Math with Almonds

“Daddy, can I do math with almonds?” asked my little girl, who was only about three years old at the time. I promptly said that it was fine and gave her a few almonds to count out on the kitchen table. Being a second-, and soon-to-be third-, generation homeschool family, one learns throughout the years that almost anything can be turned into a fun learning process.

Over the multiple decades that my life has been engulfed by homeschooling, I have noticed in more recent years this expectation that so many parents have about educating their kids at an earlier and earlier age. There is so much expectation from the world to get your child into a regimented education plan, when really what the child needs is a handful of almonds.

Having homeschooled four of my own kids, and now with an almost two-year-old granddaughter who spends a lot of time with us, I have learned that every child learns differently, at different times, and in different ways. I am here to tell you right now that is perfectly okay.

One mistake I have made in the past is that trying to teach my child something they were not ready for can do more harm than good. That “forcing education” on a little kid can destroy their desire for learning. What we should be doing is fostering the desire to learn inside of them. That comes when we, as parents, recognize those times in our day-to-day lives when the child asks us to teach them, because they want to learn.

Little kids are always curious and always learning, whether we realize it or not. There is so much that they learn from their daily life that we rob them of when we try to “regiment” their education before the time comes when they are ready for more structure. When we take the time to recognize those moments in a child’s life, we foster that love of learning inside of them.

With my daughter at the time, it was almonds (it was also because she was looking for an excuse to have a snack). We would have her count out five almonds. Then we would ask her things like, “If you have two almonds in one pile and three in the other, how many almonds are there together?” There were also other things she was taught through that process beyond simple counting. She also learned how to see a goal and how to achieve it. We were able to teach her that there was a reward for learning. She knew that if she learned a little math, she could have a snack. That same daughter just turned 10 and has started taking an interest in starting small kid businesses. For each one of them, she had to learn something in order to get her desired outcome.

But the lesson I learned that day was more important than the lessons we were teaching her about math. It taught me that I need to recognize the interests of my children more in order to foster their desire to learn. If I had been so focused on her trying to learn in a regimented fashion, she might not have ever developed the desires and talents she has today.

I don’t think that we as parents put enough focus on teaching kids while, at the same time, letting them seek their interests. Children naturally want to learn. What our job is is to teach them when the time is right. As parents, there are many times in our lives that we can get unnecessarily bogged down with a regiment trying to teach our preschooler. Personally, I think the best thing for that task is right in our pantry.

“Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”
Philippians 2:4