Home education: Subjects to teach
Maths
The law says that a home educated child must be prepared for life in today's Britain. This includes understanding measurement and money.
A useful starting point is to spend a couple of days doing normal things but listing when numbers and mathematics are being used.
Measurement means answering simple everyday questions like:
- How tall am I in centimetres?
- Can I lift a kilogram of sugar with one hand?
- What does a litre of milk look like?
- How far is it when I run or swim 100 metres, or walk five miles?
- The park looks close on the map, but how far is it in metres?
- How many litres of emulsion or square metres of carpet will we need for the hall, stars and landing?
- How many seed potatoes do we need for four five-metre-long rows using thirty-centimetre spacing?
- How long will it take us to drive from South Shields to Southampton?
- What time is the next bus / metro train, using the bus / Metro timetable? How long does the timetable show me it will take to get to the destination?
Include the idea of scale like maps and plans.
Multiplication tables can be useful, and learning them can be fun. (Seven nines are?)
Money uses addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, and it also often means dealing with percentages:
- Is it worth going out of our way for a 10% discount on a £7 bill?
- Is 28% a reasonable APR? How much will we end up paying?
- What are our chances of winning a small prize in the lottery?
- How many Euros can I afford?
- How much is that in pounds?
- Budgeting
If you're not very confident with maths, you could borrow or buy a textbook. They can be found in libraries and bookshops.
If you've got access to the internet searching "free maths" in Google can come up with helpful websites.