Help prepare son to return to public school

I don’t have any advice at the moment but I read your post and will pray for you and your family.

Praying for you and your family too.

If he needs help with math facts, we have had success with RightStart Math card games and free http://www.xtramath.org for drill.  In xtramath, you can start them in any of the functions -,+,x,/, being sure the student knows stategies first, and that it is more important to get the fact right than to get it fast.  When they miss it, they are supposed to say it outloud and then type in the correct answer, which it gives. The program keeps track of the ones they know well and the ones they need work on more and gives the right amount of facts for them to practice.  We do these about 4 times per week and they pass the function in a few months, knowing all that function’s facts within 3 seconds.  It takes about 10 minutes per day.

We have also supplemented with Mathtacular DVD’s at various times through the years.  They watch 15- 20 minutes once or twice a week and can be good review or help them understand a concept when it is explained a different way or with different manipulatives than they had seen before.  Math has been my son’s struggle area, but he does pretty good with it now.  But this is the reason why I have supplemented so much for math in the past.

And it helps to do their hardest subject first thing in the morning.  So try to get math in first.  If he is behind, find out why and supplement with something to help him move along quicker.  You could also look at Math Mammoth topical math units to help him catch up in specific areas.  Joan Cotter, author of RightStart math, says that games are to math what books are to reading.  And lots of games can help with math if there are numbered cards or dice involved.  The RightStart Math games kit is nice, but you can do other math games to help him.  You can use a regular deck of cards and play addition war, subtraction war, or multiplication war.  Each lays down 2 cards and performs the function and says their answer outloud and the highest number wins the cards.  It can help make learning math more fun, too.

You could find out what math the school is using, most likely Saxon.  Then you can get a book at his level or below (to avoid frustration) and once a week work on a practice sheet with him to get him used to the format.  This way you could still continue with MUS the rest of the week, if you like.

Kim,

You are definitely in my prayers as are your family members. We lost my granddad to colon and pancreatic cancer about 7 years ago. We had a very close-knit family and my mom was his and my grandma’s main caretaker…but then my mom needed a listening ear, etc from time to time. Anyway, my granddad’s experience led me to do some research on naturally treating cancer. I wanted to share one of the resources that sticks out in my mind ( though there are many excellent ones when you can find them). It is a book called Cancer – Step Outside the Box written by Ty M. Bollinger.

As far as your son and math…. My oldest daughter was 7 or 8 when we used Jones Geniuses math program. She was not gifted in math and her story is not the exception. She went from doing addition and subtraction the 1st semester we used the program to doing exponents and upper level math in just 3 semesters. How is this possible? Dr. Jones helps build the memory muscle w a seemingly irrelevant story about numbers in the very beginning. Simultaneously, he teaches math in an accelerated manner. To clarify, this is a quicker way of learning math, but is NOT necessarily aimed at “gifted” children. Later on, the memory pegs created by the number story you’ve been memorizing helps you learn prime and composite numbers, cube roots, etc. There is no frill, but he keeps the students interested. He offers both an online class which he personally teaches. Your child will get to work on a virtual black board w his classmates on various problem types but is never made to feel inadequate if he should make a blunder, and is encouraged through positive peer pressure. He also offers a parent lead\taught version. We have used both and I’m not sure which I prefer as they both hv their advantages.

I will gv one word of caution though. Dr. Jones asks that the students do one or two of each type of problem they hv learned as a daily review, plus the daily assignment. In the beginning this is no big deal, but it can get to be quiet a bit as the student learns more. Do not become a slave to the curriculum, but rather adjust it to fit your needs. We did this by reviewing some types of problems once a twice or a week and then the remaining other types of problems once or twice a week. At first, I let the curriculum dictate how much we did and we all burnt out on Jones Geniuses. It looks like there is A LOT of daily work daily work when you look at each assignment and we would do ALL the problems. By the time I realized that there were so many problems not for the child to necessarily complete them all, but for those who struggled and needed more practice there was nothing left of us to frazzle. I cut way back and we’d only work a line or two worth of problems, plus the review. We were too far gone by that point though and so we set that program aside. We have been a few years away from it and I am ready to hop back in. At first, my motives were wrong in choosing this program. I wanted to make homeschooling and myself look good when my daughter was able to understand and fly through math that most high school students can’t even do to convince my public school teacher M-I-L and some other family that homeschooling is just as much of an education, that it’s not a joke…and I burnt us out in math as well as language arts. I did learn one important lesson about Jones Geniuses; I could wait until high school to do any math and my kids would still be just fine, though I certainly wouldn’t do that. I also learned the general lesson that we have plenty of time and that I don’t have to rush.

I hope this helps you some. If you hv any other questions about this specific program, I’d be happy to tell you more about it or our experiences. I feel I’ve not been real clear about the value\merits of the program or the bumps in the road. I’m “hunting and pecking” on a tablet right now and so my thoughts are not flowing so well, lol. I type almost mindlessly on a keyboard and my thoughts are free to flow but my computer is down just now.

May God give you the strength and direction you seek.