four cars.. when daddy goes to work we have three and if your car is gone we have two and..." On she went, I listened with a near jaw drop on my face. I wasn't sure if I was going to cry, smile , hug her or add to it. I think I said something like wow that was cool I didn't realize you understood that. She then went on to count other things.

I didn't learn my multiplication tables until after I graduated high school. I disliked math so seeing my children get it without the pressure or tests I know they will have a better experience than I. Seeing the different paths to math/life experiences that my children have taken is clear to me that unschooling was/is a wonderful path for our family.

Laura Drew
Unschoolingmaine.com

Experimenting with life

I love the way my youngest daughter's (she just turned 8) mind works. She likes to figure out why things happen and predict what the outcome may be.

For example, a few weeks ago she wanted to know how long she was sleeping before having to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. She put a pad, pencil and her watch in the bathroom and marked down the time that she went to bed, on the pad. When she woke up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, she recorded the time. When she woke up in the morning, she also recorded the time. Then she figured out how much time she was aleep before and after using the bathroom. She repeated her experiment several more times that week and then compared them to each other.

Last week we went food shopping and the store just got a new cash register with a large screen facing the customer, that gives a running total of what you're buying. It wasn't there the last time so it caught her attention. As the cashier started scanning our items, Jacqueline took a quick look at what we were buying, predicted it would come out to about $100 and watched the total go higher and higher. It came to $98 (and some change). :-) The cashier told Jacqueline she should get a job there when she gets older. Jacqueline looked at her and said "No, thanks...I want to be an astronaut". :-)

We've had a leaky kitchen faucet for a while, The other day Jacqueline put a 16 oz. cup under the drip because she wanted to see how many times it would fill up in a day. She got her pad and pencil and wrote a prediction of 10 times. Each time it filled up, she dumped it out and marked it on the paper with hash marks. She forgot to refill it a few times so her prediction was way off this time.

:-) I love her mind....I love that she's home and not in school and able to do these types of things.

A quote I like

"When we adults think of children there is a simple truth that we ignore: childhood is not preparation for life; childhood is life. A child isn't getting ready to live; a child is living. No child will miss the zest and joy of living unless these are denied by adults who have convinced themselves that childhood is a period of preparation. How much heartache we would save ourselves if we would recognize
children as partners with adults in the process of living, rather than always viewing them as apprentices. How much we could teach each other; we have the experience and they have the freshness. How full both our lives could be."

- John A. Taylor, Notes on an Unhurried Journey

Book Reviews & Writing

Shawna have been having a blast reviewing books at the Barnes & Noble website. Because of a B&N policy, she isn't allowed to use her first names on the site so she goes by 'S' an unschooler. So far she's reviewed, Dancing in the Wings by Debbie Allen, Annie & the Wild Animals by Jan Brett and Girls Hold up this World by Jada Pickett Smith.

She's really enjoying it and she's getting a kick out of going back and reading her reviews on the site. :-)

This is quite a new concept for her....that she could actually enjoy writing. She used to hate writing in school. Who could blame her? Being told what to write and then being told it wasn't good enough, turned her off to anything that resembled school writing. Not only that, it made her feel that she wasn't good at writing.

Just like I did with reading, when I removed her from school, I backed off. I gave her the freedom to deschool, while at the same time, made things available to her and showed her how writing benefits my everyday life. That was key to her learning. Shawna is the type of learner that needs meaning and connections in what she's learning. School can't offer her that.

She saw me writing shopping lists, sending e-mails, working on this blog, writing letters to family in NYC, jotting down thoughts in a journal, etc. Soon, she was writing the shopping list, typing her own e-mails, writing to several penpals and having fun with mad libs.

Again, as with reading, her confidence started to build.

She decided she wanted to write a story so we're woring on one together, about a horse who becomes a pegasus by helping a fairy. :-) I'll post it here when it's done. :-)
I bought her a Harry Potter journal the other day and she's been writing it in ever since. She writes her thoughts and her plans for the day.

But...the best writing is when we write notes to each other. :-) I have all her little love notes taped to my computer and she uses mine as book marks.

That's real writing. :-)

Related Tags: unschooling, unschool