Charlotte Mason Math For Kindergarten and Preschool
If you love the Charlotte Mason method like I do, you might be instantly thinking “wait a minute! Charlotte Mason doesn’t recommend math for preschool age!”
You are correct. However, keep reading to see what type of math I’m talking about, and what sort of things I do with my 4 year old to satisfy her desires for math!
Charlotte Mason was a British educator who was born in the 1800’s. She really went against the mainstream thinking of education at the time, and I really respect her for the work she did. I’ve read most of her books, and found them to be books I go back to over and over again for guidance.
That being said, I’m not a Charlotte Mason purist, meaning I don’t do absolutely everything like she did. I do feel like if she was alive today, there might be things she would do differently for the time period we are in now. I also tweak things to make them work for my large family.
Read her quote below on what the first six years of a child’s life should look like:
How much time daily in the open air should the children have? And how is it possible to secure this for them? In this time of extraordinary pressure, educational and social, perhaps a mothers first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet growing time, a full six years of passive receptive life, the waking part of it spent for the most part out in the fresh air. And this, not for the gain in bodily health alone––body and soul, heart and mind, are nourished with food convenient for them when the children are let alone, let to live without friction and without stimulus amongst happy influences which incline them to be good.
Home Education Book – Charlotte Mason
Clearly we can see from this that Charlotte Mason did not think math was a huge priority for a child under six. Instead, they should be playing outside, looking at picture books, playing with engaging toys, and just living life.
Some children are just curious for more though, and when you have a younger sibling that is seeing their older siblings do schoolwork, they want to be right there with them. So instead of saying no to my 4 year old’s request to do math, I try to make it more hands on, how Charlotte Mason would suggest.
In order to do that, I want my 4 year old to learn the connection of what a number stands for. She can do this through counting objects in books, helping in the kitchen, it honestly just happens very naturally.
Lately she has been asking me for more math, and I don’t want to start her with a formal math curriculum yet. She can’t write her numbers yet, and that’s totally ok.
Instead of giving a child a pencil and expecting them to write perfectly at a young age, I use  chalkboards with a chalk pencil. It requires less fine motor skills for a young child, and even Charlotte Mason talked about starting writing skills with a chalkboard.
You can watch the video for more details on how I do this, and what it looks like. To do a quick summary though, I write out six problems on the basic operations chalkboard. Then I have the full size numbers chalkboard next to it, along with fun, hands on manipulatives.
She will say the problem to me, then count out each number using the objects, add them together, and then trace the number on the large numbers board. Some days I help her write the number in the answer box of the basic operations chalkboard, other days we just leave it at that. After six problems she is done, and so happy that she did her math for the day!
I love how gentle this is, and that it doesn’t take a lot of brain power on my end to make it happen. 🙂
