Okay, so I’ve said over and over and over that this is the year Maddie conquers the math mountain. The school she will be attending two days per week is going to help in that it’s not just going to be me telling her that math is indeed important. They gave us a couple of math assessments for the girls to fill out to help place them in the appropriate level of math, which is a relief because she’s not ready for 3rd grade math. In addition to this new program, I’m going to be continuing what we’ve been doing at home to try to help in the mastery department.

So yesterday was the day. Craig had the three younger girls at a Cardinals game, and I took Maddie to Starbucks where we spent an hour drinking our beverages of choice and doing the math sheets. It was wonderful. I think I’ve hit on what it is for her – she needed a change of scenery, some non-threatening one/one time, and an Odwalla orange juice smoothie. She needed a mom who was chilling out to some soft music and a cafe mocha with nothing driving her to complete it as fast as possible in order to move on to the next thing. We were relaxed, we had no schedule, and the math was completed with no problems. This doesn’t mean that she understood it all, but she didn’t freak out over what she didn’t understand either, perhaps because she knew I wasn’t going to freak out as well.

I don’t think we can go to Starbucks every day to do math together, but I have some better ideas of how to motivate her in this department now. Suddenly math isn’t looking nearly as terrifying as it once did. I think we can do this.