Update on my 4 year olds math progress

[rebecas]

Hi Linzy. This clip is very inspiring. Thanks for posting. What age did you start teaching your son math? What program did u follow? For me LM is doable, but forget about the programs that require 9 sessions a day.

[akalori]

Amazing - Inspired me to start working on math with my older child at home.  I'm already seeing some improvement.  Thank you for motivating me.
Karma, Lori

[baba]

wow excellent! good job linzy!

[linzy]

Thanks Lori, that's why I wanted to share. It was another parent who inspired me focus more on math. We had always had such a focus in reading and he is a great reader, but he finds reading so exciting. Learning about things that interest him, exciting stories...but math was not as inspiring. We had dabbled in Doman math dots when he was a baby and tried right start, but found it to be a poor fit conceptually, then we moved on to the Kumon books which were very straghtforward but didn't move very fast.

Then I read something Dr. Jones said (about how noone likes to do things until they are good at them) and it reminded me of something else I had seen about how it takes 10,000 hours of practice of something to become an expert and I decided that in reality what my son needed was just daily practice. Even though he initially wasn't excited about it once he started realizing he was actually good at it, then it started taking less time and he started enjoying seeing how fast and accurate he could be, and now he does all his math work in maybe 30 minutes at the most and he's at a late second grade level.

[TracyR4]

That's awesome! And a very good point made by Dr. Jones. I think had I taken more time with my older daughters and math they wouldn't be struggling right now.
I liked the Kumon books too. To me they were good for practice of a concept or for fun. But not for teaching.

I do like Saxon. Another really good math program is Christian Light. www.clp.org
 It is created by a Mennonite company but is seemingly becoming more popular than Saxon lately. Has very little if any Christian content in the program ( you would most likely see a word problem with Susie going to church ) but other then that its all math. 

[2010BEBES]

....
I do like Saxon. Another really good math program is Christian Light. www.clp.org
 It is created by a Mennonite company but is seemingly becoming more popular than Saxon lately. Has very little if any Christian content in the program ( you would most likely see a word problem with Susie going to church ) but other then that its all math. 

Thanks Tracy. i was looking into the content of the curriculum and found some examples we can print for my grandson to practice.
This is where they can be seen:
http://www.clp.org/store/by_course/45

I have a question. If wou would start again and not homeschool but reinforce a school curriculum, which one would you choose Saxon or Christian light? 

[TracyR4]

 If I could do it over I would  use Christian Light. The curriculum is set up so nicely that you don't have to buy extra manipulatives,you may need a clock and flashcards for certain levels but that's about it. You can use whatever you have around the home. The lessons are clearly laid out in the teacher manual and it takes very little time from lesson prep to teaching the lesson.
 Saxon in the early grades K-3 take up quite a bit of time. The prep time for Saxon ,and lesson teaching took up much more of my time than when I used Christian Light.
Plus Christian Light is even more advanced than Saxon. By about the middle to towards the end of the first grade the kids are adding two digit numbers and working with larger numbers with money and so forth than Saxon does. You wouldn't see some of that until towards the end of the Saxon 2nd grade curriculum.  Another nice part is that the drill is in the back of the Light Unit ( the name of the workbooks). There are no extra worksheets. With the early Saxon you need to get a binder to put the worksheets in. I had to have one for the drill sheets and one for the worksheets. All of the math is nicely laid out in the workbooks so that they don't take up much room and you don't forget to do anything either, and hey, you don't have worksheets lying around the house either.

I would say once your child hits about 3rd or 4th grade they can easily work on the math on their own and then you can switch to being more of a facilitator. Being there to teach new concepts, to answer questions and correct work when needed. But really the concepts are clearly taught in the lessons in the upper levels.  CLE is nicely laid out with their SunLight Editions all the way up to Algebra 1. After that I would switch to Saxon. CLE doesn't plan on making any more of their SunLight Editions past that level due to not enough demand. That may change in the future as this curriculum becomes more popular though. Who knows?
But I would definitely  would have used CLE math first.

Also you do need the teacher manual for the 100 and 200 levels. As they  have some auditory lessons in the workbooks. AFter that the teacher manuals for level 300 and up are more for corrections as they have the answers in them.
The consensus with CLE is that if you have an older child coming into the program and haven't used it from the beginning most children will test at least one grade below. So say you have an older child that just finished 3rd grade, it wouldn't be unusual for them to test into CLE's 200 level or sometimes the 100. So that's how far ahead it is to most math curriculums that I know of right now.

[2010BEBES]

Thanks a lot. i will try one of those samples with my grandson right know.
Karma to you for all this information. I think it is very important to help kids and wathc how they develop. I was amazed to see that he was counting by twos. Maybe he is doing that in preschool.

[happy2kids]

Thank you Tracy, these is very helpful for me. Im going to order one.

[Krista G]

Hi Linzy,

What is 2+2 is not 5?  Can you please tell me?  Thanks in advance.

[linzy]

Here is the website for "Two plus two is not five" it teaches addition and subtraction facts. They also have a multiplication/division bookcalled "five times five is not ten".

http://longevitypublishing.com/

It is cheaper on Amazon though (used to be 17$, but looks like it went up some):

http://www.amazon.com/Plus-Methods-Learn-Addition-Subtraction/dp/0977732304/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1303584692&sr=8-1

The pages are reproducable so you could use it for more that one child, or for the same child if you want extra practice. I like that they teach a new trick a day and have lots of cumulative practice. It takes my son about 5-10 minutes to do one page front and back daily. I like it much better than the Kumon addition and you cover all addition and subtraction facts in one book. 

[linzy]

I agree with Tracy about the early levels of Saxon though, that was why we were planning on starting with the 5/4 book. A lot of people do that once their children have memorized all of their math facts (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division through 12). If your children can read well and know their math facts they should be able to start there (4-5th grade level math) and have no problem. Depending on your childs self direction it also can be competed for the most part independently.

[Krista G]

Thank you!  I will check these out.  I rather loathe teaching my kids their math facts.  I am looking for an easier, more effective way.

[Krista G]

If you want to see a few sample pages of Addition the Fun Way go to http://www.citycreek.com/Addition-Book-for-Kids-p/bka.htm and click look inside.  It shows about 3 sample lessons.

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