Living Math
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Hands-on, Real Life Math Experiences
In a child's early years, math is actually play. Counting, stacking, sorting, and balancing are all fun activities that develop mathematical reasoning.
Don't separate math from fun. Don't kill a child's natural love of mathematical play by insisting all mathematical concepts be relegated to a textbook or a workbook once she reaches the elementary years. By using math in daily life, especially in games and playtimes, not only will your child avoid the "math dread" so many of us have, but he will also end up with proficiency in many math skills. Math will come alive and become living math.
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Learning Math Through Play
Whether it's deliberate on your part or not, these activities all benefit math comprehension. There are ideas on this list to suit everyone from preschoolers to upper elementary students.
Just look at the math display pictured below. In the eyes of a child, these are TOYS, not "math manipulatives." Do you have attractive, engaging math toys in your home? Consider the list. Most of them are inexpensive.
- sorting buttons, counting bears, or beans
- board games -- any games that require moving pieces after a roll or spin, Monopoly, Battleship
- card games -- UNO, SkipBo, War, Rummy
- math bingo
- tangrams and other shape blocks or number rods
- dice games -- Yahtzee
- following recipes while cooking
- memory -- matching the problem with its answer
- sorting pom poms or dry pasta into egg carton sections
- saving and spending money
- dominoes
- scales, tape measures, and rulers
- hundreds chart
- timers, clocks, and stopwatches
- abacus
- pattern blocks
Living Math
a Charlotte Mason philosophy
Those who homeschool with a Charlotte Mason approach often speak of living books, living science, and living math.
What is living math, anyway?
Simply put, living math is real math, used in daily life to solve actual problems or to play games. It is math outside of worksheets and textbooks and instead inside the context of solving relevant problems -- how can we double this recipe or how much money will I have to save each week to be able to buy my brother a birthday gift?
So with living math, textbooks or worksheets are never used, right? Well not exactly. As long as life is breathed into the curriculum, textbooks can still be part of a living math program. But to use a living math approach, you have to be very deliberate to add the daily use of math to solve life's problems and to have fun.
To read more about living math, download the Winter 2007 Charlotte Mason Educational Review from Childlight USA. Look for the great, 2 page article called "Making Math Meaningful" by Dr. Milton Uecker. It offers seven great strategies that you can incorporate into your homeschool math experience. And read Miss Mason's own words about math as well.
The Best Math Resource
These books are for mom or dad to plan some fun games and activities for math learning. Armed with these ideas, you won't hear groans "Oh no! Not math again!" Instead, you'll hear, "Horray! We can play a game!" Or you get a note like this one that my daughter gave me after a day when we incorporated a game from Family Math.
Family Math
Amazon Price: $13.95 (as of 02/14/2012)
This book is a fantastic resource of math brainteasers, games, and activities all meant to be done by a parent and a child (or children). If you want to make math more fun, put away the textbook for a day and pull out this volume! This is the book that got me the sweet note above.
If you want to begin implementing living math, this is the ONE book I'd recommend.
More Math Resources
For Math Board Games
FREE HELPS
Helping Your Child Learn Math by Patsy F. Kanter with Linda B. Darby (Illustrated by Roberta Toth) is a modern book in the public domain. You can find it online at the US Department of Education. I've converted the main sections into PDF for easy printing.
Another version of the entire book but without the cute graphics can be found from this link at Vidya Online.
A 2004 edition of this publication is here: A Parent Handbook for Helping Your Child Learn Mathematics.
RETAIL HELPS
Loving Living Math
by Cindy West
Loving Living Math is an ebook which outlines how to supplement textbook lessons with living math activities.
25 Super Cool Math Board Games: Easy-to-Play Reproducible Games that Teach Essential Math Skills, Grades 3-6
Amazon Price: $7.62 (as of 02/14/2012)
Get kids fired up about math with this big collection of super-cool reproducible board games that build key skills: multiplication, division, fractions, probability, estimation, mental math, and more! Each game is a snap to make and so easy to play.
Practical Math Ideas from Real Moms
These blog entries from real, homeschooling moms will inspire your math learning!
- Our Journey Westward
- Graphing poll results is rather engaging anyway, but Cindy makes it even more fun by having her children create graphs with leaves, candies, and math manipulatives! Read all of her math entries for even more encouragement.
- Freedom Academy
- Tangram fun and worksheets that are so much more than just rote repetition!
- Living Math Posts at Jimmie's Collage
- These are all of my own blog posts tagged living math.
Math Education Ideas
Let's Play Math Blog
If you want something meaty, dive into Lockhart's Lament, a 25 page essay about math education. You will come away from it with a new perspective about how you were taught math and how you want to teach it to your children.For a regular dose of living math fun, visit the Let's Play Math blog. A few of the latest entries are below.
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byLiving Math at My House
The Charts and Graphs page linked below describes and documents a way we used some living math alongside our classical music study! And we tackled fractions with loads of manipulatives and games.
Living Math Books
These are just good books. But they happen to include mathematical concepts. So they are perfect for a living math curriculum.
For book lists of even more living math titles, visit Penny Gardner, Ohio Literacy Resource Center, McGraw Hill, or Living Math.
And for more about the use of literature in math instruction, see Mathwire.
A concise article that's worthy of a read is How to Use Leveled Readers in Math. You'll find a step by step approach.
One Grain Of Rice: A Mathematical Folktale
Amazon Price: $11.29 (as of 02/14/2012)
Used Price: $7.99
Visit Teach with Picture Books blog for some great ideas for this book.
What's Your Angle, Pythagoras?
What's Your Angle, Pythagoras? A Math Adventure
Amazon Price: $3.54 (as of 02/14/2012)
Used Price: $3.36
I love how this picture book brings the Pythagorean theorem to life with clear illustrations and an engaging narrative.
Sir Cumference and the First Round Table
Sir Cumference and the First Round Table (A Math Adventure)
Amazon Price: $3.09 (as of 02/14/2012)
Used Price: $1.48
For free lesson plans and printables to accompany many of the Sir Cumference titles, visit Homeschool Share.
Homemade Math Manipulatives and Games
I love this blog post explaining How to Use Math Manipulatives. Keep MIchele's recommendations in mind as you implement these great resources.
- Math Toolbox
- A great site for clear directions for math manipulatives from household items.
- Manipulatives
- Printable manipulatives!
- Proteacher Forum
- A discussion filled with lots of manipulative ideas.
- Math Printables for Home
- This is a "one stop" link. Here you will find loads of math printables -- times tables, pattern blocks, hundreds charts, graph paper, place value charts, graphing paper, dot paper, and much more.
- Printable Pattern Blocks
- At the bottom of each page, it even tells you what color paper to print on!
- Printable Math Games
- Shapes, addition,and fractions are the concepts in these free .doc files which you print and use to make your own board games.
- Ready Made Game Boards
- Just print and play. This site also has printable spinner and dice patterns. Scroll down for simpler templates that allow you to be more creative.
- Houghton Mifflin Math
- This textbook company offers lots of freebies -- math references, math manipulatives, and more. These are arranged by grade level, but be sure to check several grade levels.
There are so many goodies, sometimes things are hard to find. Here's a tip -- click on a grade level, then Teaching Tools. From that page, look for Learning Tools (here's the 4th grade page as an example). That's where all the printable manipulatives and games are hidden. Look at a grade up and down from your target grade as well! - Ellen McHenry's Basement Workshop
- Free printable board games that reinforce math skills!
- Free Online Graph Paper / Grid Paper PDFs
- Free graph and grid paper PDFs. There is much more here than just tiny boxes! There are hexagons, circles, dots, trapezoids, and even more!
- Primary Mathematics Enhancement Programme
- This is a complete curriculum. Harvest some nice printable number lines, shape cards, and operation symbols from these nifty resources.
- Tangrams Resources
- Beautiful printable PDFs with both color and black and white tangram patterns. This page also includes puzzles to solve with your tangrams!
- Free Printables : SEN Teacher
- This page has some amazing math resources -- 3D shape templates, number wheels and charts, games, numeracy fans, coin games, and so much more.
Online Math Play and Tools
- Virtual Math Manipulatives
- Play online with virtual manipulatives.
- Create a Graph
- This is a sophisticated graphic program, but it's easy enough for a child to use with some adult supervision! Graphs can be saved and printed.
- Virtual Pattern Blocks
- The hands-on kind are better, but maybe you would have a need for an online type.
- Multiplication.com's Games
- Every game is meant to reinforce multiplication skills.
- Googol Power Games
- Game topics include counting & numbers, addition and subtraction, multiplication, math skills, and math facts.
- The MegaPenny Project
- An amazing resource for visualizing huge numbers using pennies. Very cool! You must visit this site with your child beside you.
- Online Tangram
- Virtual tangram puzzles -- very engaging.
Math Curricula
Research these options for a living math approach.
- Living Math Curriculum
- LivingMath.net sells a living books, math history curriculum written by a homeschool mom. The book lists for these programs are extensive and free! If you have access to a good library, though, this would be an affordable math program.
This program is a literature based, chronologically ordered study of math history through the ages. You will still want some math games and activities to supplement this curriculum. You can read my complete review at The Curriculum Choice. - Math on the Level
- More of a resource book than a complete curriculum, Math on the Level shares how to teach math skills (up to the algebra level) through real life.
- Life of Fred
- A unique math approach -- a story! Read about Fred to learn math in a very engaging way.
Let your Comments Multiply Here
It's time for you to leave your comment here.
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GrinningFool
Aug 8, 2011 @ 5:55 pm | delete
- I think using math in the home for everyday is a good thing. I try to expose my kids to it as much as I can.
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Math Cool Games MoM
Jun 24, 2011 @ 4:24 am | delete
- What do you call the colorful circles on the second picture? It looks so enticing, my kids will surely love playing with it. Right now they both love playing memory games online, geography games as well as Math cool games at http://www.clubtuki.com because it saves me a lot of bucks, instead of buying toys... they just play games online but I make sure that they play games that can enhance their skills and can be beneficial in their studies.
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sorana
Mar 11, 2011 @ 7:14 pm | delete
- Living Math ... what a great idea. You present Maths in such a fun and interesting way. Lensrolled to My Mathematics Lenses lens. :)
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JaguarJulie
Nov 18, 2010 @ 1:11 pm | delete
- Now, you know ... math was a top subject for me. I love how you have presented it artistically.
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javrsmith
Oct 29, 2010 @ 6:22 pm | delete
- I love your ideas. Thanks!
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by Jimmie
Hello! I am a homeschooling, stay at home mom who loves to teach, cook from scratch, write (and blog), sew, listen to great sermons, and travel.
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Make Your Own Math Manipulatives
40 Easy-to-make Math Manipulatives
Amazon Price: $3.75 (as of 02/14/2012)
Printing your own manipulatives is an economical way to provides hands-on experiences to your children. But you can also involve the children in making the manipulatives for even more learning benefit.
