01/04/2022
I would like to explain my philosophy of teaching mathematics to my children. I have two children, a 13 year old boy and a ten year old girl. I started teaching them when each child turned five. We cover math on the weekends. Surprisingly, that is more than enough to give them a strong edge. Although they both attend school, homeschooling, that is, my teaching, accounts for about 10 to 20 percent of their education. We spend 3 to 6 hours every weekend.
We use the Spectrum and Kumon books for mathematics. We only recently incorporated Spectrum grammar books. And, like I said, we regularly study on the weekends. The holidays, like this recent long Christmas holiday, are used for more instruction during the week since I do not want them to, frankly, totally shutdown intellectually.
So, before we cover a few pages I spend time reading the pages of the Kumon/Spectrum book and create my own instructions. I like to drill down deeper into the material. My instructions are designed to convey a crystal clear idea of the mathematical concept. The objective is to see the concepts in your mind. My kids should know the idea so well that they can see it in their mind and have a general idea on how to solve it. Now, you need pencil and paper to do the equations and flesh out the details. I council them to never try to solve the equations in your head. However, see the problem in your mind and then chase and solve the problem in your writings.
That is how I have done it for decades and that is how I train them.