Monday, November 26, 2012

Math.

Teaching math to my daughter continues to challenge me. In August, I purchased MathUSee Delta at a consignment sale. As I watched the Delta video, I realized that my daughter's shaky foundations need to be strengthened, and I ordered Alpha directly from MathUSee. We have been working our way through Alpha together. A couple of weeks ago, while I was gone for a long weekend chaperoning a marching band event of my high schooler, my homeschooler took her MathUSee workbook to her bedroom and worked through the whole thing. Arg.

Interestingly, I see her strengths and weaknesses by what she got right and by what she skipped and by what she attempted but got wrong.  Makes my job a bit more difficult sorting through it all.  Working through the workbook in order would have been easier for me than sorting through to find the concepts that need practice.

The ironic thing is that if I'd asked her to work through the workbook, she would have resisted, screamed, screeched, protested, thrown a big fit. When working through it is her idea, she's fine with it.  I do understand that a lot of her resistance is about working alongside me, that she is anxious that I will move too quickly, expect too much and that she will feel incompetent.  So, moving forward, we will work toward my being a good guide, someone "possible" for her, as we tackle the concepts of math that need practice.

3 comments:

Rachel said...

When you are using Math-U-See, are you having her watch the lessons on her own? Even if you join her, have her put in the DVD, control the remote, etc. It's actually good if she wants to do it on her own, as long as she gets the DVD stuff too. Odds are good that then she CAN do most of it on her own.

Rachel said...

Do you have her watch the dvd's on her own? You could join her maybe, but have her be in charge of putting in the DVD, controlling the remote, finding the lesson, etc. One of the things I like about MUS is that it really does let them do most of it on their own. They don't have to have you "teach" them, which can make it easier. That, and mine always learned better from a video than a person.

Penny said...

Rachel, I do watch the videos with her. I want to understand the terms and lingo Mr Demme uses so that I can be consistent during the day with her. I am able to see what she grasps and what challenges her and am able to work in practice during the day on concepts that challenged her during the lesson.

I have not been allowing her to control the DVD player/remote as we continue to work on her joining me with me in the lead. I need to consider allowing her to do that independently, giving her some active participation in her own learning with MathUSee. Thank you for putting that idea out there for me!

OnePlusYou Quizzes and Widgets

Created by OnePlusYou -

Stat Counter