Homeschool Math Help: Guidelines for Teaching Children Mathematics

Leaving aside the fact that some parents find it challenging to remember fraction rules or geometry proofs well enough to embark on an explanation, there are unique difficulties in math in both curriculum design and instruction. It is these two issues that we will focus on in this article.

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How are you supposed to know what to teach in third grade?

Getting Started

1. First of all, one potential source for homeschool math help are the state math standards that are published and are often available on the Internet and can be directly sent to homeschooling families.
2. Secondly, one can get the curriculum from the local public school district. Again, this is often available online.
3. Third, one can get the math textbooks used by the local district and simply work through it section by section.

In any one of those cases, one would seem to have access to a proper and complete third grade curriculum, right?

Wrong!

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Problems With Today's Math Curriculums
The established curriculum that you will get will have a long list of topics, some of which you might well find hard to understand what they are or how they fit in the third grade.

Moreover, as a parent, and not a math education professional, it could be very difficult to tell, what are the fundamental topics of 3rd grade math; that is, which topics need to be emphasized because they are essential to the mathematical mental development of your child, and also will form the conceptual and skill basis for subsequent topics.

Homeschool math help and guidance is vital in order to make the best curricular choice for your child's education. That is the fundamental difficulty of trying to use today’s official curricula: for various reasons that we will not address here, they contain an excessive number of topics and do not distinguish and emphasize the genuinely important topics.

So, instead of getting homeschool math help, when relying on official curricula, you're getting the opposite... weak or even confusing information on what math topics to focus on.

You’ll find the exact same problem in almost any American math textbooks you might buy. Ten or a dozen topics are presented with almost equal emphasis. In 3rd grade math, this might be addition and subtraction, regrouping, place value, fraction concepts, geometry concepts, multiplication activities, division, probability, and data analysis.

Are these all of equal importance when teaching children mathematics?

Should these all be emphasized the same way?

Should you spend one month on each one?

Or do some really need to be given more time and mastered more thoroughly than others?

You will be hard put to figure this out from the student’s math textbooks or even, if you’ve been able to get one, the teacher’s manuals.

That's a key reason why homeschool math help is needed from a source that is based on core math skills and not the "politics" involved that have watered down public school math curricula.

The problem you’re dealing with is that in each grade more topics have been included in the curriculum than can possibly be taught thoroughly. And as a consequence, the essential topics are not given adequate emphasis.

Homeschool Math Help: Finding the Right Math Resources
What you, as your child’s math instructor, need to do is get guidance or math coaching on what are the main topics to emphasize at each grade level. You will need to supplement those areas with extra work and practice.

A key point in homeschool math help and guidance is understanding this background information as to why American math education is distorted in this way and provides outlined curriculum guides at each level, allowing you to focus on the major topics at each point along the way.

In addition, throughout this site we offer links to good quality practice books and other materials, as well as some free practice worksheets that I have designed.

Unless you are confident in your background and experience in teaching math, you cannot rely on the local or state standards or the textbook you have in hand, but need guidance from an experienced math teacher and curriculum designer who speaks your language.

Homeschoolers also need guidance on scheduling and organizing the academic activities in their day. The Kid Friendly Homeschool Curriculum web site offers great tips about How to Homeschool your children successfully.

Teaching Aspect
The second point in homeschool math help is understanding the teaching aspect. Traditionally, math has been taught with direct instruction and practice, in other words the teacher explained how to do something and the child practiced with it until he or she could do it reliably. I know this sounds obvious. How did you learn to tie your shoes or hit a baseball or ride a bike? How did you teach your children to do the same?

However, in the past twenty years, this approach to teaching children mathematics has been challenged with the idea that the knowledge gained through direct instruction (that is to say, regular teaching) is somehow inauthentic or inferior, and also with the notion that practice is not really necessary for learning a concept or developing or retaining a skill.

The vast majority of parents find these educational theories obviously silly and wrong-headed. They are a big part of what has driven many to homeschooling, or in some cases, to traditionally structured independent schools.

But, from the teaching perspective in math, the homeschooling parent can still be put in a difficult and frustrating position because the curriculum and teaching materials available may well be designed and structured from the perspective of “experiential math.”

I am sorry to tell you that almost every elementary school math text book available is now written from this perspective.

For a parent who was taught through direct instruction and for whom direct instruction is the most natural and comfortable way to proceed, it can be frustrating and encumbering to work with materials designed with an alien and repulsive philosophy.

Homeschool Math Help: Tips to Find the Math Books That Work for You:
As you look at books that you might use, the simplest way to pick one congenial to your style is take a topic that you feel you could explain, for example, how to multiply two digit numbers, and then see how this is treated in the math textbooks you’re considering.

Is it directly explained in a step-by-step way? Is there a substantial amount of practice of gradually increasing difficulty? Do applications or practical problems then follow the practice? Is there follow up practice through subsequent sections of the book?

You are looking for materials that are like this, or as much like this as possible. You should feel in charge of your teaching: you can skip over activities based on explorations or writing or side topics irrelevant to the main topics of the grade; you can provide your own direct explanation even if the textbook you have doesn’t; and you can provide a generous amount of practice even if it is not incorporated into the text.

The reality is that skills practice brings conceptual development. Focus on the grade-appropriate skills, and everything will fall into place!

In summary, to homeschool math, you need a curriculum you can rely on, congenial and appropriate teaching materials, and a consistent teaching philosophy or methodology. With that in place, you have the opportunity for a rewarding educational experience with your child, and a chance to give him or her a better math education that 99% of American children today.

You can do it!

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