I am feeling better about math. Until recently my 12 year old son was spending very little time doing math. He finished the Life of Fred Decimals and Percents and Fractions books a while back and I have only been having him do a few word problems once in a while when the purpose was really to make sure he could write out the problems and keep the columns straight, that kind of thing, because he has motor dysgraphia. I think pencil and paper math might always be slow for him because of the writing involved.
With the Life of Fred books he always picked up the concepts quickly, he loved the way the books were written, and there were not very many problems to do, so he liked that. But I wanted him to get a little more practice with middle school math before really getting involved in Algebra, which he has been doing only once in a while. This is a kid who would much rather read than do math anyway so I was looking for a fun way for him to review middle school math and build up speed. I found something called IXL math and like some of my son's video games there are achievements that he can earn and he has been doing about one hundred problems a day, sometimes on his iPad in bed at night. I never thought my son would ever do math willingly in bed. It keeps track of the time it takes him to do the problems so he answers the questions as quickly as possible and he has to be accurate even in spelling or the answer is counted as wrong. When his score is up in the 90's, any wrong answer (typos included, like spelling hundredth without the d) will knock his score down about 10 points so he is learning to work quickly and accurately. He always gets the answers faster than I can and uses a lot of mental math when he does math on the computer but I will always beat him in pencil and paper math because I do not have dysgraphia. IXL costs about $10 a month and we will find something else if he get tired of it, but for now I am happy.
