Our Waldorf Homeschool Journey

For the majority of this year Juliette has been concentrating on languages and other subjects, but only a little maths. Slowly teaching her to trust me, that if she gets it wrong it’s not the end of the world. It is a nasty memory from her private school days that has put her off maths. I’ve pretty much got this sorted, but introducing any new concepts has still been a no-no!

Well it had to be done, so now that we’re nearly finished our English for the year, I had to try a new maths concept again.

I use the Waldorf method of teaching Maths concepts. We tried divide again today, I did touch on it last year and met with such resistance, I left it well alone, and continued with multiplication, addition and subtraction, all of which she’s now nearly finished for the year. Anyway I waited for Jules to be ready. My gut instinct told me now was good.

Last night I made her a card with a drawing of Diddy Divide on it. Underneath Diddy I wrote Always Fair, Always Equal. It was waiting for her at her main lesson today.

She loved it! Hurdle 1 crossed! She was receptive and wanted to know more…

I told her a story about the Sum Farm, she knows the farm, Polly Plus, Mia Minus and Tommy Times all live there.

Well Diddy Divide runs the shop. She’s always fair, and always gives her customer equal amounts of goods. I used eggs as an example. The farmer gave Diddy 2 eggs today to sell in the shop. (I was the customer, Jules was Diddy) I came into the shop and said,” I’m the only customer today, I’ll have all the eggs. She wrote the sum with me as she went, so she had a 2 and a divide sign, and then put a 1 as there was only 1 customer, than = and then the answer, with ease. She never got stuck with a single answer. It was fantastic! She got it!

Before we opened the shop we made 12 playdough eggs, so we did the shopping with “real eggs”. Again I was incorporating nearly all her senses into the lesson. Sight, sound, touch, smell (the playdough has lavender oil in it). On Bakers Day this week the Farmer will give her the cakes and she’ll divide them for real between all of us, and our neighbours. That way, we’ve incorporated the sense of taste as well. (If there is an odd number that cannot be divided easily, the dog is going to get lucky!)

Well we finished all the sums we could with the numbers up to 12. We packed away the eggs, and without me saying a word Jules turned to me and said, “You know I don’t really like maths, but this was fun, Can we do it again?”

That was all I needed to hear. My heart broke just a little bit with joy, I’ve struggled to get her away from the negative image of maths she’s had. A reward like no other today! Of course I played it real cool, with sure we can, I’ll put some sums together for you tomorrow. But inside I was jumping up and down, screeching and hugging!

May your Homeschool be filled with love and rewards,

Susan

Filed under: Homeschool on July 9th, 2007