Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school math facts weakness...

I found that doing mathdoku/KenKen puzzles helped my DDs gradually memorize their math facts. Both the logic element and the fact that it wasn't timed made it more fun.

DS5 found this pretty fun at one point:
http://www.worksheetworks.com/puzzles/math-maze.html

we also get that frustration with timez attack to the point of meltdown at times. we now warn that at the first sign of freakout, the PC goes off without warning.

I try and tell him that he needs to play again and again if he does not know/cant remember the answers.

sowhat we find is this: he will play a section over and over. then when he is too frustrated he goes back and starts from the very beginning. then he messes around there for a while and then when he feels ready and goes back to his frustration point, he has miraculously learnt all the answers for that section. and so it goes on and on.

he is now nearly done with the 3 times tables (yay!) and so is back to the messing around at thestart of the game again

I just thought I would give an update. My DD5.1 is now doing great with math facts (at the level we were working on...there is room to grow). She and I just didn't know how to approach something that wasn't automatic. I still don't drill her (she would resist and be very negative about that), but do give her some practice problems every other day or so. I suppose I could do more, but this seems enough for now. Her math concept level is very high (based on testing) and so I want her to have the facts to be automatic for her so she can do more, but I am very careful not to push her because she gets very hostile if I try to impose an agenda even if I try to do it in a "fun" way.