Proud teaching day - B has my Math mind!

I love Math; it was my favorite subject in school.  But it can be a complicated subject.  The phrase, "It's all Greek to me!" is a perfect description of Math for some people.  In my opinion, the single most important factor in a student understanding Math is the teacher.  I was fortunate enough to be taught by some spectacular Math lovers who wanted all their students to understand  and be successful at Math.  The best ones I learned under didn't use the textbooks to teach us how to do problems; they taught us their own way on the board.  And if a student didn't understand that method, the teacher would pull out a different method and see if the student clicked with that one.  No one was left behind or out of the loop.  I was so inspired by these caring, excited teachers that I wanted to teach Math, too.  (Why I didn't is a whole other story….)

We love, love, love our Math curriculum, Life of Fred.  It's literature-based, meaning B learns about a subject through a story.  Math is brought to him through the adventures of a 5 year old boy, Fred, who is a Math professor at Kittens University in Kansas.  This series answers the most asked question of Math students, When am I going to use this in real life?!  Although some of Fred's story actually takes place in the classroom where he teaches Math, most takes place outside of it, in "real life".  Math is needed and used at the bank, the grocery store, telling time, booking a vacation, paying admission to a museum, planting a garden, decorating a room, everywhere!  Life of Fred shows B over and over the importance of Math in "real life" and entertains him with a story.  He is learning and having fun.  The goal of this Math teacher.

I'm one of those people who don't like to "show my work" with Math if I can do it in my head; and I do a lot of Math in my head.  Over the last 4 years, I've given B examples of how I break big problems down into smaller steps that he can do, instead of being overwhelmed by a complicated Math problem.  B can easily add, subtract, multiply and divide with 5s, 10s and 100s and I've tried to show him to break things down into their 5s, 10s and 100s and multiply or divide something by 2 to help solve a problem.

For example, if Sam made $450/week how much does he make a year?  I can't do $450 x 52 weeks in my head, but I can do $450 x 100 weeks = $45,000 and $45,000 / 2 = $22, 500 earned for 50 weeks.  Now I only need to add 2 weeks of $450 to $22,500 to get my answer of $23,400.

Life of Fred - Homeschool Happens Everywhere

I'm grateful for all the wonderful ideas my friend Julie @ Creekside Learning has given me to homeschool B.  When she told me about the Life of Fred Math curriculum, it sounded like something that was right up B's alley and we gave it a try in the Fall of 2012.  B really loves his Fred!  He does not have to be told twice to work on Math and he does it independently.  :o)  A year and a half later and we're still happy with Fred.

B likes to settle into a niche, under a blanket or find a friend when he does Life of Fred and I posted several pictures of him on Instagram last year.  Julie suggested that I do a blog post, compiling all of these Life of Fred pictures and I knew she'd come up with another good idea.  Of course, then my muddled brain completely forgot about it.  Well, it's almost a year later and I just remembered, so I'm sitting down to post some of these pix before I forget again!

Life of Fred - Our Math Curriculum

This is where B does his Math.

We chose Life of Fred this year for B's Math curriculum.  What I love about Life of Fred is that it is independent study for B.  He reads a chapter or 2 by himself on the days we do Math and answers the questions at the end of each chapter.  Even though he is in 4th grade, we followed the suggestion of the creators and had B start from the 1st Life of Fred book to ensure he is building on all concepts.  My goal is for him to complete the 1st 10 books before we start 5th grade; he started the 3rd book, Cats, earlier this week.  

B loves reading about Fred's life and the adventures he and his doll, Kingie, have.  He's especially impressed with how well Kingie can draw.  ;o)  I enjoy hearing B laugh as he reads and several times, he's stopped to share with me something funny or amazing.

The other means of teaching Math the past 2 years (Math-U-See and workbooks) have not been successful with B, with the exception of flash cards.  At least he's interested in this form of Math lesson and I can't wait to see where he'll be in knowledge, understanding and application at the end of the year.  I'm very pleased so far by reviewing his answers at the end of each chapter.  :o)

End of Year Testing

B and I finished up his end of year test this week because our state requires proof of progress from homeschoolers each Summer.  Wednesday B had a meltdown during one section of his Math test because the problem did not look exactly like problems he'd done before.  The problem looked like this:

 104

+  7

He flipped out because the number of digits on the bottom were not the same as the number of digits on the top, i.e.,

   104          6          33
+456        +9       +88

*sigh*  His, I don't-know-how-to-do-it-so-I'm-sure-I-will-get-it-wrong-so-I'm-not-going-to-do-it's ugly head reared up.  We had to visit the safety corner, let it out, regroup, explain the situation and go over the inappropriate reaction to it.  For all his anxiety, he got 3 out of 40 Math questions wrong, a 93%, and none of those 3 were anything like the problem he flipped out over.  He got 5 out of 81 wrong in Language Arts, a 94%.  Two of those 5 he really knew the answer to; he accidentally filled in the wrong bubble.  But I wouldn't let him change his answers.  It is so hard to take the "mom" hat off and just be a teacher during testing!  He asks me questions and I want to help"guide" him to the correct answer or I'm at the table with him, heard him say the correct answer out loud and then watched him fill in the wrong bubble.  However, that defeats the purpose of testing, which is to see how much he actually retained and to teach him a lesson to be careful with each question.

One of the many things I love and admire about B is his common sense, his ability to reason himself to an answer even when he doesn't have the knowledge or isn't sure of something.  He talked his way through some questions he didn't know the answers to, connecting the dots like Six Degrees of Separation, until he came up with an answer that seemed logical enough to choose.  And he was right.  He continues to amaze us and make us proud.

Math Worries

I've been struggling with B's Math curriculum the past 2 years.  I did my research in 2010 and I thought Math-U-See was the right choice for B's personality and learning styles.  He loves LEGOS and is so creative with them that I assumed Math with bricks would click.  I was wrong.  I know that multiplication is taught to 3rd graders in my county.  And, although I have heard a couple of public school parents struggle with getting their 3rd graders to understand multiplication, I was still struggling with B over addition!  How was I going to get to multiplication if I couldn't even get through addition, let alone subtraction?!

In March, I had a rare day off from work that coincided with an informal get together in my homeschooling group.  The talk of Math came up and a friend of mine spoke about where her 3rd grade daughters was.  She said that when she started homeschooling this past Fall (her daughter had been to public school for kindergarten - 2nd grade), she realized that she had to start over and reteach her daughter principals of addition and subtraction and had not yet gotten to multiplication.  That made me feel better, that B was not odd man out.  It reminded me of so many homeschool authors I'd read that talked about when the public schools say kids should be reading - kindergarten and 1st grade.  These authors, like me, struggled with their boys over reading and finally stopped.  They read to their boys, instead, and all of the boys picked up reading by choice between the ages of 7 and 9.  And that is exactly what happened with B and reading.

When I mentioned my Math worries to my brother, he asked if I'd tried flash cards b/c they were used to teach the 2 of us in school.  So, I went out and bought flash cards for addition, subtraction and multiplication.  And I have learned that B can do Math in his head and is a wiz at flash cards!  I thought he wasn't getting Math b/c he struggled with worksheets.  It's just that he isn't a worksheet and show-your-work kinda kid!  Phew!  Flash cards are so much cheaper than a Math curriculum and I can create word problems and find some freebies online.

I also got a great tip from another homeschooling mom - Timez Attack by Big Brainz.  It's a video game with timed Math problems.  B did some addition on it last week and was getting upset by the timer (too short, IMO) but still did well.  Today, I had him take the pre-test in multiplication.  Man did that upset B!  He had not even been exposed to multiplication before that.  He was stressed over the time and frustrated b/c he didn't know "anything".  Well, he got 10 out of 66 right and I know he came up with the correct answers for a few others but just didn't get them typed in fast enough.  He was not happy when I pulled out the multiplication flash cards after that experience.  So, I got a pad of paper and a pencil out and went over the easier multiplication problems with him.

1. Any number x 0 = 0 
2. Any number x 1 = that number
3. Any number x 10 = that number with a 0 on the end 
4. And to boost his confidence, I threw in any number x 100 and any number x 1,000 and he was pretty impressed with himself that he could multiply something by 1,000.  And that's exactly what I wanted - to bolster his confidence that he could do multiplication.  If I'd put the times table in front of him for memorization, he would have been lost, frustrated and given up.
5. 1 through 9 x 11 = 1 through 9 in the tens and ones column
6. 10 x 11 (follow the principle in #3)
7. 11 x 11 and 11 x 12 = memorization.  These were the only 2 answers he had to memorize today so he could handle that and he remembered them!

Just using the flash cards that worked with the above 7 situations, B was able to answer 104 flashcards correctly!  The other 65 flash cards that do not fall into the above 7 situations I didn't show him.  We'll cover those another time.  He and I are just so proud that he's got over 60% of the multiplication table down in his 1st lesson!  After I put the cards away, I actually went over multiplying by 5s with him, verbally.  Even telling him some of my tricks.  For example: 8 x 5 seems daunting.  He can count by 5s eight times to get there or he can do 8 x 10 = 80 in his head quickly and then cut that in 2 to get 40 b/c 5 is half of 10.  If he can't remember what 11 x 11 is, he can do 11 x 10 = 110 in his head and then just add another 11 to that.  But I'm sure he'll work the numbers out in his head his way.  He was so proud to tell the hubs that he "...had a great 1st multiplication lesson today, Daddy!"  And I am thrilled to unlock another mystery of how his brain works.