Math Movement
KarateKid absorbs knowledge on his schedule, not anyone else’s, and certainly never on mine! He has a wonderful mind but picks & chooses what he’s interested in at any given time. Most of the time, this isn’t a problem for me, but we’ve chosen a very straight-forward, chunked-knowledge math curriculum in Math-U-See, which means that two months may go by before he’s willing to open it again, but when he does, look out.
building the multiples of 6 with MUS blocks
I feel like single digit multiplication has finally filtered through enough times to become truly functional for him. He’s understood the theory behind multiplication for ages but still often skip-counted to figure out the answers. This is totally fine for a 7 year old and I wasn’t going to push him, but at the same time, I didn’t feel that we could move ahead to multiple-digit multiplication until he could do single-digit with a little more speed.
This week I suggested we try a little Math-U-See again, and he has astounded me by quickly covering 4 chapters of single-digit multiplication in four days, and when he saw that the light at the end of the multiplication tunnel is only 3 chapters away in the enticing “Multiple Digit Multiplication” lesson, he begged to do 2 lessons today. Unfortunately, we are heading out the door right now for a check-up on my poor ear drum, so I couldn’t indulge him in more math. But I love that we’re moving forward again!
February 5th, 2010 at 9:12 pm
Don’t you love it when you take a leap of faith with your kid and it pays off in spades when the time is right? Bravo to you for trusting that he’ll do it when he’s good and ready. Homeschooling is a beautiful thing!!!! (Are you coming to the unschooling convention in Ohio next week, by chance??)
February 6th, 2010 at 4:02 pm
It sounds like he and James have similar learning styles. He does the same kind of thing. And when he hits a roadblock there is no “let’s keep practicing until you get the hang of it.” I just have to back off and maybe introduce the concept again in a few months.