DD6 is prone to throwing drama fits in which she pretends to not understand something very basic. My tactic is to take her at her word and walk her through it until she grabs the pencil out of my hand and starts doing the problem for real.
But today, after she got over the drama and buckled down to actually trying, it became apparent that she
really couldn't reliably name 407 vs. 470, for example. (Even though, one at a time, she can identify the hundreds, tens, and ones places.) I've always known she had a weird area of weakness in small-scale spatial relations, compared to the rest of her cognitive profile, so this makes perfect sense.
I don't think it's a huge roadblock, we worked on it for several minutes and she started getting the hang of it. But I have to wonder how long this would have gone uncorrected? And how much math frustration it would have given her?
I don't blame Tiny Private School, the teacher does an awesome job of tracking twelve moving targets. (Meaning twelve kids, each on their own trajectory.) But it seems like there's no substitute for one-on-one. Here's to being an "over-involved" parent!
I have high hopes that a bunch of math stuff is going to suddenly become much easier for her, just by clearing up this one weak spot.
