Willow using her “nature paint brush” to follow ten’s form
Although we haven’t officially begun our homeschooling year, we have begun some math practice through our Wild Math curriculum. Can I just say that I’m obsessed?! Math was always a dreaded topic during my education as a kid, and it lead to so many confidence issues. I flunked nearly ever math class I’d ever taken due to not understanding the materials and general disinterest; although admittedly, I became great at math after my schooling career ended (ha, go figure). So naturally, when I found this curriculum I fell in love with it. It’s such a gift that my daughters have a great chance at loving math, unlike my relationship with it.
What I like most about Wild Math is that it’s completely nature-based. It’s also play-based, which is great because my girls barely even realize that they’re learning! We’ve been working on the Kindergarten level curriculum for Willow, and once September comes I’ll add in our grade 1 for Skyla (once we move out into the forest a bit more for our schooling).
We’re currently exploring the first half of our “Counting, Cardinality and Place Value” unit. The girls, so far, have learned the count sequence of numbers 1-20, their value, missing numbers in a sequence and how to write them out. Skyla was already familiar with this aspect of introductory math, but Willow is new to this foreign territory. None the less, she is really enjoying her lessons!
Our first lesson consisted of the girls setting out on an adventure to write numbers as I was calling them out. They were told to write the numbers with chalk on anything within our backyard (tree trunks, rocks, leaves, the ground, the deck, wooden boards, and whatever they wanted!). Our second lesson was about the number forms; as I wrote the numbers in chalk on the driveway, the girls “painted” the forms of the numbers with water and a nature paint brush (I’ll write a separate post for nature painting). They had such fun that they decided to sequentially jump over each number afterwards and shout them out as they jumped!
Our third lesson was our favorite so far – we created a “soup business” during playtime to learn the value of the numbers. Skye chose the type of business, naturally, as she loves anything business related. She was eager to make a business sign, so we found a piece of slate and she wrote her name-of-choice across it, “The Food Business”.
As Skye chose to handle the details, like picking the name and writing out the prices for each pot of soup, Willow took charge in making the soups. We wrote out the numbers on pieces of paper and placed them on the ground for our “number value” portion of the activity. We decided to pretend that the pieces of nature in which we lined up behind each of their numbers were vegetables that we were growing on our farm, which then became our soup ingredients as we “harvested them” and added them to the soups. Magically, grass became oregano, leaves became spinach, pinecones became potatoes, and so on! We used bamboo leaves as money, and each of us pretended over and over to be customers. We purchased our soup-of-choice and gave out the correct amounts owed.
I’m really looking forward to the rest of this curriculum, and following it through the grades! If you’re interested in learning more about Wild Math, check it out at: https://wildmath.ositracker.com/164863/12262
Naturally Katey 