Math with a Pre-K'er

You might also consider slowing down and doing only 2-3 lessons per week.  Add in games the other days.  My daughter has begun kindergarten this month.  We alternate reading lessons (CM style) one day and math the next.  On the off days, we’ll often play a game.  So if we did a reading lesson, we will play a math game.  Sometimes these happen at other times during the day, sometimes at our lesson time (during the little one’s naptime).  We do file folder games, board games, cooking, etc.

I have a son who is 4 and we also “went through” the Saxon K. He also enjoyed using all the manipulatives and we were VERY relaxed with it and like you say, finished rather quickly. We have not started any formal 1st grade math – most of what I have looked at is too much writing for him for now. Instead we continue to play games (a lot of the ones from the Saxon K) and use our math manipulatives – we have some activity books for tangrams, geoboards, etc. We have a lot of math conversation: e.g. as we play outside I give him “math problems” very casually, that have to do with what we are playing. While he LOVES his “schoolwork” I don’t want him to see it as drudgery at a young age by moving on to a structured curriculum quite yet. I am trying reinforce what we’ve gone over (that has all been very fun) and to work his mental math skills by showing him practical math as we go throughout our day. Hopefully when he starts a more formal curriculum it will be a bit easier with a good thinking foundation. Ruth Beechick’s math book/pamphlet (I think it is “A Strong Start in Arithmetic” – it can be bought separate or in the book “The Three R’s”) has a lot of good ideas for “math things” to do with younger children. It’s very short and a very quick but very informative read. Have fun – we love math around here!!!

I’m dropping Saxon. I actually bought the 1st grade and then sold it on ebay. I felt as if there was too much of it I was skipping over and it would be a waste of money (i.e. the meeting book we didn’t do at all b/c it made the lesson too long and we were doing too many different things all at once). I really liked the K for my son b/c he wasn’t old enough to write yet and it was all manipulatives and no writing and was very fun. When I looked at the 1st grade it was too involved. He is very bright in math, but still young. I wanted to find activities that he could do to keep learning math but not be pushed so much since he is still little. I was really encouraged by the ideas in the Ruth Beechick book (my library had it so you may be able to check it out if you didn’t want to buy). It was a much more gentle approach without giving it up altogether. I have read a lot of the articles by Maria Miller who wrote the Math Mammoth curriculum (www.mathmammoth.com). I like her books for many reasons: they are cheap, thorough, and not so overwhelming. She has a lot of great information about math learning and teaching even if you choose a different curriculum. One downside she points out (and I have heard this from others) of Saxon is that it doesn’t encourage mastery of one topic before moving on to the next. I know for some Saxon works great –  I had Saxon all through school and sailed through math on into higher college level maths. I look forward to teaching it to my children, but the more I looked at Saxon the less common sense it made compared to other more simple approaches. So, for what it’s worth, that’s my two cents! I wouldn’t see anything detrimental to taking your time, having fun, and reinforcing the basics for now while you read up on all that’s out there. You would be surprised how much math they can learn from talking through every day situations – it’s all around you. How exciting that your daughter enjoys math – have fun with it!

I had the same question about the lingo – you can look back (search) there is an older post I started called “forum lingo” where I asked what all the abreviations meant 🙂 DD means dear daughter – I got a good many responses that explain the others 🙂

We have been going through the Singapore Earlybird math after we zipped through Saxon K (I haven’t seen the Primary Math yet). Some of it overlaps, but it goes further than Saxon at the K level. I have mixed feelings – some days I love it, some days I am thinking “what??” Some of the activities mentioned seem to be geared toward classrooms and seem either hard to adapt to home, or unecessary. What I do like about it is the emphasis on mental math and my son likes the colorful pictures. It is easy enough for him while still challenging him to move forward. I think it is structured differently from the Primary Math – the Earlybird doesn’t have a home teachers guide like the Primary Math does (the “teachers guide” for EB is very expensive – there are instructions in the kids books). I will say though, I have been really impressed with what I’ve seen of Math Mammoth. I am probably going to use it next (and she says she uses some elements similar to Singapore, i.e. pictures). From what all I’ve read about both, Singapore is great, but Math Mammoth would be equally as comprehensive. I feel like the Math Mammoth allows for more customization for the homeschool student (and it’s a lot cheaper!). It is not so cumbersome and is a much more simple approach. Like I said in my earlier posts, Ruth Beechick and Maria Miller seem to have a lot of good information about math learning (if you want to do some reading on that). I want to make sure he understands the hows and whys and can think through it in his head and not just memorize a system or finish a book – also I want him to see how to use his math in everyday life. So, we are focusing on that and letting the books sort of give us some structure along the way. I’ve also found that my son enjoys and learns much better when we are just talking and working through problems rather than doing a scripted lesson (like Saxon – as much fun as we had with the K, we didn’t do it word for word like they script it). So, the less cumbersome the material the better for us. I’m very “mathy” so I apologize for the long post (I also am not good at being short and sweet – my sweet husband just smiles when it takes me 10 minutes to explain what he can in 2!).