Thursday, April 10, 2008

Unintentional Unschooling

Lately Hunter has been asking me a lot of questions about numbers. The only formal schooling that we have been doing is a phonics program and occasionally we will touch on numbers, but just familiarizing him with numbers 1-10. So the questions have run the gamut from what does a 45 look like to how much is 1,000,000. The other night he was deep in thought, as he usually is, and then asked me if you could spell numbers just like you can spell words. Of course you can, GENIUS BOY!! So eagerly I got out the white board and wrote out 1-10 with their corresponding spellings. He was very pleased with that and tried to sound out each word. Then we continued talking about numbers and he wanted to know what 10,000 looked like. So I showed him.. then on a whim I said "hey I can show you something cool with numbers, how to add!" and he was very excited so I wrote out some 1+1=, 2+1=, etc.. problems on the board and talked to him about how addition works. Then we spent a good 30-45 minutes writing out problems for each other. I would write one for him and then he'd do one for me... mine were HARD like 10,000+10! I was so surprised that he came up with numbers like that. He did really well with that so I've started incorporating some addition into our daily schooling. He really seems to enjoy it. Today he wasn't as into it and we only did a few problems. I'm being very careful not to push anything because he is really enjoying learning and I don't want to squelch that excitement. I think I may look for some little swords or knights or something to use as counters for math to make it more interesting to him. Oooh or maybe some army men. Those are cheap and easy to find.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

That's so neat Sarah! I'd like to see the phonics program you are using with him...I am looking for something for Lily right now besides just my brain. :) How cool for Hunter!