Math/Conner update

Upon much consideration and weighing all my options and of course all the great ideas everyone came up with I have come to a decision about Conner and Math. We are taking a step back.....way back. I have gone back to our 3rd grade edition of the math text he was using (k-12's). I am also going to be looking into fun short math games to do whatever lessons I can and to get him liking it. Of course I still think that his curric for math needs changing and I am still trying to figure out which way to go with that.

It was not easy to have him go two yrs back but what a Friend of mine was saying made sense. I can have him do the chapter tests until he gets stuck and frustrated at which point we will do the chapter. In the meantime it should all be fairly easy for him boosting his confidence in math which is what I want. Also as long as we do the chapter tests he won't be in 3rd grade math long he will move in a much faster pace again boosting his confidence. That is my main goal right now to get him to have that confidence that he can do it and with any luck do it without my being there for every question. Of course there will need to be the explanation of the lesson and help on questions he gets stuck on but overall I need to have him be a bit more independent as the other kids need help too.

Alot happens in 3rd grade math. Fractions are introduced and some geometry as well among a few other things I can't quite remember at the moment, hey it's late;-) So the reasoning behind going back two yrs instead of one just makes more sense for Conner. When we started hs'ing he entered 3rd grade and we went with k-12. The thing about k-12 that I have learned since is that they are quite advanced course of study. Conner went from ps 2nd grade to k-12 3rd grade. I didn't realize what was happening although I was watching it the whole time and it was progressively getting worse. I need to be able to help him help himself. I think this is just the thing to help Conner.

Conner was none too happy to be put back into 3rd grade math. I apparently wasn't as sneaky with my conversations as I had thought. He overheard some of what was going on. Of course I'm sure he heard his name and it got his attention and he wanted to know what was going on. He made a bit of a fuss and then I explained to him my reasoning and he seemed okay with it upon hearing he wouldn't be in 3rd grade math for the entire yr just till he got done with the book. He was even happier knowing it would basically only involve the chapter tests unless he got stuck and I felt he needed more in depth study on said subject.

We have done 2 days and I am still helping him out quite a bit I think it comes from his low esteem in this area. He is so used to needing help he asks before he tries and most times he can get it. The great thing is that I am seeing him already not ask for as much help but just clarification on what I want done. If he gets something wrong he generally sees what he did with me asking him to look at it and tell me what he did wrong. He will make some silly mistake and I will grade his work and he will ask why is this wrong? I will say look at it and he will and then he will smile and say oh I added instead of subtracted...oops (started to wear smile, great moment)
.After only 2 days I am already starting to see that my plan may well have been exactly what we needed to do at the moment. I hope to see it continue in the days/weeks to come. We are still having frustrating moments but that's okay because they by no means compare to what was. This make me feel like I am on the right track and that we will be back on our "regular" track soon with much less fuss.

Vanessa