Why play math?

Imagine that you are growing up in a world where very few people read books. At the
same time, the importance of Reading is stressed in school because educators and
politicians are alarmed at the loss of literacy in your world.
In elementary school you learn the alphabet and how to put two or more letters together
to make sounds to prepare you for the study of Phonics in high school. This is fun at first
because you love making sounds. But sometimes you make a sound that your teacher
says is wrong, and when you ask why she just says, English doesnt use that
combination.
You also learn to define things like noun and verb and how to tell one from the
other. In high school youll be studying Grammar and putting all this together, but for
now you memorize terms in order to lay the foundation for that study. Its fun knowing
things, and you enjoy trying to categorize all the words you know.
But sometimes you have trouble with a word. During a beginning Diagramming lesson
one day, you write the sentence I am reading, on the blackboard and mark reading as
a verb, which the teacher says is wrong. It looks like a verb and when you ask her why
its wrong she says its really a noun it belongs to a special class of nouns that you
wont be studying until later, so for now your sentences should only use words covered in
class. She suggests you write, I read, instead, which you do, but all the same it feels
insultingly childish.
By middle school, students are starting to complain about Reading class. Why do we
have to learn this stuff anyway? Your teachers always say that reading is important.
When youre older youll need to fill out an application to get your drivers license. If
you go to college youll need to be able to read Literature and Poetry, and then when
youre grown up you might need to be able to read the news instead of watching it. And
even if you never use it after you leave school, studying Reading sharpens your thinking
skills.
Finally, in ninth grade, your Grammar teacher gives you a sentence to diagram for your
homework:
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I
sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, and with old woes new wail my dear times
waste: Then can I drown an eye, unusd to flow, for precious friends hid in deaths
dateless night.
Your mom, who loves Reading, even though she isnt a professional Reader, sits down to
help you with this insane work, but she spends at least ten minutes waxing eloquent about
how beautifully the words express pain and loss and memory, when all you want is just to
get the blasted homework done so you dont fail the class and have to repeat it.

Of course, you already know where Im going with this that its analogous to my
experience with studying math in school, and maybe yours too, and that this is what I
want to avoid in teaching math to my own children.
The very first assignment in the Natural Math class I mentioned last week was to write
down my goals and dreams for my own children as it relates to math. Heres what I
wrote for the class:
I want my childrens experience of math to be similar to our experience with poetry. We
read some every day, whether its fun and sweet things by AA Milne or Lewis Carroll or
Robert Louis Stevenson, or rich, meaty stuff, like Spencers Fairy Queen and GK
Chestertons Ballad of the White Horse. Through the course of the day, favorite lines
from poetry might come up, or someone might invent a rhyming game on the spur of the
moment, or one of us might use the words of a poem to express a feeling or idea or just to
make everyone laugh. In any case, we live in a sea of beautiful words that lead us into
imaginary worlds, and help us understand the world we live in.
From what Ive been reading about math lately, it seems that its like that -- that its a
language, its a doorway into a world of ideas, and a way of understanding and relating to
the world we live in. I want my children to be as much at home in that world as they are
in the worlds of poetry and music.
We also do this with lines from favorite books, movies, and songs. We tell each other
stories I retell my childrens birth stories on their birthday each year, my husband
makes up stories to tell at bedtime, we tell stories our parents have handed down to us
about their childhoods. From the time they were tiny my children were telling stories
with their blocks and dolls and little cars, and while drawing and painting.

This comes to us so naturally that its hard realize how much we play with words and
stories long before I teach our children to read and write.
But the same thing is not true of math. I have never known how to provide a math-rich
environment so that when my children reached the age for the formal study of
mathematics theyd have all that experience and play as a foundation to build on.
Thats why Im reading books and blogs on playing with math and taking this class. Its
remedial education for myself as well as for my children.
And it really is helping. The other day Mike had bought some Kit Kat bars for a treat and
gave them to me to break in half and pass out. As I was doing it, some of them broke into
quarters, so I told my children, You may have one medium-size piece, or two small
pieces, or half of a large piece.
Of course someone said, Thats all the same, and we laughed and ate the treat.
That sounds dumb, but its a baby step honestly it wouldnt have occurred to me to
make a joke like that before. Ive told you I was math-phobe, right?