Revamping math yet again

From Deb:

Madison is almost finished with the multiplication tables. I took Laura's suggestion to take a break from Saxon, so instead I have on my own been helping her take the math she's been learning a little farther.

We have two parts to math each day: The first part, she has on her own to learn her one or two multiplication equations by whatever method she chooses. Then, she also does a section with me.

I've been writing 2-digit by 1-digit multiplication problems on the big white board, 18 problems per day. Today I mixed them up with multi-digit addition problems just to see "if I can trick her." At first, I just sat her in front of the white board to have her do them alone, and that worked only semi-ok. She had a lot of trouble maintaining focus. But then, this week, I got the idea to *time* how long it takes her to do each problem, and that really works a charm to get her focused. As she's gazing at the problem, I count down the seconds, saying, "5-4-3-2-1-go" and then she does the problem. She tries as hard as she can to figure out what's involved in the problem as I'm doing the countdown, to try to impress me with how fast she can do it. She thinks she's cheating. Ha!

A little bit of minutiae about this -- she was having trouble remembering, when doing the multi-digit multiplication, which digit to "put down" and which digit to carry. Then I showed her that she can remember this by just making sure that the number she's working with reads correctly left-to-right, even though it's broken up between the one that is "put down" and the one that is carried. So I noticed today that she's taken to writing the number that's carried, first (the tens digit) and putting down the units digit second. I've always done it in the reverse order, but in this case there is no conceptual reason for her not to do it this way, and it seems to work for her.

I will admit that a part of me wishes I didn't have to resort to these tricks and manipulation, and then the other part of me slaps the first part of me upside the head and tells it to shut up, that so much of parenting young children is finding clever ways to get them to want to do tedious stuff that ultimately they'll do by habit.

Speaking of tricks, the two checklists I mentioned last week that I'd downloaded from ChartJungle.com are still magic, total magic. I completely attribute all of the schoolwork that the girls accomplished this week to these charts. I think the magic consists in it seeming less to them that I'm arbitrarily selecting stuff they should do than that there is a objective plan for their individual education. Removing it a step or two from Mom really has done the trick, I think, and it's easy for them to see where the end will be each day. We stick a tiny sticker in the relevant column each time they complete a subject, and they have loved seeing the weekly chart fill up with stickers. Madison's subjects are

Multiplication
Other math
Handwriting
Spelling
Logic
Philosophy/History
Science
Economics
Reading out loud
Pleasure reading
Exercise
Cooking
Drama (class)
Fine motor skills (crafts)
Cleaning/beautification
Story writing (The Frontier Team book)
Music (piano)

Of course, we don't do every subject every day, but every day we do multiplication tables, other math, handwriting, and spelling. She does piano every day, too, on her own initiative, which is really encouraging for when we move back to Rochester and actually start her back on lessons. They really like the unit we're doing on American Indians, too, so we have been doing history every day as well.

Ella's subject list is smaller:

Reading
Math
Handwriting
Logic
Philosophy/History
Science
Exercise
Cooking
Fine motor skills (crafts)
Cleaning/beautification
Story writing (she dictates to me)
Drama (class)