I have lots of photos and even a fun giveaway coming,
but too be honest our homeschool days have been DRAGGING along.
Drrrrrrrrr……Aaaaaaaaa….Giiiiiiiiiiiiiing
Sissy (9) has reached LONG DIVISION.
IF you missed our Curriculum post,
Sissy is using Math-U-See Delta, and so far (up to this point),
she has FLOWN through the book.
It’s been cake.
When we first hit long division,
She even FLEW through single digit divisors.
But then we hit double digit divisors and we literally came to a rushing halt.
It was like a smack in the face with cold broccoli.
The days of cake were long (division) gone.
It just wasn’t….sinking in.
We spent three weeks trying to get into a rythym with these,
printing off extra practice sheets and doubling our time for Math,
We kept our Base 10 blocks within arms reach of our dining table.
But nothing worked.
She would become frusterated.
She wouldn’t finish her lessons.
She would stay up to the wee hours struggling quietly in her room,
spending her nightly “reading” time with math instead.
“I HATE MATH”
was the new slogan around here.
It was really depressing, and
I finally talked with her ES about our frustrations.
(Education Specialist from a local charter school we joined)
And you know what she said?
“She’s just not ready.
It’s okay to put it up on the shelf and come back later.”
Whaaaaaat?
Oh.
Oh yeah.
I forgot.
We can do that.
We’re homeschoolers.
For some reason I thought that if we put enough hours into Math,
it would “CLICK” and a little lightbulb would go off right above her head.
And more honestly,
maybe I just needed permission to quit.
…mid book…
… before we finished…
…with pages left….
(ack!)
So that’s what we did.
We Quit.
Bunch-o-Quitters around here now.
Just kidding.
We tucked Math-U-See back up on the shelf for a while,
and decided we are going to give it another go in the Spring.
Obviously, we didn’t quit math entirely.
We brought out Envision Math instead, because
for some reason Math-U-See covers double digit divisors and Envision doesn’t.
So now, Sissy is happily using Envision Math.
We started mid book near lesson 8,
which strangely evened the scales in my OCD mind.
Balance has been restored.
The long-division weight has been lifted and
The girl is smiling about numbers again.
Well not so much smiling, but
I haven’t heard “I HATE MATH” all week!
And me?
I’m feeling pretty blessed with this small reminder of why we homeschool.
If you’re looking to rediscover your Homeschool Joy, check out Bloom this Summer!