Hi Marina (and thanks for bumping this, Sandra),
How wonderful that you will sit and work with your daughter. I would encourage 30 minutes of concentrated attention in math along with 5 minutes of mental math at another time or at the end of your math lesson with your daughter on each school day if possible. Having a good portion of the math lesson be done orally can help her progress more quickly, especially with dyscalculia, with the added benefit of you knowing exactly where she is having difficulty than if she were writing each question out. She will, of course, need to do some written work and her geometry will be hands-on. Be sure to precede and follow the math lessons with an easier lesson or ones using either a different part of the brain or body.
If you are wanting to add in that practical geometry (which my dyslexic son loved, btw), there is a newer book out called “Hands-On Geometry: Constructions with a Straightedge and Compass” by Christopher M. Freeman that could be taken twice weekly (dropping two arithmetic/pre-algebra days). I wouldn’t show her the cover since it shows a grade level on it but each sheet can be cut out or photo-copied and the constructions worked right on it. The answers are all in the back. I’m just giving that as an option.
I’m going to copy and paste a little post I wrote below as it may give you some Charlotte Mason-ideas that help make sense of some abstract things for children with dyslexia and/or dyscalculia.
Warmly,
Richele
“To briefly touch on the question of dyslexia and dyscalculia and Mason’s methods in teaching math: Common sense warning -I am not a doctor, psychologist, or specialist. I am; however, the loving mother of an incredible son with the gift of seeing in a visual-spatial way.
When we began our formal venture of faith in a CM-education with this child, I found a firm foundation in her first principle that ‘Children are born persons.’ I trusted in her observation that ‘every child has been discovered to be a person of infinite possibilities’ and the simplicity that each child sits down to the same ‘abundant and delicate feast.’
Miss Mason’s methods are so interwoven in her scheme of education and these seemingly small things help work together to teach the great in math. For example, a common symptom stated for dyscalculia is trouble telling time. In a Mason education, a child is not given a clock face first to work on telling time. Rather, a child will follow the rising and setting of the sun, changes of seasons, and come into contact with ideas of distance and direction in outdoor geography and nature walks before ever meeting the abstract concept of time in an arithmetic lesson.
There are a number of other fascinating dovetails with her methodology in teaching math -such as the use of history charts, the Book of Centuries, paper sloyd, the teaching of reading, and dictation, to name a few. Her methodology rests firmly upon her principles with the use of captain ideas, atmosphere of environment, and discipline of good habits. All this I have found to be instrumental in the living teaching of math for both of my unique children but even more so is the cooperation with the Divine Spirit. In Miss Mason’s words, ‘Such teaching as enwraps a child’s mind in folds of many words that his thought is unable to penetrate, which gives him rules and definitions, and tables, in lieu of ideas – this is teaching which excludes and renders impossible the divine cooperation’ (Vol. II, p. 274).”
