heartofdakota.com

Hello fellow HOD users. I am very glad to join everyone on this board. I have been enjoying all the comments for some time. I am currently using Bigger with my "almost"8 year old son. We have just begun Unit 3 and I am loving my time with my little man. Now, for whatever reason, I can't seem to find any posts on SM? I can't imagine it has not come up a million times, I almost feel guilty asking a question about it, but here goes. My son is good at math, and for K and 1st grade we used BJUP and Horizons 1 and he did very well with both. When I first started with HOD one of my goals was to resist any urge to supplement and enjoy the simplicity of using the guide just as it's written. Everything has been going so well but this past week I felt very insecure with math. Seems the program is strong in mental math. Ok so for my actual question? What about the explanations to teach the word problems, what about his math facts,drills, the visual textbook ?(which I did not buy) I only got the workbooks; he started getting stuck with the mental subtraction wording so of course I question myself to articulate the concept well and without a "detailed" plan I can feel the insecurity rising. So what am I missing guys, if I forge ahead without buying the formal Teachers Manual from SM, without adding tons of drills, or changing anything...are we going to come out ok? How are these little SM kids doing? Would love to hear your thouhts.

A Big Fan of HOD but scared of new math,
Philshelper (grateful mom)

We are using the SM textbooks in addition to the HOD activities, because my children love to look at the colorful explanations of the concepts. I tried using the SM teacher guides for a while, and they were fine, but not necessary.

Today I decided to drill my children while we were running errands; I started asking them random addition/subtraction facts, and they did great. They really are learning this and retaining it. We do have flashcards we'll use if I feel the need, but so far we've been fine without them.

Philshelper,

You are right that there are a ton of Singapore math discussions on the board, however you'd have to search under the word "Singapore" math, as it seems that we often type out of the word Singapore on this board, rather than abbreviating it.

Since you're using Bigger Hearts, if you're doing math 2A/2B, you'll want to be sure to do the hands-on activities and explanations that are provided within the math box of the daily plans. If you feel you'd like more examples, you can easily order the textbooks 2A/2B (which we carry as well). If you're using 3A/3B, then you'd want the textbooks and workbooks, in order to fully follow the plans in the Appendix.

One thing that I've discovered with Singapore is that they do get around to explaining the concepts in a step-by-step fashion, but they do want the kiddos to grapple with the concepts a bit before they provide set steps for the kiddos to follow. I have to try hard not to jump in and just show my kiddo the steps right away, only to discover a few days later that Singapore math WILL do that if I just patiently wait.

The same is true for fact memorization. As Sharon shared, rather than using a drill method, Singapore uses the more natural way of learning facts through applying them to daily math exercises. Eventually, we've found kiddos learn their math facts in this way, without all of the drill. Often, there may be only a handful of facts left to drill at all.

Blessings,
Carrie

Thank you both for the responses. Carrie, I see you are absolutely correct. I saw in todays lesson they just taught one piece of a concept, later comes the rest. Now I am starting to see the magic. This little boy is getting this place value thing down and his mental math but I could not see it coming just 4 lessons ago. I'm so impressed. I'm thankful for this board. I have another question but I will create a new post as your replies are so helpful to everyone. FYI there is a great PRO discussion board for sucessful SM users at Yahoo groups.

Ruth