Unschooling Math

The boys have really been getting into numbers lately!! It's so fun to watch them "doing math" without any of the frustrations that most of us remember from struggling with multiplication tables, fractions and long division.

Even though I have plenty of evidence of how easily my kids learn when given the freedom to do it in their own time and in their own way, there are still times when I'm amazed at how their minds just pick things up. One of my earliest "unschooling math" moments was when Nathan was only 3 or 4 (this was related to me by Joe as he happened to be the parent that was home at the time). Nathan was sitting at the table playing with a bunch of Cheerios. After messing around with them for a while, he announced, "Hey dad, four 3's makes twelve!!" He had divided them up into nice little piles and counted them, all on his own.

Fast forward a year or so, and we're all in the car on our way to a holiday gathering. I overhear the boys in the back seat in some intense discussion. All of a sudden I hear Nathan heatedly announce, "Noah, I told you, infinity is the biggest number!!" Okay. I asked Nathan, gently, just out of curiosity, if he understood what "infinity" meant. He looked at me with that "why wouldn't I" expression and patiently explained "that means it goes on and on forever". Glad he got that figured out before the tender age of six.

Lately, I've been noticing both boys have an increasing comfort level manipulating numbers. When I told Noah that an event he was looking forward to was two weeks away, he promptly announced, "That's 14 days!". He easily told me that 3 weeks was 21 days, and 4 weeks was 28 days. One night we were on the couch watching cartoons when we mentioned that another show would be on in five minutes. Noah quickly informed us that that was 300 seconds. Another evening a few weeks ago, Joe came home with a wad of cash and Nathan asked to count it. It was a stack of 20's, and I watched as he easily counted it out: 20, 40, 60, 80, 100, 120 bucks!!

Clearly they are mastering multiplication, without a workbook in sight!! Most importantly, they are doing it because they want to, because it has meaning to them in their life, not because someone told them they should.