Witness:
Just another worksheet?
Yes, this looks like just another page of math sums. Watching Yusuf work them out however reveals the brilliance that is RightStart. Take 4+3 for example. Instead of starting with 4 and counting up 3 like most K/1 math programs teach, RightStart has taught Yusuf to mentally take one from the 3 and move it over to the 4 to make the problem 5+2. Similarly, 6+1 also becomes 5+2 and 4+4 becomes 5+3. The more math we do the more incredible I think RightStart is! The program spends a lot of time at the beginning teaching kids how to visualize numbers without counting, using their fingers, tally sticks (popsicle sticks used as tally marks), and the abacus.
RightStart's Standard Abacus
We do a multitude of activies and play many games in which Yusuf shows 7 fingers with one full hand and two others (5+2), builds 7 in tally sticks with a group of five and two others, and sees 7 on the abacus as 5+2. While other elementary math programs emphasize the decimal or base-ten system (Montessori, Math-U-See), I have never seen a program teach the base-five model like RightStart does. So many of the students I tutor use their fingers to “count up” when solving basic addition problems, and they’re upper elementary, middle, and even high school students! One of my biggest goals for homeschooling Yusuf is to give him a solid math foundation, it is so gratifying to watch him start to really understand.
In other math news, we have been having a lot of fun working with money (just dimes, nickels, and pennies of course, to reinforce the decimal and base-five systems), playing with mirrors (exploring symmetry and reflections), and using calendars. Yusuf counts to 100 pretty well now, and can count by twos and tens also. Mansoor can always name the current month before Yusuf can remember, but surprisingly (and thankfully), this doesn’t bother Yusuf in the slightest. From Mansoor’s perspective, I imagine it’s fun to finally have something he can do faster than his big brother.
