Math with a 2E 9 year old?

[beaners]

I am at a loss with this kid. He was in a special ed preschool class for a couple years for overall delays and speech. As he has gotten older it has become obvious that his attention deficit and other issues are seriously masking his abilities.

Math is my biggest conundrum. Doing something he already knows is boring to him. He knows all the topics to move into prealgebra. He won't sit and stay on task unless I am sitting next to him. He can't sit and work through longer open-ended problems without getting distracted and frustrated. He writes slowly because of delayed motor skills, so it's easier to keep him on task if he points and tells me what to write and where. 

I 100% can't move him into AoPS. (LOL) I can't do challenge or enrichment work that would move laterally on the same material. If I just say we take a break from math as schoolwork he will revolt when we add it back in. 

Our current trajectory has us moving into a typical prealgebra course with me continuing to scribe, and hoping that our decision to start medication later this year works some miracles. It seems a bit silly to keep moving a third grader forward through shallow prealgebra material when he won't write out more than one long division or multi-digit multiplication problem on his own. But I am drawing a blank on anything else that we could do.

[Susan in TX]

He might do well with Life of Fred. You can read the books to him and do some of it orally and continue to write for him as needed. The problem sets in Life of Fred are short. There isn't a lot of repetition of the same types of problems over and over. But there is review built in. I would start out a level or two below what he can currently do. There are a lot of topics covered in each level and there is also a story element so he shouldn't get bored and it will allow him to get used to the format before getting to new material.

Susan in TX

[beaners]

I will check out LoF. Our library has them, so I can take a look and see if they might work. I thought they were quite wordy, but I haven't seen them. Is that the case?

He will use math in other areas to an extent. One issue is that a lot of problems hit his weak language processing skills. His frustration tolerance is so low that if he realizes something is "hard" he will just give up. He does like mental math! He has figured out quite a few strategies on his own, but that might be something he would work on.

[8filltheheart]

How about Hands On Equations Verbal Problem book?  You can do them where he tells you what to write down or using the manipulative (if he would.  My kids detest manipulatives.)  HOE's problems are all simple alg problems that can be solved by elementary age kids.

[beaners]

Oh! I might have some HOE stuff here somewhere. I should dig it out and see what I have.

[slackermom]

My kid enjoyed the Zaccaro Challenge Math books at that stage. 

eta: There is a good bit of white space on each page for working out problems, but I also did much of the writing on a small white board as needed.

Edited February 8, 2020 by slackermom

[beaners]

We have the Zaccaro books. They are exactly what I would typically use for an advanced kid this age, and exactly the kind of thing that won't work for him. Go figure!