2nd grader doing miquon and hating it

[MarigoldHS]

My 2nd grade son just started his first year of homeschooling.  He came from a montessori school.  I thought Miquon math would be a good program to start off with, but it seems to be going poorly.  i read somewhere that I should start at the beginning with the miquon, so we have been working through red and orange and he HATES it.  He complains everyday about Miquon.  It is super super easy for him.  I have thought about jumping ahead, but i hesitate b/c it is my understanding that the concepts build on one another.  So now, I'm not sure what to do.  I just realized that a lot of people do red and orange in kindergarten, so I hate to put him through something that he likely has already mastered.  

 

So do i switch gears entirely and get a new curriculum?  or do i continue with miquon until we get into the later books? or jump ahead?  He also does some math facts drill worksheets/flash cards and Life of Fred.

 

Thank you!

[wapiti]

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Edited January 12, 2016 by wapiti

[Spy Car]

I happen to love Miquon, especially in the younger years when it can reach children when other methods might not. That said, I would not torture a child by putting him though work in Miquon that he feels is an insult to his intelligence. I would try letting him choose some concepts and Lab sheets to work on, and suggest that you choose some too (based on where you think he is topic wise).

 

You can (and should) read the topical materials in the Teacher books (especially the Annotations book) and see if you think he understands the mathematical principals. If the answer is some cases is "no" then work with those concepts at the more advance variations of the basic topic or operation, rather than doing the program from square one.

 

Miquon may (or may not) prove to be to his taste, but I would try "moving up" first, and then consider adding a second program (like PM or one of the other good programs like Singapore/MEP/MiF/RS/MM or replacing Miquon entirely. Depending. He should not hate math. Sticking with Miquon is not a hill I would die on (said as one with great affection for this program). I would try, if possible to salvage it. If that is not possible I would still urge you to use the teacher's materials for your self-education as a math teacher and bring those assets to another "conceptual" math program.

 

My 2 cents.

 

Bill

[Farrar]

While I think there's value in starting with Orange, I wouldn't recommend it for a 2nd grader - I would start with Red and get the whole set and let him follow threads from book to book instead of being stuck at a low level.  I think one of the beauties of Miquon is being able to jump around.  For kids going through it from kindy in order, that usually means jumping around mostly within a single lab book, but for older kids, I think that means jumping around between the books.  In addition to the Annotations, be sure you make good use of the videos at Education Unboxed.

 

But that said, I agree with Bill that there are other great programs out there.  Miquon was perfect for one of my ds...  his twin thrives with MM instead.

[kbutton]

You may know this already, but I didn't fully understand how this worked until I got my hands on the actual books and could look at the different levels. The "threads" are listed topic by topic in a chart at the back of each book. The letter indicates the topic, and the number indicates how many sheets into the topic you are (or how many are in each book). If your child can do all the hardest pages for topic C in one book, then you can skip to the next book, look up the pages for C, and then decide if those are appropriate. If necessary, you can move on to another book for topic C. Meanwhile, you can still be doing other topics in an earlier book. If you don't have the whole series or the additional teacher-ish books, this may not be evident. We are just getting started with Miquon, but my younger son loves it. My older son does Singapore.

[austen]

I agree with what the others have said about moving around in Miquon. My kids don't like to repeat things, so doing all the addition, subtraction, etc. all at once often worked for us.

Also, neither one of my kids like worksheets. For Miquon, I usually used the activities in the First Grade Diary/Annotations, but we did some of the problems from the worksheets on whiteboards. I also supplemented with other math activities from Mathwire.com, Marilyn Burns, and other games.

 

I recently found this website: http://www.educationunboxed.com/ which has a lot of games/activities with the rods if the problem is that your son doesn't like worksheets.

We're now doing Singapore, but I still use a lot of the ideas I used with Miquon.

[MarigoldHS]

This has been so helpful.  thank you to all of you!