Hello Lara,

In Lesson 56, the child starts to learn the traditional names of the tens (ten, twenty, thirty, so on). So if she is starting to do both names on Lesson 53 you can either have her stop until Lesson 56 or tell her that it is both names.

When my kids came to this point I always gave them both versions, the one that is mathematically correct and the Latin root traditional version. This way they keep the correct version at the fore front of their thinking while understanding that in English we call them different names but the quantity is still the same. As time goes by and you are constantly reminded them they will naturally pick it up.

To comment on her dreading math time, I would like to add…
1) Don’t make math an open-ended math time. Limit your time to 30min. and stop for the day and pick up where you left off the next day.
2) Don’t stick the one concept so long that it becomes intolerable to your child. In other words, if she is stuck on a concept work through it for your limited time and pick up the next day, and approach it as a review, and there are time when ;you need to only discuss it for five minutes and move on, then bring it up in the warms-ups until she is understanding the concept.

Some things to do…
You can make it a part of the warm-up to do five different numbers (i.e. 50, 30, 20, 60, 10) on the abacus and have her name them in both ways. Then move on to the other warm-ups and the lesson.
You can have races where she has to build the number 50 (5ten and fifty)on the abacus while you build it on the place value cards, or vice versa.

“and trying to do the math by counting ones and then translating it back into ‘tens’ .”

I am not sure what this means. If you mean that she sees a number like 2ten and counts the two and then adds the ten, that would seem fine if she is not really counting but knows the number by sight or quantity.

I mean, if she sees the number 50 on the abacus and she sees it is a five and then knows they are all tens and calls it “5ten” or “fifty” that is fine.
If she sees the number 50 on paper in the “50” symbolic form then calls by the correct name that is fine.

If she sees either and is counting “1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ten, that is fifty” then you can work on her visualization skills and that does take time, and I recommend doing it in the warm-up time.

Please let me know if you have more questions as I hope that I have answered these, but if you have more please feel free to email me directly Carissa@alabcus.com
Or Call our customer service at 888-272-3291 I answer phones on Wed.

Thank you for your time,
Carissa
Customer Service Rep