Life Schooling 101: What We Use For Math.
Life schooling is what we are all about over here in the Palmer household. We enjoy life schooling because it deals with not only the academics of schooling, but the various facets that go along with it.
When we life school, we school our children...well,...about life!
Read my inspiration for life schooling: Why You Shouldn't Homeschool.
I will get more into this, but first, helping you to understand the types of curriculum we use is what I want to talk about here. I will not provide any detailed reviews on the curriculum in these post as I will save that for other post when I break down what we use for each subject. Today, I will discuss what we use for math.
Being that we school our children through life, it would only be wise for us to use Life of Fred for our math curriculum. This was established once trying different math curricula that worked well for seasons but then we began to notice it still wasn't the perfect fit.
Saxon math was the best by far, but it just took too darn long to complete each day. Life of Fred gets us straight to the point and they get it! So far so good...
What makes Life of Fred work well for us is that we are very relaxed schoolers. What this means is that within us doing school in such a relaxed way we sometimes unschool using video games or any kind of schooling that makes our education fun, but quick and simple. You know how it is to have boys, right?
Snips and snails and puppy-dogs' tails are what my little guys are made of!
And this means when it comes to their schooling, which they often dread, I have to create a fun and energetic atmosphere that makes them want to learn.
Life of Fred provides lots of laughter, and at the same time, they are learning math through funny life stories of his. This makes it work for us!
When not using any type of "curriculum" for math we creatively use life as our black board. I love taking my boys shopping with me and they love going too! We can incorporate math easily as we're shopping and this works well for different grade levels.
I love to see my 7th grader as he attempts to calculate everything just to make sure we have enough money in our pockets to pay for our groceries.
But what makes it special is seeing how he uses his leadership skills to decide what is important to keep or to put back in order to stay on budget. You should see the seriousness on his face! I am cracking up just thinking about it as he keeps the younger ones from throwing unnecessary items into the basket.
But we use so many things to incorporate math on an almost everyday basis. Using field trips or simple local drive-outs to calculate distance and the time it should take us to arrive at our destination. They have so much fun with this because I use our real life situations and turn them into problem solving strategies.
We may also use simple projects around the house such as what may be on my "honey-do list".
For instance, when computing fractions of measurements for understanding how much we needed to cut into the wall in order to run cables for our internet service in our new home, we used math. The first time we made a mistake by cutting the wrong end of the wall (HaHaHa), but nevertheless, we achieved our goal in the end!
My husband orchestrated this project.
Next week, I will show you what we use for Language Arts. I will continue to post until I've shown you every subject, so stick around and I hope to see you all soon!
"You were designed and created to be a world-changer, whether for one individual, several, or an entire world. Your life is a book and the pages of your life are being added daily, so be the difference someone wants to open and read!"
-Lynn Palmer
