To Suppress Natural Curiosity–Or Not?

“My 5 year old son keeps asking to do more math, and I have to keep explaining to him that school is over, and it’s summer vacation now!”

Sorry, but you’re doing home education wrong. Anytime anyone, of any age, expresses an interest in math, I’m happy to oblige.

Home education requires very little “formal schooling” time, but children and parents can and do find many informal opportunities to learn 365 days a year.

I remember many early math conversations with my parents and siblings. I learned about the values of coins, about counting and addition and multiplication, fractions, and many other topics long before I began my formal schooling.

My parents were not mathematicians, but they still considered it useful to be able to count change, add up bills, deal with recipes, and solve many other sorts of everyday math problems which tend to baffle the math-phobic. And they were right.

Properly understood, home education is not a method to squelch your child’s natural curiosity. You can outsource that.

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