Remember when I was thinking about enrolling my oldest in a Kumon program? I took her to an assessment and learned about the program. I’m telling you, I was tempted. I was tempted because I thought it would take all the pressure off of me to get her up to speed on her math.
Then reason kicked in. Reason in the form of $100/month tuition. I gathered from the assessment that the goal is mastery plus speed. They figure out where the kids have mastered concepts quickly and start them there to build confidence. They then work them up little by little. They do homework every single day. They don’t do any direct teaching. And the $100/month is for what again? Paper I guess.
Anyway, being the loyal Math-U-See users that we are, I went to the MUS website and played around with the worksheet generator. I made my own “Kumon” like packets for Maddie. The file on my computer is called “Memon.” Get it? Because it’s me making the worksheets instead of Kumon? *groan*
Anyway, I made several worksheets with 125 problems on them each. She was blazing through them in about 4 minutes each and getting 100% right. Success. And confidence. We’ve had no math struggles this week, even in her normal MUS lessons. She just needs it proved to herself that she can do this.
Today we moved up to concepts one step harder. Again, 100% correct and fast.
The goober has been yanking my chain all this time. She can do this. SHE CAN DO THIS!
I think she has surprised herself. She likes that I’m making the sheets for her. She sort of even likes the timing aspect of it. We’ll eventually move up to the hard-for-her stuff that she so easily gets stuck on, but I think by the time we get there she just might have forgotten that she’s “supposed” to hate math.
And we’re accomplishing this for the price of some printer paper and ink. No tuition, no drive across town.
That’s my kind of math program.