Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Can someone please explain...

Why does my DS moan and flop around when asked to practice subtraction facts like 13-6 (which he is perfectly capable of figuring out but has not memorized) until he talks me into "letting" him do multiplication afterwards (which he hasn't memorized either but seems to enjoy figuring out things like 7x4 in his head.) ???

Don't know but when you find out would you let me know? Mine does the same. The subtraction is too easy, maybe?

I decided to just ask DS.

Me: Why do you like multiplication better than subtraction?

DS: It's waaaay more fun!

Me: What is it about multiplication that makes it more fun?

DS: It's harder!

So, squirt, it sounds like you may be right. Maybe I should give him harder subtraction (like borrowing problems?) Maybe that would make subtraction more fun...

You know my DS7's motto: hard is good!

Easy is boring. I found out that combination of easy-boring-but-needs-to-be-practiced and new-and-exciting works best for us. Right now we are doing 2 completely different math chapters at the same time for this very reason.

We're doing the same sort of thing, LMom. Today for math, we did area and perimeter of squares, rectangles, and irregular figures (like a rectangle with a square chunk taken out of it). Working with the sqares led us to some stuff with square roots and squaring numbers--so we covered all the 2x2/3x3/4x4 pairs in the multiplication table and found a neat pattern there, plus he found the square root of 121. It all allowed us to do some work with times tables without the painful memory work that failed so miserably last year.

It was pretty advanced geometry and pre-algebra stuff...plus boring times tables snuck in!

<singing>
Just a spoonful of ha-ard helps the ea-easy go down,
the ea-easy go do-own,
ea-easy go down!

GS9 does better with the 'easy and/or repetitive' if we can make it into a contest. Memorizing the times tables becomes fun when he's trying to beat his time used for the previous attempt. And, the 'Murderous Maths' books just came in the mail yesterday. I can see now that I'll have to reserve those as rewards for doing the 'easy and/or repetitive', hahaha... if you all didn't understand, you'd think I was sick or evil to give a kid a math book as a reward!


P.S. 'easy and/or repetitive' has to be in short bursts for the time factor to work for GS9. He needs to know it will not drag on forever. I think/hope it's teaching him to attack those boring things and get them out of the way so he can do the fun/challenging things.

I hear you, but DS7 just can't do that sort of timed test yet. He will have to eventually. But for now it just stresses him out. He actually works faster *without* the time pressure, since he doesn't get panicky and lose focus. It's weird, but it's how he is.

I just remind myself that your average 7yo would not be good at timed math tests either. We'll ease into it, and when he's 9, we'll be giving timed tests. But it's a weakness we must cultivate.

DS7 has the same problem. He has to take a timed test in school every day. 50 math problems in 2 minutes. I've explained to the teacher that the probs are too easy and that's why he has no interest in doing them. But he has to do them anyway. Right now he is adding 3+. when I asked why, I ws told it's so he does well on the standardized tests!

FWIW, we're currently going through this with DS5.5 and the assignments that he's getting, particularly for math. We haven't yet found a good solution. Homework sometimes takes up to an hour for "number pairs". Even if we dangle the carrot of Timez Attack (computer multiplication game) it only works about half the time.

When we play informal learning games we get the "hard questions, please!"

Wish we had a good answer.

JB