"He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD
require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to
walk humbly with thy God?"
~Micah 6:8~
Sunday, January 13, 2008 - Struggling with your math?
I recently read a blog post where a mom was crying out in frustration because of their experience with their math text. It brought me back to our days of temper tantrums (mine) and frustrations (my kids) and I shared with her some of the tricks we used to help things go a little smoother.
This particular post was about Saxon math, but the tricks were used for many different subjects. We had a struggling reader so we implemented some of these ideas with the phonics reading program.
Hopefully, you can use some of these ideas.
We have done Saxon for about 12 years and here are some tricks I found:
1. We work on the first part of the lesson that presents the new skill being taught, then do all the practice problems.
2. For the next section (review) we do all the odd problems one day, even the next. If there are a lot of problems that day I may reduce the requirements further.
3. The timed drills we do once a week and chart/graph our time so we can see if we got faster or slower. It often got so they wanted a timed drill 2-4 times a week because they liked bettering their time.
These next three ideas we utilized many times over and they did make a difference!
Anytime we would struggle I'd declare a break and we would do the following:
1. Before starting your schoolwork or a difficult subject, eat a snack with protein, drink water and do some stretches and exercise.
A snack will fuel the brain and help with concentration.
I read, and later heard in a learning styles seminar, that water is the only substance we put into our bodies that directly nourishes the brain, so give it a good drink.
If you do physical exercises that cause you to use both sides of the brain like crab crawls, rub the belly/pat the head, army combat crawls, you will help the brain work more efficiently. Boys especially need physical outlet.
2. Be lavish with the praise and your child's effort. Maybe you can say, since you had a good attitude today, tomorrow you only have to do 10 review problems. We also rewarded good book time with fun learning games either on the computer or board games.
3. AND pray together before you start. Your child will be blessed to hear you bring your lack of patience and plea for wisdom to the Lord.
4. For some kids having instrumental music in the background may help with concentration. We found classics like Mozart and Beethoven to be beautiful and soothing.
Please remember you are not required to do everything a curriculum suggests. Additionally, textbooks are written for classroom instruction so a teacher may assign all 100 problems because she needs to keep her students occupied. Homeschool students need not do this no matter what the subject is.
Additionally, we did math Mon. - Thurs. and Friday was math games and manipulatives.
Please drop me a line and tell me if you tried any of these and if you noticed a difference.
Lastly, I would like to add something that is VERY hard to come to terms with, often times the problem is not your curriculum, it is not your child, it is you. Maybe you are being impatient, quick tempered, or grumpy. Maybe you had your own agenda and it isn't getting met. Take it to the Lord, confess and pray and seek comfort in His Word, the situation may not change, but you will. Furthermore, an apology about your attitude or harsh words (whatever) to your child will do wonders for your relationship. I have found children to be so forgiving and absolutely delighted that Mom would confess to them.
I'd like to share more about this tomorrow because it just happened to be in my reading last night about the VERY same subject.
Thank you, Lord for your Holy Spirit. He is hear to teach us, comfort us, admonish us, convict us of sin and lead us to repentance. Lord, send your Holy Spirit now to speak to my heart, mind and spirit, in Jesus name I pray.
I don't want to just be a better mom, I want to be like Jesus!
We use Saxon as well. My oldest detests math and daily expresses it. Thanks for the suggestion of doing all the practice questions but only the even or odd review questions. I think he'll like that and it makes sense to spend more time practicing a new skill rather than review old ones. I also think I'll change our weekly math schedule to include a Fun Friday for math puzzles, etc.
I'm so glad you visited my blog, because I loved reading yours. It was very encouraging. I have 4 children, one girl and three boys. This is our 5th year homeschooling, but I still feel very new to it. I will defintely try the tips about the physical exercise. Reading your blog was a confimation on so many levels. Thanks!!!
A homeschooling mom of 6 delightful blessings looking for her place in this immense world wide web to share, to fit in and to place random thoughts.
Trying to persevere in homeschooling and will use this blog to seek encouragement and wisdom to then pass on to you.
Psalm 37:23-24 (New King James Version)
23 The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD,
And He delights in his way.
24 Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down;
For the LORD upholds him with His hand
These are Books I have Enjoyed!
Including Scrapbooking, Out-of-the-Ordinary Projects, Delightful Hands-On Creations and GREAT Ideas...
Sharpen Writing Skills With These Books About Journaling and Writing
