Monday, March 5, 2007

First Day With Math Mammoth

I printed off several pages of the Math Mammoth, 'Addition and Subtraction 2A,' today. It's going backwards perhaps but I thought I'd see what Catherine did with it. She was thrilled to see worksheets that were relatively easy and really enjoyed the clean layout of the pages. All was well until she got to a part that asked her to count by two's but started on an odd number. I hadn't realized it but up until now she had thought counting by two's meant listing off the even numbers. Counting by five's meant strictly counting 5, 10, 15...Counting by ten's meant 10, 20, 30...She didn't realize it could be counting relative to the starting number.

I tried explaining it to her several different ways. Finally I printed off a number line, something we'd never used before, intending to show her the pattern behind the idea. However, one look at the number line as I was putting it on the table and she got it. That was it, the concept was understood. Whew.

So Math Mammoth was a huge hit on it's first day and it pointed out a weakness I didn't know was there. I had thought we were going a little crazy with three different curriculums but now I'm sure it was a good move. We have lots of flexibility if any one approach gets boring and each of the three will hopefully compliment and strengthen the other.

After math Catherine set to work cutting pictures of animals out of different National Geographics. They're all damaged doubles of ones we already have but I was still a little nervous. It felt like when I first highlighted some passage or footnote in my study bible...Or bent a spine on one of my comic books. :) The animal pictures are for an activity on classifying animals but I'm in no hurry to do that. She can work away for the next week or two collecting pictures and then we'll start.

Most of the rest of the day was her playing with Harry. They watched a movie together, painted together, had a bath together and even snuggled a bit.

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