Why You Should Be Involved in Your Child’s Homeschool Math Lessons

Most homeschool math lessons have the parent phasing out of the lessons pretty quickly. They might get the children started when they’re young, but then, very soon it’s all turned over to the students to do independently. But that’s not the Charlotte Mason way. Let’s talk about the differences and why Charlotte Mason thought it was so important and so beneficial for the parent to be involved in the math lessons all the way through. Today I’m joined by Richele Baburina, author of The Charlotte Mason Elementary Arithmetic Series.

Sonya: Richele, so glad to have you back.

Richele: Thank you for having me.

Sonya: We have a question we want to discuss today about Charlotte Mason math. So we thought, why not ask you? Because you wrote it.

Richele: I appreciate that.

The Role of the Parent in Math Lessons

Sonya: In so many other math curricula, when they approach math, they have the parent involved when the child is very young, but then quickly the parent kind of takes a back seat and it’s all dependent on the child interacting with videos, or interacting with the book itself, and doing the work independently. So the homeschool parent is like, “Here, go do your math lesson. Let me know if you have any questions,” or something like that. How is that different from a Charlotte Mason approach, and why did Charlotte do it a different way? Where do you want to start on that lovely topic?

Richele: Okay, that’s a great question. I’d like to start out just talking about the role of the parent-teacher in the Charlotte Mason approach and her philosophy of education. And then I’d like to give a quote from Charlotte herself, specific to mathematics.

Sonya: Wonderful. Okay, yeah, let’s talk about that.

Richele: All right, so the first one is from Essex Cholmondeley in The Story of Charlotte Mason. And she says, “Teaching is not a technique exercised by the skilled on behalf of the unskilled. It is a sharing of the effort to know, using all that is best in the world of books, of music, of pictures, all that can be observed and cherished out of doors, all that hand and eye can make, all that religion, history, art, mathematics, and science can reveal to the active mind.”

Sonya: Wow, we might as well just sit here for five minutes and ponder that. That is deep. That is huge.

Richele: The role of the teacher is different in the Charlotte Mason education. It’s not what they call the “sage on the stage.” It’s the “guide by the side,” which we’ve heard before. And it’s in every topic, every subject, in that broad feast that we’re spreading for the child.

Sonya: Why do you suppose that was so important to Charlotte? I know in her day, the modus operandi was for the teacher to stand up and lecture the students, or for them to just memorize and recite. That was basically all it was. So why do you think she put so much emphasis on the “guide at the side”?

Richele: Well, I think for a number of reasons, and we’ll just maybe touch on a couple of them. One, we bring our wider experience with us, and we also are there to excite their enthusiasm. We are bringing ideas to them while the child himself must meet that idea and must grapple with the idea, work with that idea, think upon that idea. She likened it to the planting of a seed, and then the seed is left to germinate and to almost multiply, she says, after its kind. So that one seed gives succession to a number of ideas that the child might be working on—maybe while they’re out playing, but we have been there to plant that seed, or a number of seeds, say, in a living book. The author has given those ideas and the child might not take all of them immediately, or he might, when we throw the seed into the soil where it lands in the fertile ground. As we give them other ideas, they’re connecting things; they’re connecting with ideas. 

But the child is the one who actually does the work. So this is that—I don’t know that I would call it attention—but it’s a two-fold purpose of what the teacher’s role is and then what the student’s role is. Specific to mathematics, Charlotte says, “Therefore his progress must be carefully graduated, but there is no subject in which the teacher has a more delightful consciousness of drawing out from day to day new power in the child. Do not offer him a crutch, it is in his own power he must go.” We have the privilege of drawing new power out and seeing, especially in the math lesson, you can see the wheels moving. The way that we teach, this living teaching of mathematics, allows us to draw that new power out from day to day, but then on the other side of it, the child is the one doing the work. There is independent thinking and independent work going on, but we’re not leaving the child.

Sonya: Yes, we’re not abandoning them to do that by themselves. It is a wonderful privilege and it’s so exciting when you see the light bulb go off, and the wheels are turning and those moments are just priceless. What’s hard is, in the former quote, when you talked about letting the child grapple with an idea, it’s hard to sit by and allow him to grapple with this idea until he makes it his own. There’s a difference though, isn’t there? Between grappling with an idea and being completely overwhelmed. I think of grappling as wrestling with it, and the child has some strength to wrestle too, rather than this idea just “bonk,” lands on him and he has no clue and he’s just laying there helpless, you know? There’s a big difference between those. Talk a little bit about how the parent can see that; which of those processes is going on? When are they grappling and when are they just overwhelmed? When do we need to take a step back?

Richele: Yes, and that’s the important part of being there with your child. Because we, I would say almost prayerfully as well, we watch our child and we can see, and because habit training is so important, we can also see when perhaps the child just doesn’t want to do something difficult. We all have different characters; some of us might love to, just like a rock, go with something challenging, and then others of us, or at different times, we might have a child with character that’s more like water, who wants to take the path of least resistance, so it’s important for us to be there for that. But in the last quote I read, she talks about the teaching being graduated, and carefully graduated. So it’s up to us as a parent watching our child to make sure that they are not in a panic zone, but we’re also challenging them, because we want them to grow that mental muscle as well. So there is balance between our children feeling confident in math and our children just feeling like they’re in too deep of water and we need to slow down.

Sonya: That reminds me; we’ve talked before about comparing the parent to a guide on a mountain. As you said, carefully graduated, we are beside our children as we take it step by step, always securing the ground under their feet before we go the next step. When they get overwhelmed is when you are trying to take leaps instead of steps. And as you said, if you’ve been beside them the whole way and you know your children, you’re watching them, you can tell if they are just taking one step at a time or if, oops, I shouldn’t have gone that fast, I’m asking them to take leaps instead of steps. And I love your point about knowing your child as well, and his tendencies. The personality comes into this so much. Charlotte Mason is so much about relationships, because the child is forming relations with the math concepts and ideas, but you’re also strengthening the parent-child relationship as you walk through those lessons together, aren’t you?

Richele: Definitely. I always think about how we love to do picture study with our children, or poetry, and have tea time. We’re strengthening that relationship with them as they’re strengthening their relationship with the characters they meet in a book, or this beautiful poetry, or this beautiful piece of art. It’s the same in mathematics, we get to strengthen our relationship with our children while they are strengthening their relationships with numbers.

Sonya: I wonder if that does not occur to us as parents, many of us, because we do not feel confident in our own math skills. It’s kind of like, “I can’t introduce you to somebody I don’t know,” and that’s how you feel about it. So talk a little bit about how the curriculum, that you wrote, by the way, how that can help the parent also form a relation with the math as you’re going side by side. It’s not, as you said, the parent has to know everything. The parent’s not the fountainhead of all knowledge. And we can do that with our literary books, with our history books: Let the book be the teacher. We can do that, but somehow we think it’s different with math. So talk about how the curriculum can help in that area.

Richele: Just like with literature, we can introduce them to someone we don’t know because we have an author who knew. Say, Lafayette. I didn’t really know much about Lafayette, but I was able to introduce my child to Lafayette through a living book. Well, with math, math is a speech, Charlotte Mason said. She said it was a language unto its own, but she called it a musical language. It’s a language that we get to learn along with our children. And because we present it in a number of different ways in the math books—perhaps you might not get it one way or your child might not get it one way, but if we approach it from another direction, we get to know that idea and we get to meet it from another angle. That’s a math pun.

Sonya: That’s a good math pun, yes. And that’s all in the curriculum. It’s not that, “Oh, this isn’t working, I’ve got to think of another angle.” It is in there.

Richele: It is. Know what the captain ideas are in math, especially when we were not taught math that way, in this living way, with a healthy atmosphere, with a discipline of habit in our math lessons, as well as meeting these living, these ideas that give life to something. It’s absolute truth. The math curriculum means that the parent doesn’t have to scratch her head and try to figure out what the living ideas are. There are ideas even in Book 1 in our child introduction to numbers 1 through 100. It’s amazing that there are ideas just in counting from 1 to 10. We see that there’s an order to numbers. We see that there is a magnitude as we count higher, things grow larger. We see that numbers represent; they’re symbols that represent different ideas. And so in Book 1, we aren’t saying specifically “This is the idea,” but the teaching is presented in a way that lays out these ideas for the child to catch.

How to Prepare for Math Lessons

Sonya: Yes, to grasp as he or she is ready. We have received so many messages and emails and texts and stuff from parents saying, “I was a math-phobic myself, but I’ve been using your curriculum with my child and now we both are growing in our confidence and love for it,” which is so exciting to see. Can you help us, then, with how much preparation should the parent be doing for the math lesson? Because, yes, we are “guide on the side,” but does that mean, “Okay, let’s just open the book and see what happens together today?” Or does it mean I should be one step ahead, or at least looking one step ahead, so I know where we’re going next? How much preparation do you think is wise for the parent?

Richele: I think before sitting down with the child to the math lesson, you should read through the lessons. They are short. I think from Book 1 through Book 6, a lesson is never longer than 30 minutes. And that includes 5 to 10 minutes of oral work or mental math.

Sonya: And Book 1 is like 10 or 15 minutes, yeah.

Richele: With my own child, well, my first one, he could sit and enjoy a 20-minute math lesson. With my next child, it was 5 minutes on the floor. And as we built that habit of attention and the lessons, because they’re lively lessons, that helps build the habit of attention. And I’ve gone all that way, and I don’t remember your initial question.

Sonya: How much prep? You’re looking over the lesson ahead of time, but I will say this also, the books are not divided into lessons. “You must cover this much in one sitting.” So you’re basically just looking ahead. You get an idea of how much you’ve been able to cover, if you want to use that term, in each lesson, so you kind of have a feel for how much to look ahead each time.

Richele: You don’t have to look very far ahead because the student will be doing that work, especially in the beginning, when he isn’t reading and writing mathematical notations. He is just learning those mechanics in some of the lessons. So we want to be sure that we have everything that we need. So we might have to gather a math notebook and a pencil and a dry erase board and the marker and then a variety of manipulatives or everyday objects. So we want to bring that to our math lesson, bring that to the table. And the reason I suggest just reading one step ahead is so that you are able to attend to your child and watch him do the work rather than skimming ahead.

Sonya: Nose in a book.

Richele: Like when you go to a doctor, you don’t want him coming in and then reading your charts.

Sonya: Yes, that’s a good point. At least stand outside the door and read it before you come in.

Richele: So head down in the book, we don’t want that. We want to be able to deliver the math lesson in a normal, organic way.

Sonya: Now as the students get older, we are not sitting beside them for the whole lesson, walking them through everything together. What I’m saying is, as they get older, they do start to learn to have some independent work. So talk a little bit about how that progression works and why that progression happens. Yet, it’s going to be different from what we might have been used to in completely independent math lessons. How’s that for a broad question?

Richele: I think if we think about it, it’s like how we progress in our reading and writing. We have history or literature, maybe those are tales in the beginning. We are reading with our child, and Charlotte Mason’s teachers were very specific about saying we aren’t reading to the child, we’re reading with the child.

Sonya: I love that.

Richele: So we aren’t sending him off with a book in first grade to go to his room and to read it and then to do a written narration. We’re reading with our child and then he orally tells back, gives a narration. It’s the same way in our arithmetic lessons. In the beginning, we are reading to the child the questions, or with the child, the questions, and then he is giving answers back orally at the same, not at the same time in the lesson, but during the lesson. He is also learning how to write their numbers to the best of his ability, but as perfectly as he is able; you know, we want the 2 to have an open hook, we want the 3 to have open hooks, open curves so they don’t look like the number 8. He is also slowly learning to read, so we might give a question, he answers the question, and then we might be writing that on the board so he is able to see what that looks like in written format. And so as the child progresses in his mechanics of reading and writing, which are laborious to the child—to many children at this age—he doesn’t have to attend just to the mechanics, he gets to attend to the ideas because you’re giving the questions orally, just like you would read him a book orally, and then he is going to give the answer back orally. 

Sonya: So he can focus on the reading and writing during the reading and writing lesson, rather than bring that aspect also into the math lesson. It could become a hindrance and an obstacle to his grasping the math. I love how Charlotte is so consistent across the board.

The Three Parts of a Charlotte Mason Math Lesson

Richele: There are these threads that run through all of the subjects, with those practices that sit upon her principles that respect the child. So as the child progresses in his mechanics, then he is able to; well, let’s talk about the three aspects of the math lesson because this is going to tie into that. We have our New, our Review, and Mental Math too. Those are the three components of the math lessons through the week. So the New could be the teacher introducing a new idea or a new concept, and that usually takes a little more time for the teacher to do that and work together with the student to be able to understand. Maybe the child is using manipulatives, so you watch him so the child is able to understand what the new concept is and then work with that new concept. Then we have the Review component, which is where we habitualize the idea so that it kind of becomes a part of him. And then the mental math is that fun time of oral work, manipulatives are put away, and it’s quick question with quick answer; and quick is relative as the student begins those habits of concentrated thinking. 

So the child has worked with the new concept, and now we might have a time of review of a different concept that he has already grasped, that he already has a comfort working with, but we want to habitualize that, maybe help him be able to do it a little bit faster. So that time of review, in the beginning we’re with the student, but when your student is able to handle the mechanics of reading and writing, then the student might have that time, you would look over the review section with the student, make sure he understands what is expected of him. Say, you know, “I’ll give you 10 minutes to work as many questions as you are able,” so there’s not pressure, the child has time to think, but the child can do that on his own at this point. And then immediately after, you can review that with the student to make sure there are no false ideas that have come into play and that your child is understanding the work.

Sonya: Yes, you don’t want to set up bad habits or wrong habits that they’re thinking, “Oh, three plus two is six,” or something like that. We need to correct those habits as soon as possible.

Richele: And sometimes that can happen, where our student has known something, and then for some reason an idea comes in, and we don’t know where it happened, it could have happened outside of the home, and suddenly he has a different idea in his head. And so it is important that we catch that immediately, so when we have that teacher involvement, we’re able to catch it fairly quickly. Whereas, if we did send our student off with a math book, and then suddenly, a few weeks later, we have time to correct either his worksheets or his written work in some way, and then we see a lot of things are off here. Now we have to go back maybe a month and try to figure out, “Where did my child get off the path?”

Sonya: Yeah, just like that mountain path, if you get a little off and correct it right away, that’s much easier than if you keep going that direction and then have to come all the way back. So yeah, that makes total sense. 

Richele: But if a child has grasped a concept and an idea, and he is working fluently with it, then he can go on ahead and work either the review or the next exercises that are solidifying the new idea. So there is time for your student to be doing that independent work. You should just remain available for him at that time.

Sonya: And that opportunity to do independent work increases throughout the books, 1 through 6. As you said in the beginning, you’re doing everything together. But then as they solidify those mechanics so they’re not an issue, then giving them…I like the idea of just, “here’s your 10 minutes”, and it’s not a timed test. It’s not, “See how many you can get through.” It’s not that at all. The atmosphere is, “Do your best effort and you’re only going to be doing this for 10 minutes.” So give it your full attention, do your best effort, and then we’ll come back together and review it and make sure that everything looks correct.

Richele: And then the next day your student can come back to finish those review exercises if your student needs more review. And a lot of times they do, because we just want that ground to be very firm and solid. It’s what Charlotte Mason likens to building a very firm foundation upon which a superstructure can be built. So when they have that firm foundation in things like the tables or just all of these ideas, then we can look at it with a view to them doing much more complex math later because we’re building upon a very firm foundation. 

Sonya: I’ve talked with some parents who look at Book 1 or Book 2, and they’re kind of like “This is too simple; we’re not moving fast enough.” But then when they look at Book 5 or Book 6, they are flabbergasted at what the student is being asked to do. But it’s because the foundation was laid so carefully along the way, boom, they can take off then. It’s astounding.

Richele: It is really amazing what you see happens with what we consider, as adults, something so simple. Recently, I spoke with a professor who talked about students coming into his classes with all of these AP classes and good grades, but he said wished that they had the tables and perhaps Algebra I. Sometimes children have been taught to pass the test or to just memorize the algorithm without understanding it. But if we give our child the time in these processes, then he’ll build that firm foundation.

Managing Math Lessons with Multiple Children

Sonya: All right, speaking of time, let’s talk about the elephant in the room: We’ve had parents ask us, “But if I have to personally do the math lesson with each child, and I have several children, this is going to take too much of my time.” How do you help parents think about that situation? What are some tips you have for that? Either in thinking, or in doing, or both.

Richele: I have a sister who has five children, and she was homeschooling all of them at one point, all together. I would like to tell you kind of how she went about it in a practical way, but also the fact that it’s really 10 to 15 minutes of your time with each child. I really liked how she scheduled it and it might work for our readers.  She scheduled it in almost like a stair-step fashion. She worked with the youngest, and then came the next child to the table, eventually they’re all at the table, but she is doing 10 to 15 minutes with each child, and then they are doing their review work, perhaps on their own then. And they’re all there, and she’s able to attend to any questions that they might have. So she might start with one child who has on his schedule the review section that he didn’t finish the day before, that type of a thing. So she is attending to the new concept, if there is a new concept that day, and each child is working individually, if that makes sense.

Sonya: I think so. If you had a first grader, for example, you would only spend 10 or 15 minutes, and he’s done. So he doesn’t have to sit there, you know, “Go play, child,” so there he goes. But then if you have a third grader who is the next oldest, you’re going to spend a few minutes with that child and then maybe assign some of the independent work. And while he’s doing that, you bring in the fifth grader and give the 10- or 15-minute instruction and set the independent work, but you’re still available if third grader has any questions. And maybe at that point, you go back and look at third grader’s work, make sure he’s okay. So is that kind of what you mean by layering it in?

Richele: That’s what I meant. And then of course, then they’re all mostly together for that time of mental math, where the older child can be giving questions to all of them because they’ve already gone through a certain point; so it can be a fun family dynamic at that point. Or, we did mental math in the car; we were in the car quite a bit. So our lessons might not have the mental math component right there sitting. But then when we had to go run errands. And sometimes it is ridiculous because your children will be like “More mental math, more mental math!”

Sonya: It’s like “I’m trying to drive.”

Richele: That time of mental math can come at a different point in the day as well; it can be outside. Obviously, the idea is to help your child nurture habits of attention and concentration, things like that, quick responses; and again, that’s relative depending on where your child is. So we see in that way that you don’t have to sit for 30 minutes for each child. So it’s not two and a half hours of taking up your day. But rather, we’re just going incrementally with each child, and then they have their time of their independent work, but you’re still right there. 

Sonya: So altogether that took about an hour, or so, to get through all five kids? Plus the mental math later, or whenever you wanted to do it, give or take a little bit. And if you’re doing the Simply Charlotte Mason curriculum, you’ve got all your other subjects—your history, geography, Bible and all your enrichment subjects and everything. That only takes an hour and a half of your day, with everybody together. So an hour and a half and then you’ve got the whole rest of the time to do your math and your language arts. So an hour for math for five kids, I’d say that’s not too bad.

Richele: That’s not too bad. It is interesting too, when you have that kind of one-room school room, then your younger children are oftentimes listening to you give the lesson to your older child. Or if you’re doing the mental math, they can have their dry erase boards and and if you’re giving some harder, more complex, questions to an older child, your younger child can be listening and can solve it to the point that he is able to solve it. He might write his own answer down on his board because he’s not going to be giving it orally and then you can see what he’s done as well. So it can really be a fun dynamic.

Sonya: That makes total sense. I just had a picture in my head of, if you’re giving your oldest child a double-digit multiplication problem, your youngest child could be writing the double-digit number because he knows how to do that now. Yes, that could be very easily customized. All right. So, lots of benefits to staying involved every day in the math lesson, but it’s not being the fountainhead of all knowledge, not prying the answers out of your child, that’s not what we’re talking about. But this combination of methods that are consistent in all of Charlotte’s top subjects, it’s just a beautiful thing. How would you encourage a parent to make this practice, make this a new habit, and make this the atmosphere of their home?

Richele: One, I would think that to look at math as not a drudgery, but to see it as a wondrous whole. So maybe to have this shift in your thinking that it can be every bit as beautiful, as life-giving, and as relationship-building as any of the other subjects.

Sonya: That’s wonderful. Thanks so much.

Richele: You’re welcome.

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