Post from the Past: Help with Math and Reading

This post was from last year; it’s incredible to read again and see how far he’s come in just one school year!

The best way I have found to help Ian get everything done is to make him do his least favorite subject first, and early in the morning at that. It used to be reading, and then math for a while, but I have no idea yet what this year will bring. It will probably be writing. Doing his least favorite subject first helped both him and me. Until we started getting up earlier I found that I would procrastinate beginning the school day at all when I knew we had to look forward to the dreaded subject, and all of the whining that accompanied it. So I just got Ian up early, and started the day with it. Sometimes we would even do it before breakfast. That leaves the rest of the day to look forward to.

I also have trouble getting Ian motivated to complete his work in a timely fashion. So I’ll tell him he has 2 hours to get done with math and play his video game. His next subject starts promptly when those 2 hours are up. If he spends 1 hour and 45 minutes on his math, he’ll only have 15 minutes to play. I think this is helping motivate him, but it’s a slow process. (If he could stay focused, his math would probably only take him about 20 minutes, but he gets distracted so easily. I keep thinking that he would probably be diagnosed with ADHD if I sent him to a public school.)

One of the ways I have failed Ian is by procrastinating in teaching him his math facts. I think he could finish his math in about 10 minutes (distractions aside) if he didn’t have to figure every single problem out from scratch. So we’re taking the month of September to work on flashcards. I’m going to let him answer as many addition facts as possible in 60 seconds. Then we’re going to see if we can add a couple of cards to the pile while completing them in the same amount of time. We gave it a try the other day, and it was definitely more fun than reciting facts. We’re also going to do subtraction and beginning multiplication and division, but separately for a while.

I don’t have any idea if you all are struggling with reading, but here is what I have done: I have prioritized reading way over science, history, etc. I figured the faster he could learn to read well, the better. I merely read Ian’s science and history out loud to him last year; we spent most of his study time learning to read better. I don’t know if this has anything to do with it, but Ian’s reading skills just took off when we bought him the Kid’s Day by Day Bible and had him read to himself from it every night. Until your child is really excelling in the basic areas: reading, writing, arithmetic – I wouldn’t worry too much about the other subjects, except Bible, of course, which you can count for history. You could also get some nature readers and knock out science while working on reading skills.

New multiplication breakthrough

After weeks of trying everything from flashcards to speedsheets, Mathblaster to recitation, I think that Ian and I finally hit on something that works! Yesterday he came over to sit on my lap, after playing an online math game (and having plenty of trouble). I held up my hand, and ticked off one finger at a time as we counted by threes. “Three, six, nine, twelve, fifteen!” We did that several times, then I changed my approach. I held up one finger and said, “One times three is:” I had to make him wait until I finished speaking before giving me the answer. (He was stuck on counting by threes and didn’t want to wait.) After we went through the first five factors that way a few times, I began to mix them up (at his suggestion). Lo and behold, it worked! He knew them! The whole process took less than five minutes. Today we will learn up to 3×10 if all goes well, and add on 11 and 12 tomorrow for good measure. Prayerfully, we can learn a family a week using this method, and finally get back into his second grade math books. (We’ve been on hiatus while we focused on multiplication tables.) Hooray for something that works for us!!

 

What works for your kids? How did you tackle learning multiplication tables in a homeschool setting?

Help with Math and Reading

The best way I have found to help Ian get everything done is to make him do his least favorite subject first, and early in the morning at that. It used to be reading, and then math for a while, but I have no idea yet what this year will bring. It will probably be writing. Doing his least favorite subject first helped both him and me. Until we started getting up earlier I found that I would procrastinate beginning the school day at all when I knew we had to look forward to the dreaded subject, and all of the whining that accompanied it. So I just got Ian up early, and started the day with it. Sometimes we would even do it before breakfast. That leaves the rest of the day to look forward to.

I also have trouble getting Ian motivated to complete his work in a timely fashion. So I’ll tell him he has 2 hours to get done with math and play his video game. His next subject starts promptly when those 2 hours are up. If he spends 1 hour and 45 minutes on his math, he’ll only have 15 minutes to play. I think this is helping motivate him, but it’s a slow process. (If he could stay focused, his math would probably only take him about 20 minutes, but he gets distracted so easily. I keep thinking that he would probably be diagnosed with ADHD if I sent him to a public school.)

One of the ways I have failed Ian is by procrastinating in teaching him his math facts. I think he could finish his math in about 10 minutes (distractions aside) if he didn’t have to figure every single problem out from scratch. So we’re taking the month of September to work on flashcards. I’m going to let him answer as many addition facts as possible in 60 seconds. Then we’re going to see if we can add a couple of cards to the pile while completing them in the same amount of time. We gave it a try the other day, and it was definitely more fun than reciting facts. We’re also going to do subtraction and beginning multiplication and division, but separately for a while.

I don’t have any idea if you all are struggling with reading, but here is what I have done: I have prioritized reading way over science, history, etc. I figured the faster he could learn to read well, the better. I merely read Ian’s science and history out loud to him last year; we spent most of his study time learning to read better. I don’t know if this has anything to do with it, but Ian’s reading skills just took off when we bought him the Kid’s Day by Day Bible and had him read to himself from it every night. Until your child is really excelling in the basic areas: reading, writing, arithmetic – I wouldn’t worry too much about the other subjects, except Bible, of course, which you can count for history. You could also get some nature readers and knock out science while working on reading skills.

“I can read, can’t I, Amy?”

My niece stopped in the middle of her reading page to look up at me and whisper, “I can read, can’t I, Amy?” She has been pretending to read for a year or so now, but the realization that she was actually reading hit her all at once. For me, it was one of those great moments in homeschooling. While teaching my son to read, I pushed him so hard to read that he began to hate it. I pushed him through seven or eight of the A Beka first grade readers before he even turned six, and we never read anything twice! The good thing is, he is really beginning to like reading now. I even “catch” him reading for pleasure once in a while (but not often enough). However, that was a long, frustrating road, so I’m using a different strategy this time.

My niece starts at the beginning of her little six-page kindergarten reader every Monday through Wednesday (those are the only days I have her). I have her read until her attention dwindles, and then we move on to something else. It’s been working! Each day she goes a little further without becoming bored. Tuesday she finished the entire book, and yesterday we started a new one. Her excitement bubbles out into the room, and some of it rubs off on me. My son has always been a pretty quick study, but his attention span is extremely short. It’s amazing how different the kids are, and yet they are both so fun to teach!

I noticed that both children devised different ways of keeping track of things they had counted. My son drew lines from item to item as he counted in his math book. My niece colors or writes a number on each item. It’s so interesting that they both realized they needed a way to keep track, and made up their own systems. Sometimes I wonder if we are as smart as our own children!

BTW, my son is getting into larger addition and subtraction problems and beginning multiplication. How do you all teach math facts? Do you use flashcards, speed sheets, rote memorization, or do your children just figure out the answers every time and eventually get faster? I didn’t memorize anything by rote while being homeschooled, but I went to a Christian school in 3rd grade and learned my multiplication tables by saying them aloud with the entire class every day. I just don’t know what to do…help!