MUS & RS – mix the 2?

We do mix the two.  I have posted about it before, but not sure which thread right now.  We are using MUS Alpha and watch the video lesson.  I love how the video works.  I have a dvd time scheduled each day for 4 days per week.  We either watch the MUS lesson, Mathtacular, or Discover and Do science which I had left over from Sonlight.  I am planning to buy a few Signing Time videos to play on Friday. 

So anyways, after video time, then that day I’ll teach with the MUS lessons, blocks and worksheets.  The next day is the MUS worksheet and the AL Abacus.  The next few days is more practice problems on worksheets I either print from the worksheet generator on the MUS website, or copy practice problems out of the resource from RS: Worksheets for the AL Abacus.  I can look in the table of contents for the topic matching the MUS lesson.  Since the worksheets don’t take as much time on the later days of the week, that’s when we play a RS game from the RS Math Card Games set.  Again, I just look for the same topic as the MUS lesson.   ds is still having problems memorizing his math facts.  So I added an idea I got from a seminar from Diane Craft who does Right Brain learning.  We make our own math fact cards.  I write the math equation on a 5 X 7 notecard and he draws on the numbers to make them characters, usually dinosaurs.  Then we tell a story about those characters.  This is supposed to help in developing a relationship with them (like in CM teaching!).  That day and the next, I’ll pop that question (What’s 8 + 2?) to him several times, even in the evening cooking or cleaning and I may show him with bread or eggs in the kitchen.  “I need 10 slices of bread and I have 8 here on the plate, so how many more slices of bread do we need?”  I have held off on going further in MUS until these facts are mastered.  So we are mostly doing RS games, MUS website generated worksheets and the created math fact cards with me drilling several times per day.  I think once we get these facts memorized and understood, subtraction and Beta (mult-digit add / sub.) will come easier and go faster.  Both my kids do the math games and math fact cards, but I do help my younger one since she is not at older’s level, but she feels left out if not included.  So she is included with my help and with lower expectations out of her.  She also watches the videos, but again is not expected to do the worksheets, etc.

HTH, Sarah