Ever since the beginning of our homeschool journey, math has been a struggle for Bean. Our first year, we made a BAD curriculum choice (in my defense, we did make the decision to homeschool on the fly and I didn't really get a chance to research curriculum before we started). Their approach was too fast, too abstract for my kinesthetic learner. Every day there was yelling and screaming and crying about math (and sometimes Bean would get upset too ). Anyway, by the time we attended our first homeschool bookfair at the end of that school year, I KNEW we had to make a change. I wandered into the Math-U-See booth with Bean in tow and suddenly we could see the entrance to the tunnel (no light at the end yet!) Hubby leaned over to me and whispered, "I don't care what it costs, we are getting this one!"
We are almost finished with our 4th year of MUS. It has been a joy to see Bean master concepts in Math that I didn't even get exposed to until well into junior high school. BUT, every time she is faced with the most basic concepts (the ones she was first exposed to during that disasterous first year) she freezes up and gets very frustrated. Since those concepts are addition and subtraction, it has turned math time into an exercise in "adrenaline management". And, rather than following my suggestion to just "get it done and over with", her approach has been to see "just how long can I drag this out?". We have tried doing Math first in the day, but that was taking time away from other subjects that needed to get done. We tried doing Math last in the day, but with our busy schedule, that often meant she didn't finish it at all the day it was assigned. Then, one day I noticed that her handwriting for the advanced concepts was very clear and her numbers, when faced with adding or subtracting, became illegible. I began to wonder if it was all related? Could the fact that she was trying to master making pretty numbers at the same time we were using that "awful" curriculum (for her) be causing some of the stress?
So, I decided to try an experiment. I told her that I would act as the driver of her pencil during math. I would be there to offer help if she needed it during exercise days, but during test days I would just be the pencil. What a difference!!! Suddenly math is getting done in about 20 minutes (versus 2-3 hours) and she is getting 100% correct on every page. Add to that the fact that she is mastering concepts at light speed and that is how we have finished two LESSONS in MUS this week!! It is amazing and, better yet, she is starting to see that she really IS smart in math. And, finally, instead of always proclaiming, "I HATE Math!!", we have progressed to, "It's okay." If you ask me, that's the greatest thing ever!! And, it totally reinforces all the reasons that I love to homeschool. We were able to fix our problem on our own time-schedule, we had the freedom to experiment to find the solution and we have the option to use our solution until she no longer needs it.
Amen!!
No comments:
Post a Comment