Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Math facts concern

So by way of background - I have an HG daughter age 7. Interested in providing her some enrichment, we enrolled her in EPGY from the age of 4 until she could start K at 5. She was able to complete through the end of 3rd grade on EPGY before starting kindy. We enrolled her in a local school for gifted kids where she has been going for the past two years. I did not do any enrichment at home with her because she seemed happy and challenged at school. Spending time with her over the summer, I became a bit concerned because I noticed that she did not seem to have a solid grasp on her math facts. (I know that she school is very "anti-math facts" and all about "math concepts". Concerned for her math welfare : ) I re-enrolled her in EPGY and had to keep moving down the level because it was too hard, until we got to level 2.2. Wow. What the heck has she been doing for the past 2 years? Now somewhat panicked, I brought her down to the local Kumon center thinking I could at least get a free test and get to the root of the problem. She tested at first grade level. WTH? This is a kid who could tell time at three years old. On the placement test she got all of the questions right except for one silly mistake, but she took too much time. (I believe, because she still sometimes uses her fingers). So my knee jerk reaction is to enroll her in Kumon and bludgeon her with math facts (seems to be the modus operandi there) until school starts. Thoughts?

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Take my advice with a grain of salt, but fwiw I don't think I'd worry about it right now. Some kids just aren't ready (maturity) to have math facts down and quickly until they are older - there's a wide variation of when math facts "click" with each individual child. It's important to have a good grasp on them before a child starts in on algebra etc at the middle/high school level, but your dd isn't there quite yet. I'm not familiar with EPGY course content because we haven't enrolled our kids in EPGY - but if she's been in a school program that doesn't emphasize math facts and she's continuing in the program next year and she's doing well in the program... I wouldn't think there's any need to panic over math facts.

I have one dd who is enrolled in Kumon, and this is just my impression but fwiw - Kumon (our experience) has been that they start off with math facts drilling to get the child in the habit of doing daily math work with something they can show quick progress at and feel successful about. Our dd also tested at least one grade level below where we feel she's really at (at Kumon) and I think we have a fairly good understanding of where she's at re math from the work she's been doing in school. The cynical side of me suspects that there might be a business incentive to say a child is slightly below the grade level they are really working at in math in order to sell a few more lessons

polarbear

Seven is still very young to have the math facts down. We did not do the Kumon Center- it seemed so boring... However, I have my kids do one page a day out of a Kumon book (multiplication, addition, etc). It has really helped with the math facts alot.
I also made (or obviously you can buy) some flashcards. When my older one was 7/8, I would flip them every night for 5 minutes. He has a documented processing disorder and has extended time written into his IEP, but we have never used that.
He's really good at math, and he has the math facts down well. I would not pay too much to the Kumon testing they did- who knows if it's accurate, and maybe it's biased to get you to sign up for their classes. My older one in third grade got an 87th percentile on the (5th grade) CTY math part.
So just work on math facts at home a bit, Kumon worksheets and/or old-fashioned flashcards and that should be enough!

We do ALOHA mental math. http://www.aloha-usa.com/ DS6 now likes it. He is getting challenged at his level. Although it wasn't love at first sight, in fact he struggled.
We like it too especially now it's summer break.

Thanks all. It does seem like a bit of drilling might be in order here. I was just at the supermarket and I looked at a few math workbooks and it does seem like, concepetually, she is in good shape. She can borrow and carry, add, subtract and multiply fractions, she even can do order of operations problems - no problem.... but if any of those things involve needing to do something like 8+5... out come the fingers... and I actually think she seems to know her multiplication tables better than addition and subtraction - I guess perhaps she must have skipped over that part because she came in to school seeming to know it.

So just hunker down and spend some time with flashcards. It's boring but it has to be done!
When I was a kid, we did multiplication tables in school but they never do that in school today. I guess the teacher just expects that magically they will know the math facts.
I do think it's very important though. Even if your child is a wiz at math, if they still in higher grades are counting on their fingers, it will hold them back in Algebra and beyond. ALOT of kids in my son's third grade class last year did that!

I think it really depends on your daughter and what she wants to do. At 7, I expect she'll have an opinion, if you discuss your concerns, and that's what I'd do. I don't think there's any harm in "drilling" if she's willing, but I also don't think it's essential, if she's making conceptual progress.

FWIW, maths facts weren't fashionable when I was at school and I never learned them. I have as much maths as you like (PhD etc.) but I noticed when DS's school was wanting him to learn maths facts that for many of them I didn't, actually, retrieve them from memory exactly. What I did was to work them out at lightening speed (I could answer as quickly as someone who'd memorised them and didn't have any sensation of cognitive load), along tracks so well-worn that you might say I'd memorised the fastest way to work out the fact! I think I had just gone through a process of working out the same small sum over and over again, as part of larger problems etc., until I could do it that fast. I had and have never found this to be a problem.

DS, otoh, goes to a school that does value maths facts. It set practising "the story of 12" etc. as homework, and we did it (e.g. played ping pong on the bus - with the child, you speak alternate words and it goes, e.g., Ping Pong 7 5 6 6 10 2... - you give a number and the child has to give the number that adds to it to make the target number - phrased that way, not as subtraction! The aim is to keep a fast rhythm like ping pong. (And then you swap, of course :-) ) ) because he enjoyed it, but it wasn't something I felt particularly committed to. He did learn his tables early, using Timez Attack. I had explained when I installed it that I thought it would be a good idea for him to learn his tables because school would find it easier to believe that it was OK to give him harder maths if he knew them well. That he learned them so fast and well was because he liked TA though!

Yes ColinsMum, you are right she does have an opinion and the opinion is that she absolutely does not want to do math over summer break. Do you think it is a problem that she does not know something like, 12-8 by rote? I don't know... she is ahead of the curve conceptually (which I guess should not surprise me since that is, in fact, what they emphasize at her school). I guess I just worry that as the concepts get harder things will get exponentially harder without a solid grasp on basic arithmetic.
Yesterday I made her do 30 minutes of math and 30 minutes of piano practice, which makes me either the best mom ever or the worst mom ever - depending on your perspective.

My DD7 is just like this... a whiz at math concepts and still counting on her fingers. Whenever I watch this behavior, I get the impression that I'm watching perfectionism at work. She doubts her brain, and trusts her fingers.

She's got a point, too. Even at the pre-calculus level, I'd often have a complicated problem undone because of a boneheadedly simple miscalculation.