Step 3 – Process

I own a business and work at it M-F from 8-6 (or so) so I don’t have the luxury of being able to spend all day making math toys and teaching my topics. So to make this work, it has to be efficient. My theory is that working on math for a few minutes a couple times a day, every day is more effective than a long, drawn-out session every once in a while.

My schedule right now is to do a lesson for 10-12 minutes before I leave for work and 10-12 minutes after dinner. In that span of time I seem to be able to review the past lesson and hit two topics pretty easily. Every lesson has addition/subtraction plus one other topic. There’s definitely a trend to the equations that Sara struggles with, so we’ll be sure to hit those every lesson until she has them cold.

This weekend, I spent most of my Saturday planning, buying and building math tools. I was able to get materials for seven projects and get a good start on some of them. As tempting as it is for me to show Sara all of my cool new toys, I’m really trying to only show her as we use them to keep the lessons fresh and new.

Sara’s first grade teacher gave her a 1st and 2nd grade math workbook to work on this summer. So while I’m working on the tools, we are using the workbook. Knowing we only have two and a half months of summer home schooling, perfection and utopia curriculum gets thrown out the window; we are fast and furious.