Honors section of MUS

Try doing the honors sections of a couple of lessons BEFORE where you are.  Leave her with them for a while.  Sometimes we step in too fast when we hear “I can’t”. There are lessons that only pretty advanced students can pull off (the intro to the lesson will tell you this)  Don’t worry if she needs significant help with those.  What you want to find out with the honors lessons is does the student have a deep enough understanding of concepts to be able to apply it in a slightly different way?  Just being competent in basics and formulas does not mean this deeper understanding is taking place.  Try walking her through ONE problem on the page and then letting her take notes on that and try to apply it to the other problems herself.  Some honors pages were tough for my students, and mine are generally quite advanced in math.  We ourselves never did drop back to doing the pages for EARLIER lessons, but this is frequently recommended on the MUS forum for students having difficulty with the honors pages.

I DO recommend at least trying these pages.  The extra mental effort is very valuable and helps keep MUS from being a wee bit on the too-easy side.  

No, just don’t do them until you are a couple of lessons ahead.  That gives your student a couple-week break for now (yay!) and then you try an honors page, with the skills you have added in the meantime.  ALSO try to encourage the child not to immediately get frustrated and say “I can’t” but play around with it for a while.  Tell her maybe she can do a little work on it over several days, don’t penalize her for attempts to try even if they are wrong, then try just giving her one hint if she really is stuck.  I know the above is easier said than done 🙂  BTDT.  LOL.  But over time the attitude you want to encourage is “Hmm, if I play with this for a while, maybe I can figure it out, and it doesn’t matter if I do a few wrong attempts first”  Not “THAT’S TOO HARD!!!!!”  LOL