Math is all around us. Every day for just about every thing we use math. Oddly enough, subjects are separated and not used in conjunction with each other in school, as they are in real life.
When thinking about writing a letter to explain that you are paying your loan off early, you would first start by writing a simple letter with your loan number, the pay off amount as of a particular date and you would sign and date the letter. After doing that, you would
most likely write out the check if you had not done so before writing the letter. After writing out the check, you'd probably bring your balance down in your checkbook and then address the envelope, add the stamp and head off to the post office or mail box.
This simple activity, for most of us is not broken up into separate segments. When writing the letter you do not have to say to yourself, "Ok, I am going to use Language Arts now in writing this letter!" When you switch to bring down all the balances in your checkbook, you
probably do not say to yourself, "Ok, I am going to do Math now." because you just do it! After addressing and placing a stamp on the envelope, if you do not have a mail box to put it in, you can use geography to find the local drop mail box as well as science to start your car
correctly to get it on the road. We simply do not do things this way in the real world.
I have separated each subject on purpose to illustrate a basic principal. That principal is that none of these subjects can really be taught in isolation away from another subject. Let's face it! Math has writing involved in it!
In order to do story problems, one has to know how to read and comprehend which is Language Arts. Some children are kinestetic learners and cannot learn well while sitting still and must be "on the move" in order to learn their Math
facts, spelling words or geographical locations. When one is moving around purposefully, to exercise the body or to just move around, one is utilizing PE. We cannot get around the fact that ALL subjects naturally blend together!
For Math, we do everything. Our kitchen is our laboratory for experimentation. The grocery story is one setting where we hold class as well. We deal with various subjects as estimation, healthy foods,
calculators, pen and paper math, "mind math", as well as frugality, need vs want and scarcity.
We do flash cards, Alpha Omega Life Pacs, computer games, manipulatives for different math problems and anything else we can get our hands on to use for Math.
We are utilizing real life applications for our learning as much as we possibly can so that our children are not "just" book smart, but have common sense as well.
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