2nd grade math

[summer]

I have been having an issue this week. I did purchase the Singapore Math, but everytime I open the book, my high stress accelerated child (he has anxiety disorder bad enough to have a diagnosis) my incoming 2nd grader has to ask why this persons name is pronounced like this and why...all entailing things in the pictures and such. Juan is pronounced like wahn...not Jon. Why? What country is he from? What language do they speak there? Why is the book in English then? uugghhh

 

You get the idea. Should I just keep plugging away figuring he will get over this? Or is he perhaps one of those kids who simply gets too distracted by these sorts of things and I need to move on?

 

He is very quick at math. The only program I have on my list that has no distracting pictures and such is Math U See. The blocks may be distracting, but fortunately, due to the nature of the blocks, they are at least mathematical and he will learn something doing them.

 

He is a very smart child, his anxiety/stress problems just get in the way of so much.

[Jen500]

Summer, my kids do the same thing, although not in a stressed way. More out of curiosity, so we sometimes go off onto bunny trails before we finish math. Sometimes they like to change names and items, and even numbers in the problems and redo them. Most of the time I just go with it and allow extra time for math. We've talked about other cultures and get out the world atlas book a lot! Is he stressed about it or just very curious?

[summer]

Hhe wants to know, but it is very hard to pull him back to the actual math problem at hand. Since this is our first week with this particular book (we did Early Bird series previously) I am thinking it MIGHT just be because it is all new. He is pulling a lot of "can't handle it." Realize, he did take the placement exam and tested out of 1A and got most of the problems right on 1B but was very slow and it was hard for him so I decided we would start with 1B.

[Jenny in Atl]

After a while he will get used to it. They pretty much use some of the same names over and over. Maybe you all can make some chicken Satay together!

[nmoira]

Maybe until the novelty has worn off you could set aside extra time to talk about it. Since DD asked, we read a some books about Singapore.

 

Here's one.

Here's another.

And another. (This might be a bit too much, we skipped it.)

 

Here's a collection of traditional children's tales.

[Mallory]

How about Miquon? Simple pages and cheap to try out. Also works well with kids who are good at math.