Just a note to let you know how everything worked out regarding math curriculum. I bought two small books at Wal-mart, one marked Multiplication and Division and one called 3rd grade math. Spent about $7. Filled out my info for our school district and was surprised they actually wanted to see us this year for a meeting. Guess they have been short staff for the two previous years. Anyway, today we met with the Director of Student Services (the evaluator). We use My Father’s World as a guide and brought in our books for our year’s study of countries and cultures. Brought our evaluation techniques which obviously did not include paper and pencil tests – I purposely wrote that we did not test that way as I felt at this stage (third and kindergarten) it was not appropriate. A few minutes into the meeting with the very nice lady evaluator (who had been the high school principal), my two year old has to go to the bathroom. I take her and leave 4 yo, 5 yo and 8 yo and wonder if this is a good idea. I come back and two minutes later the two year old said she needed to go to the bathroom again! 5 year old also needed to go. During this slightly longer trip, 5 yo says, “That lady used to teach Math, but she said Mathematics. I told her 1 plus 1 was 2 and 2 plus 2 was 4 and 4 plus 4 is 8 and 8 plus eight is sixteen. She asked me if I was just in Kindergarten.” I am wanting to race in to see what the evaluator is asking my third grader (who does no formal math and doesn’t know what a multiplication table is – though she has doubled a recipe alone and does easy multiplication in her head). When I return, nice lady evaluator says about third grader, “I like this girl. Her favorite subject is math. You don’t find that much anymore. I used to be a math teacher.” Now, Savannah will always say math is her favorite subject, so she was not speaking out of both sides of her mouth. She always says she likes it because we don’t do it, but I think she likes it because she totally understand what she does. I know people have a really hard time committing to no formal math, but I am starting to see the fruit and I KNOW you are right. Of course Savannah kept up quite a conversation with the lady about a book we had just read about Norwegian children smuggling gold bullion past Nazi soldiers on their sleds. I figured today that we have read 45 chapter books in our 42 months of official school.

Blessings,
Megan Volmer