Math!

I hear more new homeschoolers being anxious over how they will teach math, than any other subject!

But there are some wonderful, fun, interesting (and educational) books to add to your homeschool bookshelf!

Math doesn’t have to be just about workbooks or textbooks. There are all kinds of story books and activity books that will introduce your children to fascinating concepts and ideas. 

Can this possibly work?

I did very little formal, sit-down worksheet/textbook math with my children until they were around 12 – and even then I introduced it slowly. In the meantime we looked at day-to-day math examples, talked about the concepts – and read lots and lots of books!

My husband used to be a Math teacher and loves his subject. He wanted the children to love it too. So books of all kinds were bought and read to introduce the concepts in multiple ways.

My daughter now has an A* in GCSE Maths and is taking her A’level Maths this year (she is 18). My son sits his first exam this year too – so I will let you know 🙂

I wanted to share with you some of the wonderful Math books I have on my bookshelf – and a few others I have come across. It was hard to categorize them do do browse around!

Please note that the image links are affiliate links, which means if you buy I get a (very) small percentage of the sale. If you would prefer not to support this site in that way, just go to Amazon and search for the book yourself.

Coloring Books

Coloring books are a really fun way to help your kids learn math. Check out my page of Educational Coloring Books. As well as the math section at the top, scroll down for books covering numbers.

Picture Books

Right from the word go you can get your child interested in math using picture books.

You can start as simply as counting the things you see in books – “how many cars do you see?”. Or try these beautiful books covering math concepts. I particularly love the Anno’s books – very beautiful.

Addition and Subtraction

There are several books introducing children to addition and subtraction. The Arithmetic Village stories are very pretty – but mostly cheaper to buy from her website than from Amazon.

Math Concepts

I love the different ways you can introduce math concepts to children in a fun way. The books here cover lots of ideas from graphs to fractions. We liked the Sir Cumference books – it looks like there are a LOT of them in the series now.

Great Books for Older Children

These books tend to cover the whole math spectrum! Most of them are very wordy so you need your child to be a proficient reader. We had 3 of The Life of Fred books and my feeling is that I introduced them too early. I think he has versions for younger children now.

Money

We only have two books from this list. Alexander (who we loved!) and the Grocery Cart Math. That one is meant to be taken to the grocery store and the exercises completed there.  Pretty good but all in $ and cents so not great for us in the UK.

Mathematicians and History

You can learn a lot by reading about mathematicians and their breakthroughs. Here are some we enjoyed.

Games

Games are a fun way to cover math – we are big on board games in our house! But sticking to books for this post, I have a few that I used to specifically cover math subjects.

Art and Activities

Yes, even art can be used 🙂

I really liked the Belair ‘on display’ books. I think they are meant for teachers to give them ideas for bulletin boards or classroom displays. But we used them a lot to make great displays – or put the art into lapbooks. I thought they had good ideas in them. There are quite a few Belair books on lots of subjects so worth taking a look at.

Puzzles

My son absolutely loves Suduko and Kukuro puzzles. And of course these develop math skills too. I figured you could track down those type of books yourself – so here are a few new ideas.

And more!

Well, one more. To make 50!

I picked this one because I quite like Theoni Pappas books and this seemed like such a fun idea.

I hope you find something new and interesting about my recommendations. If you have a recommendation too, I would love to hear it. Just leave me a comment or come visit my facebook page.