Monday, January 4, 2010

Math~STILL WORKing IT at Our House!!

Are you confident and satisfied with what is going on with MATH at your house? I am well known to have MATH TERROR myself, so teaching this daunting subject is just that for ME~so I look for well designed and formulated materials to teach with.  Believe me, I've been "through" quite a bit, and by far the VERY best for ME in the lower grades was using Abeka Book Arithmatic K-6th grades.  Now we have tried a couple of supplementals that I liked to boost up skills that needed MORE practice than what is offered in the curricula~We had difficulty with long division, so we needed extra work to cement the process so we could move on.  I used things I found online and even a workbook from Wal-mart! So it's the skill building that's so important.  Today, I am known to make up my OWN worksheets too to practice a skill.  Also since we are much older, we are using Teaching Textbooks for Pre and Algebra. To explain using this curricula, let me say that it has DVD instruction,  but it's step by step and for my children, they complain it's TOO detailed~HA! HOW CAN MATH instruction be too detailed? Soooo I have them do it, but  I also supplement with things that help them.  We are doing fractions so I have used Math Tudor DVD for additional visual instruction.  I also want to BRAG on Maria Miller for her work in math and introduce her blog to you, 
Homeschool Math
There are some unique features to Mrs. Miller's math approach. She had LOADS of freebies ( a HUGELY informative monthly Math Newsletter!!) as well as VERY affordable workbooks for various grade levels.  She does YouTube videos and has her own math YouTube channel! You will appreciate her style and work.  She's very knowledgeable, and if you want to contact her, she will help! I have used her curricula for supplement for some time now.  You may want to give her a try as well!

I think MATH is one of those TERROR things that is a work in progress~so I keep working the process! This is a subject that needs a LOADED GUN APPROACH so that a strong knowledge and understanding is achieved so that high math is attainable!

WHAT DID NOT work, was ALEKS.  It's a great math system possibly for some kids, but we found things like my daughter's work not being recorded on the "pie" but also that while she made progress, the assessments drove her backwards. Also the way to do the math was all screen driven with no workbook and limited practice.  I did not like this, and found that if MORE practice is needed it's almost impossible to figure out how to give it.  Also math IMHO is one of those pencil to paper skills~PERIOD.  You can't really do math without this method.  So ALEKS was not for us.  We left Abeka because we went with Teaching Textbooks so that we could take advantage of the step by step simple instructions for the upper grades~it goes throughout all of high school.

SOOOOOOOOOOOO here ya have it~my math TAKE~
If it's not working or needs a tweak~try something new!
SisterT<3

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