Monday, April 26, 2010

Living Math






It's amazing how you can homeschool for years and not hear even a whisper about some of the amazing resources out there. Up until now I've taught math like most homeschoolers. We have math textbooks and then we chat about math in life. Then I read a post over at Bakers Dozen where she mentioned living MATH books. Wait. What?! So as I try and fill our schooling with more and more living books, how did I not know there were loads of living math books? So I swaggled (yeah swaggled. It's a word. And if it's not, it is now. Swaggle aka search with swagbucks) So I swaggled the Sir Cumference series she mentioned. Then I saw the "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought"s and then I clawed myself out of the vortex I had been sucked into and it was closer to 2AM. Yeah. Let's not tell Clay. I'm sure I slept until 9 the next morning. Let's not tell Clay that either.

Living Math = Literature books that teach math. Literature. A book I can sit with a 6yo and read and I won't see eyes glaze over. Stores of mummies and knights. Adventure with math. Yeah, it's that amazing. Let me send you on a trip to look at loads of great math books too.

Now I think the best of the best is LivingMath.Net . LivingMath not only has a huge Living Math books resource list in all sorts of categories, it has endless ideas for math games, math websites and more. And despite having looked at that site a lot recently just discovered it offers a historical living math curriculum that while I've only read samples looks like it could be a great supplement. And the book list for it looks amazing!

Here's a little taste of the endless living math books out there:
There is a series of 6 Sir Cumference book and every one gets rave reviews!





I had to stop myself. I have so many math books on my wish list. I wanted to add 100 more! In fact I published the post and am now editing to add a couple more like the History of Counting. Hope your feed readers shows the added books. Here's a great Amazon tag list too "Teaching Math Through Children's Literature".

I think hands down one of my very favorite things about homeschooling is being able to teach my children in ways I never even imagined as a child. Off to swaggle some more so I can start buying some of these books :)

3 comments:

Beth Brown said...

So very cool! I've never heard of "Living Math" either!!! You know where I'm heading now -- TO CHECK IT OUT!! Thanks for the great information!

Darcy said...

OH!! Thanks..there are a couple of titles here that I haven't seen! WOOT! I love homeschooling!

Shell said...

Interesting. Have you started school for this season yet. I read about these this morning from a Homeschool newsletter and though hmmm. Living books is something I think I'd like to switch over too. My add son would benifit from this type of schooling I think.

What type of homeschool do you consider yourself. Would you mind sharing with this newbie homeschool mom. This is my 3rd year and I've used Abeka and I don't know if I want to use it anymore. To much like pschool.

Blessings,
Shell