My aunt told me a story about her friend’s experience with homeschooling her elementary school aged daughter this past spring during the post Covid schooling scramble. Her friend had tried to teach her daughter about fractions and suddenly realized she couldn’t remember how to do some of the problems herself. I imagined her feelings of inadequacy and stress.This was not what she signed up for. Like all parents, she wanted the best for her daughter, and the idea that she had to be her daughter’s math teacher must have felt absurd.
I listened to the story, trying to empathize with my aunt’s friend, but the homeschooler in me was taking this to a really different place.
You don’t remember how to compute fractions? That’s kind of perfect. What a beautiful way to model learning and humility. What a beautiful way to connect with your daughter. Laugh about it. Wonder why you don’t remember how to do these problems. Do you remember learning about them when you were younger? What was that like for you? Did you stop using them when you left school? How often and when have you needed to use fractions as an adult? This kind of exploration; sitting in the unknown, not having a ready answer, takes courage. It is also a gift for our children. It brings real thinking and imagination into the mix.
This Ted Talk by Math For Love founder Dan Finkel, may empower you to even relish not having the answers and free you up to find the fun in mathematical thinking.
What fractions DO you consistently use as an adult? Look around and you will find them everywhere. Bake some cookies together and see where fractions appear. Pizza is a good one, too. Money is another option; take out the change jar and play around with it.
Have you passed the elementary level of fractions? Search online for some good tutorials and watch them together. Try to figure it out together. You will.
There is so much GOOD that can come from this kind of honest exchange with our kids. We can model some important skills; courage, questioning, critical thinking, creativity... I want my kids to unabashedly admit when they don’t know something. I want them to know how to find information when they need it. I want to create a home environment in which figuring things out feels dynamic and fun. We adults certainly don’t have all the answers, and pretending like we do can impede our children’s curiosity. Most of all, I want my children to think critically about what they are learning and why it is worth learning.
I love when my kids ask me questions I don’t know the answers to. It happens a lot.
Here is another Ted Talk that may be fun to bookmark as well, especially if you are pondering more advanced math learning in your homeschool.
One last thought, I remember hearing it said that often the most effective teachers of any given subject were those who struggled themselves with that subject. When we struggle with learning something it is easier to have patience with others who may need to take it slow.
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