Advice on helping child to become "fluent in math"?

[warriormom]

Any advice from veteran homeschoolers/after schoolers on helping a child to become fluent in math? Should I drill and kill with basic math facts? Do math daily? Manipulatives? Dice games? Curriculum?

 

My son is in 1st grade, and I really want him to get him off to the right start. He is in public school this year, and I am not sure about the quality of his math instruction. Your help is greatly appreciated. :)

[cmac]

My ds8 did public school for 1st and 2nd. If I had to do it over again, I would try to do Singapore/MM etc. with him over the summer. It didn't look like they did too much conceptual math in his school. And this way you can also see what he's not completely understanding. My son's teacher only told me once he was struggling with something, but looking at his skills now, there was more that he did not understand. Nothing soo bad, but I really expected him to be solid in math if I wasn't hearing any more complaints from his teacher. I do suspect though that there were more kids in his class that needed more attention just to learn the basics. Edit:And if the more conceptual ones were too hard to do, I would have used CLE etc.

Edited September 20, 2012 by cmac

[letsplaymath]

Any advice from veteran homeschoolers/after schoolers on helping a child to become fluent in math?

 

I wrote my #1 math advice in this blog post. It doesn't take much time, but it makes a world of difference:

Tell Me a (Math) Story

 

[Sharilynn29]

Education Unboxed! If I knew how to imbued websites, I would. This site has a lot of fun math games that don't feel like school. My dd asks to play these with me during her free time.:001_smile:

[thegirlwhopaintedtrees]

Education Unboxed! If I knew how to imbued websites, I would. This site has a lot of fun math games that don't feel like school. My dd asks to play these with me during her free time.:001_smile:

 

I second this suggestion. My other advice is to keep math FUN. No drill. Do it via games. Rightstart Math has tons of games that practice the drill, but in a fun way. It's how DD learned all her how-to-make ten facts quickly - just by playing memory but having to flip over two cards that added to 10 as opposed to two matching cards. That was her favorite game, but not the only one we played. I can bring it to CC for you to look at if you want. "War" (we called it something less brutal but I can't remember) was a popular game with my 3rd graders. The two players both flip two cards and add/subtract/multiply them. Whoever has the highest/lowest wins all four cards.