Math help

[Guest guest]

First, let me say that I am not a professional but I have attended many seminars

and worked with my son on these issues myself.

For teaching more or less, after teaching to glance at a heap of items that were

very obviously different in number, I used a 1-100 number chart laminated on

construction paper. I then counted with him on it and when I asked which was

more, (he had good memory) I could show him that the last number was more. Then

when I asked which is less, I showed him that the earlier number was correct. I

taught these separately at first and then randomly and he got it. We finally

moved to index cards with one number on each and he could tell me which one was

more or less between the two.

I don't know that I would start with simple addition until she mastered the

above but when she does, I would check into Touchpoint Math. That's what we

used and the school probably already has it although they can really mess up

teaching it so you may want to keep it to yourself and do it with him at home.

I am not familiar with Singapore and Saxon is a scripted program that uses way

too much language (at least for my son). If you cannot afford the Touchpoint

Math, you could start with addition problems with blocks: set up the problem,

4+2=____. Put 4 blocks under the 4 and then 2 under the 2 and have her count

them and move them to the answer side and have her write the number 5. Don't

forget to use every opportunity in the community to count and add so that you

can generalize. In school my son had a problem with knowing which direction to

go to turn to a page and this 100 chart tthing really helped him realize that if

he needed page 32 and he was on 74 then he needed to turn to the left for the

lower number.

Prepositions are also hard but we worked them a number of ways: I think we used

pictures first and many examples of just one prep at a time and then moved that

to having actually put the objects where they were to go and so on with the

others. You could also use him to get " behind " someone (like they line up in

school) Then we used them in everyday living.

Hope this helps,