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Unschooling Math

© Teri Brown

I have to make a confession here. I am writing about a subject that I, personally, detest. Why write about it? Because it's important. Because when it comes to math, most unschoolers are confused and not sure how to approach it. Do we break down and use a curriculum for math? Ignore it and hope it goes away? Just how do you go about unschooling math anyway?

For me, the answer was, very carefully! I was almost afraid to do anything at all; I didn't want to pass my phobia of this particular subject onto my children. We tried different programs, but none seemed to work. They went against my unschooling mentality, and my children were bored. Lots of people have had success with the Miquon math program. My children were ambivalent towards it. On one hand, they felt the cuisenaire rods were too babyish, and on the other, the book went too quickly for them. They barely had time to grasp one concept before it jumped to another. Many unschoolers have liked Miquon, allowing the children to work at their own pace and interest level. I was back to square one.

So I ignored it. We blithely went on our historical field trips, did our nature studies, found new and intriguing ways to play with science, spent hours at the library and generally enjoyed our lives....... without math. The only time I would think of math was when my husband gently prodded me. "Are they getting math anywhere?" he would ask late at night. "Mmmhhhmmm," I would mumble and turn over and go to sleep.

When I saw the workshop at our statewide homeschool conference I jumped at it. I knew the woman teaching is an avid unschooler and I knew she would give a good workshop. It turned out to be more then good, it was eye opening. It helped me to look at math with something besides fearful dread.

I learned that children must go through different stages before they can grasp various concepts. To insist that they learn facts before understanding the concepts is a recipe for math phobia. She also gave a lot of great ideas for setting up real world experiences. I was challenged to see the importance of math. After much thought, my husband and I came to the conclusion that we wanted our children to leave our home knowing survival or consumer math. How to balance a check book, calculate interest, and comparison shop. If they needed higher math for a career goal, well, that was up to them. Inspired, I left the conference ready to tackle and tame the math dilemma.