Living Math Books: Coming to A Homeschool Near Me!!

I've heard of living books for history, but living books for math!? 

YES, please! 

I feel like we've been missing out...spending too much time on repetitive, mind numbing math. I knew we could teach history with living books, but how have I missed this fabulous way of teaching math?

Don't get me wrong, Saxon math is a very good curriculum...but for us the repetition was mind numbing for us. Doing the same thing over and over each day just with different numbers.

On a whim I decided to look up math books at our library. First, I searched to see if they had Life of Fred books...they don't...then, I noticed a whole list of math minded story books!

SAY WHAAAAT?

I had to know more. So, after my eldest son's woodworking class we headed to the library so that we I could look at these magical books. (My kids didn't give a hoot about what books I was interested in getting, they just wanted to play on the computers. *eyeroll*)

The first one I grabbed off the shelf and glanced at had me hooked! I scooped all of the children's math story books that were on the shelf...and promptly checked out 99% of them.

After we for home the kids wanted nothing to do with them. So I set the glorious books on the table and left them alone. I didn't want to force my children to read them...I wanted them to forget about them. I wanted them to forget the theme of today's library trip.

So, about an hour or so later while my oldest was using Xtramath and my 18mo was napping...so I decided to read a book to my daughter.(Sorting Through Spring, by Lizann Flatt) She wasn't too excited but she saw the cover of the book and was intrigued by the baby bird on the front.

She had NO idea it was actually a math book. We started reading and talking about rhythm, patterns, skip counting, and graphs. About half way through the story it asked her to make a graph, which she eagerly completed!

There wasn't a single complaint about why we had to do math! Who is this child? We sat on the couch side by side reading the book, talking about the patterns, thinking up a rhythm for raindrops, graphing frogs. I'm pretty sure she remembers more about this 'math' lesson than her last few lesson of Saxon math!

She wasn't thinking about how boring math was. She was thinking about the book, what we were reading, and just having a good time with her mama...LEARNING MATH!

I can not wait to continue using living math books in our homeschool.

Do you use living math books? Which ones are your favorite?

There are Amazon affiliate links in this post.

Mathematics Curriculum Choices to Check Out for Homeschool Newbies

When first starting out on the homeschooling journey it can be an overwhelming task researching what math curriculum to choose. A friend of mine recently started homeschooling and I sent her links to a few of my favorite math curriculum.

 3 free, 3 affordable, 3 supplemental online

FREE MATH CURRICULUM

• Easy Peasy All in One Homeschool This is a COMPLETE K-12, FREE curriculum. Lee, the author, has homeschooled her children for free for years and has put together what she has taught her children. It’s also meant to be more of an independent study, teaching children to be proactive in starting and continuing their work, asking for help when they need to. But it’s all written out to the day on what they need to do, so there isn’t ANY planning on your part…unless you want to add in more. The math is great as well and you can choose whatever level they need to be at and progress as quickly or as slowly as they need to.

• Ray's Arithmetic – This curriculum was used in the early 19th and 20th centuries. Teach intensive, and develops a strong sense of mental math.

• KHAN Academy—Early math through calculus! Free, independent, keeps track of their progress, and you can assign specific problems. Eli does this for 30 minutes a day.

AFFORDABLE-MODERATELY PRICED MATH CURRICULUM

• Teaching Textbooks $$ – computer based, workbook optional. Keeps grades for you. Independent work. 

• Beast Academy $ – textbooks and workbooks in comic book style. (currently available for 3rd , 4th –they are rolling our more over the next year.) This is what I picked up for Eli.

• Math Mammoth $ – printable, affordable…I do think it follows common core, but YOU’RE the teacher…you can change it up if you want to. 

SUPPLEMENTAL ONLINE GAMES

• Prodigy Game free - $ for membership —virtual wizarding world…You battle other players by answering math questions. Teacher/parent has the option to plan out what math subjects are covered and for how long.

• FunBrain - free —We haven't used this too much, but my kids often navigate to it in their free time to play their games. It really doesn't feel like they are doing school since they are playing games and having fun!

• IXL - free - $ membership — I like this website because it has all of the subjects listed out and you can choose specifically what you want your child to work on.

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