Math
Math drives me nuts. Everything else is going quite well, but math… it makes me want to tear my hair out! She understand the concepts but she just can’t seem to memorize her basic math facts. We did Math-U-See’s Alpha level last year and I noticed this problem then too. We’ve held off starting Beta in order to try and review this material, but I don’t feel like we’re making any real headway. Right now we’re focusing on +1 through +5 and depending on the day she may get all of them right off the bat or she may (seemingly) forget 10-12 of them. Once I walk her through the series of questions (What kind of problem is it? How do you break it down and do it that way?) she can always figure it out, but the retention just isn’t there. It is so maddening!!
There was a suggestion in the Math-U-See newsletter over the summer to do review with cards and to focus on the ones that are wrong one at a time, having the child build it, write it, and say it. This is all well and good if there’s some consistancy… but what do you do if it isn’t always the same problem(s) that are the troublemakers?
And should I be holding back on starting the next level? It seems like it makes further work a lot easier if you know your basics cold, but the constant drilling is driving both of us up the wall. I’m glad she knows how to do it, but still I know from personal experience that this just isn’t enough. Some things just need to be memorized!
I think for now I’ll continue with the drilling, but I’m going to make a few changes. On Mondays and Wednesdays I’ll have her drill herself, and whatever she misses or doesn’t get to in a set period of time she’ll have to do as copy work instead of recess. (Yes, recess, we’re very school-ish around here in some ways!) On Tuesdays and Thursdays when we do school in the afternoon because of morning Mass and errands we’ll do some sort of math game. I tried math bingo yesterday and that went over pretty well. On Fridays I’ll do the flash cards with her and evaluate how it is going.
At some point this stuff has to stick in her brain, right?
KathyJo on 09 Oct 2008 at 9:39 am #
I meant to respond to this when you wrote it, but I forgot.
Have you tried the online math drill at the MUS site? http://www.mathusee.com/drill.html This has proven to be the fastest, easiest, and most fun for the boys way to do drills. They each do a daily typing lesson, and while they’re on the computer, they do a math drill too. When we started doing this months ago, Nikki was very slow and had to sit and figure out the answer quite frequently. Just a week or so ago, he finished a math drill in just barely over a minute for the first time.
Hope everyone gets to feeling better!
amber on 10 Oct 2008 at 10:19 am #
I was using that last winter for about a month or so and didn’t really see any improvement. Emma was as likely to sit there and wiggle the mouse as she was to do the math problems. Sitting in front of the computer seems to cause her to just glaze over - it was taking her 10-15 minutes to do a super simple math drill and it didn’t seem to get any better over time. I gave up because it seemed to be reinforcing her tendency to space out rather than do anything positive.
I’ve considered trying it again to see if it the six months or so have changed anything, but I haven’t done so yet. Having her drill with the cards and doing other activities a couple days a week seems to be working quite well though.