Memorizing Math Facts

[Krista G]

My 4 year old has been enjoying www.funbrain.com.  She has not memorized her math facts but she likes to use her fingers to figure the answers as she plays math baseball.  I am sure it is helping her, it is a game and she has memorized some of the facts.

[TracyR4]

I'll have to give that a try. I had forgotten about Funbrain!  My older girls have played on that website before on and off. Thanks for reminding me! If anything I think she'll like playing the games , and she learn something from them.

[eschlem]

Lori,
To answer your question about how many questions the Kumon students do, I don't know for certain since my daughter hasn't reached that level yet (she has just learned to write her numbers), but it appears that they start with 6 addition questions per side.  Then it increases to 8 addition questions per side.  Then 7 to 8 subtraction questions per side.  Then eventually 8 to 9 addition and subtraction questions per side.  I think they do ten pages per day. 
At the moment, my daughter does 5 pages per day (writing numbers), since that is what I requested, but the instructor has already asked that I time her to keep track of how long it takes to complete each assignment.  I believe she'll be starting the addition portion soon.
Hope this helps.

[akalori]

Eschlem,

Thank you so much.  It helps alot.  My son needs math remediation, so I'm trying to recreate kumon style.  Our school doesn't do enough practice of the basics for average children to memorize their math facts.  During the school year, there is homework.  I'm trying to commit this summer to him learning his addition facts.  We are up to doing 80 problems per day.  From your description, it sounds like the Kumon kids are doing up to 180 problems per day.  I suspected as much.  It takes my son about 11 to 12 minutes to finish 80 problems.  It is a small time commitment yet I'm having trouble squeezing more out of him.  Once he did 100 probelms but insisted it was too much so I caved in and went back to assigning 80 problems per day.  He needs alot more concentrated practice than most kids to learn and integrate new skills.  Obviously I have to find a way to motivate him to do more.  I got to read Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother again.  Surely if she can get so much work out of her kids, I should be able to get at least 30 joyful minutes of my son's morning.  He is cooperative and proud of his speed and progress in math.  However whenever I suggest adding more problems he starts crying. 

Thanks, Lori

[kizudo]

How many questions are on a worksheet? 

When I had students who were overwhelmed with the length of math fact page I would simply fold the sheet in half so that they would only see four or five lines at a time.  When they got to the bottom of the first half, they'd flip it over and do the second. 

When I wanted to challenge a student to do just a bit more, I'd put a dot or happy face sticker on the question where I wanted them to get to.  If they went past my mark, they'd get a sticker or a jelly bean.  So, if they seemed to have a block at 57 questions, the sticker was below the 58th one.  Maybe you could just slowly move your son from 80 to 81, to 82, etc.

[akalori]

We had a talk - my son agreed that he could put in the 3 or 4 extra minutes to do 20 more problems - now we are up 100 problems per day.  It's still a far cry from Kumon but at least we are improving.  I feel like I've hijacked TracyR4's thread.  So TracyR4, how is your daughter coming along with her math facts?  This is an excellent topic.

Lori

[linzy]

We do 1 page of addition math facts and one of subtraction daily (either 50 or 100) problems each. My son does great solving them but I want them internalized. So we have started using Professor Harold's Video Flash Cards ADDITION.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00009XOVW

Essentially it is flashcards on a DVD. The first ssection it goes through all the addition facts in order with the answers. I just let him watch that section. In the next section they mix them up. I have him read the question and the answer with the narrator. The third section they show the problem then pause before the answe I have him try to answer before the narrator. If he doesn't answer before the narrator he just answers with him.

My hope is that all the verbal and visual repetition will build immediate recall, it is boring but it is also stress free for him.

[akalori]

Thanks for sharing Linzy.  This DVD looks good.  I just spent a bit of money on some other educational purchases.  Now I want this too.  Plus it is really exacerbating my desire for a DVD player in my car.  Then I could play this DVD and my son would be a literal captive audience in the car without any competing interests.  I could so easily spend a fortune on educational supplies - somehow one desire always leads to another one too.

Lori

[Krista G]

Akalori,

How right you are!  I can pass up clothes, shoes and the like, but I have no self control when it comes to educational materials.

[DadDude]

I'm very impressed by those of you who are having your kids do 100 problems a day, or whatever.  We do math almost every day, Monday through Friday, but not usually for more than 20-30 minutes (at the very most), often closer to 15.  I demand focused attention during this time, however.  I think the most we ever do is, like, 60, and often it's more like 30.

We use Singapore Math half the time and Two Plus Two Is Not Five (this is what involves many problems per day) the other half.  My wife isn't very supportive of of the 2+2=/=5 addition drilling, because H. doesn't like it very much.  She thinks that he'll pick up the addition facts by osmosis, while he will have to study multiplication facts.  I am not so sure.  Lots of people go to adulthood counting on fingers, and are greatly hampered by not having even basic addition facts memorized.  One way or another, a little math student has to have these down cold, and the colder, the better.

2+2=/=5 appeals to me because it teaches addition facts in more or less the same way that I remember addition facts.  They are divided into groups of tricks, which are not merely tricks but actually quite valid ways of thinking about what's going on in a certain kind of addition and subtraction problem.  Combining this systematic, rule-based (read: extremely left-brained) approach with plain old drilling tends to get the facts memorized.  In the book's method, it's actually essential what order you learn the addition and subtraction facts in.  You start with the simplest, and you also start with the math facts that involve the simplest-to-use rules/tricks.  I don't actually know if this is important for memory, but it does seem to help H., and it seems to be an important part of the method the book authors designed.  If that's right, then it makes it a lot easier to learn the math facts in a specific sort of order.

The other feature of the book which I didn't appreciate until the last couple weeks is how important it is to do plain old drilling.  That's why they keep drilling the same problems over and over again, in different orders and groupings and so forth.  Basically, as long as you do most of the problems and don't take too long of a break, the student isn't given an opportunity to forget facts (and rules) once learned.  Learning facts for the first time isn't easy, and getting them down cold is probably harder, but once they are in long-term memory, at least for H., they seem hard to forget.  For some reason, he has his doubles down better than any other problem type (1+1 through 5+5 so far).  He can usually do +1 and -1 problems quickly, though sometimes he still has to think about these.  +2 even problems (we haven't learned +2 odd problems) are more challenging but still doable.  Now he's started "number in the middle": you figure 3+5 by seeing that there is just one number in between 3 and 5, and you double that (he has 4+4 memorized very well).  There are other complementary rules which make other facts doable.  Sample: http://longevitypublishing.com/sample.pdf

I wish I knew all the different methods and could pick the best one.  I'm not at all convinced that this is the best one, but it seems to be effective, even if it requires quite a bit of effort.  If H. had any less patience, and he doesn't have much, we wouldn't be able to do it.

In other math learning news, by the way, H. is now on the last chapter of Kindergarten Math B, so the combination of A and B will have taken us, let's see, not quite two years or so.  That's OK with me.  He'll be finishing just before he'd start kindergarten (that would be this fall, but we're homeschooling).  We went through long periods (sometimes months long) in which we didn't work out of the books (basically, I didn't want to push him), and other periods where we did only one or two lessons a week.  He has certainly progressed well, although to be honest he doesn't always like math.  He actually has liked many chapters (not all) of Singapore Math so far, but he resists the more difficult drilling.  (So far, though, this has gotten easier--it feels like we've gotten over a hump and are pedaling a little easier now.)  He gets motivated by external rewards, doing hands-on math (we have a tub of "connect-a-cubes" which are very useful; today, we played with money and he looks forward to spending some), and now, he's all excited to finish the book, so he wants to do eight pages tomorrow, and then we'll be done.  We now have Singapore Math 1A textbook and workbook, and I've looked through it.  As I suspected (and as I wrote here), Primary Mathematics 1A is really mostly a review of Kindergarten Math A & B, so we might end up skipping past a lot of it.  1B definitely introduces some more advanced concepts (basic multiplication and division).

The "goal" of math is easiest to conceive (for me, anyway) as getting through a long series of math textbooks and understanding what they contain very well.  The thing is, especially if you're homeschooling, you can't depend on one textbook or workbook (series).  In addition, you have to identify the problem spots and attack them directly, as well as making use of "teachable moments" of practical math, which help solidify things.  Both of these require that you pay close attention to how your child is thinking about math, what tricks he uses and exactly what he does or does not understand.  Also, taking breaks of days or maybe weeks strategically can really boost motivation.

[khatty]

What is the age suggestion for Professor Harold's video flashcards?  I tried to find a sample video of them but I wasn't successful.  Could you describe a typical video, please.  Would it be good for a 7 month baby?

[TracyR4]

You know, Dad Dude, you win out on this one this time.
When I first began homeschooling , I was convinced by many moms online that my daughter would just learn her math facts the more she did math. Boy, was that wrong. It has really hampered her ability and she has become the kid that counts on her fingers. 
Last year when I sent her to school it was a real eye opener for me. My 13 yr old has the capability to solve math problems. She catches on much  quicker than I do that's for certain. All I have to do is show her once how to solve a math problem and she's got it.
The problem is with her recall of math facts. Because she was not drilled and learned her math facts well, her answers to her math problems are wrong. And always by one or two numbers. Always!  Its frustrating for me to see, and extremely frustrating for her. Because had she knew that 8x7 was 56 right off the bat, and not 57 the problem would have been right.

With this said at the age of 13 I have to start over again and we are working on drill right now and she's starting to make some ground in this area. Its helping as well and I'm seeing better progress with her math lately.

So you can pat yourself on the back and keep up with the 2+2=5. Your doing your son a service making sure he knows his facts. I will definitely help him in the long run when he starts learning more advanced concepts where it takes much longer to solve. 

On the better side my 11 yr old had a teacher last year that drilled, drilled, drilled every day. My daughter runs rings around her 13 yr old sister as far as this is concerned and I thank her teacher for it.

[Krista G]

TracyR4, ditto that.  I realized recently that my older kids do not know their facts instantly.  We have been working on some online speed drills this summer and they are improving.  This has caused me to get stricter with the younger kids and really drill them.  When I began homeschooling I thought they would learn them by working with facts all the time but you cannot replace drilling and memorization with learning facts.  It is strange because my kids do well in math, but when it comes to quick mental math, they are not quite up to speed.  I would be sure to share that with other homeschoolers as a big mistake that I made.

[linzy]

Professor Harold is literally just  the facts flashed on the screen with corresponding number of objects (i.e. popcicles). It is three sections one where they go through all the facts in order with answers (child can just watch), one when they go through out of order with answers (child can repeat along), and one when they go through out of order but delay showing the answer (to give the child a chance to answer). It is certainly not fancy or exciting, but it is easy. For me it was easier than taking our whole stack of flashcards, trying to get the kids to sit still and thn going through them multiple times. With the video we cover all the facts 3 times in about 25 minutes.

I am mainly using it for my 5 year old but his 20 month old brother sits with him and tries to answer too. Mainly he just says 5 and 9 for all the answers as those are his favorite numbers.

[fma001]

Krista,

I made the same mistake of not teaching math facts when my first child was younger. Now she is 6 and really struggling to learn. I have already started teaching my 3 year old, so I won't have the same problem later on. Softschools.com has two really good math fact games: http://www.softschools.com/counting/games/addition.jsp and http://www.softschools.com/math/games/addition_practice.jsp. These games allow you to choose what numbers you want to practice.

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