Math-U-See, Math-U-Do

Our bouncy, baby Joel grew up and as his Kindergarten teacher/Mother I've recently discovered that Joel seems to be kinesthetic learner. I vaguely remember jokingly calling him 'my satelite' because while I stand around talking to people, he literally walked in circles around me. It was fun when he was 2... The traditional classroom would probably 'do him in' with all that sitting still in your seat! We have practiced the Ten Commandments on Sunday afternoons for years, and Joel can finish the sentences if we start them. He knows them all at some level. And yet, could not say them independently. That is, until... we drew stick figures and put them on the floor and had him jump and say each one! Now he doesn't need any help at all!

One day during school I found him doing his 'easy' +0 facts like this:

Well, as you can imagine handwriting is tedious to say the least. Handwriting Without Tears has been fabulous and lived up to its name, but writing eventually pervades every subject in school. We've used Math-U-See for 3 years now and really love it! So Joel is in Math-U-See's Alpha book this year (Gr. 1 ish) and got to writing his numbers in order 0-100. This lesson was tough last year even for his bookworm elder brother, but asking Joel to SIT and WRITE from 0-100 must have looked like death. The first day after an hour of struggle we were at 27. Ouch. The second day we tried poster paper and markers (that's fun, right?!). We got to 53... with marker on the wall. Ouch.

This kid doesn't need Math-U-See, he needs Math-U-Do! There are great manipulatives and he is learning his math concepts and adding facts really quickly when he can start off my building them in blocks, but writing 0-100?! No way. With James I forced him to make it through twice and called it good enough. But Joel didn't seem to have place value down quite as sure, so the 0-100 exercise should be good (is it 36 or 63?) I finally came up with a way! In Reading we had success with the alphabet by laying out all the letters on cards on the floor and organizing them, so why not with math?

I spent a few hours creating 0-100 color coded cards (in his HWT number font), and voila! Happy kid.

(Okay, so he whined and needed help the first two times, but after that he couldn't wait for mathtime!) I think I have a new product for them to sell! 0-100 cards with the correct blocks colored on the back (and nicely laminated and all of course). Then there were tons of other games we could play with them like 'pick a random card and build it in 10 seconds!' Happy kid. I'm sure someone out there has a much cooler name for that one. Or 'pick a row and turn them all over and read them'...

I'm just beginning to unlock the 'key' to happy kid Joel's learning style, but hey!
Happy (learning) kid.