math in the elementary years

In the years prior to "officially" starting Kindergarten, we talked a lot about numbers. We concentrated on mathematical concepts in concrete form - measuring flour for making cookies, each person gets one fork at the table, counting everything, etc.

The Bluedorn's article Research on the Teaching of Math definitely gave some food for thought on whether to buy math curriculum for this year. I really waffled on the decision for a long time.

In Pre-K, I had scoured many recommended curricula as well as a few states' standards for and made a list of concepts to cover (At some point I may get around to posting those!). As I mentioned above, we incorporated these into daily living as well as playing games etc. Basically, I was coming up with my own no-worksheet, hands-on curriculum for math. When I realized in June of this year that I was required by law to report 180 days of instruction per year, I wanted to quickly get started. Time was the issue. How could I research enough to create a new hands-on math curriculum for Kindergarten? When I looked at most of the Kindergarten math materials and our state's standards, we had already covered almost all the concepts and I felt fairly confident that my K5-son had a good understanding of them.

As I wrote to a friend from whom I was requesting advice,

"(My 'problem', and I use that term loosely, seems to be that I spend 4x amount of time figuring out what to teach him and he learns it in x time. So then, I'm back to figuring out what to do next.) The reason I have been just looking at the standards and teaching him those is because I lean more to hands-on learning at this age instead of filling out a worksheet. Also, my K5-son's penmanship is definitely K or Pre-K level and when I look at most curriculums that would be challenging for him mathematically they require a lot of writing which I'm thinking I'm not ready to put on him yet."

She recommended Miquon Math. She wrote:

"I really love Miquon Math. I used it with (my oldest), and then I re-reviewed all the Math Curricula before (the next child) started and again chose Miquon. When (my youngest)'s turn came, I bought Miquon again .... For my children, who always have asked "Why?" these are great books because they help the children understand why 3x5=15, rather than stating this as a fact and then having them memorize it. (I'm not against memorizing math facts - we do that, too, but only after they understand the concepts.) ... In every case, the problems lead the child to understand the concepts (a Socratic approach - the "teacher" asks questions to help the student discover the answers rather than giving answers) Like (your son), my (children) hated to write and another benefit of Miquon was that they did not have too much on a page ... As real life comes at you..., it is nice to have a curriculum to give you a track to run on. I like Miquon for that purpose."

So, we settled on Miquon Math Grade One for this year. So far, I've been pleased. We are just now getting to end of addition and subtraction in the Orange Book. Sometimes he writes his answers on a worksheet and other times we just experiment or make up games to practice the concept.

Today, we created a Barnyard Animals game where some animals were in the pen and others in the barnyard and we made up math sentences to illustrate the scenario. For instance, we started with 10 in the barnyard and put 3 in the pen. Now how many are left in the barnyard. Using number cards, my K5-son would create the math sentence "10-3=7". I would also challenge him to create an addition sentence instead of a subtraction sentence etc. He loved it! He asked if we could play the game with Daddy tomorrow (Saturday).

We're definitely not tied to using every worksheet in the Miquon books. If he's got the concept down, why bore him with more of the same? So we move on or slow down as needed - ah, the benefits of home educating!

I feel like Miquon has provided a good balance between "giving us a track to run on" while using hands-on manipulatives and concrete objects for understanding abstract mathematical concepts.

Another plus - I found the Miquon Math workbooks at CurrClick.com for $6.50 each. This price is the going price, or a little cheaper, than most places. The added advantage, in my opinion, is that you download the workbooks in electronic format! They each come in a PDF file which you can print as many times as you need. So, instead of purchasing a workbook for each child, we'll use the PDF to print the worksheets as we need them for each one. That's a substantial savings. If you prefer the printed workbook, their are usually some available on PaperBackSwap or you can buy them from Amazon.