We have been using Math U See for the last 2 years, it worked great but now my DD is struggling with the simplest addition problems, I am worried the manipulatives are becoming more of a crutch. We are currently supplementing math with a Workbook I found at Barnes and Noble. What math programs have yall used that have worked well? My DD is very bright and has always done well until recently, HELP!!
May I ask what age she is/what grade you're looking for? Some math programs are good but only up to a certain point.
Give timed tests. Have her record the scores on a graph; tell her that when she gets 85% or 90% or whatever correct for three days in a row, you will take her for icecream. Sure, she can use counters or fingers, but that slows you down. The only way to meet her goal is to know her facts.
Well, Saxon is a solid program for learning math facts. It's extremely repetitive with them. It honestly didn't work well for us, but that was because it was too slow for my son, and too lacking in visuals for my daughter [a visual/spatial learner]. My daughter uses Bob Jones, which is working well for us on the second grade level. It has lots of pictures and a cute story that carries through each chapter. They'll start a lesson with the pictures to help count but wean off those for the rest of the lesson. We also supplement with Hooked on Math which does flashcards but also math bingo and other such math games to help kids apply their math facts in a fun way.
We use Horizons. We have manipulatives that DS can use (number line, number chart, counters) but I also just started timed math drills and I've noticed it's helping him a lot. He, too, is in 2nd grade. You can print math drills for free from different internet sites. Just do a search for timed math drills and it should bring up quite a few.
We use Horizons also. My kids have never really used a lot of manipulatives (although we own them...lol). I love Horizons for elementary...I just wish they had middle school/high school.
I love Saxon. MUS didn't work out for us, so we switched and have been using Saxon since 1st or 2nd grade (can't remember now). It is a little time consuming, but you can always pick and chose what parts you want or are able to do. I like it because it seems to cover everything and continues to "remind" the kids of the info they've already learned.
At that age we just used one of the books from American Education Publishing... I forget if we used a Comprehensive Curriculum that year or if it was one of the Total Math or The Complete Book of Math books, but we would just use things around the house if we needed manipulatives to learn that days topic. We also like the Spectrum books from that same publisher, though they are black and white and not much fun looking.
Horizon Math is good, we all enjoyed using it because it has short sections and repeats it self in method but not in information of new stuff you learn something and the nnext day you do a small amount of the same, plus new stuff, and some old stuff, each day is like this, they callit spiral approach I think?
I don't know if anyone's already suggested it but we went through multiplication torture for 3 years before we found out about Times Tales and my son learned his multiplication in 3.5 weeks. It was amazing.It's a picture/story curriculum. Don't know if you're there yet but I wish they made addition facts times tales.
Thank You all for the advice DH and I did a ton of research and have decided to go with Horizons, since we wait for our income tax to buy curriculum every year we are going to get the 2nd grade horizons and start ASAP and work through the summer (that way she is on track for the 3rd grade). Thanks again this is an awesome resource
at work i have fun just doing speed math... just google speed math and the first result is a math game that gives you 3 minutes to do as many math problems as possible. you can pick between addition, subtraction, addition and subtracting, multiplication, and division. so my idea would be to try to have her play it a few minutes every day or something like that and write down her scores and give her some sort of reward if she beats her high scores. Just an idea. A game that i really liked when i was little was math blasters
