Working Montessori Math into Homeschooling
The other day I received this question from a customer and I thought it was an interesting dilemma. Here's what she said:
"I have a question for you, and I wonder if you can help me out when you have some time. As you know, I am homeschooling my daughter. We use Montessori materials for language and science, but for math I have purchased a homeschooling math curriculum to use. My daughter is in first grade, and understands the concepts well (addition, subtraction, patterns, etc.), however, she is reluctant to do math work. She finds it "boring and too long” (her words).
The curriculum includes practice sheet and assessments that she needs to complete, as well as a lot of repetition of the math problems. I have also tried some games with her to teach her the concepts, but none of these have worked. Math has become a bad experience for the two of us. She complains, whines, and refuses to cooperate. I feel frustrated and helpless. What can I do?"
My answer:
"I’d be happy to try and help. First, let’s step back and look at all the dynamics that are going on. When you say things like "practice sheet and assessments", little bells go off for me. Both in Montessori and my own experience, a first grader shouldn't need to be completing those kinds of things. This does lead to the kind of behavior you speak of - complaining and whining - but that is the only way a child this age is able to tell you: "Mom, I don't want or need to do this!"
Children resist textbooks, workbooks, and worksheets because they sense an inherent irrelevance in the materials. A page of math problems with no real-life application is just busy work, and they know it. In a classroom situation, a child might not verbalize these feelings; they see their classmates doing the worksheets, which makes them feel like “everyone is doing it”, or they might not feel comfortable enough with the teacher to state their true feelings.
With mom, however, it's a different story! As you've seen, they feel no social pressure to comply just because you're telling them to. As I've browsed homeschooling websites, I found a quote by one homeschooling mom (her kids are now grown) who said: "The more I tried to make it similar to real school, the worse it was. It wasn't until I switched gears completely and let them do the leading that things fell into place".
Maria Montessori felt that children needed a strong foundation in concrete operations before moving to abstract. By concrete operations, I mean using objects, beads, or tiles to solve math problems rather than just doing them on paper. In this way, children begin to understand the why and how of the math they are doing. Most children (with a few exceptions) respond really well to hands-on math materials, especially if they are given the freedom to choose when, how, and where to work with them.
I'm not familiar with the curriculum you're using, but if you take 10 different math curriculums, I'm sure that there'd be 10 different ways to teach addition, 10 different timelines for when each skill should be learned, and on and on. In other words, the "requirements" of many curriculums are mostly arbitrary. In Montessori, the math curriculum starts with a hands-on approach to the decimal system and slowly builds off of that. If you haven’t investigated Montessori math, that would be a great place to start. Two great resources are:
Shu-Chen Jenny Yen's Online Montessori Albums (they are for 3-6 but many activities overlap with 6-9)
Montessori Foundation’s Teacher Manuals (you can purchase a 3-6 or 6-9 math album here)
I would recommend that you lighten up on math with your daughter – put out some hands-on math activities and let her be the one to choose to do them. Trust her to know what she needs to work on. If you can get a copy of Maria Montessori's book "The Secret of Childhood", I think you would be fascinated. She never imposes her own ideas on the child; she only observes and sees what they teach her about themselves. It's awesome.
It sounds like this could be a pivotal moment for you as you decide what to do in the next few months. At a certain point, all Montessori teachers and homeschoolers have to relinquish some control back to the child in order for there to be unrestricted learning. It’s something that I’ve struggled with too.
The "proof is in the pudding", as they say, and rather than worrying if your daughter gets certain test scores, or completes a certain number of worksheets, focus more on helping your daughter become creative, intelligent, thoughtful, and curious. After all, if she completes a worksheet, it begins and ends there. If she is allowed to learn freely, she can teach herself for the rest of his life.
I don't want to be preachy, and I know there's a lot to take in. At the very least, hopefully this will give you more options to pursue as you continue on your homeschooling journey."
Any thoughts, readers? I'd like to know what you think about this.
"I have a question for you, and I wonder if you can help me out when you have some time. As you know, I am homeschooling my daughter. We use Montessori materials for language and science, but for math I have purchased a homeschooling math curriculum to use. My daughter is in first grade, and understands the concepts well (addition, subtraction, patterns, etc.), however, she is reluctant to do math work. She finds it "boring and too long” (her words).
The curriculum includes practice sheet and assessments that she needs to complete, as well as a lot of repetition of the math problems. I have also tried some games with her to teach her the concepts, but none of these have worked. Math has become a bad experience for the two of us. She complains, whines, and refuses to cooperate. I feel frustrated and helpless. What can I do?"
My answer:
"I’d be happy to try and help. First, let’s step back and look at all the dynamics that are going on. When you say things like "practice sheet and assessments", little bells go off for me. Both in Montessori and my own experience, a first grader shouldn't need to be completing those kinds of things. This does lead to the kind of behavior you speak of - complaining and whining - but that is the only way a child this age is able to tell you: "Mom, I don't want or need to do this!"
Children resist textbooks, workbooks, and worksheets because they sense an inherent irrelevance in the materials. A page of math problems with no real-life application is just busy work, and they know it. In a classroom situation, a child might not verbalize these feelings; they see their classmates doing the worksheets, which makes them feel like “everyone is doing it”, or they might not feel comfortable enough with the teacher to state their true feelings.
With mom, however, it's a different story! As you've seen, they feel no social pressure to comply just because you're telling them to. As I've browsed homeschooling websites, I found a quote by one homeschooling mom (her kids are now grown) who said: "The more I tried to make it similar to real school, the worse it was. It wasn't until I switched gears completely and let them do the leading that things fell into place".
Maria Montessori felt that children needed a strong foundation in concrete operations before moving to abstract. By concrete operations, I mean using objects, beads, or tiles to solve math problems rather than just doing them on paper. In this way, children begin to understand the why and how of the math they are doing. Most children (with a few exceptions) respond really well to hands-on math materials, especially if they are given the freedom to choose when, how, and where to work with them.
I'm not familiar with the curriculum you're using, but if you take 10 different math curriculums, I'm sure that there'd be 10 different ways to teach addition, 10 different timelines for when each skill should be learned, and on and on. In other words, the "requirements" of many curriculums are mostly arbitrary. In Montessori, the math curriculum starts with a hands-on approach to the decimal system and slowly builds off of that. If you haven’t investigated Montessori math, that would be a great place to start. Two great resources are:
Shu-Chen Jenny Yen's Online Montessori Albums (they are for 3-6 but many activities overlap with 6-9)
Montessori Foundation’s Teacher Manuals (you can purchase a 3-6 or 6-9 math album here)
I would recommend that you lighten up on math with your daughter – put out some hands-on math activities and let her be the one to choose to do them. Trust her to know what she needs to work on. If you can get a copy of Maria Montessori's book "The Secret of Childhood", I think you would be fascinated. She never imposes her own ideas on the child; she only observes and sees what they teach her about themselves. It's awesome.
It sounds like this could be a pivotal moment for you as you decide what to do in the next few months. At a certain point, all Montessori teachers and homeschoolers have to relinquish some control back to the child in order for there to be unrestricted learning. It’s something that I’ve struggled with too.
The "proof is in the pudding", as they say, and rather than worrying if your daughter gets certain test scores, or completes a certain number of worksheets, focus more on helping your daughter become creative, intelligent, thoughtful, and curious. After all, if she completes a worksheet, it begins and ends there. If she is allowed to learn freely, she can teach herself for the rest of his life.
I don't want to be preachy, and I know there's a lot to take in. At the very least, hopefully this will give you more options to pursue as you continue on your homeschooling journey."
Any thoughts, readers? I'd like to know what you think about this.
Comments:
If only they would have done this with me as a little girl who just didn't get math....
Great article Lori. I passed this on again to a friend whose daughter has trouble learning math in school for most likely the very reasons the girl in the example is. Only difference is that my friend, who is Canadian, lives in Germany. She would love nothing more than to keep her daughter home and homeschool her, but unfortunately it is illegal to do that there.
I hope she can take your suggestions and work with her around the German Public School System.
That's exactly what I thought when I took the Montessori training - if only I had had the golden beads, bead frame, and binomial cube when I was learning math! How much easier and clearer the concepts would have been to learn.
I hope your friend can do some hands-on things with her daughter at home. It makes me really grateful that I live in a country that allows homeschooling!
Montessori Math really intrigues me. Years ago I attended a homeschooling conference where a representative from HSLDA spoke. He gave us statistics about how well homeschoolers do compared to public schoolers. There was a huge difference in language arts skills, but not a big difference in math. Then I attended a session on unschooling, and it became clear that even many unschoolers use textbooks for math. I believe that the homeschoolers' better scores reflect only the individualized tutoring they receive, because there usually is no difference in method.
Recently I did an online search for information on long term effects of Montessori education and found this: http://www.montessori-ami.org/research/outcomes.pdf
It shows that children who went to Montessori schools did much better than their peers in math and science at high school.
So I thought, here's my answer as to how to do math. Unfortunately I can't go get Montessori training to teach my children in that manner. So I have been considering Schiller Math, which is supposed to be based on Montessori methods. I have not seen it in person yet. I did read the list of manipulatives that comes with it and was unimpressed. Have you ever seen Schiller Math? If you have, would you recommend it for homeschooling families?
You're right, Montessori math definitely produces better results than traditional math. As far as Schiller math, I have glanced over it but never seen it in person.
My advice is to stick with traditional Montessori math materials - many can be made at home and others can be purchased from lower-priced Montessori vendors. I agree with you, the manipulatives shown with Schiller Math look like common items found in the home or a teacher store - probably for a lot less $.
Hi Lori,
My daughter is almost 3.5 and I am planning to homeschool her. I have decided to purchase montessori curriculum manuals. However, I am not quite sure if there is a big differnce in the quality of the manuals from The Montessori Foundation and NAMC, North American Montessori Council. I do know that there is a HUGE difference in price. Do you have any adivce on which set of manuals would be the best?
Great question! I'm not familiar with the NAMC manuals - can you provide a link? The Montessori Foundation Manuals are excellent, but I can't compare the two.
The cost of Montessori materials for math seem to be the biggest barrier to using them at home. The language and practical life materials lend themselves pretty well to DIY, especially with Lori's help!
The math spindles, red rods, red and blue rods, golden bead sets, binomial and trinomial cubes, all the math charts, and fractions material would be on my list of minimum requirements. If you use a combination of DIY and second hand purchases, it is doable...
For the little girl mentioned in the blog, what about reintroducing her slowly to math? Have her pass around a plate of cookies, breaking the odd cookie in half, and other non-traditional exercises until the bad association with math is a bit behind her.
I agree, the math materials definitely cost more and are harder to make than math/language/cultural. For someone completely impaired, purchasing a Montessori-based curriculum like SchillerMath wouldn't be a bad idea.
And of course, eBay is full of deals if you don't mind slightly lower quality or used items.
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