How to get rid of your math curriculum

Posted on by

Math is the subject parents love to teach right?  Wrong! Even though I have a minor in math, I can still get frustrated trying to explain what seems like simple concepts to my children.  The traditional math curriculum utilizes a number of worksheets to cover each new topic.  At our house many times there is a search for the math book before we can even get started.  We have tried several different math curriculum. The problem we encounter is the different learning styles of our different children.

My goal is not to have my child finish their X grade math book.  My goal is for my child to master the math concepts.  I know I never mastered some of the most basic math concepts so I vowed that my children would master math.  Since we started homeschooling I have tried to chose curriculum with that goal in mind.

Most curriculum is still based on the grade levels with lots of workbook activities.  With math, you usually need instructions at all levels.  Sometimes while trying to teach my kids, I would show one of my kids a Khan video.  My daughter was having problems recently so I decided to look at Khan academy once again.  Below is an example of one of the Khan videos.


Multiplication 5:  2-digit times a 2-digit number: Multiplying a 2-digit number times a 2-digit number

I was surprised that Khan academy has been updated to taking tutoring to the next level and paves the way for eliminating math curriculum.  Now at Khan academy you can track your childs progress along with watching all the tutorial videos. Students can also practice on the computer with thier progress being recorded.  You can create a mentor account at khanacademy.org.  You can then add each of your children under your account.  To do this you just log into your account and then add /createchild to the end of the web address and then press enter

www.khanacademy.org/createchild

The only problem I had was that my passwords I chose were too weak and therefore not accepted.  Finally I capitalized the first letter of my password and it was then accepted.  Once you have added your children you can then watch their progress as their mentor.

Creating accounts for your children on Khan academy now allows you to track the progress of your children.  There are some other advantages also to using Khan academy.

Advantages:

  1. I don’t get frustrated with explaining again and again.
  2. They can watch the videos as often as they like
  3. Self paced learning – learn for mastery.
  4. Record of individual progress.
To see more of Khan academy in action you can watch the Ted talk about Khan Academy.

Last but not least there is also an iPad/iphone app for Khan academy.

So have I gotten rid of my math curriculum?  Not yet but in the future hopefully I can track the progress of my children with Khan academy.  Who know maybe one day I can just say we use Khan academy for our curriculum.  What do you use for your math curriculum?  Do you use a tablet in place of worksheets?

  • Sandy Solis

    Actually, we are now using Khan Academy as our sole math curriculum. The only issue I’ve had so far is that I am not sure if I should be concerned about an “exact” order that my son learns his math in or if I should just let him sort of follow the chart they have. The charts seem to give options and I’m just not sure how to best follow them. My son is in the 9th grade, has always struggled with math and has a Central Auditory Processing delay that has caused him to struggle since we started homeschooling him in kindergarten. It took us a long time to figure out what was going on with him and finally last year we started learning therapy. The therapy caused me to start looking for another answer for his math curriculum and then I took a serious look at Khan. (we’d used it a few times with my other two boys for math work) It seems that he is becoming more proficient in recalling his math facts, is growing stronger in the things we’ve covered to this point and is more willing to take on new challenges. I will watch him closely as we move into “higher level” math to make sure the program still works for him but, for now, I’m delighted to have found something that is helping him and am hopeful that he will catch up to where he should be for his age.