BrillKids Forum

Ages 1-3 Doman math cards and dot math app
Age 3 cuisenaire rods and Kumon books
Age 4  Kindergarten math workbook and continued hands-on activitites
Age 5 Rod and Staff 1st grade math
Age 6 I finally realized math is always going to be work for her. She has no number sense. We work on grade level. As an early learning parent this was hard for me. I wanted her to excel. I wanted my investment to pay off.
Age 7 I found her learning style for math. No manipulatives-they are too fiddly and become a distraction for her. No color- also a distraction. Lessons must be logical, slow, methodical. She needs to copy the problems herself. That one was an eye-opener. Writing things out is part of her thinking process. This is a complete contrast to early learning.
I put this here to say early learning does not work immediately and in the way you thought it would. I spent years doing "child-friendly" methods and wondered what was wrong with my child. Now, I see my method was what was wrong.
Reading, languages, encyclopedic knowledge all came easy for her with the methods most people use here. Math was different for some reason.

Thank you so much for sharing your story and experience.

Now that you have found her learning style and her level in maths, I bet that you will begin to see solid and steady progress! Woohoo! Good job mama for not giving up too early or too soon.

I came on here looking for this piece of encouragement:-) I have a 5 year old boy, great at languages, loves music & science, brilliant recall of interesting facts (that he also understands)... then there is maths... logical lovely maths (to me)... It's almost funny the contrast. We didn't do too much in the early years compared to languages & music but a fair bit of marshmallow maths, maths songs, stories & poems... But the application of that??!! He's so sweet, he often answers wrongly then says no that's not it, & corrects himself (which is encouraging:-)).

We have moved onto Maths-u-see, he likes the manipulatives but we need to have no distractions for the 5-10 mins it takes per worksheet otherwise we get nowhere. Of course he is still further ahead in maths than he would be in a mainstream school but it's not as fast as I would like haha. They are so different, but still so great!! :yes:
 

Transitions for students (and teachers) can be difficult. One of my students was in 4th grade transferring from Brazil and you can imagine the parent's concern on him learning English. I would take advantage of all the wonderful resources we have online and offline. Kumon and IXL can be really helpful in standardized questions to keep their minds sharp. One of my favorites is Beestar. It has a wide range of worksheets for both Language Arts and Math. It also has a gifted and talented section which can also be helpful for more challenging worksheets for students.

Thank you so much for sharing your story and experience.

Now that you have found her learning style and her level in maths, I bet that you will begin to see solid and steady progress! Woohoo! Good job mama for not giving up too early or too soon.

Thank you so much for sharing this valuable information.  :yes:

Thanks for the info. I am very happy that my child likes mathematics. Because for me it was always interesting too.