Help me figure out math for this kid, please

[4KookieKids]

My 2nd child is more obviously 2E than my other kiddos, in that her weaknesses/disabilities are not masked nearly as well as theirs are. She is finishing up 2nd grade, and doing both Singapore 4a and BA 2C. She hates the problem solving part of BA (she doesn't want to puzzle through things, and I would say she does not at all like things that don't come easily). The only reason we have BA in there is because she was hitting stuff that was too advanced for her in Singapore, and I needed something else to keep practicing old skills while not moving forward in Singapore too quickly (she barely makes it through a page of BA in one sitting, so it's excellent for putting on the brakes and reinforcing ideas). So she picks up BA when the Singapore stuff gets frustrating, and after a month or so, usually returns to Singapore. She likes that Singapore is "straight-forward." She tends to be like a lurching car when it comes to math: stalling for days through a single lesson, and then completing the next 5 related lessons in a single sitting. It's not clear to me whether she's really "getting" it, or if she just figures out "the steps" and how to get right answers. 

I'm struggling to find what she needs from me, mathematically. On the one hand, she's clearly somewhat of an AL, and once she knows how to do it, it's "boring," and she doesn't want to waste time reviewing - she wants to move forwards. On the other hand, something about the way she's learning it still has me thinking about LD sorts of stuff, still, and I don't know how to balance the two for her math. I'm feeling like I need to slow her down, so we can both be *confident* the skills are there, but she insists upon going speedier with constant frustration rather than my preference for low-and-slow-and-comfortable. I think a contributing problem is a somewhat low working memory with a processing speed in the 99.9th %ile. She gets frustrated at a lot of things being too slow. lol. We've tried math games, Ronit Bird, lots and lots of education unboxed activities, etc. She gets into them a bit, but  does the work easily and complains of boredom still after a very short while. I tried switching her to TGTB, because I thought she'd like the pretty pictures and stories, but she wouldn't even give me the chance - just said No, she likes Singapore. 

What would you do with her for math? We read LoF. She loves when I read the BA guides to her. Should we just put all "doing" math way for a while and do nothing but "listening" math? (She can't read them on her own yet because of dyslexia.) This child makes me scratch my head an awful lot... 😄 

Edited April 28, 2020 by 4KookieKids

[Xahm]

I'm thinking out loud here, not giving real advice because my oldest is the same age as the child you are describing. When she hit a wall with Beast it was because she hadn't gotten a good handle on the multiplication facts (she understood very, very well). We stopped, took a turn in Math Mammoth for a chapter on multiplication, and now we're back in Beast with much more satisfaction. I would hate to stop doing math all together, largely because it would possibly be hard to convince the child that it's time to start back and that we're not going to drop it every time it feels boring. An unconvinced child is not giving their best effort, to say the least. I might try substituting in logic for math, so she's still doing something analytical every day, and also reading math to her, as you describe. 

[4KookieKids]

18 minutes ago, square_25 said:

Has she found any math ideas fun so far? What has she been enthusiastic about, if anything? 

Hmmm... Good question. I will have to ask her. Off the top of my head, I'd say she's enthusiastic when it comes easily. lol. She loved fractions at the beginning - until they got harder. She loves skip counting -- the easy ones. She likes some of the BA puzzles -- definitely not the starred ones. But I'm often surprised at her different perspective, so I'll chat with her about it. 🙂