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how often do you do math?
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I’ve just google search math game ideas and have made homemade math board games. I also came across a book for making homemade math games, but cannot remember the name off hand. We checked it out from our library. We also print off additional add/sub worksheets until we have the facts down before moving on. The creator of Math U See says it’s very important to have all the addition facts memorized before moving onto subtraction. They should be able to give you the answer quickly and not take a few secs to think about it. My dd did but now that we’ve started subtraction she needs review on add facts. So I do flashcards for a quick review.
Tara
Memorizing the facts does make sense now that I think about it. I’m just used to such a gentle learning approach vs. constant drilling and flash cards type of things. It is especially hard for me to imagine doing that with younger children. Is this what Charlotte Mason recommended? I’ve just started learning and I haven’t go to her ideas on math yet.
Great suggestions on math games. I never thought about Yahtzee. I should say that I’ve tried some of the computer math games and he wasn’t too keen on those. I think he does better with real interaction instead of being left to his own devices on a computer where he will inevitably get bored and decide to not play anymore.
@amypixie – I agree with your gentle approach! As soon as we started homeschooling we raced away from that driling of addition facts as fast as we could. We’ve never looked back. My daughter was so stressed over those timed tests full of adding facts. She was physically sick every time they had to do them. She was convinced she was horrible at Math. Wow, was she wrong. In the last year I can’t think of a concept I’ve handed her that has taken any amount of time to understand and master. She’s fantastic at Math. Her confidence is up and she now likes Math and is excited to learn more. Her younger brother is right behind her and eager to do everything she’s doing. I had no idea they could love Math so much but for us taking the “drill” out of it helped tremendously. It made it approachable and real. We do Math 5 times a week or more but just 10/15 minutes at a time. We use our hands to count too – Yikes?! I believe in keeping it light and using lots and lots of variety in teaching math. Everyone grasps concepts differently. We enjoy IXL for practice online (cool prize board), occasional worksheets, a funny game spot online that has lots of wacky characters, a lot of oral computation and practical applications (think m&ms!). I did buy and love the MUS skip counting cd and that’s our method for memorizing our multiplication facts. I love the idea of more games. Maybe we aren’t the fastest at Math but other than testing I can’t remember needing to be ultra quick at Math.
One of my favorite programs is really cheap. It’s the Practical Arithmetics Book 1. It is 2 years in one and I found mine used for $7ppd. We have used MUS and TT and this is still my favorite resource. You won’t need any extra drill! It’s all built in. We had to tweak it for not so much drilling.
http://www.christianbook.com/practical-arithmetics-book-1/george-strayer/pd/545009?event=CF
I want my children to have their facts memorized, to free their minds up to learn new concepts and not have to take so much time with counting on their fingers or in their mind. We’ve spent the summer doing math 30 minutes a day, about 4 days a week, learning the addition facts. My oldest daughter has now moved on to multiplication.
I print the addition worksheets from this site: http://www.math-drills.com/addition.shtml and just have them do however much they can in the 30 minutes – after each page they check their own work. They found that by the time they finished all the pages for +7 (for example) they knew the 7 facts down cold. Probably after the 3rd or 4th worksheet they would get to where they did not need to count out the answer.
I also purchased a wonderful math facts program called Sterling Math Facts. It was just $10 and there are so many options for it. Right now they are all just doing the addition facts and I set how many they do. My oldest runs through 75, while my younger two do 50 facts a day. It takes each of them less than 5 minutes. If they get any wrong I have them copy those down 2 or 3 times. They are so thrilled whenever they don’t miss any and get 100%!
Review is very imporant so they don’t lose what they’ve memorized, so I plan to have them continue the Sterling program daily even after they’ve learned all the facts, as it really only takes a few minutes.
One thing to think about–it may seem at very young ages that speed and ease of calculation are not that important. Counting on your fingers may not be a big deal when you are 8. But when you are 16 and trying to calculate moles in a chemical reaction, if you are still counting on your fingers and taking lots of time to do basic operations, it is sure going to take you a LONG LONG time to get an answer to a complex problem, and you are going to have to devote a lot of “brain space” to simple operations instead of keeping your significant digits straight. It would take me a long time just to balance the checkbook if I had to use my fingers! Let alone what an accountant or an engineer might need to do. Not to mention that the experience gained and patterns seen as you learn the basic facts help you to catch errors much more easily. And learning the facts isn’t “ungentle” and you don’t have to use flash cards or timed tests. We did a lot just driving around in the car going places. Just like reading fundamentals are important because you don’t want your teen struggling with the words when reading their books, developing math fundamentals is actually a gift to your children making their future lives easier.
I guess it is just a new concept to me. It makes sense to some degree. I was never good at math and I still count on my fingers from time to time (ducks and hides). Luckily I’ve never been in or interested in a profession where it was required for me to know more than this but I can see how helpful it is for those who are interested in a math related career.
I just can’t imagine my very reluctant math disliking 9 yo to go through this every day without balking and disliking it even more. I think math concepts disguised as games will probably work better for him.
I never learned my math facts either and even though I don’t have a career in math, it’s still very frustrating to me that it takes my brain so long to compute simple operations.
My children balked at first as well when we started learning the facts, just like they balked when I started having them do routine daily chores. But I stayed firm and consistent and nipped any complaining in the bud, and after a couple of weeks they settled down and realized this was not going to go away so they might as well learn it. Then, once they started seeing fruit, and realizing that they knew quite a bit of facts, their own motivation kicked in. They are now glad that I’m making them learn this and I know that they will be glad when they are grown. And I know that math will go more smoothly with this foundation.
Yes, games can be a good approach. We did these from time to time. But it MAY be that learning the math facts will make math easier on your child and he may like math MORE when it is not so strenuous and tedious. The comparison with reading is an apt one–many children who hate to read still struggle with phonics and the reason they dislike it is how difficult it is for them. The same can be true in math–once an enormous effort is NOT required just to do a basic problem, some of that resistance may melt away. A possibility to think about!
And math is not actually my favorite subject, either, and I definitely do not have an occupation that is math-intensive, but I use memorized math facts every day–when budgeting, balancing the checkbook, computing my calories for the day, shopping and deciding which shampoo is the best deal, comparing the sale price of something to see how much I might save, adjusting that recipe up to make enough to feed hungry teens, checking to see where my child’s long division problem went awry, calculating GPA for a high school transcript—I use it every day. It is a necessary skill in today’s world.
We do math daily, plus cooking, grocery shopping etc. Math is so important. I didn’t read all post thoroughly but wanted to say we do not allow fingers at all. Math is both mine and my dh’s favorite and excelled subject and we both know you can’t let kids use there fingers.
Also, we just spent 1 1/2 yrs (YES I said YEARS) teaching my 11yr old going into 6th grade multiplication. It’s that important and we believe you don’t move on untill they KNOW it. But guess what he knows them and does them without any problems. And guess what that will make division SO much more easier to learn and master. You really have to know the basics before you can move on.
That’s just my opinion though as you can see it really is a family decision also it depends on how important math is to you as parents.
Fun thread to read. We use Math U See like several others. Mastery of basic facts (knowing them without having to count or skip count to figure out the answer) does become important as bigger problems are introduced, as others said, so it doesn’t take forever to figure the answer to one single problem/question. We try to take plenty of time to practice each new concept both building it, saying it, and writing it. Today, for example, my oldest was doing a quick review practice on finding the unknown in a multiplication problem. The problems would read something like:
4G=28
We relate it all to real life, so in essence she asked herself “If I had 28 marshmallows to share between four people, how many marshmallows do they each get?” She built the problem with hands on manipulatives, wrote it, and said it out loud with her answer. It took some time. However, we do all our lessons like that and as they get the practice they begin remembering the facts “4×7=28”.
We also use the software Math Facts Now for quick practice of facts she’s already learned. It’s a bare bones program that lets me set what math is covered. Over the summer she had to do it once a day. Each week focused on a different set of multiplication facts (which she already was familiar with, but had yet to master completely). I don’t use this to just drill new things she’s not had lots of hands on practice with. It has her answer each fact, retype the ones she misses, and you can change the time limit so it isn’t a “hurry up and get through these” thing but she can go at her pace. As the week passed she became faster and more automatic with that week’s facts.
Everyone’s different, and what works for one child may need tweaked for another. I have one child who can’t “see” it in their head, they have to draw it or build it to truly understand. I have another that “sees” it just fine and doesn’t need the hands on manipulative to build it.
I appreciate all of the comments. Since my homeschool budget this year does not afford me buying an entire math curriculum like those mentioned, what inexpensive resource would one recommend just to teach those addition/subtraction facts?
Personally, I don’t feel like my adulthood has suffered from not being able to figure out a practical math answer in my own life at high speed. Then again, I guess I live a fairly slow paced life and maybe I just don’t know any better. Nevertheless, I do want to contemplate this and figure out where we stand as a family.
Last but not least, I asked this already but didn’t get an answer yet. Is this the approach CM recommended herself or is this just something that has evolved in our math/science obsessed culture?
Well, I don’t remember the approach you suggested and I don’t want to page back (yeah, I’m lazy) – but I’m going to give you the link to a blog post comparing the MEP math program to what CM recommended for math. I am giving it to you because of the great summary of CM’s math recommendations.
http://ohpeacefulday.blogspot.com/2010/04/are-mep-and-cm-compatible.html
btw – the MEP math program referenced on the blog is a free (except your printing costs). A lot of people love it (and I was one until very recently – and even though it is no longer working for my son – it is a fantastic program… and as I said… it is FREE.
Another great program for practicing math is Khan Academy. Some people use it as an entire math program but I personally don’t like the videos. www.khanacademy.org It is FREE
Also another great thing to practice math facts is best read about here. It is also FREE. http://letsplaymath.net/2006/12/29/the-game-that-is-worth-1000-worksheets/
Amy said: I appreciate all of the comments. Since my homeschool budget this year does not afford me buying an entire math curriculum like those mentioned, what inexpensive resource would one recommend just to teach those addition/subtraction facts?
Hi Amy, I posted a couple of links in my first post. One link was to a website with worksheets that has been one of the best helps to my children in learning the facts. I started out printing flash cards and having them study the cards, with the answers on the back, but that system wasn’t working too well.
One of my daughters actually requested that we go back to those worksheets. She had gone through the +5 set, which is 10 worksheets, and she told me that she knew her 5’s better than all the others. She has just finished the +6 set and yesterday started on the +7. They start off having to figure the problem in their mind, but doing the same problems over and over for 3 or 4 days, very soon they start to just know the answer, and by the end of the set of 10 worksheets they are flying through them. It’s been very effective for us.
I also listed a link to a math facts program that you download to your computer. It’s free to try for 7 days, and then just $10 with unlimited updates. I don’t use the program to teach the facts, only to test and reinforce what they know. Each of my girls has their own user name and I tell the program how many and which facts they should do, and how much time to give them before showing the answer.
Amy said: Last but not least, I asked this already but didn’t get an answer yet. Is this the approach CM recommended herself or is this just something that has evolved in our math/science obsessed culture?
I personally don’t know what Ms. Mason’s thoughts were about memorizing math facts, although I’ve read from others that she wrote that concrete facts should be taught before abstract concepts. Memorization of the math facts is not a new idea in our current culture. In fact it’s not really popular at all anymore. In his book, How To Tutor, which was published in 1973, Samuel L. Blumenfeld says:
For most people, however, arithmetic, like the alphabet, is considered so simple a concept that we forget how complex it really is. Those of us who went to school in previous generations were taught arithmetic mainly by rote. We learned how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide without trouble because we were taught to memorize our tables and drilled in them constantly…Today, all that rote learning has been thrown out the window….Until the 1950’s, most of our children were taught the decimal place-value system of arithmetic by rote.
And also:
At age 5 and 6 children can learn the arithmetic facts by rote. But before having the child memorize an arithmetic fact, first demonstrate it with concretes. For e.g., to demonstrate that 3 plus 4 equals 7, line up three pennies and four pennies and have the child count them to get the total. Then write the fact in numerals, 3 + 4 = 7, and tell the child that this is what he must memorize in order to be able to use this fact in the most convenient way. After you’ve demonstrated all of the addition and subtraction facts, then demonstrate the multiplication facts….After this laborious task, he will realize that the symbolic representation of 8 times 9 = 72 is a much easier and faster way.. Rote learning is the easiest form of learning. All it requires is repetition. The best way .. is to have the learner see the fact over and over again until it is indelibly imprinted on the mind. .. Flash the correct answer to the learner until he or she learns it cold and no longer has to “figure it out.” (Excerpt from “Homeschooling – A Parents Guide To Teaching Children” by Samuel L. Blumenfeld)
Of course it’s “to each his own” whether a family decides to memorize math facts. But I guess I don’t understand how this is considered “not gentle” when memorization of the scriptures is highly encouraged.
Thanks for reposting those links. I will check them out. We are very familiar with using manipulatives like math gems in the early math years so I am comfortable with that. It is the drilling which is more difficult for me to understand. I definitely wouldn’t do it with a younger child but I’m thinking now that my oldest is going into 4th grade and truly having problems with his times tables that it may be beneficial for him.
I wonder if this is one of those things which depends on the child too. For instance, my son is a completely self taught reader, no phonics, nothing…and reads quite advanced for his age…but perhaps my daughter may be the opposite and will need more formal instruction to learn. I say this because I’ve been all too confident in telling parents that children will teach themselves to read and I’m sure my youngest will prove me wrong, haha.
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