Have you ever wondered, "I don't love math, so how can I homeschool my child?" Believe me, you can do this! There are so many ways and means of teaching that even if you are not good at math, your child can be good at math! Math is my weak area. I can make it through teaching junior high math, but I obtain all the help I can to teach high school. I have found tons of help in the pages of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine�. (Nearly every issue talks about it!)
If you are not confident in math, don't fear! Just visit your local or state homeschool convention to see what's available. You will be impressed and pleased to see how math curriculum is so teacher and student friendly these days!
Yes, there will be hard math days. But, the real joy of it all is that we have our own children in our own homes, under our own care. Math can be done on comfy couches and outside in forts. No fuzzy math here. No Common Core math to struggle with. And, think of the freedom at our own little schools! Our kids are free to go to the kitchen without a permission slip, and to the restroom without a hall pass. They are free to plant a garden in the spring, and they are free to paint a masterpiece or raise aquarium fish. They are free to go as far and fast as they can in math. Or, they are free to take it more slowly. They are free from bullies and fear. In our schools, we are free to speak about the mighty wonders of God when we sit in the house, when we walk by the way, when we lie down, and when we rise up (Deut. 6:4-7). Our children are free to sing praises in the living room and dance in the dining room; free to laugh in the hallways and pray in the bedrooms; they are free to be Home Where They Belong.
Praising God for freedom, and even math!
~Deborah
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Raising Real Men
Why is math so hard? When we're speaking at a conference, if we make a joke about math taking two hours, nearly everyone groans with us. We've all been there. Some days it seems like math is all that gets done--and we're all completely burned out by the end of it!
Is there a way to make math easier and more fun? Yes!
Often math is hard because earlier skills haven't been mastered. It's really, really hard to manage fractions if you're still struggling with addition and subtraction. If you're wondering if that's the problem, there is an easy way to find out: print out a math drill and time them. We use The Math Worksheet Site to quickly print drills. A child who has memorized the math facts should be able to do one hundred problems in five minutes. Keep them working on it until they can! Once they've crossed five minutes, often their times will get radically faster quickly--because they've got it!
Once the math facts are thoroughly memorized, math gets much easier at all levels. In fact, sometimes we'll run math fact drills even with our middle schoolers or high schoolers if math is dragging. How do you motivate them to do the drills? Competition and rewards! In our house, you get a treat (something small like a piece of candy or something) every time you beat a personal best score. It's the competition that really gets them going, though. It seems like once they've done one, then they're eager to prove they can do better.
Another way to make math more fun is to make it more real. It seems pointless to learn things for the sake of learning, but if you can show them how it's used in the real world, sometimes they stop pushing back. If you're learning about area, figure out how much carpet you'd need for your school room. If you're doing fractions, figure out how much pie each person gets if you have a pie and a half left. Figure out some way to make it real!
Talk about the math you use as you go about life. When you calculate which ketchup is cheapest at the store, tell your children how you did it. When you're figuring out your gas mileage, talk about it with your children. Help them to understand math isn't just something Mama makes them do, it's something they'll need the rest of their lives ...
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Announcement
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Announcement
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A division of The Old Schoolhouse� Magazine
Did you know? Every class is INCLUDED for members!
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Math--it can be overwhelming, but it is doable! SchoolhouseTeachers.com has math classes for all ages. For pre-K & Kindergarten, there are lots of printables to practice math skills; elementary ages have access to a decimal workshop, a fraction workshop, and various other math courses; middle school math includes pre-algebra; and high school math offers statistics and trigonometry. More math classes are being added so keep an eye out for those!
Did you know SchoolhouseTeachers.com also has a Focused Learning Center for math? Here you'll find math-related resources for specific needs or skills. There are even videos to help parents teach elementary math, with worksheets for the student! Plus, for parents of kids with special needs, you'll find a 19-part program to assist you in instructing them in math.
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The Old Schoolhouse� Magazine.
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Contest Corner
For the month of March 2016
Patriotic Penmanship, Grade 1, by Mary Ellen Tedrow from Laurelwood Books, is a single workbook to help teach manuscript writing on the first grade level. The book consists of sixty-five pages. This book can be used alone, but is also in a series of higher grade levels, if you wish to continue. This book uses scripture, hymns, and words from patriots to teach handwriting skills. It is set up in thirty lessons that start with a short sentence, followed by letter practice. Next you have number practice, keywords, word pairs, and then the full quote. There are tracing words, then room to write on your own. The price of the book is $12.95. ( . . .)
There are several pros of this book. One, it is Christian based, so that always earns a point in my book. However, this book also uses quotes from famous patriots as well. I really enjoyed that, because it actually gave us some starting points to expand our learning into other areas, such as history. My daughter thought it was neat to see the quotes, and to be able to look them up to learn a little more about the speaker. Also, I like how each lesson is set up--instead of just opening a book with A-Z learning, you have actual lessons to work on. This helped break it up for my daughter, so she knew what to expect. She is dyslexic, and never ending pages overwhelm her. Most of the wording was simple and fairly easy to sound out. The work also progresses through the book to show improvement in word and sentence writing, and not just copying letters. This is a great book for Christian homeschoolers.
You can win Grade 1 for your homeschool!
TO ENTER: Email Heather (hmader@thehomeschoolmagazine.com) with your name, mailing address, and phone number for contact purposes, with the subject line, "Patriotic Penmanship" for a chance to win* it for your family!
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Liberty Twp, OH
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Mason City, IA
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"I really enjoy reading all the THM articles. I learn a lot from Todd Wilson's column. [He's a] funny guy who speaks the simple truth! Thank you very much!"
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Brandon, FL
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"I look forward to THM every Wednesday. I really enjoy Deborah's articles. For some reason, it must be God, she always writes about what I am needing to hear. Her ability to put scripture and God in the middle of all her articles keeps me coming back. I recently have been enjoying the Youngs' [articles] because I have a young man (10) in my house. The encouragement of the Youngs is fabulous. I thank God for parents like them that pave the way for parents like myself and my husband."
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Glen Burnie, Maryland
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Dunwoody, GA
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"What I appreciate most about Todd's column is that he never assumes he knows what is best for me... but he KNOWS that God knows & encourages me to find that & follow that. Thanks for all the encouragement over the years!"
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Kannapolis, NC
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"...I appreciate them both so much. I love Diana's passion for teaching history in a fun and interesting way. And that she is all about relationships first. I love that about Todd as well, and that he always, always says it is okay to relax about the schooling."
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Everett, WA
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