Math Monday

This week W begins Chapter 6 of Math-U-See Alpha. He completed chapter 5 last week and even wanted to do the extra fun pages that go along with the chapter, woohoo! I am hoping he can cover a chapter per week now that he's on a roll with this material. I think that is a good pace to be challenging enough. He works on the Kumon geometry workbook every now and then but doesn't find it as appealing as MUS. They use the number line differently, so I don't want to confuse him too much (MUS goes 0-9, while Kumon uses 1-10).

He is working on addition problems and sometimes it surprises me what he can get right and the things he gets stuck on too; the "teen" numbers are difficult for him to remember how to say and write sometimes when just reading them, although he can count them fine reciting out loud. W continues writing some numbers backwards, sometimes both ways on the same page. I can tell his brain is trying to figure them out and by 3rd grade or so kids usually can master writing numbers properly.

Math-U-See "names" some of the manipulative blocks by color & calls 8 chocol-8, 7 se-vanilla, and 9 minty nine so W likes these nicknames for numbers and it's helpful when doing the color matching exercises. We use the blocks sometimes for building or solving problems that aren't even MUS. C likes them too, mostly for building towers, but also likes counting.