Today I thought I'd talk about how we approach math for our kids. Again, my eldest is 6 and in "kindergarten" and my middle child is 4 and my youngest is 2. Up until about a month ago, my 4 year old wasn't into any formal math but recently he's wanted to be included in math work, so we've purchased a little book for him too. He is really excited to work alongside his brother, but we don't require it and he can do it as long or as short as he'd like. My 6 year old does have several pages he needs to work through each session.
Math is the only subject we have a curriculum for ( we use Singapore Math) and so far we love it. We do math about 4 times a week for about 25 minutes. Beyond that our focus is more on real life applied mathematics. Some of the things our family puts a lot of time and effort into doing are:
1. Cooking and baking ( measurements, quantities etc).
2. Shopping ( numbers, money, prices, values)
3. Building/engineering projects ( forts, blocks, structures)
4. Using math manipulatives
5. Games ( card and board games)
6. Following their own interests ( i.e. aviation and space) which usually have a strong mathematics component to them.
Anyway, that's all we do for math. We definitely put more of a focus on the real world applied math versus the textbook math. That being said, I feel really great about following the textbook to ensure I'm covering all my basis when it comes to their mathematics education and I'm not unintentionally giving them too many gaps in the early years.
Resources we use for kindergarten math
Singapore Math Books
We also use wooden blocks, Lincoln logs, marble runs, manga-tiles & calculators
Now here are some pictures from our walk yesterday in the woods! We explored for about two hours, breathing in the fresh forest air. Pure magic! Don't forget to follow us on instagram our youtube for more forest goodness!
