Nothing can produce tears faster during the school day than homeschool math! Parents often say it is the toughest subject, takes the longest part of the day, and causes the most battles. And yet, we all know how vitally important math is for academic success.
Learn how you can make elementary homeschool math more fun, smoother, and faster for a more positive daily experience. If you have young learners, discover what should you focus on in those early years during math instruction to make it more seamless in the later years.
10 Tips for Happy Homeschool Math
Homeschoo Math Tip#1: Do it 1st
Most kids are fresh and eager in the mornings. They may start off a bit sluggish, but by the time they’ve had breakfast and prepped for the day, their young minds are ready to tackle tough subjects. In our home, I’ve found hitting homeschool math as the very first subject of the day is the best plan. By the end of the school day, the cumulative struggles and challenges of the day add up and your child (not to mention Mom!) may have used up all their patience for tedious math problems. When we put math later in the day, we tend to have more tears and it takes forever to complete. Be smart and schedule it first.
Homeschool Math Tip #2: Start a Year Early
Get a jump start on math by skipping the kindergarten math level! Most kids are ready to dive into 1st grade math in kindergarten then continue on the regular progression. Plus, most math curricula cover all of the kindergarten concepts again in 1st grade, just as a quicker pace.
In many families, parents naturally teach their preschool age children math basics – counting, numeral recognition, simple patterns, shapes, calendar, and so forth. This happens almost without even realizing it just by reading books and day-to-day conversation within the home!
If that’s the case with your little one, then there is no need to repeat these concepts for an entire year of kindergarten. Instead, jump into 1st grade homeschool math and accelerate their math instruction. Why? This leaves room in later years for slowing the math down as it gets harder or opening up options for higher math. It provides you with greater flexibility later on during the years when math is likely to become a battle or during junior high and high school when you begin to see which math will be most beneficial to your child.
In our house, we have used a mix of Saxon Math and Teaching Textbooks. Following the Saxon sequence and skipping kindergarten math, the teaching sequence looks like the chart below.
Homeschool Math Tip #3: Teach Precision and Attention to Detail
As a child, I never had any love for math. Instead, I was a free-spirit who couldn’t understand the restraint and strict rules required. But as a teacher, I’ve come to understand that one of the keys to homeschool math success is careful attention to detail and precision. If you are just starting out in your homeschool math journey, put emphasis on accuracy and details while your child is young. Be careful to keep it positive – it’s easy for a child to loose heart when they feel they are getting many problems wrong each day.
Simply stress that precision and methodology are one of the secret keys to making math work. After all, you wouldn’t want a doctor to be sloppy or imprecise when he did surgery on you, right? Precision may not come easily or naturally for your kids. Perhaps this is one reason why right-brained, creative children often balk at math – they find it constraining and boring. (Wait – that wasn’t only me, right?) Free-spirit kids will benefit from having a roadmap for success, and that includes the simple but powerful idea that precision and accuracy are vital to math.
Homeschool Math Tip #4: Use Hands-on Manipulatives
All children benefit from interactive hands-on learning. So, build yourself a math kit of must-have items. Just remember – for homeschool math, you don’t need huge quantities of math manipulatives because you are only usually working with 1 or 2 children at a time. Young children learn best when they can touch and interact with real materials to count, sort, measure, and use to make patterns. Using hands-on manipulatives is not a crutch or cheating! This is how kids learn and make abstract concepts real, especially kinesthetic and visual learners. Just don’t rush out to buy everything at once because some homeschool math curricula come with the needed math materials for each year.
Math Manipulatives to keep on hand:
- Counting bears (or bunnies, beans, beads, etc.)
- 100s chart
- 1-inch tiles
- 1-inch cubes and/or 1-cm cubes
- 2-sided counters
- Pattern blocks
- 3-D wooden shapes
- Balance scale
- Plastic clock with movable hands
- Unifix cubes or snap cubes
- Dice
- Dominoes
- Coins (real or plastic)
Homeschool Math Tip #5: Use a Whiteboard
Another item to add to your math stash is a couple of whiteboards. You can find these cheap at a dollar store! It’s not uncommon for many math lessons to contain 40-50 problems in one daily lesson. Little hands get fatigued from pushing a pencil and erasing errors. Plus, for some reason I’ll never understand, they rarely give kids enough space in math books to solve the problems. Try using a whiteboard instead! The markers slide effortlessly across the paper and erase quickly, making it smoother and easier for tactile kids. The bright colors from the white-board markers can also help kids focus better. Another advantage to math on a white board is that it helps a visually over-stimulated child to focus on only one problem at a time while allowing them the opportunity to write bigger.
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Homeschool Math Tip #6: Keep a Stock of Graph Paper
Graph paper is another essential in your homeschool math kit! It can come in handy for lining up 3-4 digit subtraction or multiplication problems by helping kids learn to stay within the correct columns. Another time-period when we used graph paper frequently is when older elementary students get into complicated long-division. This tip from another mom was a life-saver for us when our dyslexic child struggled due to being unable to keep the numbers in the proper columns. Graph paper made all the difference in the world! Needless to say, graph paper also comes in handy for graphing and many algebra and geometry problems for older students.
Homeschool Math Tip #7: Do Math Together
In our house, nothing can discourage kids faster than tedious, challenging math all alone. There are a lot of pesky details and sequences to hold in your mind when you do math, and some kids get overwhelmed then want to give up. One of the best strategies we have found is to do math together instead of alone. Depending on the ages of your children, they may be able to work together, racing to complete one problem then checking each other’s work to make sure it is correct. With older children, this method worked well racing to complete problems before Mom could answer it. I often grab a whiteboard at the same time as my kids and try to do their math problems alongside of them to see if they can beat me. They are enormously satisfied when they can work more quickly than Mommy and even more pleased if I get the problem wrong! Plus, working together is an excellent way to model your thinking and talk through your methodology after working a problem.
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Homeschool Math Tip #8: Make it Positive
Homeschool math can bring on the tears faster than any other subject, so make a special effort to make math light and fun! How? Lots of ways! When possible, turn math into a game. Be positive about math and show them how vitally important it is in our world. Don’t hesitate to reward your student for each problem or problem set, too. When one of ours was going through a particularly strong, “I HATE MATH” phase, we made a deal to eat an M&M at the end of each row of math problems. Remember how you rewarded your little one during potty training? Most children respond well to positive reinforcement whether it is verbal or physical combined with the delight of positivity. So, get creative and find ways to make math a happy time of day.
Homeschool Math Tip #9: Make Anchor-Charts
With math, there are many details a child must remember and hold in their mind. This task is difficult for many kids! So, help them out by creating anchor charts. What’s an anchor chart? It’s a chart you make to help organize foundational math concepts in a way that is easy for them to understand. For example, an anchor chart might show all the coins with their names and values or listing and drawing all the 3-d shapes. Later, you might make a math chart showing how to do long division or explaining metric unit measurement.
These homeschool math anchor charts can be simple and home-made on the spot the day of a new lesson. Over the following days, if you review the anchor chart, it serves as a method to reteach and continually expose your child to the new concept in a non-threatening way. You can keep a spiral math notebook for this purpose or use individual pieces of paper.
Just keep your anchor charts collected for frequent review and spend 2-5 minutes at the beginning of your math session zipping through them! Besides the deep learning involved with frequent repetition, this also helps kids really appreciate just how many new concepts they have learned over the course of the year. Celebrate their accomplishment!
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Homeschool Math Tip #10: Focus on the Facts & Skip-Count
Starting at a very early age in kinder, 1st, and 2nd grades, focus on skip-counting. There are many wonderful You-tube videos that teach skip counting with fun songs and rhythms. These little ditties will make multiplication facts much easier in the upper elementary years!
No matter how you swing it, kids need to memorize their math facts! Knowing basic arithmetic facts is just as important to math as learning the letters and letter sounds is to reading. In fact, it’s even worth slowing down to make sure math facts are mastered before moving on. When a child can easily add and subtract, it makes multiplication and division much easier. Similarly, when a child can quickly compute multiplication and division facts, it makes all the higher math from pre-algebra on much faster and smoother.
During those middle school years, math suddenly gets challenging and complex. However, if a child already has all those math facts mastered, they can save their brain energy for the new concepts and glide over the arithmetic involved in the problems.
Homeschool math doesn’t have to be a battle-zone everyday! Give some of these simple strategies a try and see if they help make math time more of a positive experience for your kids. Leave me a comment and share your favorite tips for making math quicker and easier!
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