New Math Program

Mi'ita finished her first math book, Singapore Math 3A, last week.

Dilemma. Should I continue this program that I know is good but she hates? Or should I switch programs? I looked online at Math U See, my next runner up when I was researching math. It didn't seem that exciting to me. The program boasts about all the manipulative's, but all I saw were base ten blocks.

I called Mi'ita over and asked her if it looked exciting to her. She took one look at the base ten blocks and said, "Oh, I LOVE those!"

I bought the program.

They came Friday afternoon as we were about to leave for the weekend. She was all excited to open them, but I didn't let her--we were about ready to walk out the door. When she got back Monday night she wanted to open them again. Again, I didn't let her. It was bath then bed time.

7 AM Tuesday morning and she wanted to get up and do math. She hasn't done that since we started homeschooling in August.

Before you get all excited about buying this program for your kids, know this. We opened the box and played with the base ten blocks. When it was time to do the math problems, no interest.

This doesn't worry me. She didn't have any interest in doing Singapore Math, either. If she gets some math concepts by just playing with the blocks, great. She still has to do the five problems four times per week. If she does them with little interest, but complains less, I'll take that as a success.

The level we bought for her, Delta, has a lot of review for her. We have covered long multiplication and long division already, but this book approaches it differently so we need to learn their methodology. Fine. Learning several ways to do the same functions is good. As soon as she gets the hang of their notation (more algebraic) and what they require for the manipulative's, we can speed up and skip some stuff.

Y'all are probably thinking that I am slacking. My daughter basically has to do the sum total of 20 math problems a week. Most kids do double that every day! But as my friend pointed out, if she can demonstrate in 5 problems that she knows the concept, forcing her to do 40 will just make her cranky and turn her off of math. I would rather her do a lot less rote math and like it. And we have shifted our emphasis to games, puzzles, mysteries, and word problems. She loves word problems. She thinks of them as puzzles to solve. Word problems are how math is used in real life so that thrills me.