Homeschool World Forum

Hi

Have a question- How many of you let your kids use calculators for math or do you only let them use them for problems that can't be solved without a calculaotor.

I gave my dd a saxon math test and she's suppose to be a straight A math student in public school, but isn't doing well on the assessment. I didn't let her use the calculator.

I don't want to squash her ego, but kids know a days are too dependent on calculator. We only used calculaors when they were needed.

No calculator for anything below algebra. Ever.

I agree and will add one caveat. I think a child should know how to use a calculator so to teach them a lesson or two would not be bad. Yet, unless it is highly advanced, then a calculator is not necessary and should be avoided.

As a high school chemistry teacher, one of the biggest problems that I find is that kids who use a calculator will write down any answer that the calculator spits out - even if it is completely wrong. We try to get the kids to estimate what the answer should be - at least determine the range - and then work it out quickly on the calculator and consider if their answer is even in the ball park.

I do see that there is a general reliance on calculators in the middle school which makes its way up to the H.S. Unfortunately, kids aren't thinking for themselves...instead they do EVERYTHING on the calculator - even multiplying something by 1!!!!!

I agree w/ the previous posts. Basic math - up to and including a lot of algebra should be done out by hand first. Only use a calculator when problems can't be solved by hand - ie. trig functions, square roots, etc. or when the actual math isn't the main focus of the assignment, such as in my case w/ chemistry.

My kids are not allowed to use a calculator. I didn't get to use one in school so they don't need one either. Kids rely on Calculators for the simple addition problems these days. Most teenagers and young adults can't even count back change anymore. Just for fun sometime, after the cashier gets the change amount on the register, throw a few pennies her way to round off your change. A lot of the cashiers where I live just about go into meltdown mode, they don't know how to do that. I'm not completely heartless though, when they get to chem, stats, and trig they get a calculator to use.

A golden rule to follow is to avoid the calculator at least till the fouth year of primary school. Kids have to develop a hands on feel for doing math operations. Calculators rob them of this. It is interesting that the top 6 math performing countries' students are discouraged from using the calculator at primary school.

Well, I'm rather dated, but we had no calculators in school even through grad school (math). I do believe that having to perform some basic calculations in my head helped me quite a bit.

Some years ago we found a math game where each person would have 5 numbered cards (face up). The final card would be placed in the center and you had to figure out how to use 5 cards, adding, subtracting multiplying and/or dividing to equal the turned up card.

We played with our nephews for a few days and their calculation speed and accuracy sky-rocketed.

Back in college, we weren't allowed calculators in my algebra class. I didn't like it at first, but I found that my mental math sharpened as the semester went along. Before the class, I just assumed I "wasn't good" at mental math. Really I just needed some practice.

Having kids do mental math is a great thing.