It's that time of year when everyone is talking about curriculum and evaluating what is working and what changes need to be made for the next school year. We are currently in Level B with a young 1st grader (late summer b-day). We did Level A for Kindergarten. Sometimes I wonder if it's too much for her or if she's really getting it only to hear her say something that tells me that YES she gets it. I'll share a few of those moments...We were eating dinner when we noticed that my daughter folded her napkin into an octagon. She went on to tell us what it was and how many sides it has too. We went to a show and the attendant stated that the cost for three of us was $15 when my daughter exclaimed that's 5 and 5 and 5. While playing with her yonger sister, she said 12 and 12 is 24! So we all second guess our choices and wonder if we're using the right curriculum, but I'm convinced that Right Start teaches children to really understand math. Kids are very capable of just memorizing their math facts, but understanding math is SO much more important! It's amazing how my daughter is able to do math in her head. I'm so glad I stumbled into a Right Start workshop at a convention. I wish I had learned math this way! It just makes so much sense and I'm learning right along with my daughter.

Kelley,

I can imagine how great those moments are. It really shows that she IS understanding.

After reading yours I wanted to share something that happened today.

I have a son in the Geometric Approach and he was multiplying a two digit number by a two digit number.....MENTALLY. Not because I asked him to....he just wanted to do it. And he got the right answer. When I asked him to tell me what he did it was even more complicated.

It was 44 x 45. He multiplied 44 by 20 since that was half of 40 in the 45...getting 880. Then he doubled that to get 1760. Then he multiplied 44x5 getting 220 and then added it to 1760 for a grand total of 1980.

Yes....I was confused...yet it made perfect sense to him and he did it almost as fast as I did on the calculator.

He's done RS from level B.....