Math question – 8yo

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.

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.