Unschool Rules

More than any other question in the dozens of homeschooling Facebook groups and email lists I frequent, the great debates rage over “Should I use this math curriculum or that one?”

Saxon, Math-U-See, Life of Fred, Common Core, not Common Core, lots of drill, not a lot of drill, workbooks, stories, manipulatives… the questions fly, and parents heatedly share their opinions as if discussing their views on peace in the Middle East, not methods of multiplication.

The fact is, the curriculum is not what matters most.

$The great math curriculum hoax$

Does it matter? Well, sure. Are there approaches that work better for some students than others? Almost certainly. Is it sometimes hard and confusing to switch methods midstream, even if the current one isn’t completely meeting your family’s needs? Sure.

But the big hoax is that the math curriculum you choose will make or break your child’s chance for success in high school and beyond.

The curriculum is only as valuable as the understanding you bring to it.

If you “get” math and you can explain things to your children if they’re struggling, a straightforward method might be fine. If you struggle yourself, a method that’s written at the student’s level, with little extra explanation required, might be preferable. If your child excels at math, maybe a deeper and more rigorous approach is best, or maybe you want to minimize the “calculation” approach and spend more time on theory.

No matter what math curriculum you choose, your student will succeed if you – and I mean both of you – truly understand the “why” behind the material.

Multiplication is awesome. Hundreds of thousands of children across the country can tell you that 5 times 7 is 35. Unfortunately, thousands of those children don’t understand that if they have 6 sets of 7 items and take one set of 7 away, they have the same answer – 35.

You’ve got to get it. You’ve got to know why you’re doing whatever operation or calculation you’re doing. There’s not really a program out there that can’t teach your son or daughter the formula for the area of a circle. But why does that matter? When might you do it? And WHY is it pi times the square of the radius? There are fascinating stories out there about the discovery of just that, and when it becomes memorable and useful – well, that’s when it becomes a real part of your child’s life, not something to memorize for a test and promptly forget.

It’s hard. If math is difficult for you as a parent, it’s even harder. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, to work through problems and watch video explanations yourself.

Don’t be afraid to ask WHY. That’s the curriculum that I most recommend to build lifelong math skills. Whatever else accompanies that? Well, that’s up to you.

Just don’t let the curriculum get in the way of your learning!

Note: This post originally was written for the no-longer-active blog of online video learning company Uzinggo, a review partner of ours. When I was writing recently about real-world math, I wanted to reference some of these thoughts, realized they were no longer online and decided to revive them! I have one other similar post coming soon.

I often talk about how I believe that real-world math is what matters.

You can, like our family, use an entirely real-world approach to math, with no required workbooks or textbooks. You can also use a super-structured math program. You can love math yourself, or be mystified by it. You can have a preschooler or a high-schooler, a child with math anxiety or one gifted with numbers.

In either extreme, or anywhere in the middle, I believe that knowing the real-world applications of the math you encounter is what’s most important.

While I’ve talked about this issue in many ways before, today I’d like to focus on a specific concern or question I hear, even among proponents of real-world math. Many people think it’s fine “to start with.” But the concern I hear above all others is this:

“If your daughter doesn’t learn algebra and geometry, how can she graduate?”

$real-world-high-school-math$

That’s what I want to address today, both by talking a little about our learning philosophy and by sharing some resources where you can read and explore more about math in the real world.

Real world high school algebra and geometry

First of all, I want to point something out:

“Learning algebra and geometry” is not the same thing as “working your way through an algebra or geometry textbook.” It can be, but it doesn’t have to be. In Pennsylvania, our homeschool law doesn’t even specify that you must have a whole semester or year of those subjects; you must study math in high school, and it must include algebra and geometry.

In our family, algebra happens naturally. It happens when we figure out grocery-store price comparisons. It happens when we’re keeping track of our personal finances. It happens when, as part of a summer camp on forensics, Ashar finds out that you can estimate someone’s height based on the size of their footprint.

It’s amazing the amount of times we talk about algebra in our family without ever mentioning “math.” I’ve said before that algebra is simply overlaying sets of equations onto the world around us, and the biggest thing we do to promote a real-world approach to algebra is to talk.

We talk about gas mileage in our two cars, one a decade old and the other brand new. We talk about when it makes sense to invest in something expensive – like a new microwave – and how cost-per-use works out to make it more effective to spend more money up front to spend less over time in some situations.

And geometry and its science counterpart, physics, are even more natural. Have you packed a full cart of groceries into your car’s trunk recently? Played sports? Fit things into your pantry?

These are the things we do, and the things we talk about.

And, again, what makes this work is the engagement. I’m not saying “never do math.” I’m actually saying exactly the opposite – stop relegating math to a subject on a chart for however many minutes a day. See how much of it is all around you, and share that with your kids.

It’s kind of fun. Play “spot the math” for a week, and see who can find the most examples. You might be surprised!

Real world high school math resources

It’s not all about numbers: Unschooling math – This post came about when I tried to explain our family’s unschooling approach as it relates to the traditional subject areas most families are familiar with. It’s a great starting point and I encourage you to read it first!
Real world math resources series – This is a starting point for most of my posts about real-world math, including the “5 Days of Real-World Math” series I wrote in 2012 and continue to add to. It breaks down the math you encounter in the kitchen, playing sports, at the grocery store, in personal finance and more.
Real world math resources you’ll love – The final part of the series I mentioned above. I continue to add to this, and in fact need to update it with the resources I’m including today!
The unschooled version of a ninth-grade-ish curriculum – A look at what we’re learning this year, including math, and how.
DragonBox Algebra 12+ – An amazing way to learn algebra through an app that doesn’t even really look like algebra. This is not what I’d call an “educational game.” It’s a game. It happens to be educational. It’s also amazing. I play it too. 🙂
DragonBox Elements – This app is the newer one from WeWantToKnow, and Ashar FLEW through the geometric concepts in it. Much like DragonBox Algebra, the point here is conceptual math, which is awesome.
Get the Math – Dude. Rap/hip-hop style music videos showing how algebra is used in music, a video-game designer sharing how she uses math to create games, and more. Seriously cool.
A Charlotte Mason approach to math: Living Math – This article in Homeschool magazine is by my friend Jimmie of Jimmie’s Collage, and it’s a great example of how living math happens at all levels
Pinterest: Unschooling math – I contribute to this group board along with Aadel of These Temporary Tents and our fellow unschooling friend Mariellen. Great stuff for all ages!
Pinterest: Unschooling high school science and math – This is a board I started this year (with contributions from my friend Karen of Homeschool Girls) to try to compile specific higher-level real world resources and conversation-starters.
The Life of Fred book series – I’ve talked about this series often. It’s a math textbook series – sort of. It’s a story about a 5-year-old math genius named Fred, and instead of tons of exercises, it tells stories about how Fred encounters everything from arithmetic to calculus in the real world. Ashar likes reading the stories, and we highly recommend it. While this is described as a Christian series, we are a secular homeschooling family and haven’t had any problems using the fairly few spiritual references we’ve found as talking points about what different people believe, which we like to do anyway.
Digital currency: Video games for math – This post focuses mainly on games Ashar played when she was a little younger, but it poses some questions to help you think more expansively about how math appears in your family’s favorite games.

Bringing homeschool subjects to life

This post is part of a series through the iHomeschool Network about bringing homeschool subjects to life. Click the image below to see how my blog friends bring their favorite subjects to life, from history to art to nature study and more!