Hi Laurie, I was wondering if you have ever considered not having your girls do all the math up through Saxon Advanced Math? Mine CAN do it but there are so many other things they want to be learning and that I want them to learn, it seems sort of silly to take the time [...]

Dear Laurie, … I wanted to give a testimonial about your book Teaching the Trivium. Last year my husband and I became very convicted about having our children in school. It was a wonderful Christian school, and I was the 3rd/4th grade language arts teacher. He told me in early January that he wanted me [...]

The following is a summary of our article Research on the Teaching of Math: Formal Arithmetic at Age Ten, Hurried or Delayed? by Harvey Bluedorn Historically, the age for instruction in arithmetic and mathematics seems to have slowly shifted from age fifteen or later down to age ten. Then, about a century ago, this was [...]

The Historical Perspective Strange though it may seem at first, it is nevertheless quite clear that addition, subtraction, multiplication and division – comparatively simple operations, which we inflict on our children while they are still quite young – were, in antiquity, far beyond the horizon of any primary school. The widespread use of calculating-tables and [...]

I’m doing my catalog run-throughs, have read Teaching the Trivium again, and am comparison shopping everything on my 28-item list for the coming year. I’ve got 3 boys, 9yo, 7yo and almost 2yo. We did 2 years of Saxon math, but have been much happier with Singapore this last year for both big boys, but [...]

Our now 14 ds had a horrible time trying to learn to read and do math simultaneously. I read about delaying math, and promptly threw out his math book. Well, shelved it anyway. Within a month, his reading level soared 2 grade levels. It seems the stress of learning both was more than his brain [...]

I am trying to figure out how your recommendation about delaying formal math until age ten would work out in practice. Specifically, when does the child learn basic math facts? It seems to me that you can’t do much math without knowing the math facts. If you wait until age ten to start learning the [...]

I have two boys, ages 8 and 6 1/2. Last year we used Saxon 1, the year before we used Math-U-See, and the year before that we used A Beka math. Some time ago I read your statement regarding not doing formal math with children before they were 10 years old. Based on my personal [...]

I found Teaching the Trivium this summer after four years of homeschooling. I was so greatly relieved by the math recommendation because I have totally failed in that area. I used Miqioun only slightly as well as other oral math. My oldest turned 10 in August, and I really did not know what I was [...]