math

[happycc]

my 1st grade daughter soon to be 2nd grader has no problem knowing her math facts. She has that done pat. Her teachers gives her daily speed drills and she passes them. But she is getting below standards comments on areas such as skip counting, money, time, and shapes. She has a very hard time with word problems and graphing. She doesn't understand place value and gets the two mixed up. Teacher thinks she doesn;t know her left and right. She doesnt seem to have the memory to get the concepts. What is going on with her? How can she ace the speed drills? critically thinking problems are her worst nightmare such as those like carl is the tall, meg is taller than carl, john is the tallest. what curriculum for her?????? Her school was mostly paper and pencil, workbook type. So I feel we are workbooked out.

[KristenR]

Miquon sounds like it would be a great fit to help her visualize and play with math in a tangible way.

[happycc]

I think she needs something more scripted and more spiral review with learning math concepts. She doesn;t get the whole to part and part either. Looking at Right start B and thinking that might be a better fit than the McRuffy 2. What do people think?

[SnegurochkaL]

RS level A spends a lot of time on part of whole/whole and it is very step by step program which gives a good foundation in math. RS math is lacking of word problems but many people supplement with CWP.

 

My daughter when she was 4-5 y.old spent a lot of her play time working on her logic problems. We did Mind Benders from Critical Thinking company and few others.

Edited June 5, 2011 by SneguochkaL

[happycc]

Ok I have decided on right start for my soon to be 2nd grader...now i need to decide on level a or b.

The website told me to do level b but i wanted she has some definite holes. HOw is it this child cannot learn her shapes for anything? I have tried drawing, reading about them , talking about them, finding them in the house, meet the shapes video etc What more does she need to learn the names of the shapes? Does right start level a teach shapes?

[SnegurochkaL]

RS A is good for very young children. If I were you, I would get Level B. Level B start from the beginning, moves faster and covers much more materials than A.

When you asking about shapes, do you mean solids?

[happycc]

she cant tell difference between triangle, rectangle and square.

 

What is wrong with her?

[SnegurochkaL]

RS B start talking about parallel lines in Lesson 21, so you really will be fine in level B. Some people just buy level B for very young kids and go slowly.

 

Is your daughter a visual learner or kinetic? May be try to point at vertexes of a box on one side and ask your daughter to count them, then ask her to touch sides. May be it will help her to make a cube model, she would see. It will come to her. My daughter was driving me crazy, when she could not see the quantity of 5 without counting. She was 3,5 years old and I tried almost everything which didn't help, of course. And then something finally clicked in her mind:)

 

 

You were also suggested to use Miquon which might not be a bad idea. Workbooks are cheap, but they have a lot of neat activities for kids to do, which reinforce different topics. For example, the Orange book( 1st book ) talk about skip counting and shapes. I think it will be very useful for your child. RS does not have many practice papers to do, so supplementing with Miquon will give your daughter a good variety of assignments.

Edited June 7, 2011 by SneguochkaL

[Aludlam]

We had a lot of the same problems. Horizons math was a God send to us. We use MUS on grade level and Horizons one grade lower. To my dd, it's so fun b/c of all the bright pics, puzzles, etc. I really saw a great leap in skills when we added it to our day.

[happycc]

and I just did not understand it...

I don;t know what was wrong with me.

Maybe I need to look it over again.

I don;t know.

[FO4UR]

For shapes (I remember not understanding the difference between triangle and rectangle in Kindy btw...funny the things we remember...), teaching that "tri" means 3 as in TRIcycle and TRIceratops helps a bunch. We have a talking puzzle with the shapes, and my dc mainly learned from that.

 

For time, get it off of the worksheet. I gave (still do this) mine something to watch the clock for. "Tell me when it's time for snack...3:30...the small hand points after the 3, and the long hand points to the 6." Of course, if you have a digital clock around you may need to hide it for this to work...and you need something desirable for which to watch the clock. (Trips to the library, park, snacks, storytime, lunch...) Learn to watch the clock for 3:30 (or whatever time) everyday for 2 weeks before adding more.

 

With money, we played a game called "Win Mommy's Money." I hold up a coin and if he can tell me the name of the coin, he keeps it. When that became easy, he told me the name of the coin and how many cents it's worth...when his piggy bank started getting fat off of that I gave him a handful of coins to add...and then I started running out of $ so the game was over.:tongue_smilie: We let him take his money to the store and buy small treats...he reads the price, tells us if he has enough (and if he wants to spend that much), counts out the needed coins to pay the cashier, and counts his change.

 

She just may not be developmentally ready for abstract/critical thinking yet. That's OK. Focus on mastering what she IS ready for. She was probably able to master the math facts b/c she can learn those in a concrete fashion...2 marbles + 3 marbles = 5 marbles. I know you said you don't get Miquon, but this is why it has worked for me...it makes the abstract into concrete so young minds can grasp it. Miquon isn't the only way to do that (so don't feel I'm leading you that way), but the general idea to get these concepts in a concrete form for her would be a good goal. (...thus the real clock and real money...and thinking about other words with "tri" that have 3 of something...)

[Critterfixer]

I just got AoPS Kitchen Table Math for my sons to use in addition to their math program for the summer. While it isn't a curriculum it does have a lot of things that you can do to teach children the more abstract things in math.

For place value I found that the Saxon recommendation (which is also in AoPS) of making sure that you show that a two digit number is a sum of tens and a lower value number has been very useful. If you have to, don't say fifteen, say ten and five. Dr. Wright also suggests using bundles of Popsicle sticks to show how the tens and ones work. I used crayons and rubber bands, or pencils and rubber bands to bundle up ten.

For shapes I'd go get myself a big tube of pattern blocks and a Tangram set. She can probably tell the difference between triangles, squares and rectangles, but she doesn't know how to express it. Instead of asking her what the shape is, have her tell you the attributes. How many sides is it? How many corners? Are all the sides the same? Is a side longer than another side? Only after she has told you the differences would I use the word triangle or rectangle or square.

 

Never mistake fact recall for actual understanding. It's a good thing to have, but just because a child has something memorized does not mean they have "got it." I'm thrilled that my sons have memorized math facts, but I am also not bothered that they still drag out the crayons when they are working independently on Saxon fact sheets. I'd much rather that they take their time seeing how things work than just regurgitating their fact cards on paper.

[SnegurochkaL]

and I just did not understand it...

I don;t know what was wrong with me.

Maybe I need to look it over again.

I don;t know.

 

If you are going to use RS math you will be using Miquon Lab sheets only as a supplements. When I saw an "Annotation" book to lab pages, I was confused too:), so don't feel bad at all. I like the workbooks because they teach kids to learn by "playing" with numbers. I am going to use some of the books with my daughter through summer just for fun ( something she hasn't studied yet ), so she could experiment with them.

 

I think you know your child better than anybody else. May be she doesn't like the names of shapes. Ask her to name them her own way. Later, associate traditional names with her "names",and eventually she will be using regular names. If I asked my 4.5 years old son to name shapes his way he would choose the folowing:

Circle- Sun

Triangle -Piece of cheese or pizza

Oval- Watermelon

Square - Block

Rectangle- Box

Trapezoid- Sofa etc

 

Just an idea:)

 

RS does a great teaching kids to understand how numbers are built before they use traditional names. I only modified it for my daughter asking her to say 2 tens and 5 instead of 2-ten and 5.

Edited June 7, 2011 by SneguochkaL