Moving back to the original tone of "hitting a wall", DD10 fell apart this morning. She had been up late last night with a bad cold so she was operating on little sleep and had had hours (!!!) of homework to do over the weekend. When she cries I know it's bad. She sobbed that she could not remember the geometry formulas for volume she had been taught last week, and she had a quiz about them today. Between the masses of Kleenex I saw everywhere and the meltdown before me, I knew her she needed to stay home. I did a little work. She did a little Minecraft. We met over some sheets of volume problems, and soon she was saying things like "Oh! I see. Let me re-do this one." or "Oh! I forgot to do this."
I took the "mental health" day approach - well, it was mental and sick - and it worked well. I asked her later if she liked learning math with me vs. in the classroom, and she said one on one with me (although I just found good websites to help because I can't remember any of this stuff). I asked her how she could remember science/social studies/LA facts so well but not the math, and she bluntly stated "I just read history and stuff once, and I know it." but she didn't have an answer why the math formulas wouldn't stick after just seeing them once. It's probably because she HATES math. Funny how the math went easily after she learned the formulas today. Plus, she and her sister were throwing volume information at each other across the dining room table over burgers.
