After the numbers 1-12 have been formally introduced with a story that is fitting to each one, it’s time to bring the numbers together. Relationships are now formed and the numbers’ interactions can be characterized. If all 4 processes are presented together, from the very beginning, it makes this sort of lively exploration possible. One…
Fairy tales. They are not to be read or listened to lightly, for they are essential to the young child’s well-being. In a Waldorf kindergarten, there a steeping in these tales, with the same story told again and again, every day for a week. You need only watch the children’s faces as they sit raptly…
Fractions are difficult to grasp. They, like many other math concepts, are best taught concretely and colorfully. You can introduce fractions simply and graphically by cutting up a piece of fruit. It’s easy to see that a whole apple represents the number one, cutting it in two is plainly halves, in four is quarters, and…
The Brain by Emily Dickinson The Brain – is wider than the Sky – For – put them side by side – The one the other will contain With ease – and You – beside – The Brain is deeper than the Sea – For – hold them – Blue to Blue – The one…
Is it possible, desirable, or perhaps even necessary to teach math without setting goals for outcomes or achievement? What if teaching and learning math happened as beautifully and naturally as the Fibonacci sequence in this sunflower? It can happen that way! Homeschool math educators too often fall into the fallacy that math needs to be…
Many of us have experienced it, a terrible brain freeze when faced with what seems like an insoluble problem: learning and/or applying one or another math concept. I was never a whiz at math, in fact times tables’ mastery escaped my grasp well into adulthood. Indeed, I regularly practiced the most commonly used…
Yes! As demonstrated by this computer-generated image of iterating systems of mobius transformations. Math is everywhere, and though it often hides from everyday sight or observation, with the right focus it can be readily seen and appreciated. The fundamental or archetypal forms found in nature can be taught to children at a very young age.…
If your homeschool math curriculum must be in a box, it should be a box like this one, a cube mercator 3D ocean model. Of course, thinking outside the box is optimal, but nowhere is this more true than in math. Even advanced mathematicians who would seem to think in well-ordered and circumscribed ways…
The most difficult sell for new parents in the school when I was a Waldorf teacher was the strong recommendation that TV be eliminated. TV’s become such an unquestioned fixture in all of our homes that we hardly know how to live without it. And children are so much more susceptible to its seductive lure.…
Word problems: the bane of many a math student’s existence? Perhaps one of the problems with word problems is that they don’t seem to stand on their own two feet as stories, since the plots and characters are most often abstract and subservient to the numbers or the problem itself. Though word problems do sharpen…