Living Math

I found LivingMath.net at the beginning of this year and have found it to be an absolutely wonderful math resource. From the website:

I want to build a bridge. I'd like to close the gap between math and history, science, literature and humanity created by the isolated way we traditionally approach math education.

In teaching my own children, tutoring and furthering my own self education, I've found that math history and literature humanizes math, makes it come alive, and provides the context needed to enjoy and retain learning. Early exposure to real mathematics in real settings without requiring mastery of arithmetic on a set timetable has been a key to the incredible ease my kids have attained mastery when the time is right for them.

The website is chock full of ideas for different ways to approach math and the related email list is a wonderful place to ask questions and get lots of feedback about all sorts of ways to approach math. You will find lots of ways to approach math from a hands-on, holistic pov in addition to lots of discussions about all sorts of different math curricula. I love the mix and it works great with our approach this year of focusing on different math concepts and pulling in a variety of resources.

I especially like her ideas on approaching math from a history and literature perspective. This approach has worked really well with Jason so far…he really likes the Penrose, the Mathematical Cat books and The Number Devil which have been great at exposing him to a variety of math concepts. Reading about them and getting familiar with the concepts will help as we get more and more into them. He seems really drawn to certain concepts like Fibonacci numbers. We have also been reading a bit about the mathematicians themselves and that has given an added dimension to our learning (I personally have been enjoying this aspect as well as I love history!) I have found that a lot of the folks on the LivingMath.net email list have right-brained/visual-learners. Which makes sense, I think, as we tend to have very non-traditional learners and are always on the look out for new and creative ways to approach math!

Definitely check it out. The website could take you a little while to work through as there are tons of great ideas and especially book recommendations and reviews.

Enjoy!

~Stephanie

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[Robin]