A question: is my son the only one who despises the number puzzles in the warm up section of the Level E book? We commonly spend at least 30 minutes on just the number puzzle. I give him time to try to figure some out, he usually gets one, then I try to give him hints about the other ones, without giving him the answer out right, and this takes a long time and he and I both get so frustrated.

He's more gifted verbally than in math, by the way.

Any words of wisdom?

Kelly

Dear Kelly,

Thank you for your post. While many children enjoy the puzzles, there are those who are not so appreciative of them as is your son. I just emailed another Mom with the same concern only a few days ago.

I had the same issue with some of my own children. what I started to do was give them hints. To begin with I would write out the symbol of the operations needed. EX: +, x, -, = . Doing this seemed to help. If I needed to I would then use the RS strategy for teaching which is to ask questions to lead them to the answer. And, if all else fails write out an answer or a few answers yourself and ask your child, "Does this work.?" giving your child the opportunity to correct you? This is what I did for my children who were where your child is at during some of the warm ups. This slowly helped my children to risk and try different approaches to their answers.

Let me know what you think and if you think this will work for you. If you have any other questions please feel free to post, email or call.

Thanks for giving your child a RightStart in math.

Sincerely, Rosine

Dear Kelly,
Thanks for your post. It is good to share openly with others and find support. As I read your post and Rosine's great advice it made me think a bit deeper. Why do we do the warmups? When you think about that perhaps you will come to realize how important they are to lay a foundation for your child to see the interconnectedness in math. They help him see if I multiply on one side and it works, then I can probably do the "inverse" which is dividing and it will work too. These discoveries help him see that math is much more than just memorizing numbers and finishing pages. He begins to see the bigger picture and then he is ready for higher level thinking.

I taught Level E for many years and here are some ideas I used. Again, you are trying to get your son to discover these for himself, but until he does some priming of the pump might be necessary.
Try writing out the problem three ways and putting an equal sign in a different place each time. for instance:
1= 2 3 4 [1=2+3-4]
1 2=3 4 [-1+2 =-3 +4 or 1-2=3-4]
1 2 3=4 [1-2-3=-4 OR -1+2+3=4]

Another idea is to show him how each problem has a positive and negative example by just changing the sign in front you have two problems for every one you can think of, as in the last two example above.

He may also need to "see" how it works and the math balance is a great tool for that.

I hope this helps give you some more ideas. Please keep in touch if you have any more questions or if you need more ideas.
Nancy

Dear Nancy and Rosine,

What I did was to rewrite the number puzzles, one set per page, in a spiral notebook. He is starting again from the very beginning, and we'll just continue through the summer with the number puzzles (we always do math games through the summer anyway).

I will definately have him use the hint of writing the equal sign in a different place for each row of numbers.

Thanks.

Kelly

I'm glad to read that you do math in the summer. We do this too and I find it helpful for keeping up my children's math skills. Sounds like you have everything set and ready to go.

Thanks for sharing with us what you plan on doing.

Sincerely, Rosine

We had a hard time getting through the puzzles until I realized he doesn't HAVE to figure them all out from scratch - I could not even do that. We give hints like the others suggest, we also switch off days - one day he plays teacher and gives me hints and the next day is my turn to give him hints. This helped us enjoy and appreciate them.