She says she doesn't like Miquon

[La Condessa]

My 4.5 year old daughter has finished Beginning Mathematical Reasoning 1& 2. She adored these and would beg for them. Though by the end, I think her developmental readiness had advanced faster than our progress through the book, and it was way too easy for her the last few months. But we just continued with it because she enjoyed it. She likes to talk about math, ask questions about negative numbers, and have me ask her simple addition/subtraction questions (in story form) which she does on her fingers or sometimes mentally.

 

We recently began Miquon Orange, only ~6 sheets in. I thought this would be great for her, fun and appropriate for her age because of the manipulatives and games, but now she is now saying that she doesn't like Miquon and she wants to go back to her old math book, instead. I'm not sure if it is just because Miquon requires a little more thought (she is a perfectionist and tends to lose it whenever something takes effort) or if it's the format, and she's just one of those unusual kids who love workbooks? I'm just not sure what to do--we're not currently making any progress in math at all, because I have always just done math on request, and she doesn't want to do it if it's Miquon. I've thought about requiring a bit of math from her for a while to see if she likes it better once she gets used to the new format, but I'm wary of turning a subject she loves into a chore. I'm also considering getting Singapore for her instead, which might help if it's just that she prefers workbooks, but probably not if she just wants it all to be easy.

 

Does anyone have any suggestions?

[The Way of My People]

Given her young age, you also might consider trying the RightStart games.

 

FWIW, it took my kids a while to warm up to Miquon (and one never did). It just feels really random and unstructured to them.

[La Condessa]

Assuming you've let her play with/get familiar with the Cuisenaire rods first and she's just not into them... She might like Singapore's first grade better. DS is liking Miquon orange (we started a month ago), but he did the SM first grade Extra Practice book first (and especially liked the problems with fruit, candy, toys, etc.). It's cute.

 

Alternately, you could skip ahead to Miquon's red book, especially if she likes (or you think she'd like) even/odd, number lines, and eventually an introduction to multiplying, dividing, and fractions.

Yes, we've been playing with c-rods for about a year. She doesn't mind occasionally making a picture out of c-rods for fun if I start it, or playing a math game with me with them, but she's not all that interested in them.

 

So, you would skip the Singapore K programs and go straight to first? Why? (I was considering Essential Math).

[Rachel]

No opinion on the Miquon, but I will second that Singapore's Essential Math is really basic.  Book A is very preschoolish, book B is less so, it does get into addition and subtraction.  My 5.5 year old went through A in a month, he's about half way through B and only been working on it 3 weeks. I just received 1A and flipping through it, it appears to cover the same topics as EM.

[La Condessa]

Thank you all. After looking over the online samples and contents, I think maybe I'll get EM B to try with her. It looks like B has some things she doesn't know yet, and maybe if it starts out easy she will be more willing to make the change from her old math books. Thanks!