More Unschooling Math/s – What Does Learning Mathematics Naturally Look Like

My love and I make coffee using our little machine. We pour it into our Yeti travel mugs and set out for the lake.

Half an hour later, we’re sitting at a picnic table, sipping from our mugs while soaking in the glorious autumn day.

Andy munches on a protein bar. He swallows the last nutty mouthful and sighs, “I’m still hungry.”

“Have another bar,” I suggest.

“I’d better not. They’re not very healthy.”

I look at the protein bar label. Andy is right: the bars only have a two out of six health star rating. But I have an idea.

“One bar has only a two-star health rating, but what if you eat three? That would be three times two. That’ll give you six stars. The protein bars will be completely healthy.

Andy grins. He unwraps a second bar, turning two stars into four with some unschool maths.

Two grandparents and three grandchildren arrive at the picnic table next to ours. The grandmother unpacks a basket while the children race off to play. A few minutes later, she calls, “Andronicus! Mark! Luke!”

Andy and I look at each other. Andronicus? The eldest child’s name doesn’t seem to match those of his younger siblings.

Andronicus makes me think of coffee or the Shakespeare play Titus Andronicus.
Thinking of Shakespeare reminds me of unschool maths again.

When my kids were younger, I’d search for maths associated with their passions. I’d Google ‘maths and Jane Austen’ or ‘maths and art history’ or ‘maths and Shakespeare’. I discovered loads of unschool maths and interesting facts that I made into notes to include in our homeschool records book.

I shared this story and others in the Virtual Kitchen Table podcast episode 38 when Erin and Ashley invited April and me back to continue the unschool maths conversation we began in episode 36.

More Unschooling Math/s – What Does Learning Mathematics Naturally Look Like?

Show Notes

We discuss:

The difference in how we feel about mathematics depending on how it’s presented
“Gamification and “Sneaky learning”
Kids responding differently to offerings that have rewards or set outcomes depending on personality
“Edutainment”
Board games as often containing inherent mathematics
How finding fun ways to teach math isn’t effective for all kids if they aren’t ready or finding it relevant
How fun, reward-based games can be enjoyable if they are played by choice
That rewards are not inherently bad
Strewing
Finding and sharing interesting math resources
Reasons for strewing – yes, math comes up naturally in life but it can also be fun to offer interesting things that kids might not have seen
That many parts of formal math can be relevant to real life but that it depends on what your individual life requires
The substantial market of educational video gaming
That there can sometimes be a lot of value and fun in introducing a mathematical concept
Observing what math is already involved in what our kids are playing
The importance of context and relevance even for us as adults
Entrepreneurship and business and the myriad of skills involved – inventory, marketing, pricing, making change, counting money
The enormous amount of mathematical thinking kids do in researching and choosing purchases, eg. comparison shopping
Selling or trading their things, kids’ markets or having allowance as ways that math is integrated in decision-making
That sometimes games that simulate real life things in a solid way can be really fun and feel valuable to kids
Online generators to help homeschool parents out with mathematical language for record-keeping
That we don’t always know what learning our children have been doing or what they are learning (radical thought: Is it even our business?)
How solving math problems that someone else has already found the answer to, in which the request is just for a child to come to the same answer, isn’t always as interesting as a child’s own discoveries
Rewards – various ways of thinking about them
Kids’ natural observations about things like telling time as being just as deep (and likely deeper) than what they might be formally presented with
Trust – the journey to understanding our kids’ capabilities
That as parents we don’t want to close any doors or keep them from learning something they might need – sorting through and also understanding that it’s okay if a child doesn’t excel in a particular subject like math
That self-directed learning doesn’t mean that workbooks, curricula or other resources won’t be chosen or helpful
Finding maths within a child’s interests and activities as a way of leading to rich conversations as well as gathering examples for homeschool records
Letting go of the idea that as parents we are the main passers on of information and skills
That often things like working with budgets, especially company or organizational ones, require more skills than simply math; although we’re using math, there are also skills around projecting and understanding the big picture