Family Game Night Builds Family Memories

Family game night, a universal concept to enhance family unity, can provide a mathematical format for learning in any home. However, in a homeschooled home, these weekly family games can become a foundation for the homeschool math curriculum. Many homeschool families utilize the family game night into a nightly gathering of the entire family to enhance the homeschool mathematics curriculum and the family unit. Using card games such as Uno, SkipBo, Cribbage, War and other numerical card games provides an educational format that teaches numbers and strategy through game night fun. Board games such as Monopoly, Life, Cranium and many others also enhance the mathematical thinking and learning skills of the homeschooled student without every opening a textbook. Dice games, dominoes, Legos and Tangrams also provide a learning format through family fun. Critical thinking, strategy, mathematical equations, subtraction, addition, and many other mathematical concepts become a concrete concept when practices through play. As a homeschool family, utilizing games to teach math is a logical transition from fun to learning. A homeschool math curriculum is built upon realistic learning and comprehension scaffolded by the parent. In a family game night format, not only is the family life enriched but the overall comprehension of math, it is enhanced through family playtime. If your homeschooled student is intimidated by the mathematics curriculum that is presented in your current homeschool curriculum, introduce new concepts and explore the basic math skills while playing a game. There are many different games that specialize in specific mathematical concepts, introduce the new concept while actively using it during play and it will remove the intimidation factor almost immediately. 

Getting Past Your Own Math Fears

Many homeschool parents freeze up when it comes time to teach mathematics to their children. Still inhibited by their own perceived math failures in life, the homeschool parent often shortchanges their own ability to teach a quality homeschool math curriculum. It is important for homeschool parents to realize that the actual instruction of the homeschool math curriculum allows them to simultaneously teach and learn the mathematical concepts alongside of their children. This teaching and learning environment is of great benefit to both the parent and the child, learning together and facilitating such an environment allows for honest exploration by both teacher and student. The most basic and elementary math skills are the initial stages of any homeschool math curriculum. These are skills that any parent understands, as the ability of the student grows, so will the teacher. Each adjustment in the homeschool math curriculum that is necessary to build a strong foundation for the student will also provide the learning environment for the teacher. The more difficult advanced mathematical skills encountered in the later years, will be tackled one step at a time in the natural progression of skill acquisition. If at some time in the educational process a homeschool parent discovers that they are unable to understand a formula or mathematical process, there are many different text books, online resources or homeschool co-ops and support groups that are available for guidance or resource information. However, it is important to keep in mind, that education is gained through slow and calculated steps, each piece of knowledge fitting together like a puzzle piece, building upon the comprehension of the previous lessons. As you teach a homeschool mathematics program, so will you also learn and enhance your ability to lead your student onto the path of understanding.

Using Children’s Literature to Enhance the Homeschool Mathematic Curriculum

Children of all ages love read-alouds, processing the sound of language with the visual pictures, growing both visually and audibly as they travel through the story. Throughout history, stories have been the medium used to pass down history, fairy tales, life lessons and other stories of make-believe. Today, children’s literature has expanded into all areas of the academic curriculum, using picture books to teach mathematics, science, language arts, social studies and art. It is not uncommon for many middle school teachers to utilize children’s picture books as a medium to teach character, plot, point of view and other writing fundamentals. Taking a seemingly simplistic children’s picture book and dissecting it with teenage students allows for a simple yet ultimately complex group of ideas to be broken down into smaller pieces that can be processed without fear. For many middle school students, the “dismissal” of using a children’s book also frees that same teen from believing the concept being discussed is complex. It is easier for the teen to believe the ideas being discussed are simple because they are in a “kid’s” book. A perfect example is Math Curse by Jon Scieszka. As a children’s book, this is a fundamental piece of math literature that is perfect for any homeschool math curriculum.  The book takes the simple daily activities of a young child and provides detailed descriptions of every type of math problem that is encountered in the daily life. It is funny, simple to read and yet it packs a “powerful punch” that shows how important math is in reality. Not only do children, teens and adults enjoy the overall humor of the text but also in the powerful revelations on how many times we work with math without even thinking about. It is an excellent book to read for someone that is intimidated or struggles with math as it clearly shows how everyone uses math to some degree on a daily basis without even realizing it.

Homeschool Math Curriculum Finds Home In The Kitchen

Teaching children to cook is a lesson in mathematics, science, and language arts. If you teach them to create recipes for holidays and other family celebrations, you can include a bit of sociology in the curriculum as well. There is no better format than the kitchen to teach fractions, addition and subtraction, chemical reactions and the use of reading skills to create and read different recipes. Simple children’s cookbooks become invaluable pieces of the homeschool math curriculum. Easy to find and often written in such a manner than children can read and process the recipes themselves, daily tasks suddenly take on mathematical comprehension without the student even realizing what is going on. There are many different children and family focused magazines that offer monthly segments designed to get both parents and children into the kitchen together, an activity that promotes the understanding of basic life skills, increases the awareness of math and science in the daily life of everyone and the enjoyment of spending quality family time together. It is important to realize that the faster our country moves, the further it moves away from the family dinner hour. It is not difficult to understand why the family unit becomes more disjointed with the increase in busy schedules. Many commercials now advertise the "take out" meal brought home to the kitchen table as the “family dinner hour”. With this in mind, it is important to realize the powerful influence parents have over defining just what is important about quality family time. As parent and teacher in the homeschool curriculum, it is important to not only teach our children the value of their education but also the importance of their morals and values as a positive member of the family and the society in which they live. The most basic of skills, food preparation, is one that is vital to any homeschool curriculum; the kitchen is rich with many academic and social skills that cannot be learned in any other classroom.

Using Real Life To Teach Math Concepts Increases Overall Comprehension

The most important teaching tools involved in providing an educational mathematics program for students is to make the learning objectives fun, relevant to real life and challenging for the learner. A well-planned homeschool math program is going to teach the student the mathematical concepts in a well-organized and realistic manner that will enhance the learning style of the student. Many families have discovered that bringing mathematics into everyday activities often provides a quality learning experience in a real-life setting, enhancing the comprehension of the student. Using the kitchen or grocery store to teach such concepts as sorting foods, counting, fractions thru reading recipes, patterns in food shapes or colors, subtraction or addition through eating and preparing meals or snacks allows the student to submerge themselves into real-life applications. Using concrete items and daily practices to teach mathematical concepts allows children to learn and apply mathematics within their own daily lives. Another real life tool that can facilitate the mathematical homeschool curriculum is learning math through money. All children learn the basic ideas of money within their own lives on a basic day-to-day experience, whether they are homeschooled or taught in a public or private school. However, for the homeschool family, money as a mathematic unit is an ongoing and daily lesson in the making. Using money to teach values, decimals, percentages, interest, making change and carrying and borrowing and other mathematical concepts provides a realistic way for students to understand and apply these skills within their own lives.