Starting Miquon with an 8 year old

[poppy]

My daughter is 8 but is struggling with 2nd grade math.

She was in public school through 2nd grade and was considered "satisfactory" but can't add two-digit numbers or other basic stuff.

We are doing Math Mammoth but is a bit intimidated by it.

I asked her what she needed to do better and she said more hands-on tools, so I'm thinking: MathUSee, RightStart, Shiller or Miquon.

 

Of these Miquon is most appealing to me.  Simple, effective.
Someone on YouTube said I need to start at level 1 no matter what so she can understand the c-rods.

I don't mind spending the $ but I don't want to waste time or make her think she's doing baby-ish math - know what i mean?

What is a good approach to introduce Miquon to an older kid ?  Is there a way to jump-start thinking about c-rods?

[73349]

The first book doesn't look babyish or anything; they all just look like math. The first one helps you get good at knowing which rod color is for each number, among other things. Let her go at a comfortable pace.

 

Here's a link you may find helpful: http://www.educationunboxed.com/learning-about-cuisenaire-rods/

Edited November 5, 2016 by whitehawk

[MyLife]

I would start at the beginning with some free play with the rods, building a staircase with the rods, and the counting section in the Orange book. You don't have to spend days on this because I bet she will understand the rod values very quickly. So, introduce the counting section in the Orange section and if she understands, then move on. She doesn't have to complete every worksheet. Also, I don't think the Orange book is baby-ish. It is the first book and it works on even/odd, addition, subtraction, multiplication, fractions.

[MyLife]

I second Education Unboxed. Also, buy the lab sheet annotations and first grade diary for Miquon.

[poppy]

Will read these thanks - glad to hear it's maybe not crazy to start this with an older kid.

[wapiti]

I would go with the Miquon and start at the very beginning.  It sounds like there is difficulty with place value.  You can also ask on the Learning Challenges forum.

[El...]

I think Miquon will be perfect.  I agree, start at the beginning.  I bet she'll go fast for a while, but it's so cheap, and you can do as many pages as you want at a sitting. 

[Ellie]

My daughter is 8 but is struggling with 2nd grade math.

She was in public school through 2nd grade and was considered "satisfactory" but can't add two-digit numbers or other basic stuff.

We are doing Math Mammoth but is a bit intimidated by it.

I asked her what she needed to do better and she said more hands-on tools, so I'm thinking: MathUSee, RightStart, Shiller or Miquon.

 

Of these Miquon is most appealing to me.  Simple, effective.

Someone on YouTube said I need to start at level 1 no matter what so she can understand the c-rods.

I don't mind spending the $ but I don't want to waste time or make her think she's doing baby-ish math - know what i mean?

What is a good approach to introduce Miquon to an older kid ?  Is there a way to jump-start thinking about c-rods?

 

Miquon doesn't really have a "level 1." It has Orange. :-) And that's where you would start.

[AimeeM]

I agree with the others - start at the beginning (with Orange), buy the annotations.

[justasque]

Don't underestimate the value of just playing with the rods for a couple of days.  Build stuff, make patterns, etc. like you would with other blocks or shape tiles.  This will help her to see the relationships between the rods.

[Spy Car]

I would also get a set of 10 base-10 "flats" to go with a C Rod set. The "flats" are the same scale as C Rods and (being 10x10 cm) serve as 100 values in normal use. 

 

It is not explicitly in Miquon to model numbers, but with flats, Orange Rods (as 10), and the other C Rods as Units/Ones it makes the physical modeling of 3 digit numbers simple.

 

Later a "flat" can be reassigned a value of 1-Unit (One), with an Orange rod becoming 1/10th and Unit Rods 100ths.

 

The greatest value in Miquon from my perspective is in providing a way to teach/learn. If this Miquon way works for you, you can adapt the style to almost anything. 

 

Do study those parent/teacher books.

 

Bill

[Rosie_0801]

If place value is the problem, the CSMP minicomputers are brilliant. 

 

Other than the A thread (counting) Miquon Orange won't look babyish. We're finally going to finish it tomorrow. (Dd has been working across the first four books for months.)

[Farrar]

Well, I'll say I think it's fine to start with Red. I don't think Orange has so much magic in it for an 8 yo that they can't pick up everything in Red. Orange is very, very basic. Red is pretty basic too, but there's stuff in Red that follows forward - like multiplication with fractions - that a lot of kids that age if they're struggling or behind won't have done before.

 

But what I really I think what you really want to do is get the full set and follow the threads system and not go page by page at all. I think it's one of the beauties of Miquon. And if you're doing that, you may as well just get them all at once. And then you're not staying with Orange really - you're taking a thread and following it through several books. I think with an older kid, that's pretty key to making Miquon work. Because otherwise you may end up with a kid who is tuning out the learning and discovery - they already think they get it about the stuff in Orange and Red mostly... so instead of jumping to new topics that they also mostly get but need a new perspective on, you want to move that topic forward so that the stuff in the early books is helping them discover the stuff in the later books. For kids doing it on grade level, I think it makes sense to mostly stay in one book at a time because you're working with what's developmentally appropriate. But for an older kid, it would be developmentally appropriate to follow a topic much farther along - possibly even all the way to the end. You might even have a few threads going at once. The multiplication with fractions stuff is a really good example of how Miquon takes a topic and gets really young kids to see that 1/2 of the 12 hats can become 1/2 x 12 can become 1/2 x 1/2 can become 3/4 x 24 can become even more and more complex (for an early elementary schooler) problems and they seem intuitive because of how Miquon presents them and because of how you learn to use the rods.

 

I second what Bill said about also getting 100 flats to go with the C-rods. If you're going to be buying anyway, I'd get a 1000 cube as well. They're only like $5 or something.

 

Also seconding what people are saying about making good use of Education Unboxed.

 

And yes, study and use the Annotations. Most people don't find the Notes to Teachers super useful (I didn't either). The First Grade Diary is good... but some people find it just okay and others find it's the key to grokking the whole excellent thing that is Miquon. Shrug. Decide accordingly...

[Lori D.]

My understanding has always been that Miquon was designed to cover grades 1-3 math. We found that some topics (pages from the Yellow, and esp. the Purple workbooks) actually plugged in well as supplements for grade 4 math. So no, I don't think it's a problem at all to start Miquon with an 8yo.

 

Agreeing with previous posters to start by spending a few days playing with the rods, seeing connections, watching some of the Education Unboxed videos and using those as a springboard for experimenting with what else you both see as you experiment.

 

One of the beauties of the program is that it is not set up by grade levels, but by topics, and laid out so that you can use it in a "spiral" fashion (finish all the topics in one workbook, then start the next workbook which "spirals" back around to those same topics but at the next step up in difficulty) -- OR -- in a mastery fashion (follow one topic through the workbooks until the student either completes the topic, or "hits the wall" with that topic and needs to switch to a different topic).

 

That alone is worth just buying the whole package at once. (BTW, Rainbow Resource has a package price for the Lab Annotations and all 6 workbooks, and they also sell the bucket of rods, so you can get a complete Math package that will last you 2 years (or can be used as a supplement for several years) for just under $80. :)

[poppy]

I got the 6 books , lab book, c rods (wood), hundred block (plastic) and am just waiting to get started . Also bookmarked education unboxed !!

 

I may get the first grade dairy too, but I also bought mosdos this week and am feeling a limit poor.

 

Thanks everyone for the advice and encouragement .