Math has always been a source of anxiety for me.   I've never been very good at math, and honestly, the thought of teaching it to my children makes me break out in cold sweat. 

So, I thought I'd hit the jackpot when I discovered Math U See.  I LOVE it.  It's wonderful that I can pop in a dvd and have someone else teach the lesson. 

However--Sarah seems to have inherited my math anxiety, and math had become a source of frustration.  Sometimes a lesson would take her hours to complete, due to complaining, whining, throwing the book across the table, etc. 

Finally at the end of my rope, I decided to try a different approach.  My kids love board games, so I did some hunting, and found this math game set, which turned out be a hit with all three kids.  We also started playing lots of addition War with playing cards--we each throw down 2 cards, and the person with the highest sum collects the cards.

Then, I remembered a series of books I'd heard about ages ago, called Math Start.  I had a $20 gift card to Barnes and Noble, so I ordered 6 of the books in the series.  We got one about Place Value, one about Estimation, Addition, Subtraction, counting coins, and bar graphs.  Sarah LOVES these books.  The day they came in the mail, she devoured them, and has read all of them several times since.

I posted below about our Place Value activities, so I'll show you what we've been doing for addition.  Sarah's weakness is that she still counts on her fingers--she hasn't yet managed to memorize her addition facts.  So, I'm working hard with her to get those facts memorized.  I thought we'd try some lapbooking, but wasn't quite sure how to go about doing it for math. 

So, on Monday, we read the addition Math Start book.  Then I had her sit down at the table and using manipulatives, she put together this lapbook.


We started with the 5 facts, since 2-4 were too easy (according to Sarah).  Each matchbook opens up to reveal all the ways to make the number on the cover. 


 This book only contains 5-11, and tomorrow, we're going to start a second book, for 12-18.    It took her 3 days to complete the book, then she read over them  on her own for 2 days.  Friday I wrote out all the problems she had in her book and gave her a timed quiz--I set the timer for 7 min.  Normally, this would have ended in tears, as she hates timed tests....but this time, she was ready.  She finished the test in a record 2 min. and had all the answers right.  I'd never seen her so proud of herself.   She has declared math to be really fun. 

She asked if we could always do math this way.  I'm hesitant to drop Math U See altogether--espeically because of my own math anxiety.  But, I think having a few breaks throughout the year, where we only do fun math--and maybe having Fun Math Fridays, will ensure that I don't suck the joy out of math.

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