Name: Thrive! NCHE Homeschool Conference
Start: 2025-05-22T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-05-24T23:59:59-05:00
Location: Winston-Salem, NC

Tagged: DVDs, mental math, sol-fa

This topic has 5 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 10 years, 11 months ago by RobinP.

Viewing 6 posts - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

Author
Posts
May 31, 2014 at 12:59 am
abbynellie
Participant
I have two questions relating to the new Living and Learning DVDs. One thing Sonja talked about was using Mental Math. We will be using Math-U-See but I was wondering if there was a book or resource out there for Mental Math. This is something I’m am not good about making up. I could not come up with problems everyday for the kids to solve. Where can I find something to accomplish this?
Also, she mentions the Solfege method for singing. Where can I get a resource to teach this to my littles?

Thanks for all your help!
Abby
May 31, 2014 at 1:08 am
Karen
Participant
Sound Thinking by Philip Tacka and Micheal Houlahan – Houlahan was my sight singing and harmony teacher in college. Interesting adn talented guy. The book is all singing exercises starting with sol-mi and progressing. We were expected to sight sing (w/ handsigns); sing and play (sing one part and play another on piano); sing and play in round with ourselves; sing one part and sign another part or two with our hands. Challenging!!!! But, doable with the amount of practice he made us do!
The book is available at Amazon and comes in part 1 and part 2.

May 31, 2014 at 1:56 am
ruth
Participant
I’m not sure what Sonya had in mind with the mental math. We use Rays Arithmatic which is oral and manipulative based. I also do oral drill daily. I use math-drills.com and just orally call out the problems for my ds (8y 10m) to answer. It only takes a few minutes each day.
May 31, 2014 at 2:08 am
RobinP
Participant
I use Ray’s as well in addition to Math on the Level. The mental math problems Sonya used were incredible. (And I got the last answer of 56! HA! I’m terribly math challenged so was very proud of myself.) 🙂 I’d like to have a source of good mental math problems at my fingertips like that. I see that as being so beneficial.
May 31, 2014 at 2:22 am
ruth
Participant
RobinP can you give an example of the mental math? I won’t be getting the dvd’s any time soon. 🙁 I’m just currious to what her definition of mental math is.
May 31, 2014 at 2:08 pm
RobinP
Participant
Sonya explained that what she (and I) would think of as mental math was not what Charlotte did. Such as 3+5=8+4=12-7=5, etc.
Charlotte did, for example…
There were a lady, a dog, and a butcher’s boy walking down the street. How many creatures were there? How many legs?
She gave harder examples as well but they would be harder to type out!
They were more like multi-step story problems. I’m sure any book of good word problems would be good to have handy. There may be examples in the math book SCM sells but it’s always checked out!! (I’m going to seize it when it comes back in.)