Last year was the first time I'd even heard of living math and I was puzzled. "What is it? Is this ANOTHER thing to add to my homeschool to-do list?" I was surprised to find that it was easy to add living math to our current curriculum (which was A Beka Arithmetic). Living Math is in everyday life. I can't really give you a simple answer or a general outline to fully describe the great potential that is Living Math. You can read a children's math literature book (yes, they make them and no they aren't boring) and work a related activity to the book. You could also replicate the book results and come up with your own conclusions and record it in your math notebook.
Math Notebooks are essential with living math. My kids love their math notebook. In fact, it is the only part of my Kindy child's math lesson that she finds enjoyable. Anytime your child learns something new in math, just have him write down what they've learned and add some illustrated examples in their notebook. Next week when they can't remember what fractions are equivalent they can simply refer back to their notebook. I know I'm not giving living math it's full justice but there are some great articles that can explain in it much more detail.
My favorite living math article is written by
Jimmie on Squidoo. She does a fantastic job explaining living math and has some great links and ideas to get you started.
Free
Living Math Ideas download from Confessions of a Homeschooler. She has suggestions, ideas and printables to get you started. She makes it look so easy.
Math Notebooking is another article my Jimmie but this is on her Notebooking Fairy site.
Math Read Alouds are another key component to living math. Here is a
great book list by category. Your library should have most of the books already. Try them out before you buy and start building your living math library.
Another living math book list. This one is by title rather than by category.
This is a whole site devoted to nothing but living math. They have the ultimate book list and ideas for teaching living math.
Another great living math book list by category
To get you started on your math notebook you could by a composition book and use your scrapbooking supplies to embellish your pages and add more detail. You could also use a 3 ring binder and use printable
Math Journal Pages from the internet.
Math Notebooking article with links and practical advice. It's a nice break-down of what Living Math is and how easy it is to add to your homeschool day.
Loving Living Math Ebook. A how-to living math ebook for beginners for $8.95. I actually did buy this ebook and it was helpful but honestly for the price, I kind of expected more. I gleaned alot from the above articles but if you feel you need more hand-holding, you may want to buy the ebook.
While this blog post is more of an outline, I will use future posts to explain each component of living math in more detail.
*Math Notebooking
*Teaching Math with literature
*Everyday Living Math
All coming in the near future along with links to my favorite resources, tips and tricks and also pictures of our math notebooks.
UPDATE: Loving Living Math ebook turned out to be a lot more helpful than I thought. I flipped through it again recently (I printed the whole thing out) and found more ideas to improve our living math days. I still think it's a bit pricey but then again I'm a cheapskate but it's a very helpful book to anyone wanting to venture out into Living Math.
