As we are deschooling, and not using curriculum or workbooks we are allowing for our children’s world to fill naturally with mathematical concepts. Alex has liked counting since he was small, and can confidently count to 100.He can recognise and create many numbers up to 100, having difficulty only with the teens.
Having played some board games he can quickly identify the numbers on the dice to take his turn and move accordingly (subitising and one to one correspondence).
He seems naturally inclined to group and categorise. One day when he wanted to play schools and I gave him a letter to write, he grouped the trace letters into three groups of 4. And rather than counting each one in turn, calculated there were 12 letters altogether.
He allocates numbers to tell us how much he loves each member of his family. last week he asked me which number I loved him. I told him I love him infinity. he replied that infinity s not a number. I informed him that it was the biggest number there could be. He ended the chat with “Then I love you 2 infinites”.
Yesterday at the table over breakfast, Alex said “4 and 4 is 8, two 4’s make 8”. About 10 seconds later “And four 2’s make 8”. Quite an impressive connection to make (commutative properties of numbers).
All these little things, and there are many more that I forget and don’t document leave me confident that maths is not something that needs to be worked at separately. These ideas mean something to Alex. He comes to them in his own time. He may not be reading yet, and takes no interest in writing anything but his name. But his understanding of maths is beyond the prep standards. If he was in school, these ideas would not be presented to him yet. And certainly not naturally.
Extra: 18/4/15 Alex always liked buses, and we have a bus route going right past the house. He soon learned the bus number was 421 at 3 years old and always looks out for it even now. But recently when he saw it, he said to me “Mum, 421 makes 7”. I realised he was adding the numbers together