Has anyone ever used both Miquon and RightStart?

[countrymum]

This is admittedly kind of a spin off of my K math thread. I have used and know RightStart. I do not know Miquon. Can anyone compare the 2? Or fill me in on some of the miquon philosophy Or how it works out practically ? I am intrigued by it for a child who is interested in numbers.

[Nichola]

I haven’t used Rightstart, so I can’t speak to that. I have used Miquon as a supplement and I have liked it quite well. Miquon guides kids into seeing patterns in math and allows them to play around with numbers in a way that most standard math curricula aren’t set up to do. I think it gives kids a deep sense of numbers, and many of the worksheets give kids the chance to create their own math problems. You have to use Cuisenaire rods with it, at least to get started, but both of my kids have stopped using them now unless they have to for a particular problem. 

You have some choices with the workbooks. You can work straight through them, going through multiple concepts, or you can focus on a particular concept, like addition, and do all of those problems in all of the books. We’ve mostly just worked straight through them.

There is a Facebook group called Homeschool Math with Base Ten Blocks that I’ve found helpful. Their focus is more on the Gattegno books, but they do talk about Miquon too. Also, since Miquon is based on Gattegno’s methods, reading at least one of his books might be helpful to you too. “Now Johnny Can Do Arithmetic “ is a good introduction to his methods.

Edited April 24 by Nichola

[HomeAgain]

You got a good overview of Miquon above.  I would compare it more to Mortensen, where a kid can work in whatever strand they like.

When I was teaching Miquon I used the 1st Grade Diary and Lab Annotations books to create hands on lessons and play time.  The worksheets were the "gravy", something a child could do independently after working with me and using it to review previous concepts in a more independent way.  If a child has enough hands on practice, the worksheets are challenging but fun.  If they don't, they may struggle until they get that practice.

Miquon is open ended.  Right Start is very structured, giving you a plan for each day/lesson.  To go through one lesson in RS you have several parts and pieces to bring out- it's good for a student who likes to move on quickly, but it's not that great for a student who finds a particular concept difficult.  The length of the lesson in the upper grades can be tedious.

We used RS C-E, I think, and it was a.............love/hate relationship.  The card games are firmly on my shelf and well used.  Watching my child melt down because of the terrible way Right Start taught fractions/percents was an eye opener.  We left the program and moved on.

 

[countrymum]

6 hours ago, HomeAgain said:

You got a good overview of Miquon above.  I would compare it more to Mortensen, where a kid can work in whatever strand they like.

When I was teaching Miquon I used the 1st Grade Diary and Lab Annotations books to create hands on lessons and play time.  The worksheets were the "gravy", something a child could do independently after working with me and using it to review previous concepts in a more independent way.  If a child has enough hands on practice, the worksheets are challenging but fun.  If they don't, they may struggle until they get that practice.

Miquon is open ended.  Right Start is very structured, giving you a plan for each day/lesson.  To go through one lesson in RS you have several parts and pieces to bring out- it's good for a student who likes to move on quickly, but it's not that great for a student who finds a particular concept difficult.  The length of the lesson in the upper grades can be tedious.

We used RS C-E, I think, and it was a.............love/hate relationship.  The card games are firmly on my shelf and well used.  Watching my child melt down because of the terrible way Right Start taught fractions/percents was an eye opener.  We left the program and moved on.

 

I really like how RightStart A does place value. All 3 I have so far taught really got it. How does Miquon do on place value?

I understand the love hate relationship with RightStart. I really like A and B and sort of C. I do not think D, E, and F have enough time or practice on some concepts. Also, I think procedural fluency with long multiplication and division are important and somewhat neglected... Mostly it was great for my oldest though. I did like the fraction teaching?! However G was not a good fit for him...to much drawing that took him forever and he hated. I think Math mammoth is better for now for those older 2. (Dd totally did not get RightStarts multiplication algorithm presentation....not sure the hang up here....She understands it. We've done that over and over and....She just constantly messes it up!)

I just want something fun for preK, K and maybe 1 before math mammoth. Place value and number sense and fun (as in engaging/ interesting) are my goals;) 

Thanks so much for the review.

 

[Rosie_0801]

I LOVE how CSMP does place value. Those lessons set my daughter up for comprehending fractions too.

[countrymum]

12 hours ago, Rosie_0801 said:

I LOVE how CSMP does place value. Those lessons set my daughter up for comprehending fractions too.

That is good to know too. Thank you. I am not dismissing CSMP. I did look at it a bit. I just have a lot of trouble with digital stuff. I don't have a good way to read it well online or to print it off...

[Not_a_Number]

23 hours ago, HomeAgain said:

Watching my child melt down because of the terrible way Right Start taught fractions/percents was an eye opener.  We left the program and moved on.

How did it teach those?

[HomeAgain]

Just now, Not_a_Number said:

How did it teach those?

I can't speak for all the lessons because we gave up on them after it asked my child to circle something like 1/3 of the abacus beads in the picture.  Watching an 8yo melt down after trying to get exactly 33 1/3 beads in his circle was....yeah.  I taught the rest of the lessons the Math U See way with visual fractions.  Right Start kept reviewing, but in a way where the material was taught in such tiny steps and different materials that cohesiveness didn't happen.  We jumped to Gattegno math soon after - between Math U See's overlays and Gattegno's way (which was to create equivalent fractions with lines of blocks and fully understanding the division process that went on in a fraction/seeing inverse operations as two sides of the same information), fractions & percents weren't issues at all.

It wasn't even that my kid was bad at fractions.  It was just I had seen what a detailed lesson focused on conceptual understanding looked like, and I knew that Right Start wasn't even coming close to achieving that.  I will say ds enjoyed the games and the variety of things he did at each lesson.  It's why we kept with it until I was redoing the lessons to hit the objectives better.  I did that, he flew through the material, and we reassessed how it wasn't working for us.

The best reviews I've heard of Rights Start are the K-2 years.  Everyone talks about how well it teaches place value.  My kid was pretty good with place value due to MEP so none of those lessons would have benefited him.  I will say I still use my RS abacus with adapted place value on it.  I have strips across the top and bottom at the moment that extends 5 place values to the right and left of the decimal, with the fraction equivalent at the bottom.  It works for my kids who are struggling.  I use my cards and the square inch blocks.  They go with me to kids who use Math Mammoth, Singapore, etc.  I can use the tools with any program, any kid.  I just wasn't impressed with the higher lessons of Right Start.

[Not_a_Number]

6 minutes ago, HomeAgain said:

The best reviews I've heard of Rights Start are the K-2 years.  Everyone talks about how well it teaches place value. 

I think I read somewhere it grew out of a master’s thesis which was around place value? Or something like that? I might be garbling it.

The fraction teaching sounds awful. I’d have given up on that, too.

I like fractions integrated with division and I like visual models. Sounds like other curriculums do that much better.

[Malam]

25 minutes ago, HomeAgain said:

I have strips across the top and bottom at the moment that extends 5 place values to the right and left of the decimal, with the fraction equivalent at the bottom

Like 1/10, 1/100, etc? Are the Gattegno lessons you mentioned from his books or somewhere else?

[HomeAgain]

1 minute ago, Malam said:

Like 1/10, 1/100, etc? Are the Gattegno lessons you mentioned from his books or somewhere else?

Exactly.  It helps them internalize the grouping/ungrouping that happens between place value and then later the kids can do decimal multiplication with either decimals or fractions.

Gattegno begins to cover multiplication of fractions at the end of book 1, before kids move on to numbers above 20 in book 2.  A lesson from book 4, I think, or book 2, I forget which, just showed up in my memories on Facebook.  It has kids do a lot more with fractions, including things like learning 'the reciprocal of the reciprocal' or dealing with numbers like: 1/1/1/1/1/1/1/16.

Gattegno does not progress normally and required some time and effort of working out the tasks on my own before presenting them to my kid.  BUT, it's non-consumable, open ended, and always interesting, so my kid really enjoyed it.  I had him do Math U See Algebra after Gattegno book 5, though, and he was delighted over how easy it was in comparison. 😂 MUS was very gentle and explicit in teaching.  Gattegno was more of a 'work on it until you work it out' program.