L10 has always hated anything to do with maths, right from learning how to count. I have tried every curriculum. Now I don’t think changing curriculum frequently is a very good idea and generally I live by that. Although of course for the past four years we’ve pretty much been unschoolers as far as curriculum goes. Maths is really the only curriculum I follow. Thing is, no matter the curriculum, L10 does not understand numbers. I’ve known this for a while. Unfortunately, my own anxiety over L10 getting further and further behind has prevented me from sitting down and facing the truth of the situation and working with L10 to find answers. Instead I have swapped curriculums with desperation to find one that might suit her. Mathusee was the best fit, only I knew she still wasn’t truly understanding any of it. At all. She could follow procedure and get the right answer but she looked blank if I asked her how or why. This is not the education I wanted for my children.
Diving into an individualised maths approach
It all came to a head at the beginning of the summer, when she referred to maths as being boring, boring, boring. This may not seem too bad to most, but my guys use that word so infrequently and are, by nature, incredibly enthusiastic, it kind of broke my heart. I really felt like I had failed her. And you know what? I have failed her. If I had followed my gut when I realised she needed me to take a different approach, she may never have got to the stage of hating maths with such ferocity. I hadn’t been brave enough then, and we have seemingly lost more time and L10 is falling even more behind. With some encouragement (thanks Phyllis!), I decided to spend the summer exploring a curriculum free, hands on approach to see if it would be a good fit for my girls.
I made the tough (for me) decision to go right back to the start, to try to figure out where the hole was in their understanding. It seems to me that both girls have lots of puzzle pieces (lots of knowledge so to speak), but the pieces are all jumbled up without order (no understanding or clarity) and there maybe one or two pieces missing. It is my job to help the girls fit the pieces together and find those which are missing.
Deschooling my maths phobic child
It seems funny to talk about deschooling them, but ultimately that is what L10, in particular, needs- a complete break from curriculum of any sort. So for the past four weeks we have been playing lots of maths games. I have been pleasantly surprised and feel more hopeful than I have for a long time. Now the pressure is off she seems to be finding calculations a little easier.
Introducing Number Bonds
I introduced number bonds a couple of weeks ago, when I thought she was ready for a little more formal teaching. No text book mind you, just the girls and their mummy. Both girls had, of course, learnt about number bonds when they were younger. I checked their knowledge using cards 1-9, we did number bonds of 10, of 15, of 8 etc. They both knew them well, but I wondered if they understood them. C10 did but L10 really didn’t. She could reel them off very accurately but when asked what they were she did not understand that they were parts of a whole, that numbers could be split. To her a 10 was a 10 and therefore was always a 10. She did not see that a 10 could be split to a 3 and a 7. Don’t get me wrong, she knew that 3 + 7 was 10 but didn’t understand the break down-build up mechanics of numbers.
I enjoy maths and understand it fairly well. I see maths pictorially. Numbers are never numbers but amounts which rearrange themselves in my head with relative ease, so that mental calculation appears simple to me. T11 thinks the same way. Maths is effortless to him. L10 sees 10. It is 10, nothing more. It has no meaning to her….until you put it into the context of cooking and she can compute hard sums easily in her head. Suddenly 10 grams isn’t 10 the number but 10 an imaginable amount. Unfortunately, not all the maths she needs to be able to do will be cooking related. However this certainly gave me a starting point to understanding the way her mind works.
Our Summer Plans
We intend to spend the whole summer playing with numbers. I want to teach L10 the joy and excitement I feel when dealing with figures. And more than anything I want to get rid of that look of sheer panic I see far too often on her face when she is faced with any type of maths problem.
We will start with number bonds and stay there until I can set her hard problems and she has the understanding and tools sufficient to solve them confidently. Then and only then will I move on. We will perhaps focus on place value next, maybe have a bit of fun with Roman numerals or even looking into the history of numbers. Whatever we do will be geared to increasing her understanding of numbers in general. I will concentrate on helping her to build up her maths tool box so she need never feel panic related to maths again, for she will know it is as simple as searching in her tool box for the right tool for the problem in hand. I am doing what I should have done years ago, and dumping the curriculum. I have found I teach maths much better without one. Who knew? I thought I was naff at teaching maths. Actually, as always, I’m naff at using someone else’s methods to teach. Left to my own devises, and suddenly everything is starting to fall into place.
I intend to share this maths journey just in case anyone else is struggling with the same issues.