Freaking out a bit (Math)

[Amanda in RI]

So last year we switched Maddie from ACE Paces math to Math-U-See Epsilon. She's doing okay, but not really having those lightbulb moments that make me thing she'll go to MIT someday. We will press on, though.

Now Patience, who for the most part is a brilliant child , is having trouble in math. She successfully finished the ACE Paces 4th grade, but wants to switch to Math-U-See. Thing is, though, as smart as she is, she isn't really proficient. So I'm thinking that I'll have to seriously put her back into MUS Beta. She has a hard time with carrying & borrowing, and I can't see putting her any further until she feels comfortable with these concepts.

Am I doing the right thing? She's devastated by the idea of "going back".

TIA,
Amanda

[Shannon P]

Are you sure that her problem is with understanding and not simple arithmetic errors?

In my experience, Beta is the quickest MUS level of all. There's little to it other than carrying and borrowing. I'd see if I could borrow it from someone for a month to introduce dd to MUS's concept of place value. It may not even be necessary to buy a student book, just watch the video and provide practice problems.

A quick refresher course to introduce an unorthodox program might not feel like going back, especially if the book is borrowed.

[Amanda in RI]

Fabulous idea! Karendg is loaning them to me!

[lisaha]

My DD gets more problems wrong with addition and sutraction high numbers with carring and barrowing then she does with multipication and division. In her case it's not from lack of understanding but silly mistakes like forgetting to add the carried number. For her I found that if I give her 1/2 of the page of problems to do with the promise that if she gets them all right she can be done for the day in math, but if she gets some wrong she will have to do the whole page. She works harder not to make silly mistakes and her math work improves ALOT!