Practical Tips for Teaching Math from a Homeschool Mom of 10

I don't spend a lot of time talking about curriculum because I've learned over the years that curriculum it's a tool but it's not the most important thing the thing that matters the most is your relationship with your child the atmosphere in your home and being consistent consistently moving forward a little bit making progress every day those are the things that make the biggest difference my name is Sher Christian wife and thankful mom to 10 incredible kids I'm the author of the blog and YouTube channel R life homeschooling where I share homeschooling encouragement for everyday moms I believe that motherhood is Ministry and homeschooling is simply an extension of parenting my passion is to cheer on other moms who are at home doing the most important work of all raising the Next Generation for the glory of God hi every everybody it's Sherry from R life homeschooling I want to talk to you today about how I teach math and give you hopefully some practical tips that you can use in your H school I don't spend a lot of time talking about curriculum because I've learned over the years that curriculum it's a tool but it's not the most important thing a couple of friends I want to say five or six of my friends we all had our oldest child graduate two 2 years ago and we recently got together at a mom's Retreat and this is the one thing we were talking about we were remembering back to those early years of homeschooling where we were just worried about what kind of curriculum we were going to use and is it going to be the right one and what if it doesn't fit my learning style or my child's learning style or this is what I like about this one and we just spent so much time worrying about what curriculum was going to be a good fit for us and by the time we all had graduates looking back on that time of our life we realized how insignificant the curriculum is it's not the most important thing the thing that matters the most is your relationship with your child the atmosphere in your home and being consistent consistently moving forward a little bit making progress every day those are the things that make the biggest difference so I don't spend a lot of time on curriculum I think moms can get hung up on this and I don't think it matters so much what you use as much as your desire to learn and your consistent work every day with your child curriculum is simply a tool you can have a curriculum that's really not that great but you can make it great and you can teach it well your kids can still learn I don't put a whole lot of emphasis on curriculum I also know that moms it's like as soon as they see what this other person is doing then they're like oh maybe I should just try that so they hop on board to that curriculum and then they see something else cuz they're kind of that's getting dull and they move over to that and if you've watched any of my videos before you know that one thing that I've said many times is that there is a lot of benefit to sticking with the same curriculum now that's not a reason that you should never switch if something isn't working but if your curriculum is working pretty well for you overall there are so many advantages to sticking with it it trickles down to all your other kids there's so much less of a learning curve um when you just stay with the same curriculum every time you switch it takes almost a year to learn the new system just to learn how everything's laid out how their approach is to math so there's just there's so much less you have to learn and you can just move through content especially when you stick with the same curriculum with math now I'm not I don't claim to be any math expert by any means but what I'm sharing with you is what I've learned in our 15 years of homeschooling and I do want to make sure to mention that if you are looking for homeschooling resources book lists um just tons of information about how to get started large family living life skills morning time any of these things I have a plethora of resources ources over on the blog rlif homeschooling docomomo so if there's something I don't cover in this post I'm sure you will find it on the blog I have a lot more details on the blog about our family's curriculum you can probably just search curriculum and there's going to be things that come up so head on over to the blog if there's something I don't cover here or if you just want more details when I started teaching math 15 years ago with our oldest I picked the curriculum right start math and this is a math program that you can learn by uh games by manipulatives it's a one-on-one lesson that you do with your child every day and I loved this curriculum I still love it um the thing I love the most about it was that it uses the base 10 system to teach kids so it really gives them a good understanding of how numbers work the only thing I would say that was a a big deficiency for me in the right start curriculum was that it's very teacher intensive you have to teach the lesson individually with each child at this time we had three in school but we also had a toddler and a baby so I had five kids and it was just not as feasible for me to do three individual math lessons with each child this became more and more difficult to do and I realized I had to do something else I was forced our family was growing another problem I had with right at this time was that there was not enough written work written practice so while I said in the beginning don't you know there's so many benefits to not switching curriculum obviously this curriculum was not working for us and I really did have to switch it wasn't just that there were some things I didn't like about it this was pretty much the only curriculum switch I've ever made in math after that we stuck with the same thing so we moved from right start to Singapore which is what we're still doing today the reason I picked Singapore was that my kids were able to do it mostly on their own they were able to progress very easily and I didn't have to teach each lesson individually now I will say with Singapore you can teach each lesson they have lessons there and they have just instructions for what to say and um how to introduce each lesson to your kids I don't use them I use them if I need them when my kids are learning A New Concept they'll come to me and I'll use them but I you don't have to your kids can move through pretty well on their own so we've been using Singapore for several years and our kids are pretty independent the thing that I love about it is that it's it's simple there's not a lot of fluff and so this is the curriculum that we've stuck with over time one thing that I think is so important with math math is a skill so your child should be doing math every day every day you should do some Reading Writing and math that's kind of what I aim for even when I'm in survival mode when we've just had a baby if we have a couple weeks where it's just we just have to get through it I always say Reading Writing and math every day all the other stuff is extra if you're reading aloud to your child they are getting other things other subjects in there but Reading Writing and math is foundational so we try to do math every day and we don't I don't aim to get through level one in first grade we have a completely different approach our kids are making progress every day every day we're moving forward and doing a little bit more this has been such a relieving way to look at math and learning in general it's kind of erased grade levels for us our kids are just where they're at and they're moving forward one thing that is helped me more than anything else and this doesn't have to be just with a curriculum like Singapore you can do this with other curriculums as well is to move my kids toward Independence so they get a check list when they're working on their independent work they have a checklist and when they come to math they get out their math they look it over and try to understand it if it's a New Concept I am more of a facilitator so when they come to something new they bring it to me and I will help explain it to them I'll get out some manipulatives whatever they need and we'll move on from that point but once they understand the concept this is their work they're finishing the lesson and one thing my kids I noticed when we switched from right start to Singapore one thing they did love was that they took ownership of their work and they could tell when the lesson was going to be finished they could see how much they had to do for it to be done and um I really believe in short lessons we don't waste a lot of time doing the same problem 15 20 times when they get it the first four or five times it's just not necessary one thing that is definitely really helpful when you're teaching math is to have some kind of Hands-On manipulatives and this is something that right start had a lot of and it kind of helped me the one benefit that I had and maybe I would have had this if I had used any curriculum was that I learned from right start how to teach math even though I had been a public school teacher I would say looking at the home school School curriculum really taught me more about teaching math than anything else right start gave me a lot of ideas about how to teach math and so when my kids would come to new things I had an idea of how to break it down and with young kids it really is helpful to have just some concrete objects cuz they think that way it's hard for them to move from the concrete to the abstract so they need to see something right in front of them and I'll just give one example is um when my 3-year-old calls my husband on the phone she will call him and talk to him and she is just talking about all the things that are right in front of her these flowers and the baby doll and Mommy's has cookies and she just mentions whatever is right in front of her so that's how kids think so if we can start with something concrete and then help them move to the abstract so I have used um an abacus is something I use to teach all of my kids we use base 10 blocks these are great for helping them understand place value and tens hundreds thousands um flash cards especially for computation skills super important for them to know their math facts I've used some counters or we have these colored squares that they can can make patterns with or they can count those are handy uh we have some place value cards which um it just doesn't take them long that once they see how to make numbers with these place value cards then they can understand place value and they can put them together and it makes sense in their mind they can tell you how many tens are in a 100 how many tens are in a thousand how many ones are in a thousand um I use base 10 blocks and place value cards to teach those and it's just really handy um and then just even playing cards I've used regular playing cards we have you can do Uno or Dutch Blitz cards um to teach different colors I've used that with my preschooler um we'll just flip over the card and put it into the pile of its color those are great for very young children but having some kind of math manipulative to use to teach them is really helpful on a practical note I think the most important thing like if you're going to if you're going to worry about anything and you shouldn't be worrying about things Mom Mom's always worry am I doing enough you know it seems like we're missing this or that and I think if you are watching this video if you are asking those questions you're doing enough just remember that it takes much less time to teach someone a concept oneon-one than it takes to for one teacher to teach 20 25 kids so when you finish your home school in a couple hours when you finish your math in half an hour or 15 minutes or an hour whatever it takes you you have done enough you're doing enough you're just making progress so don't worry about if you're doing enough but if you should focus on one thing and I've heard this from several different places to move on to higher math the most important thing is to have have strong computation skills so to know how to add subtract multiply and divide to be very strong in those skills and then once you know your addition subtraction multiplication division once you know that really well to be able to transfer that into fractions decimals and percents if you have good skills in first the computation skills and then second ly using that multiplication division addition and subtraction to perform um problems with fractions decimals and percent you have the basics of what you need to perform higher level math now a lot of the periperal subjects math subjects like teaching money teaching measurement time perimeter uh geometry understanding angles all those things those are in our math curric culum we spend time on those we do those but I will say there is so much that can be learned about those things just through real life uh my kids have learned more about money from just using money and earning money and spending money going with me to the bank uh going with us to the store so that when it comes to teach money A lot of times they just already know that stuff same thing with time um they're asking they know what time of day we do different things because we have routines and so when it comes time when it comes time to teach time A lot of times they just they understand how that works and it doesn't take as long now as I say that I can think of many times myself when I had um maybe a first grader and they were coming to that section on learning time in their math book and they just weren't developing mentally there yet they hadn't been asking questions or looking at the clock or wondering about time at all and so then to try to teach that child this next 10 pages of time it was grueling and now that I've been doing this for a while I've learned that when this happens it's so much better to wait wait until the next year wait six more months until they're interested in it and then you can teach them how to tell time in like 5 minutes because they want to know so um I think that that makes a lot of sense with a lot of these peripheral math subjects that if you you don't need to spend you know three or four worksheets teaching them left from right just go out walking every day go out with your bike and they'll ask you oh do we turn left or do we turn right when it comes to some of these subjects we don't need to do endless work sheets on them a lot of them they can learn through real life since computation skills are super important I'll just give you a couple practical suggestions for how I teach these to my kids with addition and subtraction I start with the number 10 we get an advocus out we get the number 10 and we learn all the numbers that make 10 so 1 and 9 2 and 8 3 and 7 five and five four and six and we play games with these we get out cards any kind of playing cards you can as long as you have numbers 1 through 10 or I'm sorry 0 through 10 you can play matching games or old made games with making a match with the numbers that make 10 once this is really familiar to them we move on to teaching them how to make numbers that make a 100 so I will call out the number 20 3 and they'll have to use what they know about making the number 10 to make the number 100 and I'll just randomly call out different numbers and I might start with something easier like um 75 and they would have to come up with 25 the opposite number and then get a little harder with numbers like 23 or 67 that it's harder to find the opposite number but understanding what makes up a 10 and 100 is just great practice for them this transfers over to money than they understand change for a dollar change for $10 and then with the rest of addition and subtraction I use flashcards there's a ton of strategies you can use to teach your kids how to add and subtract and I think it can be help they can be helpful with the right kind of child who's interested in that but a lot of times I've tried to teach my kids strategies for adding and subtracting and they don't want to learn them they just want to use their fingers or learn on their own and over time I just become okay with that because they're understanding it in their own way and after they use their fingers for a while after they figure it out their own way in their head they can do it without having to count or without having to use any anything like their fingers so I let them do that I use flashcards and um that's how we learn our addition and subtraction if you can make a competition out of it let them compete against their own time that's also great for multiplication and division we learn this through skip counting so we'll start with twos and I'll say okay say your twos to 20 and we'll use an advocus or some kind of counting tiles where they're drawing two at a time a lot of times we play Bananagrams and so if we start with 14 Bananagrams they have to count by twos up to 14 anything like that count by twos up to 20 once they get good at that count by twos up to 20 and back again and then we do that with threes to 30 fours to 40 so a young child in maybe first or second grade third grade um you may just work up to those numbers and fives fives are usually pretty easy and then that that may take a while for them to understand that concept and then gradually when they're ready for it move on to 6 7 8 9 and 10 count from nines up to 90 and back again when you're skip counting you're starting with addition and moving to multiplication in your head because you're adding three more if you're using threes Counting By Threes threes you're adding three more every time and eventually you understand that you're just multiplying this has been one of the best ways for me to teach multiplication and division because you're doing both at the same time they may not realize it but they're learning division at the same time because these are all the same numbers I did have a mom ask me a question about how I use Singapore specifically so I'm going to go into that just a little bit when I start level one um my kids can pretty much do level one a andb on their own to am and I can check their work so they finish it bring it to me I go through and correct it or I'll have one of my older kids if they're sitting right beside it sometimes they like to correct it once they get to level 3A and 3B it becomes a little bit more difficult and it's not something you can just easily sit there and correct so I buy the teacher manuals for these and I have the child do the textbook so they read the lesson in the textbook they have a separate notebook that they'll write the answers in just a spiral notebook and then at the end of the textbook lesson it has workbook exercise and so they'll do the corresponding workbook exercise in their workbooks and that technically would be about a lesson now if it's a little bit longer or harder I may just have them do the textbook and the textbook problems in their notebook and then do the workbook the next day but they're pretty much able to do that on their own and then I do have them check their own work if I trust the child to be able to check their work work then I have them do that and that's never it's not been a problem for us um I'll have them check their own work and then usually I'll just ask them did you get any wrong which ones did you get wrong and I do have them go back and learn what they did wrong or correct it just to me the important thing is that they understand it so starting at level three it is a little bit more for them and it takes my kids more than a year to get through level a 3A and 3B and I've learned that's okay by the time they finish level six they are ready for either pre-algebra or algebra um so I moved my older two kids right from level six into algebra so it's okay I always worried like oh they're in seventh and eth grade and they're still doing level six of Singapore well that's okay because after that they're ready for pre-algebra skills one last practical tip that I want to share with you is that math gets so much easier the more you teach it it's the hardest with your first child so if you are struggling and it's your first child that you're teaching math that is totally normal and it's okay when I was teaching math to our son Tai and he got to I want to say fifth or sixth grade there were some sections of his textbook that I started getting nervous and I could feel my palm sweating I just thought oh boy I don't know how we're going to keep moving and homeschooling because I don't know if I can do this well I just had to look at it a little bit more closely sometimes I had to ask someone for help one time I asked a friend whose husband was a math teacher on a specific problem once he explained it it made total sense I got better at math and I also got better at teaching math at breaking it down in a way way that is easy for other people to understand and that's what's going to change the first time with your oldest child you're just kind of remembering these skills again and sometimes it can be a little scary but with your second child you see it again and you're like oh yeah this is this isn't as hard as I you know as it looks at First Sight and then your third child you're just like oh yes okay let me explain how to break this down and another thing that's really helpful to know is that long division and double and triple digit multiplication this is a big step for kids so when they start doing this in whatever grade it is for your child fourth fifth sixth 7th 8th whatever it is when you start double digit multiplication and long division it's just a big step so if you if you know that ahead of time if you know that it's just a big jump for them some kids have to see things over and over again and it just takes a couple days and that's how it is with these specific Concepts you show it to them the first day it's a little overwhelming sometimes they cry you show it to them the second time and you're like now let's just just watch just just observe it may take several days and they just have to see it repeated and then the light will come on and they'll get it I hope these tips have been helpful for you you um math can be kind of daunting for homeschool moms to teach but uh I hope this this just gives you some a lighter way to look at it and can maybe just give you some ideas to use if you're struggling with math if you like this content I encourage you to take a look at the video I did last week it was a day in the life video just showing what homeschooling looks like in our home we did some picture study we did a little Reformation study and then my high school kids had a volleyball tournament thanks for watching I do one video a week on homeschooling encouragement for everyday moms I'll see you next week