Homeschool World Forum

Honestly, have you memorized your math facts? I never did and still aced all my math classes all through school and college. My daugter just isn't ready to memorize all those "boring facts". Last year, at age 5, she was able to add and subtract 3 digit numbers with borrowing/carrying. She also dreads writing, she sometimes writes backwards and takes FOREVER to finish just a few simple problems. So, I let her dictate (no clues from me!) and she can do 3rd grade math or better as a 6 year old without doing the writing and without memorizing the facts.

I'd say move on! Just stay on their level, no holding back, and eventually, those skills will develop. If it were something absoulutely necessary, by all means, stay back. But, for something that can just be memorized later(not learned, he already learned to add and subtract, just can't memorize them), just do it later ) Your child will not suffer by even never memorizing the facts. Just like my daughter won't suffer by not yet writing all her own math homework...she is 2-3 grades ahead by doing things the way we do.

As long as you are able to quickly compute an answer, having the answer memorized isn't important. I do think that all basic addition, subtraction, and multiplication should be memorized, since it's important for doing larger operations, but there are ways to make this more fun. Math-based board games such as Muggins, computer games such as Barnum Quartermile, etc.

Greetings.

Had to chime in on this old thread.

I would suggest that if your child is counting on his/her fingers, why not teach them the right way to count on their fingers?

Here is a link to the book "The Complete Book of Fingermath," by Edwin M. Lieberthal.

Basically, this method teaches the reader how to use his or her fingers to add, subtract, multiply, and divide -- faster than with a calculator, in some instances.

The right hand represents the ones, with the thumb representing five.

The left hand represents the tens, and the thumb represents 50.

Numbers are represented by placing various fingers flat on the table. For instance, to represent 14, you would place the left forefinger and all of the right fingers on the table (no thumbs, now ...!). Pressing all 10 digits on the table give you 99 (the left thumb is 50, the four fingers represent 40, and all the fingers on the right hand represent 9.

Alas, I never got too far beyond basic addition before I managed to misplace (forever, unfortunately) my copy of the book ... but if your kids are going to count on their fingers anyway, they should do it this way!

Here's a 5 year old doing some rather heavy math -- including adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing.

Good luck ......

--gdw

As Ted Pride said in an earlier post on this thread, I've written elsewhere about fingers. Briefly, the main reason why kids still use their fingers is because they haven't had enough practice and experience with counting, counting, counting - which includes adding and multiplying. One way to get them to count more is to have them listen to Skip Count songs. These songs get stuck in their heads and they do lots of counting when they don't even realize it. Young children use fingers because they also haven't counted enough, and older kids use fingers for the same reason - they haven't counted enough and come to the confidence or the conclusion that shortcuts work consistently and effectively. So have kids count lots of things - and skip count lots of things too, esp. with the support of having listened to those catchy tunes on the skip count song CD's.

Bob Hazen