Teaching Math

It's math month in the home school room. The first week, we learned about Euclid and some geometry (shapes, perimeter, angles, and symmetry). The second week, we learned about Pythagoras and his theorem, as well as odd/even numbers, triangular numbers, and perfect numbers. Next week, we're learning about Fibonacci so we can see the beauty of the Fibonacci sequence. There's a bit of adding and subtracting thrown in, and basically fun with numbers.

The most fun part is teaching the little kids (grades 1-3) things like the Pythagorean theorem and how to do square numbers and all sort of math that they've never heard about. They have no clue what I'm talking about, and I'm not sure how much they remember (although they could all explain right angles to me a week after I taught it, so there's that), but they just have so much enthusiasm for it, and they're so delighted when they understand something. They haven't reached a point where they think that they can't do it, so they listen eagerly and make the connections and love it!

Seriously, we have this conversation all the time:
One (or more) of them: I don't understand that.
Me: I know, but I'm going to explain it to you, okay?
Them: Okay!

And then I explain it, and they get it (to whatever extent), and we're all happy.

It's a bit more challenging with the bigger kids who already know that some learning is really hard, but even they try learning what I'm teaching. The best part is that they aren't afraid to say when they don't understand, so I can try again. And some of them already know some of what I'm teaching (and most of them can do the basic math behind the concepts), so that helps.

So far, math month has been a lot of fun.