My Math Lesson

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We are not math minds. That goes for everyone in my house. I do not say that to be "clever," to let myself off easy, or to justify poor grades. I really don't like when I hear people say things like, "I just don't get math," because they prefer an excuse to not do math. Lame excuse. That just means you have to work harder. It takes a while before the light bulb goes on, but it still comes on.

Anyway, we are not math minds, so that means we work harder at math than we do at spelling or English or even Latin. Peach, in particula,r is working harder at math these days because she would rather just say, "I don't get it" and walk away. Not so fast, Sister.

We've been working on Fact Families, and for those of you who have no idea what those are (like I did not) those are numbers that go together in a math fact. Like 5 + 6 = 11, and 6 + 5 = 11, and 11 - 6 = 5, and 11 - 5 = 6, thus 5, 6, and 11 are a "fact family." This was a new concept to me when I started teaching my children, but that's o.k. Peach was having a hard time with it because she says she "caaaan't rememmmmmber" her fact families (and that is said in such a way that only a 7-year-old whiny girl can say it).



To help her, I created these Fact Family leaves as a visual aid of sorts. I drew a leaf (not very pretty, but I was going for something with three points) and cut it out of tag board. Then I traced it onto sheets of construction paper and cut them out. On each leaf I have written a fact family, with the two smaller numbers on the side and the larger number on top. Yesterday we went through all of them just saying them out loud -- 5, 6, 11. We'll do that twice a day all week. So far I have done up to 14. By the end of the week I am hoping that I can cover the largest number and she will be able to guess. Yes, sort of like flash cards, but she gets to study them first. Technically you should be able to cover any number and have them guess it, because they are a fact family (now you get it).



They were quick to make and hopefully will help us get over this hump in second grade math. Do you have any Fact Family tricks up your sleeve?

UPDATED: Today for her math lesson, I gave Peach two pages of mixed problems and then handed her the fact family leaves, one at a time, and asked her to find the problem for each fact family. She had no trouble at all. Yes, I was, in essence, giving her the answers, but I want her to make the connection between the three numbers and she did. She also recalled from memory a dozen or more fact families while we were in the car this afternoon. I love watching light bulbs come on!

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