How Can I Teach Math To My Child?
Hi, are you a homeschooling mom? Fantastic! So was I, for many years. I loved it! But my son is grown now and has already graduated from college, so my journey has ended. It was a wonderful season in my life, but I do remember feeling insecure at times because I was doubtful of my abilities to teach him everything. Are you feeling that too? Some of the subjects we must teach are easy because we all have our favorites, but rarely does a homeschooling mom know how to teach every subject perfectly. My two worst ones were history and spelling. How do you teach a subject when you got a "C-" in that class? That's when you need a good curriculum.
I thought I had a good math curriculum, until we got to multiplication.
I asked my son, "How much is four times three?" He had no idea. I said, "Four plus four is eight, so how much is eight plus four?" He still had no idea. I couldn't believe it! My son did not know how to add single digit numbers in his mind. Math was my best subject, so that came easy to me. Right then, I knew I had to stop using that curriculum and come up with my own way to teach math. That night I prayed for a way to teach math to my son. I could "see" numbers in my mind, so I needed a way to teach my son to "see" numbers in his mind too. By morning I had my answer and I started math over from the beginning.
Within a few weeks, my son began to excel at basic math. We quickly moved on to fractions, but then the same thing happened. The math book I had wasn't getting the point across, so I had to make up my own way to teach fractions, too. Just a month or two later, my son could multiply mixed numbers! His self-confidence was soaring because every day he heard how smart he was.
Then we got to algebra. I found algebra to be super easy in high school, but the math curriculum I had was ridiculous! The way they described each concept was ten times harder than it had to be. How could anyone learn this way? At night, I would read each lesson to myself, then in the morning, I would translate it in my own words with my own methods, so my son could understand how to solve for x. This worked so well that he was able to enroll in college at age 16. Not only that, once he enrolled, he was hired to be a math tutor at the college where he shared many of my ways of teaching to the struggling public school kids. He even taught himself Calculus II. Today, he is a Structural Engineer.
While our son was in college, my husband suggested I write my own math curriculum. He reminded me of all the tricks I made up over the years to teach math to our son. It only took me a few minutes to get used to the idea, but it took me a few years to bring it to fruition. In 2011, I finished the first four volumes of the Learn Math Fast System, they covered 1st to 8th grade math.
By the following year, hundreds of homeschoolers had used the books and the feedback was encouraging! Adults were learning, struggling kids were learning, and to my surprise it worked wonders for students with dyslexia, too. Then requests started to pour in for high school math, so I kept writing. By 2015, I had finished all seven volumes and I could hardly keep them in stock. To date, we have helped thousands of students to learn math, but we want to teach them all.
Is math your worst subject? Don’t worry, we’ve got that covered. This math curriculum will show you how to teach math quickly and with complete comprehension of the subject. Now if only I could teach history...