Story

I am not a school teacher.  I am a dad, who ended up teaching three of my kids for a couple of years.  They had a curriculum for math, of course, but I noticed a problem.  They thought that some numbers were scary, and sometimes they needed more practice with basic concepts.  My youngest was learning to count, but he needed help to learn how the number system worked.  My middle child was learning to add and subtract, but she needed practice without feeling too frustrated by the speed of learning new things.  My oldest was doing multiplication and division, but too slowly and haltingly to be ready for things like Algebra that were coming up quickly.

 

I needed a way to give them practice where they were already comfortable, but which would also slowly increase their exposure to next level concepts with the basic 4 math operators.  I developed some math sheets.  We made a rule.  When the school work was done, you do one math worksheet.  I picked them myself at first to start them out as easy as possible.  There was some sighing and groaning, but their skills rapidly improved with practice.  They got less slow, then they got fast and then really fast, until the numbers were sometimes hard to read, they were so slanted.

 

It worked!  The kids who had been so scared of numbers, began to laugh at scary numbers.  Numbers weren't scary anymore!  Maybe a little bit boring, but not scary.  They were now thinking things like, "You think you're a scary number?!  Bwahahaha, I eat numbers like you as a light snack, on the days that I don't feel very hungry!"  Pretty soon it took longer to ask them math questions than it did for them to answer the questions.  They were crushing it.

 

My oldest is now in a public education setting, a year ahead of average in math.  I can't take all the credit to the math sheets for her success.  There were other teachers and curriculum along the way of course, and every child is unique, but I know the math sheets helped.  We used flashcards too, of course, but the math sheets did provide some nice features.  All three kids could work at their own level at the same time, and we didn't lose the cards all over the house anymore.  If we lost a math sheet, no worries, I just reprinted it.

 

Now, I make them available to you as well.  I hope that they make your kids the fearless slayers of ugly numbers for the rest of their lives.  A few last words of advice.  Start with a lower difficulty than you think you need to, and go as slow as you need to, to build confidence.  There is no shame in doing the same page several days in a row.  Have them beat up a few little numbers before moving on to the big boys.  Don't worry if they see patterns, seeing patterns is part of math.  Take your time and explain what they don't understand.  Make sure that their addition is air tight before moving on to subtraction.  Make sure that their multiplication is air tight before moving on to division.  Keep the fun in learning, and celebrate the victories along the way!