Hello Ilana,

First, I want to congratulate you for recognizing her need to go back to Level B. This shows me you have her best interest in mind, and desire her understanding rather than dragging her through math.

There are a few things I will suggest, but I fear you may have already tried them.
1-Make sure you are playing the games like Addition War, Corners, Rows & Columns, and money games (as money deals a lot with place value) and the like. The games are critical to her working mentally on the problem.

2-Let her continue using the ALabacus as long as she needs it. Regardless of what the lesson says. If the lesson states to do mental math, have her attempt to do it, and then as you find she struggles don’t offer the solution to the answer, instead tell her, “If you are having trouble figuring it out, get your abacus”. Letting her solve the problem on her own will give her a real experience that may help the connection of what she is doing. ( I like that you have been waking her through the problems step by step, but maybe it is time to make her solve them on the abacus by herself, then you can go over the step by step processes after she solved the problem.)

3-Make sure the time for each math session is limited. If you are finding that she is forgetting, it could be just the way her mind works, or she has trained her mind not to pay attention and thus never really listens. The best way to fix this is to do school in small amounts of time (@15min) and then as she can pay attention longer you can lengthen the time. But if it is an attention problem, you will need to work with her ability, or literally you are wasting both of your time. So don’t go on until the lesson is over, instead put on the timer and stop when it goes off and then play game, and the next day pick up where you left off. It is slow going at first but the pace will pick up. I have heard too many stories and experienced it myself to doubt that it works.

4-If she is a visual leaner, using a large whiteboard with different colors will be very helpful to her, as she will use those images to recall what she is to do when she has to do problems mentally. If she is a kinesthetic learner she should be writing the problem on a large whiteboard with numbers 3-4 inches big, she needs that motions to make the connection. If she is an audio learner she needs to tell you the process of problem solving, she should be telling you how to do it not only having you tell her. Audio learners have to hear it and then repeat it aloud for them to completely understand it.

This are some suggestions and most likely you have used them, if you have let me know because it will then be more helpful to get an actual example of the lesson and see where she is getting hung up. For that a call to our customer service is more helpful 888-272-3291.

Finally, I want to tell you that it is normal to get frustrated, but it only makes them feel dumb or that they are disappointing you, and that makes them hate math time. I suggest if it is too much for you right now that you have dad teach the child for a limited time. Then when you take back the responsibility, follow my advice I just gave you and see if things don’t get better. She will be moving much slower than her sibling ever did and that is okay, because what she knows she will know well, and what she is learning she will no longer be afraid to learn.