Name: CHEC Rocky Mountain Homeschool Conference
Start: 2025-06-12T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-06-14T23:59:59-05:00
Location: Denver, CO

Tagged: CLE, math

This topic has 4 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 8 years, 6 months ago by Carolyn.

Viewing 5 posts - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

Author
Posts
December 4, 2016 at 5:37 pm
mrsmccardell
Participant
My husband fully supports homeschooling. He isn’t too involved due to his work schedule. Recently, he commented on my son (almost 9) not being able to do addition with certain numbers and not quickly enough for what he could answer.
Background: ds quickly loses his temper if he doesn’t understand it right away – seeing this early on we took our time and played with numbers using Ray’s and Life of Fred. We needed to move things along so we just started CLE but I chose to go back to the 1st grade books to make sure we thoroughly covered our basics. We are moving at a fast pace through each book. Math is not my son’s strong suit. He just started to pick up books to read on his own (thankfully!) but it’s still slow going. He loves history, nature, and science and narrates really well.
I told my dh all of this but he was still concerned b/c he compared it to when he was in 3rd grade he was doing multiplication. I related it to going at his pace and that was a beauty of homeschooling. But, now I’m nervous. Math is something we’ll keep doing – even on breaks if necessary – but will he “catch up?” My dh said there should be urgency on it but how do you do that when you’re already doing flashcards, speed drills, and lessons? I also don’t want him to hate it…he doesn’t love it but he gives it his best.
Thoughts?
December 4, 2016 at 6:27 pm
Tristan
Participant
You can eventually catch up – I had a child do that. She started over with basic addition in 3rd grade because she just wasn’t grasping it at all with Saxon (and she took 6 months off math before 3rd grade because it had become such a bad experience). She simply kept doing math during the summers so we could go at her pace instead of hurrying her. She is now in 10th grade and in Geometry. She caught up around 8th grade (made it to PreAlgebra then, and was ready for Algebra in 9th).
We don’t do flashcards on top of speed drills on top of lessons. It usually leads to burnout. Depending on your son’s preference, pick 1 way to practice those facts. My kids prefer to take me out of the equation all together for that. There are tons of games on Multiplication.com (including for addition, subtraction, etc). All are free, and all involve actually answering math fact questions to move forward in the games. Another free one, less busy, is xtramath. Also online and free – this works best for my kids who get distracted by the games in the other one. It also adapts to your child’s learned facts, gives reports so you know what they are doing well on a what facts they need to improve, etc. One of my kids doesn’t mind flashcards.

December 5, 2016 at 8:03 am
mrsmccardell
Participant
Thanks. Just to clarify, we alternate between the flash cards and speed drills so we’re not doing them all every day.
December 5, 2016 at 11:25 pm
Wings2fly
Participant
My son always struggled in math and was “behind”. I shudder to think how behind he could be if he were trying to keep up with a classroom of kids though. He is 12 now and I can see a big jump in his math understanding recently. We make math a priority in that it is the first subject we do each day and be sure to get all questions answered and any help needed from me done. With CLE, we skip the quizzes and tests and just keep plodding along. So he can complete 13 to 14 light units in a 180 day school year, 13 lessons per light unit. On our summer break he will complete another one or two light units. We are hoping to get three math levels completed in two years. He does the speed drills daily.
But when he was trying to master facts, we took a break from speed drills and used xtramath.org which uses a program to learn which facts they struggle with and then helps them work on those facts they need help with most. We spent a few months using it, being sure to emphasize the importance of getting the right answer, and then speed will naturally follow. Three-second recall is required to pass and then they print out a certificate. As the teacher, you get weekly progress reports and track their score. It is free (paid for by donations) and ad-free. It takes about ten minutes each day. We really only had to do this twice: addition and then later for multiplication. They do need to have a good understanding of strategies of how to get the right answers before they can start using this program. Then it can help them get their facts put to memory for fast recall.
December 6, 2016 at 8:24 pm
Carolyn
Participant
Have you considered using RightStart math games? We use and love RightStart. That age loves games and it can take the pressure off and include siblings. RightStart sells a game bundle that has the games books and some manipulatives.