Math Forks in the Road

Mushroom is rapidly nearing the end of Miquon.  I predict he’ll be finished with Purple within the month and that’s if we draw it out.  BalletBoy has recently finished Math Mammoth 3.  In the meantime, we’ve been trying out Beast Academy.  BalletBoy likes the graphic novel textbook, but the workbook isn’t right for him.  Everything in it is either too easy or too hard.  I haven’t felt like he’s gotten a lot out of it, so I don’t think he’ll be continuing other than to read the textbook for fun.  If you’re not familiar with Beast Academy, Tinderbox has an excellent review of it here.  Essentially, through a graphic novel about monsters, it introduces math in a very conceptual way and the more difficult practice problems often practically invite frustration.  They want you to try and fail and try again and have an epiphany.  Shockingly, it has been working for Mushroom, which is re-emphasizing the realization I’ve been having lately that he is actually pretty good at conceptual math thinking, even if his calculation skills lag behind.

The other day, we were covering the triangle inequality in Beast Academy and Mushroom wasn’t getting it, so I pulled out our constant friends the Cuisenaire rods.  See how the triangle on the left works because the sum of the two shorter sides are longer than the long side?  But the triangle on the right can never work.

For a split second, when I didn’t see this activity on Education Unboxed to link it, I thought I had made up a new use for the rods, but nah, I found it somewhere else.  Sometimes I think the rods are pure magic.  They really can be used to teach nearly any math.

What’s next for math at the Rowhouse?  I don’t totally know.  Mushroom will continue Beast Academy, but he needs the ability to switch away when he gets frustrated.  The spiral, jumpy, non-threatening nature of Miquon worked so well for him that we have to find a way to recreate some part of it.  We have several books like this one which should help us use the rods, but we need something else.  I know that Singapore, Math Mammoth and MEP aren’t right for him and it seems silly to begin Right Start only to have it run out on us soon thereafter.  What we do is still a bit up in the air.  For BalletBoy, after a lot of discussion between him and myself, we’ve decided he needs more practice with third grade concepts so he’s going to do MEP 3b, which will be a lot of review and a few new things, alongside the Singapore Challenging Word Problems 3, which we’ve done a little in, but not much.

I feel very unsure about math right now and am worried we’re playing hopscotch with programs a little too much.  I’m trying to be mindful of the need to stick with a sequence to help us keep gaps at bay.  On the other hand, I feel like when we do stick too closely with a single program, both boys have trouble honing their math thinking, not to mention that they get bored and frustrated.  It’s definitely a time of some self-doubt here.

Miquon and Cuisenaire Love

After using a hodgepodge of half a dozen things for math this year, Mushroom has settled into a regimen of mostly Miquon with the other resources, including Singapore Challenging Word Problems, Math Mammoth, MEP, and Right Start games, taking a clear supporting role.  After dallying for so long to find his stride and taking some diversions for other topics, he’s just now starting Miquon Green, which is essentially the second half the second grade curriculum.  But no worries.  I’d rather go slow and feel like he gets it than rush ahead.

I feel like I’ve really hit the Miquon stride with him.  It’s so very different from the mastery approach I take with BalletBoy’s Math Mammoth.  Instead of covering a topic from head to toe, not releasing until a child can recite it in their sleep, Miquon gives you little pieces of the puzzle in digestible chunks.  A child doesn’t have to master multiplication by fractions.  Instead, Miquon allows them to become confident with the easiest problems first.  I can really see the ways in which this ought to help Mushroom down the line see his way to solving math problems with mental math and common sense instead of by pulling out paper and pencil to do a complicated algorithm (or, heavens forbid, a calculator).

I’ve also found a good balance of really using the Annotations to build supporting activities for the lab sheets using the Cuisenaire rods and a white board.

Speaking of those terrific C-rods, a poster on the Well-Trained Mind Forum has created an invaluable set of user friendly videos about how to use the rods to teach, well, nearly everything.  Whether you’re a Miquon user or just Cuisenaire curious, please go check it out here at Education Unboxed on Vimeo.  It’s an amazing free resource, one of those things that makes me feel like the homeschool community is so generous and cool.  Here, this one on square numbers sums up what’s so nifty about using C-rods and Miquon with kids to teach concepts used reserved for older kids:

Mushroom’s Math

I posted before about how Mushroom has split off for math.  We’re doing a whole spiraly, roundabouty, wibbly wobbly timey wimey curriculum.  And while I usually adore things that are wibbly wobbly timey wimey, I would much prefer to do something more straight up Asian mastery style.  But, hey, you take the kid you’ve got, right?

We’re doing a hodgepodge of things.  He keeps a math journal, in which I put quick drills, a few “challenge” problems, some money math, some catalog math, and a whole bunch of other things.  He’s continuing through Miquon and is almost done with all of the Red book and moving into the proper second grade Blue book.  He’s also playing games a lot more and doing well at them.  We have the Right Start Games, and while I knew the Right Start Curriculum wasn’t for me as a teacher, we’re enjoying the games a lot.

Below you can see a selection of the sort of math journal pages we’ve done so far, in case you’re curious.

 

But here is the lovely thing.  He seems to be less afraid to do math and put out an answer.  I have discovered he actually likes having a math “drill.”  He understands that it’s practice of ideas he already learned and seems to get that if he makes a mistake, then it’s just a mistake, not a total failure of concepts.  What an amazing thing!

And he occasionally makes some great leaps.  We read The Greatest Guessing Game, which is a Young Math Book (I know I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: I adore the Young Math Books!) about division and Mushroom began dividing things left and right.

He has been doing more real life math more comfortably.  The other day, after doing arrays in Miquon, he arrayed the Christmas cookies.  He added up the money he had spent for Christmas so far as well.

But here is the best bit.  I apparently checked out a book quite a long time ago from the library and then lost it (it seemed to have fallen into a funny corner of the car during transport).  It was an early 80’s title with slightly psychedelic monster illustrations called Crazy Creature Number Puzzles.  It’s possible for me to not known when it came from because our public library does not assess any fines on juvenile materials.  I know, you’re jealous, right?  Anyway, I discovered it from who knows when and instead of returning it (I’ve probably accidentally renewed it too, anyway), I made Mushroom do some of the problems in it.  They’re easy enough for K-2nd grade math, though they’re tricky enough that it might take you a minute or two to figure them out (well, not most of them, but a few of them took me a minute or two).  But he did them!  And then he said to me when I assigned some more, “I really like those Crazy Creature Number Puzzles.”  Yes, that is a direct quote that I have not made up.  Really, this was his biggest hurdle, being able to be patient enough to sit and think through a problem and try different solutions until he got the right answer.

So I’m feeling pleased with the less curriculum approach right now.

PS – Sorry if the image sizes are a little wonky.  There’s some sort of image sizing bug on my blog!