When I first started to embrace unschooling a couple of years ago, the most difficult concept for me to grasp was that of children learning math, reading, spelling, you know...school subjects...without the benefit of textbooks, or computer programs. Without teaching, even. As so many experienced unschoolers will tell you, children will learn...all the time...just by living their lives. Through play, and interaction with others, and being allowed to just be, kids will learn. It takes most parents a while to realize this, though...and sometimes even longer to actually witness it.
Here then, are some of our math-y unschooling highlights from this past week:
Tori has been playing on Neopets.com and is keeping track of her Neopoints. She helped me set up a new account in my name (Tori is *quite* the computer geek in our home 
), and she brought out a ruler so that I could show her how tall my Wocky (my online pet) would be. Since we received the girls' CAT (California Achievement Test) results a few weeks ago, Tori has asked to do more testing (Shelby just rolls her eyes at this!). I've been hesitant to start "testing", so I've shown her some sites online where she can play math games (here's a good one: http://www.gamequarium.com/index2.htm). She has been learning about fractions and quadrilaterals from these games, as well as basic math facts (addition and subtraction, some multiplication).
Ashlyn is way into gaming lately, and has been keeping track of her points on games like "Animal Crossing" and "Super Smash Brothers Melee". Here are two great AC sites: http://www.animal-crossing.com/wildworld/ and http://www.animalcrossingcommunity.com/.
One day last week, I had on my "999" shirt (it actually says: "999--Evil When I Do Handstands"). So anyway, Ashlyn is commenting on my shirt, saying how close 999 is to 1,000. Yes, I told her...999+1=1,000, and 1,000-1=999, and I even mentioned that ten times one hundred equals one thousand. So on and so forth.
Out of the blue, Ash asks me, "Mama, is there such a thing as one thousand-thousand?".
Ummm...WOW?!? I have to admit...that blew my mind.
So I told her, "Well, I think I see what you're thinking about. There is a number like one thousand-thousand, but most people call it something else".
I then proceeded to write the number 1,000 on a sheet of notebook paper, telling her that 1,000 is a 1 followed by three zeros. I then added three zeros to the end, and before I could even ask her what she thought this new number was, she blurts out, "Mama...isn't that a million?!?".
And she was so excited, because she knew she was onto something big...even though this was a concept I'd never taught her. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure where she could have picked up this little bit of knowledge.
Just through living, I suppose.
4 Comments
I appreciate having the chance to read this sort of thing – the specifics of “unschooling” in action. Our home schooling style is really kind of a “schooling” – “unschooling” pushmi-pullyu
. (Yeah – I liked Dr. Doolittle when I was a kid). Plenty of planned goals and curricula, but plenty of emphasis on natural learning too. That’s what seems to work for us right now. Anyhoo … I am always eager to read about others’ unschooling adventures.
By the way, I also wanted to mention that I loved reading about Ashlyn’s math discoveries. Cool that she realized – *on her own* – what “a million” is. I love those moments. J is into *big* numbers – and trying to grasp how they work. Last year he wrote the numeral for google on the white board – carefully writing out 100 zeroes.
Then I mentioned googleplex (which contains google zeroes). Neither of us have ever been able to wrap our minds around *that* one.
Caught your blog from the carnival..thanks so much for the animal crossing links…we’re new to it but the girls (Emily 7, Rachel 6) and I really love it so far!
I loved reading about this.
I still remember the pride and joy when I figured out that counting past 100 was the same as counting to 100 with just a number in front. It was a huge deal to me to get.