Dear Amy,
I am so sorry to hear about your child's struggle with the mental math. Perhaps I could offer a couple of suggestions to try. They are just suggestions because each child is different and learns differently. First, stop putting so much pressure on her to get it with the flashcards and drills on the calculator. That is only adding stress and children under stress stop learning. Instead relax, take a deep breath and play the games. Stop doing any new lessons for the summer and just enjoy math games. You want her to love math and in order to do that games are so important. I would recommend you start with the fun ones she loved before like "Go to the Dump" and "Old Main." Play "Corners" and "Short & Long Chain Solitaire" as well as "Rows & Columns." These are some of my favorites. The key is for her to play the games and get very familiar with the basic facts through fun drill and repetition. You also should go back through the "Yellow is the Sun" CD to be sure she knows the combinations up to 10.

Second, don't worry about getting through the curriculum. Your goal is to teach your daughter. Some times it takes more than a year to cover one of the levels, but it will all be okay if they have a strong foundation in math. They will be able to skip through middle school in one year instead of three so it will really work out okay. Plus our Level A is very advanced and is similar to some Grades 1-3, so it will still help her to do fine on standardized testing.

I would strongly recommend that you do not add another curriculum into the mix as it will just confuse her more. Also, bring back the abacus. She may need it to help her visualize in her head what she is doing. The key is not to take it away too early. When you do the mental math again when you start up school again, try demonstrating it with the abacus. Let her see it on the abacus first then take the abacus away and try it again. This is a gradual process. Don't worry if she is not getting it right away. Try asking her one or two problems when you are driving in the car to help her get the idea, but don't pressure her to succeed right away. As she relaxes and enjoys math again it will open her up to really feel confident and then she can learn.

I hope this answered some of your concerns. I am sure others will write some ideas too.
Nancy

Not taking away the abacus is the first thing I thought of - I'll agree with you, Nancy, that it's been important for my daughter when she hits a hump. It COULD be viewed as a crutch, but if your leg is really broken, lol....my daughter needs extra time to visualize. I just really ensure that she's using the abacus to put the strategies into play the same way we would if she were doing it mentally.

I also don't hesitate to work a strategy through with her, orally. I think it's easy for her to feel like the testing environment (by which I mean simply trying to get her to do what she can't, yet, mentally) really gets out of hand if I push - whereas, testing isn't remotely important to us, we need to work as a team to make sure that foundation is strong. If I know that it isn't, yet, then the testing only hurts her.

Hello Amy,

I agree with Nancy, and she is always full of excellent ideas and encouragement.

But I would like to address two main points.

The first, that you may want to limit the time you are spending each day in math with her. Some parents are so glued to the curriculum and feel the driving force of having to “finish” each lesson each day, that they may lose sight of the need for the child to slow down and stop and “smell the numbers” :))

Since this program requires more one-on-one critical thinking and dialogue, more than your child would ever receive in most programs—public or private—I recommend doing a math session for no longer than 30min each day. Of course you may need to shorten it for those with less attention spans. Be stay tuned in and watch for signs of her mind drifting off. For one of my kids I had to stop after 15 min and finish the last 15 with a game—this lasted for months until I noticed his attention span was growing, but to this day we rarely finish a lesson in one day.


My second point is, you were wondering if she should be switched to a more concrete program. Honestly, this is the most concrete program out there for homeschoolers and I would venture to say for public-schoolers too. This program trains the child’s mind to think abstract concepts in concrete terms, like using the abacus, and the place value cards, and so on.

The other programs you may have been thinking about are not concrete, but are formulalic or procedure based. Those programs believe children are not capable of high concepts, so rather than teach them to understand what they are doing, they “train” them to repeat the procedure—this is called behaviorism. Teaching them that way will produce fine worksheet scores, because children are excellent at finding the patterns, thus they can pass the worksheets. The only time it becomes a problem is when you want them to use it in real life situations, or to apply critical thinking in higher math levels. They will not have the understanding as how to solve problems that are not set up in the way the were trained/drilled. This is why many of our college admissions report that high schoolers (homeschooled and public schooled) test two years below college level standards in mathematics when entering college. They can’t perform outside of their set-up worksheets.

Let me encourage you to remember, there is no perfect math program that is going to be a perfect match for any of our children and for every lesson; it is the teacher that perfects the program. She (or he) will need to observe when the child is paying attention, and when they are fading away.

It is true that some children will not “get it” at first, but that is usually because we are moving too fast, or not teaching to the way they learn, or are not playing the games 2-4 times a week. I have three children and find I have to teach to each child differently. Some I do more games with then the other. Some I spend less time talking, more time on the white board. One of them I can just say “today day we…” and he knows everything we are doing. I have one that we took SIX WEEKS on Level B Lesson 30-35. If it hadn’t been my third time teaching Level B I would have thought I must be doing this wrong… but I shortened my time even more, played games throughout the day, and we got through it. She has no problems with it today. We are now in Level C and she recalls no problems, even though she had her fair share of tears. She does not remember...but I do :)

So hang in there! It can be done. Once it is understood it goes faster.

Please let me know if you have any more questions. You can email me directly at Carissa@alabacus.com .

Thank you for giving your child a RightStart in Math,

Carissa
RightStart™ Mathematics by Activities for Learning, Inc.

For program questions: 888.272.3291
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