Math Stuff

We just finished week 11 of kinda-sorta 1st grade.  I should be week 14, but we have had to miss 3 weeks since we started, still Caleb is nearing the halfway point in the math book.  I say kinda-sorta because I can't say for sure we are 1st grade level in reading.  My friend Tina, whose kids are much older than mine, says it doesn't matter because I am only comparing himself against himself and compared to his reading self last summer, wow, he's come a long way!

With enrichment out for the summer, I've lost my sounding board, so I am going to have to have it out here.  We are using Singapore Math for the 2nd year in a row.  I like it, but that's not to say it's easy for me to teach him.  It's not exactly like math as I learned it or how I taught it when I was at RCA.  The addition and subtraction moves forward rapidly and I'm not sure how much he is expected to really grasp by the end of a lesson.  And since we don't have to move on, I don't want to until I'm sure he's got it.

For addition and subtraction it started out with manipulatives (in our house we call these beans, crayons, peanuts, Legos, etc.) and then taught what it calls "number bonds".  It's just math facts, but set up a little differently (ex.  2 and 3 "bond" to make 5).  Then it moved to "counting on".  Caleb snapped up all three.  (Of course a lot of that was in the Kindergarten book too.)  It seemed to come really quickly into adding and subtracting with numbers up to 20.  A 2 digit number + or - a 1 digit number.  And it teaches 2 methods - counting on (or back) and a method I am having a hard time explaining.  Here it goes:

ex.  17 - 8 =

method:  17 is really 10 and 7.  You can't take 8 from 7, so take it from the 10.  Then you have 2 and 7, so the answer is 9.

And so long as there are pictures or manipulatives, he has no problem with this.  He has no trouble finding the number bond for 17 or adding the two 1 digit numbers.  Personally, I think that's just fine on paper and I can see the reasoning in doing it this way, but I have a hard time thinking of it like that in my head!

So what I'm asking is - all you math people (Dana I know, but maybe some other reader of mine is a math whiz too and I just never knew it) - is there some trick to explaining this that I am missing?   If we just keep at it will it click?  In the Abeka math, the kids are supposed to memorize all the math facts, do you think that's necessary or will he just memorize them as he goes along?

Otherwise around here...we have let go most of the frogs.  I let the kids keep the promised 2 plus the deformed tadpole and suddenly it grew legs and climbed out on the rock!  It is the tiniest frog I have ever seen!  I don't have a picture yet, maybe this weekend.  I don't know if we will be able to keep them long term.  Feeding them is not simple, plus it seems kind of a shame to have such effective mosquito controllers locked up in a box.

On Wednesday, we all went with Rob to Ft. Myers.  It was a last minute trip, but I remembered to toss the swimsuits in "just in case" and we got to spend a couple of hours on the beach while he tweaked a transmitter.  Wednesday was the first sunny day since Debby on that side and the shells were really abundant.  What a blessing - plus kids meals were free at Chic-fil-a and Caleb did all his school work for the day in the van and in the lobby of a church in Naples where the station has an office.

Aaaand, I am going to be a professional enricher this fall.  I've been asked to teach a 12 week class at enrichment called My America.  It won't be big bucks, but it should more than cover the cost for enrolling my kids.  They provided some material and I have to do some lessons about elections, but I have a lot of flexibility otherwise in what to teach, so I am all ears if you know of any great books or materials.