An overview of how we do Math here.
PRESCHOOL
Math before Kindergarten basically amounts to "counting everything." Constantly asking the child how many fingers am I holding up, or how many apple slices are on your plate. The very best counting exercise I can think of for a large family preschooler is to help count out # of snacks per sibling, or divide a set portion between the children present. I like my children to be able to count to somewhere in the teens or 20's before I start them in My Father's World kindergarten, but abilities vary greatly between children and that's fine. They should probably be able to at least count to 10 before starting kindergarten though. Sometimes, if they are pestering me to be allowed to "do school" like their older siblings, I allow them to do some of the Rod & Staff preschool workbooks. Book C is specifically about numbers and practicing writing them, with cute rhymes to help remember how to form them in the correct direction. I'm not exactly an advocate of either preschool or busywork, but there's a place and time for everything. In my opinion, bookwork/seatwork before Kindergarten should be limited to only when the child is asking for it. Keep in mind that, while Milestone keeps their products reasonably priced, ordering by phone or mail directly from Rod & Staff will almost always save you money.
KINDERGARTEN
I use My Father's World for kindergarten, which includes some light math, but I also wrote my own kindergarten math curriculum after seeing my child struggle with understanding place values despite MFW's system. The one I wrote basically teaches place values in multiple different ways, over and over and over through the kindergarten year, so that they will be ready to go into Singapore 1A/B in 1st grade. They circle groups of 10, combine numbers, take numbers apart, and learn about "greedy Mr. Greater Gator" who always selfishly takes the bigger number for himself. I was able to finish enough of it by writing it in segments from the end backward toward the beginning to have my fourth and fifth children use part of the end of it before they started Singapore. Unfortunately I don't think my fourth child was able to use it for long enough to help her as much as I'd hoped, since it was for her that I started to write it in the first place and writing curriculum is a slow process so I wasn't very far along with it when she was a primary student. She's almost 11 and still gets frequently confused about place value. My fifth didn't get much more of it than her older sister, but she has been very bright with numbers all along and didn't need as much help to understand place value - she's a grade ahead in math now. By the time my sixth child was in Kindergarten, the math curriculum was done, however, I finished it during his Kindergarten year so he only had time to use about the last 3/4 of it. [1/2023 update: Youngest is now 6 years, 4 months old. He flew through Singapore 1A, 1B, and is halfway through 2A. He also does 3rd grade Teaching Textbooks . . . for fun. Since the child who got to use the most of the kindergarten math I wrote is now working 2 grades ahead and the child who used it the second most is now working 1 grade ahead, I'm beginning to think I should apply for the commercial rights for the pictures I used and actually sell this curriculum! 😅 ]
GRADES 1-2
For math between Kindergarten and about 3rd grade we use Singapore U.S. Edition. I find that my kids are able to place into Singapore 1A straight out of Kindergarten if they have a good grasp on place values. It's really their understanding of place value that determines whether Singapore 1A/B will frustrate them or whether they will thrive in it. Singapore is great at teaching mental math. I believe I have dyscalculia - I can't correctly remember any sequence of digits longer than 4 digits long. 4 is pushing it. They just get all mixed around in my head and sometimes similar looking digits get substituted. Math was a subject I hated because even if I understood it one day, the next day I had to start completely over from square 1. Which was a lengthy and exhausting process and made me hate math with a passion. But I digress... back to Singapore. The math I wish I'd had when I was a primary kidlet. I learned some of these tricks and techniques by sheer desperation, and I thought that I was cheating when I used them. I wish I'd had all of them in my arsenal and known that whatever way you get the numbers to sort out and come out right inside your head is NOT cheating.
If you are new to Singapore math, there are several editions. I suggest the "U.S. Edition" which isn't specifically common core aligned, but teaches both U.S. and metric measurement systems. Having your child take a placement test before ordering is a good idea. Each "grade" has 2 levels (1 per semester) and each level has a textbook and a workbook. If you order through MFW they send a little answer key/lesson plan book with it that I like. If you don't care about that lesson plan book, you can order Singapore math on Rainbow Resource for a little less than $60/yr, which is $24-34 LESS than MFW at the time I'm writing this. I like the MFW answer key/ lesson plan but it's NOT worth $25 a year IMHO. It says what pages to do each day and the answers, that's it. It doesn't tell you HOW they got the answers and it gives almost nothing in the way of helping you teach. I've heard that most moms start getting stuck somewhere is 3A/B or 4A/B and need to fork out another $50/yr for Singapore Home Instructor's Guides which MFW doesn't even sell, just to be able to continue to teach the curriculum.
And that brings me to why I don't continue to use what starts out as 'such a great curriculum that I wish I'd had it as a kidlet.' Because I have 6 children and I dislike math. Singapore is $97-$102 for the first kid when you get to the age where you might need that home instructor's guide, $30-34/yr for each subsequent kid, and you have to teach and grade it yourself. For me personally, being someone who does NOT like math and sees my kids picking up on my stress when I try to teach it, it's not worth sticking with Singapore long enough for it to become a hassle and make my kids hate math too. Besides, this edition only goes up to 6th grade so after that you have to switch to a different Singapore math or a different brand altogether. In my estimation, it's better to switch before it becomes a headache than to drag through the last 3 years of hating it. The last time I did 4A, with my second child, neither of us being math people, it was taking us 4+ hours a day to get through a single lesson. It was taking me away from being available to the other children for their lessons and then everyone was getting behind on their work and I was SO stressed out. This is why I don't do 4A at all anymore. Now we use Singapore starting when they place into 1A, and ending as soon as they can place into 3rd grade Teaching Textbooks. That's generally when they're somewhere between 2A-3A of Singapore, depending on the child.
GRADES 3-12
For a family with 4-8 school-age kids with the large family discount, Teaching Textbooks averages to $25-50/yr per child and TT teaches it, grades it, saves the grades, and I have full control through the teacher dashboard to reassign or even mark something as correct if I know they knew it but they accidentally clicked the wrong thing. This is the BEST thing I've ever done regarding math as a non-mathy homeschool mom: I switched all the kids who are old enough for it over to Teaching Textbooks. They even offer included optional phone tutoring if your child is stuck and you can't help them. Yes, they have placement tests (look on each grade's page, near the bottom, next to a yellow star). I have never had such stress free math goings on in this house before TT. We've had to make use of the phone tutor once for my oldest during Algebra I so far. I hope to continue to successfully use it through graduation with all the kids because it takes such a huge burden off my shoulders.
So let me tell you a little story. In August of 2021 I had COVID. My husband too. We were sick for like a month and a half! Meanwhile the kids got sick for 2-4 days each over the span of like a week. Obviously we didn't have the kids do school while sick, but there were about 6 weeks where my husband and I were deathly ill and the kids were all totally fine, so they did do school during that time. My teenagers were holding down the fort and my husband and I were trying to keep living. He got a sinus infection on top of the COVID and I got COVID pneumonia and I wound up in the ER getting a plasma treatment. I was there most of the day and let me tell you, being sick in the hospital is 10x more uncomfortable than being sick at home, especially for a homebody introvert! Anyway so I'm in the hospital and through my raging headache I text my teenager to ask if everyone got their math done. She texts back that this kid and that kid missed some problems and the other kid isn't done yet. I reassigned the missed problems from my phone, took like 2 minutes, and told her to have them redo and text me when the other was done if they needed any reassigned. Long-distance homeschooling from the ER. Not what I would have considered FUN by any means, but I was really thankful we switched the kids to TT and that meant I didn't have to teach or grade math while sick, and that I could reassign work from that bleach-stinking rock-hard cot in the freezing cold ER so that my kids could go on with doing normal things instead of having their lives on hold with nothing to do but worry about me. So if our time with TT ends before all the kids have graduated, well, I'll still always be thankful for what a help it was to me during that and this seasons of my life.
No comments:
Post a Comment