Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Remembering Math Frustration

Oh it seems so far away now but today I got a taste of the old time math frustration. I recently gave some advise to another person about the same thing and found myself reinforcing my own words.

"Grace it is OK, I see that today you immediately felt angry when we opened the math book" I said.  I will ask God to give me patience and lets work out each problem is what I sort of told her. (cannot recall exact words).  So we worked on the first few issues and then I brought her to a different part of the page that I knew she would feel successful in. It lightened the burden she felt she was carrying.  So of course we had to move on to the next difficult area for her again and she approached it without the face in her hands and the knees to her chest.  As I turned the page she was continuing to be successful and had to think some things out to determine what to do. When we got a big success I STOPPED!  There was more to the page but we do not have to do it today. I want a good attitude and feeling of success so that we have learning taking place and not locking one of us up in a closet.

This seems to work for us. No more anger and frustration and it helps her to approach math without so much frustration at the beginning.  I think the reason she felt it today right off  is because we have been away from the math workbook for a week.  We have done some math games and "shopping" with our money. 

I would like to see all frustration with math go away. I even tried the famous MUS that others swear by. Well it is not through her inability to see and understand the concept and she hated the manipulates that we borrowed when we tried it. To be honest I disliked it very much.  She gets the concept but she is not a memorizer and that makes a world of difference. On the flip side Faith is great at memorizing so she loves math as it does not require the same effort as it does Grace.

Other tasks done today included letting Grace mark my ballot today. I will let Faith mark it when we vote for president.

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