Sunday a friend of mine who also happens to be my youngest son's Sunday School teacher pulled me aside and told me "Your son is a math wiz.  We were talking about the story today and he said 'that means that he was 20 years old.'  I thought about it a minute and he was right."

I'm not bragging when I say that he is doing well but I think that has more to do with his math program than with me.  We have been using Professor B math with him from the beginning.  It was difficult for me in the beginning because it's not a traditional method, but it works.  Right now he is working on problems like      4,568,251,903  x 8    and doing well.

He works on 4 or 5 problems a day plus we work on reviewing his times tables so that he can get faster.   And yes I bribe him a little.  We use an award system to keep him motivated.  He get a penny a day if he finishes his math problems in 20 minutes, two if he has two or more minutes remaining when he's done.  He also gets a penny if he is faster of his times tables than he was the day before, two if he cuts off two or more minutes.  He gets to use the pennys to buy prizes, (candy, small toys, etc) after which the pennies are put back in the jar for next time.

I was sold on Professor B Math after attending a class at our local convention.  She used an actual lesson out of the book to show us how it worked.  It went like this; You would write a line of three digit number on a board or paper like this:

            123    456     789     102    345

 In a number like 123  you would point to the first digit and ask what number it was.  When the child say one you would tell him that is correct but inform him that there was a secret word that went with it and that that word was Hundred.  Then you would explain that secret word goes with the first digit in each of the three diget numbers.  You then make a game out of trying to trip him up.  You probablly won't be able to but he or she will think it is fun.

Next you introduce the second digit and it's secret word ty (tee).  And do the game again with the second digit.  After that you explain that the last digit is easy because it has no secret word and go through the same process.  Finally you mix it up with all the digits making a game of trying to trip him or her up.

Now comes the amazing part.  you take the above numbers and put commas between them so that it looks like this:

                        123 , 456 , 789 , 102 , 345

At this point you teach your child that the commas have name and show him or her which is named what; thousand, million, billion, trillion.  Suddenly they are reading one hundred  twenty-three trillion, four hundred fifty-six billion, seven hundred eighty-nine million, one hundred two thousand, three hundred forty five.  At that point a light went on in my head and I said this is so simple.   They say it takes 15 minutes to teach this.  I don't remeber how long it took me to get through it with my son but even if it was twice or three times that, that's better than the years it took me to teach it to my other sons.

The way things are taught is different from the way I was taught and the way I taught my other sons so there was a learning curve for me but my youngest ran with it from day one.  Some days I stand back and think Wow howed he learn to do that.  I love this program.