Jibberish to Me

The timing of today’s post was influenced by my peers. Yep, I give in to that every once in awhile. This time, as I mentioned in a previous post, I just really wanted to be a part of this:

…which I saw going on over at a blog one of my friends writes for. And this week is Curriculum Week. I want all of my homeschool friends to know about this fun resource. If you do participate, or if you learn something really fabulous by reading someone else’s blog post because of it, please do tell me!

CAUTION: Long post. But if you have ever agonized about math, or wondered if you can speak your child’s language, I hope you will be encouraged. There are so many resources out there. You can find the ones you need!

Math has never been one of those subjects that any of us, me included, have just done for fun. But the boys have been fairly easy, if you use the word easy loosely since I do not, nor have I ever, enjoyed math for the sake of math. Now, get me going on how many pounds of beef I can get cut and wrapped for one low price, toss in a bag of rice I can buy in bulk, or a coupon for a Ben & Jerry’s 2fer and I’ll be happily running figures in my head with a dreamy smile on my face. But puhleeze!! Do NOT make me just sit and “do math”.

We’ve used a variety of math curriculums through the years. If you’ve homeschooled for a few years, you understand that, while there is some comfort in using the same thing each year, you also have to be flexible and change what is not working, or what you can see is not going to work for you that year because you had a baby or are moving to a foreign country or what-have-you.

We’ve purchased Dollar Store workbooks, workbooks at learning stores and online print-outs. We’ve done Singapore and Bob Jones, Life-Pac and Switched on Schoolhouse. But mostly, once we’ve passed third grade, we’ve done Saxon in conjunction with the Dive CDs. They’ve all done fine with minimal help by my-math-avoiding-self.

Then came my girl.

Possible Map of Daughter’s Brain

(oops, I forgot to include the part for her pets)

Finishing third grade last year, we had not even yet attempted Saxon or Dive Into Math. I’d tried several different things and she just seemed to get stuck at a certain point each day. This last year, I decided to try Life-Pac because I liked the fact that she could take it in smaller increments, have a sense of accomplishment after completing each booklet, and I had the option to inexpensively buy additional booklets if I could see that she was not mastering specific topics covered within each.

Math took a ton of time each day. As the year progressed, we were continuing to spend upwards of 90 minutes on just 4 pages of math. Not time reading or cooking together, or having mud fights or hiking or learning to knit or paint. Not fun time, but frustrating time. On math and math alone. Time when my sweet girl seemed to “get it’ when I explained it, but she had a hard time retrieving what she knew at a later time.

I describe it this way: While I was teaching her, or as she read, she would seem to grasp the concept. She would put it into her Brain Storage Unit (BSU). The next time that subject came up, she would see the problem or concept and try to retrieve the information she knew she had stored, but it was as if she could not remember how to get to that BSU. So I would give her reminders -- something like “remember when we wrote out all of those hundreds and then you counted by tens until we got to a thousand?”. And she would say “oh yeah!” and I could almost see her thought process taking a little journey on a brain path to the BSU and gathering the info she had previously stored.

But I knew I could not be Mapquest Mom forever. Certainly not in a test situation. And, really, was she learning it if she could not even remember how to get to what she learned? I know she is a smart little cookie, sharp as a tack. So I knew it was I who was missing something about the way she speaks and understands the language of math.

Ouch.

I am aware that there is a shortage of females in the math and science world. I want my daughter to break beyond the typical. I want her to have every advantage. That meant that I, who did not fluently speak my own math language, was going to have to step out of the box. I was going to have to find a Rosetta Stone, if you will, a way I could use what I know, and might not love, to instill in her not only a knowledge, but a love, of math and the concepts needed to really understand it.

The following days and weeks were filled with Mapquest Mom trying to meet Rosetta Stone in the vast world of Internet Knowledge Gleaning and Talk-It-Around-Town Conferences. I surfed and chatted. I researched learning styles (again) and learning disabilities. I recalled advice given by conference speakers past and friends who are teachers and fellow homeschool parents. I followed one link that led to another. I cut and pasted and perused.

Finally I narrowed it down to two different curriculums/teaching methods I felt would make sense in her language. And I prayed. Boy, did I pray! My child’s life was at stake here.

Okay, now I’m being a bit dramatic. But you know that you know how I felt. Because it’s my child I’m talkin’ about here and the responsibility for what and whether or not she learns is upon me. Squarely upon me.

Enter

(click to go there)

You’ve never heard of it? Don’t worry. I’ve been homeschooling for awhile now, and I hadn’t either.

Their methods make sense. The way they developed their program makes sense. Some of what they said in their information very specifically addressed some of the issues I saw my daughter struggling with. And the simplicity of their ideas appealed to me.

They use an abacus as the base for their learning, for goodness sakes.

So I bought what we needed to make the transition into a totally new way of speaking Math. Well, plus what I thought we’d need to teach another kid or two for another year or so.

We got started the last week or so of April.

Our first day was fun. She kept asking when we were going to start actually doing math. I thought that was a good sign. The second day she asked if we were going to “be able” to do math that day. The third day she asked when we were going to do math and if we could do it longer. And on it went, until I decided to break for summer.

So we are part way through their Transitions book. And, you know, I am not dreading the Tower of Babel (reference to a Bible story) feeling anymore.

I know I can speak her language.

P.S. RightStart is sponsoring a free webinar on August 12th if anyone is interested.