I Hate Math

I really hate math. I know it is because when I was in school, that was the one subejct area I struggled with greatly. I remember in 8th grade I switched schools and I was so lost in math. What my classmates were learning was the opposite schedule from my old school. I missed a lot of foundational information that year and never caught up. Thus I began to think that I was just stupid in math. Now that I'm older, I realize that was not the case, but I still have math mental blocks. It is not the subject area that I feel confident teaching my children. I'm more likely to second-guess myself when it comes to math. I don't want my kids to feel this way. So I'm working to change it.

Jimmie, from Jimmie's Collage has been posting many very informative articles about living math and math notebooking.  Her article Transitioning to Living Math tells how she ditched the workbooks (well kind of) and moved toward the Living Math approach.

I have been incorporating one of the transition steps Jimmie mentions in her article-- adding more math games to our school day. I want my kids to see math as fun, not as a dreaded subject. I figured the best way to do that is to play with them. For my older two kids, we have started playing with ThinkFun Math Dice. ThinkFun has a free manual that you can download. I printed mine and had it bound w/ a plastic comb at the local printing shop. There are a lot of different games in the book to use with the Math Dice. There is even tournament competition if you wanted to set that up with a co-op or math club.

MathDice downloads

So for now we're trying to infuse some fun into our math program. That's the first step. I plan to start adding in living books and math notebooking. So hopefully you'll see a few more math-related posts from me in the upcoming months. Who knows, maybe you'll even see a post about how much I love math. :)