Please help me to help my son with math...

[Jackie in NE]

I am so discouraged for him. He is 9 years old, and is still struggling with addition and subtraction. We have used MUS, and now, right start. We even tried abeka and saxon briefly. We keep coming back to MUS. He prefers the blocks and the uncluttered pages. I have tried flashcards, manipulatives, pictures, prizes, and threats (in my worst moments).

 

And he still has to count on his fingers. It is frustrating and embarassing for him. His younger brother, who likes math, and sees patterns easily, has flown by him in every math book we've used.

 

Ds can do rounding, and regrouping, and learns skip-counting songs with ease. He will probably do fine with multiplication. But he is excrutiatingly slow with addition and subtraction. He just doesn't "see" it unless he is actually handling the manipulatives.

 

I don't want a new curriculum. What I'm looking for is a technique that I can use to help him "see" his basic math.

 

Any thoughts are welcome!

[thowell]

I dont know if it will help or not but when my girl was going through this someone recommended Ray's Arithimetic it's online and free so I thoughtwould give it a try. It worked great! Not sure why but something finally has begun to click in her and she is flying through the lessons.

[Jackie in NE]

When I googled "Ray's Arithmetic", I found the curriculum, but not the free on-line stuff. Am I missing it?

[thowell]

http://books.google.com/books?id=ntTy0NUjKHQC&pg=PA2&dq=ray%27s+primary+arithmetic&as_brr=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false

 

see if this works

[thowell]

you can click on PDF in top right hand side to print out.

[Jackie in NE]

It worked perfectly. Thanks!

[thowell]

Good Luck. We started out doing everything verbal and using some sort of mun. We used popsickle sticks. After doing a lesson verbal for a few days I would read each problem use the sticks and have dd write the problem herself and give me the correct answer. So far so good she is up to add. facts 8 and knows them by heart!

[Catherine]

When I first started RS with my now 8 yo, who is NOT naturally good at math, it was a struggle to get him to stop counting (even so, his numeration skills were so weak he almost always miscounted). Still, after 2 years, he sometimes starts to count instead of using the strategies. Have you really gone back to square 1 and started with the exercises in "seeing 5" and the Yellow is the Sun song? Can he add quantities within 10 reliably? If he can't, I'd start there. If he can, then I'd go to the games that teach adding within 20. FWIW, my 8 yo had the most trouble with subtraction and addition, both conceptually and in learning facts, much less difficulty in multiplication and division, which we are just starting.

[forty-two]

My first thoughts were an abacus and RightStart. I've read about how experienced abacus users often visualize a mental abacus when doing mental calculations. And, as a pp said, RS does a lot of work developing visualization skills. Also, Charlotte Mason has written a lot about developing visualization skills.

[Tohru]

Another issue is that his brain just might still only understand concrete ideas, hence he needs counting beads or fingers, which is PERFECTLY FINE. Later when he is older he will be able to understand more abstract concepts, but until then, no curriculum will work until that part of his brain is formed. This brain development issue is so often overlooked.

 

The Bluedorns have an excellent article in their book, Teaching the Trivium, about delayed math and the brain.

[Amber in AUS]

I will second or third the suggestion of adding some RS. We are loving the abacus and 'seeing' the math. Maybe you could look at adding the RS games which will give you the basics of seeing the math if you practice the beginning games. Or you could look at Activities for the AL Abacus. We have both of these but do not use RS as our main math. I have it on the shelf, we play some games and when we get stuck we learn and practice it the RS way.