Midwinter Math Blues: Refreshing Your Math Routine
Welcome to A Mother’s Thinking Love: Living Ideas, Lovingly Shared! January often finds the mother-teacher, and her children, in the homeschool with the midwinter math blues, and these blues often lead to hours of searching for a new math curriculum. I’ve been in this place in many a January over almost a decade of homeschooling. But maybe there’s something else you can do to refresh your math routine instead of jumping to a new curriculum. Join me for: “Midwinter Math Blues: Refreshing Your Math Routine” and find out!
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An Old Favorite
Last year, I wrote a ten-part math series titled: “On Teaching Math”. In the series, I share my journey, and my ideas about teaching math without a curriculum and in a one room school house style at home. If you’re frustrated with your math curriculum overall, this series may be a helpful read for you. In it, I also share about keeping your math curriculum but using it in a different way. In today’s post, I’m simply sharing a few ideas to add to your math routine to help you break out of the midwinter math blues.
Eureka: Remembering the “Why” of Math
In our modern day studies, math is often seen as a utilitarian subject that is mastered through rote memorization. It’s presented as a lifeless subject that’s dry as dust. Some children are naturally drawn to math but many aren’t. Those children are assumed to be “not math kids” and are simply pushed along the math assembly line from one concept to the next. Historically, however, math has been quite thrilling. It has been a subject of noticing, wondering, making connections, discovering, and delighting. Remember Archimedes’ “Eureka!” moment? In my experience, one way to refresh your math routine is to read about the history of math itself. This can be accomplished by reading biographies of mathematicians/scientists or a math history spine. Reading these sorts of books help children, and their moms, to know that noticing, wondering, making connections, and discovering help us to delight in math. Let me share a few ideas.
Biographies:
Archimedes and the Door of Science by Jeanne Bendick
Galileo and the Magic Numbers by Sidney Rosen
A Piece of the Mountain: The Story of Blaise Pascal by Joyce McPherson
The Ocean of Truth: The Story of Sir Isaac Newton by Joyce McPherson
Albert Einstein and the Theory of Relativity by Robert Cwiklik
Math History Spines:
Number Stories of Long Ago by David Eugene Smith
String, Straightedge, Shadow: The Story of Geometry by Julia E Diggins
A Game Changer
I know every Instagram influencer marketing a product in a reel declares that it’s a “game changer”, but I do truly think that math games can help you break out of your midwinter math blues. What’s even better is that they are also a good time for connection, either between children or between parents and children. Math games are a great step towards communal math in the homeschool. There are many books with math games available, but I think Denise Gaskins is wonderful for this. She has books of math games available for beginning math students to high school. I haven’t tried all of her books, because she has so many, but here are a couple we own. She has some free games on her website too!
Multiplication & Fractions: Math Games for Tough Topics (Math You Can Play)
Prealgebra & Geometry: Math Games for Middle School (Math You Can Play)
On the Back Burner
“Doing math” involves much more than writing with pencil and paper. Many math curriculums offer project ideas. Sometimes these come at the end of a chapter or the end of a unit. These projects, however, often get put on the back burner. We’re so busy trying to, unnecessarily, complete 180 days of math lessons for the year that we push those to the side. The dead of winter is a great time to pull those projects out. If you don’t have a math curriculum, your curriculum doesn’t offer hands-on ideas, or you want some new ideas, keep reading. I will share a couple of ideas below.
Paper Sloyd: A Handbook for Primary Grades (Yesterday’s Classics)
Cooking is a great option for this, and it serves a practical purpose too. I wouldn’t start cooking and call it a “math lesson”. I would just enjoy cooking together and maybe “notice” and “wonder” a bit along the way. This cookbook is a simple way to get started. Or, you can make a family favorite meal.
The Nourishing Traditions Cookbook for Children: Teaching Children to Cook the Nourishing Traditions
If you want to take this one a step further, try meal planning, budgeting, and grocery shopping together too.
There are many other options for projects, but these are two we have experience with.
Write this Down
Math Journals have been a cornerstone of my math lessons for over a decade – both in the classroom and at home. Math Journals are a wonderful way to memorialize what students are learning, without stressing about filling in all the blanks of a worksheet. Students can, and should, also do written or oral narrations throughout math time too. Denise Gaskins also has some math journal options, although we have not used them.
As the mother-teacher, it’s helpful to write a few notes down at the end of each “math time”. You can write what went well or what needs some work, ideas for the future, or even fun moments you want to remember. During this time away from your math curriculum, you may notice that a child is struggling with a concept you thought they understood. Or, you may realize a child understands much more than you thought. Write these observations down too.
You can read more about my ideas for math journals and recordkeeping in these two blog posts.
The Nitty Gritty Details
At this point, you may be thinking something like, “Well this sounds nice, but what would our week actually look like?” I can’t answer this question for you, but I can give you a few ideas.
- Take a break from your math curriculum and implement new ideas
- Do your current math curriculum 2-3 days a week and implement some of the ideas here 2-3 days a week.
- Shorten your daily math curriculum lessons. If you were spending an hour per day on your math curriculum, cut that to 30 minutes a day. Then, you can do 30 minutes of math games, projects, read alouds, etc.
These are just a few scheduling options. Only you know the circumstances and needs of your family.
Closing
Thank you for reading: “”Midwinter Math Blues: Refreshing Your Math Routine”! Do you get burned out with your math curriculum around this time of year too? How do you break out of it? Share in the comments below!
