Highschool Math! {HSHS carnival edition #4}

Is anyone else shaking in their boots thinking about how to do math with older kids?! Today we'll have a look at how to handle math in the upper years. Thanks to others who have gone ahead, those of us who are just coming into the highschool years have much help and encouragement.

"...math appeals directly to the mind and, although it's as challenging as scaling a mountain, it can be just as rewarding. Good math teachers know not to drown lessons in too many words."

Charlotte Mason

Willa shares what her 4 grown homeschoolers did for mathematics in the homeschool and what her current high schooler is doing. With or without outside help, your students can be successful in college prep math!

How do you keep maths interesting when the high school years look like screeds of formulae to be memorised? The only answer I could come up with was similar to what we've done in the primary years; follow the child's lead and pace, but give the topic breadth with living books and other fun activities.  Catherine shares with us, Does math have to get boring during the teen years?

Many parents fear homeschooling through high school because of math. This article is for them. Lori Havens discusses the concerns that homeschooling parents have about high school math (and science), and shares how these fears are common, sadly, but unfounded. Get a dose of encouragement and reality from this veteran homeschooling mom, who considers herself barely average (at best!) in math, with one son now successfully graduated from college, the other now a student in electrical engineering at one of the top 5 engineering schools in the country!

I share very briefly about one way to use narration in math in, Keeping a Math Notebook.

Sue explores the questions, Do high schoolers really need to learn higher maths skills? If they do learn maths, what contributes to their success? And can structured maths courses play a part in the education of unschoolers? in When Will I Use All This Maths, Mum?

Updated!! (somehow these posts were originally omitted, please accept my apologies):

Erin shares how they strive to foster math thinkers in their home and search for the balance between meeting expectations and yet supporting each child in their varying talents, in the Maths Equation.

Sally talks from the perspective of the non-math person about different curricula for different students, and her friend Anne-Marie talks from the perspective of the math person about the same in Homeschooling High School Math.

And then on another note, we have some more general encouragement from our friends...

Jimmie Lanley shares her daughter's recovery from a spinal fusion surgery, Jimmie realized yet another layer of how wonderful homeschooling is in The Beauty of Homebound Homeschool.
This free printable notebooking page is designed for listening to presentations or speeches. Great for co-op classes. She shares, Keeping it Real You are Not Alone in your Homeschool Struggles about the chaos I see sometimes in my home also happens in the homes of others.

Connie shares some Encouragement of a Friend. I would like to submit one of my posts that was a part of the HomeSchool High link up. It had lots of views~ the encouragement to encourage one another resonated well with my readers and on social media.

As the end of the term comes to a close, I take a few minutes to record the achievements my son has accomplished. Recording these things as we go along makes the building of a narrative report card much easier at the year's end. Barb shares Homeschool Grades versus Achievements.


Charlotte Mason talks more about Mathematics.

"Arithmetic and Math don't appeal to most children, either, no matter how intelligent. Most children are baffled by math, although they may love reasoning out questions of life in literature or history. Since so many dislike those subjects, maybe we should take that as a hint and stop putting so much pressure on those subjects. It would make sense to push grammar and math if children's reason was waiting for us to develop it. But when we see that they have plenty of ability to reason in other subjects, we have to face the fact that they have plenty of reason. They have as much ability to reason as they have ability to love. They don't need us to give them subjects to develop their reason. Our job is to give them lots of material for their reason to work on. If their reason gets sharper, it will be a side effect as they learn their other subjects. (...)  A child who understands how immutable the laws of math are will never divide 15 pennies between five people and give them the wrong amount. He will understand that math answers aren't arbitrary, they're logical, and even a child can use reason to come to the right answer. Math can be enjoyable for a person who loves perceiving a law of nature and figuring out the law behind why things work the way they do. But not every child can be a star wrestler, and not every boy 'takes' to math. So perhaps teachers should make it their duty to expose the child to as many interests as possible. Math is just one subject in education, and it's one that not everyone excels at. So it shouldn't monopolize too much time in the school day."

Read the quote above in its context here (scroll down to page 151ff).

More helpful math-related links:

• MEP is a K-12 math program designed and used in Europe available free online here.
• Brandy hosted a 'Math Week' series on Afterthoughts last month, have a look!

This has been a highschool carnival post! Hasn't it been fun?! Please check in here for more of the same! The next Homeschool High School Carnival on January 1st will be hosted by Gae at Cherished Hearts at Home. The suggested topic will be Finding our Stride... You are most welcome to join us. Thank you to all our contributors and to our readers for taking the time to read and comment:)