garddwr Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 Honeybee (dd9) has started complaining that her math is boring and not challenging enough. I'm hoping ya'll can help me think through how to proceed with her. For background, we did math exploration but no formal program until February of this year. At that point she started MM2B, and has since breezed through 3A and 3B and is now working in MM4A and 4B. We have also been working through BA 3A and 3B, I plan to order C and D once D is released. Honeybee seems to get a lot out of the challenging sections of BA (she'll whine and complain but insist on figuring it out herself). She likes mental math, and prefers to find her own way to solve problems. She doesn't like writing out her work! MM4A and 4B seem to be building very incrementally, there's not a lot that is really new until we get to long division--which I'm holding off on because I want her to have her multiplication and division facts really solid first and they're not yet. She tells me what she is doing is kindergarten math and she can't focus because it's boring--and during math time she drags her feet over doing the work, doodles on the pages, stares off into space... I'm thinking it's probably good for her to keep plugging away and learn how to focus when something doesn't grab her attention--she can use plenty of work still on making facts and procedures automatic, working carefully to not make silly errors, and writing down and checking her work. But she tells me, rightfully, that that's not real math--she wants something her brain can chew on. She enjoyed the section on Pascal's Triangle in MM4A, particularly the part where they gave her a blank pattern and suggested she create her own triangle with a different number running down the sides (instead of 1). She picked a number in the hundreds, filled out the entire triangle, then worked to figure out what the total of of all the numbers in her triangle would be. Then she asked me to print out more templates so she could try other numbers. We haven't hit any conceptual snags yet--she seems to grasp most elementary concepts intuitively. Looking ahead, though, I see a lot more basic arithmetic without much of the more meaty challenge she says she wants. She needs the arithmetic...but I'm wondering if she may need less practice than I have been assigning (she does between 1/2 and 2/3 of the MM problems). And mostly I'm wondering what to add to make things more interesting. I have most of the elementary LOF books, which she reads through but doesn't want to stop to do that math. I have the Fractions book, which I could sit down and go through with her (I think that's what it would take to get her to focus on the actual math and not just the story). I have Rightstart Geometry and Patty Paper geometry that we could play with, also HoE. I wish the rest of BA were out...I haven't tried SM's Challenging Word Problems yet but will probably pull that out this week. I've wondered about the MOEM book that AoPS sell--does anyone have experience with that? I told Honeybee today that I will try to find some more interesting "real math" as she calls it for her to work on, but she does need to keep working on the drill and skill aspects as well. Thoughts, experience, words of wisdom to share? How should I proceed? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boscopup Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 Sometimes moving on actually helps solidify the facts. I made sure my son had a reasonable knowledge of the facts before doing long division, but they weren't lightening quick. Doing long division helped them become quicker. I also fast tracked our fact practice by printing drills from math-drills.com. The day I started, I did table of 3. We spent 5 minutes, and I told him to skip any he didn't know right away. When the 5 minutes was up, I orally reviewed the page. Each fact he skipped, I asked him right there what it was. He had skipped 3x6 and 3x8. After going over the page, he knew what those were - we had isolated the problem areas and worked those to death. ;) Also, MM is sometimes too incremental for mathy kids, so you might skip steps where you don't think they're needed. It worked best when I took the workbook in my hand and taught at the white board, then assigned however many problems he needed. Some sections, we'd do 3-5 problems, and some sections we'd do 15. Just depended on how well he demonstrated understanding. You could also tell her that after she finishes 5B,, she can try AoPS prealgebra. Sounds like she might enjoy that. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbmamaz Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 idk, i'm way too laid back to give good advice. My older son does every other or every third problem in his singapore book most of the time, unless its something he's really not getting. My younger one, we did most of singapore 2A in 1st grade and have not done any 'real' curriculum since then. We have done Zaccaro's challenge math, read some murderous maths books (this kid is addicted to humor), finished LOF fractions. I've printed a few random worksheets here and there for practice, and he liked Kaleidoscope math which i picked up during a scholastic sale. He is incredibly stubborn, so i keep it really light. While it is important to do some stuff you hate, I guess the line of how much is a personal decision. But i would probably reduce the practice problems a lot - when you say 'drills', you dont mean facts drills do you? Because those can all be done as games, too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
garddwr Posted October 17, 2012 Author Share Posted October 17, 2012 Sometimes moving on actually helps solidify the facts. I made sure my son had a reasonable knowledge of the facts before doing long division, but they weren't lightening quick. Doing long division helped them become quicker. I also fast tracked our fact practice by printing drills from math-drills.com. The day I started, I did table of 3. We spent 5 minutes, and I told him to skip any he didn't know right away. When the 5 minutes was up, I orally reviewed the page. Each fact he skipped, I asked him right there what it was. He had skipped 3x6 and 3x8. After going over the page, he knew what those were - we had isolated the problem areas and worked those to death. ;) Also, MM is sometimes too incremental for mathy kids, so you might skip steps where you don't think they're needed. It worked best when I took the workbook in my hand and taught at the white board, then assigned however many problems he needed. Some sections, we'd do 3-5 problems, and some sections we'd do 15. Just depended on how well he demonstrated understanding. You could also tell her that after she finishes 5B,, she can try AoPS prealgebra. Sounds like she might enjoy that. :) Thanks for the response. Working at the white board might help--I can see that holding her interest better. For awhile she was doing her math fairly independently, which was really nice--but right now she doesn't seem to be able to focus unless I am right there with her. I do think AoPS prealgebra will be good for her--it is sitting by my bed right now while I try to work through it (in all my spare time:lol:) I may need to let her skip more of the MM problems--I started out in 2B having her do all of them because it was our first experience with a formal math program and I wanted to make sure she had a good foundation. I've lightened up a lot in the last few months as she obviously understands the basics and doesn't need a ton of practice with each incremental step. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
garddwr Posted October 17, 2012 Author Share Posted October 17, 2012 idk, i'm way too laid back to give good advice. My older son does every other or every third problem in his singapore book most of the time, unless its something he's really not getting. My younger one, we did most of singapore 2A in 1st grade and have not done any 'real' curriculum since then. We have done Zaccaro's challenge math, read some murderous maths books (this kid is addicted to humor), finished LOF fractions. I've printed a few random worksheets here and there for practice, and he liked Kaleidoscope math which i picked up during a scholastic sale. He is incredibly stubborn, so i keep it really light. While it is important to do some stuff you hate, I guess the line of how much is a personal decision. But i would probably reduce the practice problems a lot - when you say 'drills', you dont mean facts drills do you? Because those can all be done as games, too. Well, I have been laid-back until this year--I think kids can learn a lot by exploring, reading books, playing games, etc.; Honeybee had a good understanding of numbers and mathematical concepts before we went to a formal program. At this point I feel we need to work through something structured to make sure she has a really good foundation going into Algebra etc.--I had a very fragmented math education from 4-8th grades, and struggled throughout high school in spite of being "mathy" by nature (I went to 5 different school in 3 different countries and 3 different languages during those years...people talk about their kids struggling because of too many curriculum hops, try continent hops!) By drill, I mostly mean the practice problems built into MM. We do do some separate drill (computer games, flashcards, and worksheets) for multiplication facts. I agree that games work well and I have a variety of card and board games for math--but it's almost impossible to actually get through a game without the younger kids interrupting and wreaking havoc with the cards/game pieces. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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