Totally Flipping Brianna's Math

Brianna has several issues that are just part of her life. She has Sensory Processing Disorder, Central Auditory Processing Disorder and probable Dysgraphia. Such is life. We deal with it. Now, however, we are looking at the probability of Dyscalculia.

Brianna is a smart child. Regardless of her alphabet soup of letters between her diagnosed disorders and her probable ones, she still excels in many areas of life. Except math. Math has always been her sore spot. In a sea of straight As in everything else, the highest grade she's ever gotten in math is a C, but most often it's a D or (currently) an F.

While she seemingly has no issues with grades 1 through 4, grade 5 hit her like a lead balloon. It took her 3 tries to make it through Gr. 5 math. She is now on her 2nd try through Gr. 6 math. And yet, she's doing Gr. 8-10 in most other subjects.

Going into the high school years and the fact that she needs at least Gr. 11 math for the college course she wants to take, we obviously need to figure something out.

What we're going to do first is have her do almost all of the chapter tests (thankfully no test anxiety here) from grade 2 to 5. That will hopefully pin point the specific areas she's struggling with.

From there, we're going to spend extra time with Khan Academy, drills and randomized math questions in problem areas. Hopefully we will go back with Math Mammoth in a few months as both she and I enjoy it. We are also looking into Life of Fred and MobyMax.

Summer Curriculum

Here's a look at our plans over the summer in regards to school.

Because we homeschool I, of course, plan to lock the kids in closets all summer and beat them with books. We can't have them socializing, now can we?! Ok, so maybe I've heard the S word too often lately lol Here's what's really going on.

Brianna has a zillion activities as usual! She's doing a science camp next week and a sewing camp in August. Brianna also goes swimming at a local outdoor pool with friends most afternoons. Olivia would have joined soccer this year, but the only group that allowed 4 year olds was almost an hour away, so we'll wait til next year.

Brianna also does a Park Leaders program at the neighbourhood park Tues-Fri mornings. Olivia even gets to join her this year! Unfortunately this is officially Brianna's last year, but I'm hoping since our park has a small group that she can be allowed to go with Olivia for a couple more years, even if it's only as a "helper".

Brianna and Olivia both joined the Read to Ride program with the library. In exchange for giving weekly oral book reports to the librarians, they get a sticker on their library cards that allows them on the city buses free (with an adult for Olivia!). Brianna loves it because she can go to the library any time without worrying about the heat and humidity (the library is quite a hike away) and Olivia just loves the bus!

Both girls ran a fun run today (which also happens to be Brianna's birthday!). Olivia is over the moon, thrilled for another race! It's all she talked about all week. Brianna has her 4th triathlon next month. She really needs to step up the pace in her training if she wants to beat her time from last year. She has great plans to do training and then forgets them quickly lol We're working on figuring out some kind of schedule for her to follow that works around the heat but still gets her running at least a few times a week.

As for actual school:

Brianna and I are doing a joint writing project. Each day we add to a story. Just 10 minutes of writing for each of us. Brianna thinks it's great both because it's something we're doing together, but also because it only requires 10 minutes of writing (she has a lot of issues putting thoughts to paper so "hates" writing). We've only been at it a few days, but it's fun so far. Sometimes it's hard to figure out what to write after Brianna's sometimes scrambled line of thought, but by reading what I write, she's also (without realizing it) learning proper writing style, grammar, punctuation, ect...

I'm also throwing spelling review at her once a week or so. Which, while I find it tedious, appears to be working as he spelling has *greatly* improved over the last couple of months. What ever works, eh?

Normally we'd slow down drastically in the math department, but Brianna wants to "catch up" her math as she's a year "behind". So we're working our way through Math Mammoth's Gr. 6 curriculum over the summer. I certainly don't expect her to finish it in 2 mths, but by doing a regular amount of pages rather than our summer amount of pages, she'll get a great head start.

We are still doing our country studies but we'll spread it over 2-3 weeks instead of cramming everything into 1 week. I had considered stopping them for the summer but as soon as we were winding down with Iceland, Brianna was harassing me about what our next country was. So we'll continue.

Olivia is in Kindergarten so already has quite the watered down schedule. To be honest, I do school with her whenever she asks for it or I think to ask her if she wants to do some. This works out to be, on average, 1-3 times a week. As she's still technically "ahead" if she was in public school, I'm not worried.

Over the summer, we're working on telling time, calendars, drawing shapes and convincing her to write her name more often. We'll also be working on making sure she's got all of her letters down, capital and lowercase and start working more on letter sounds.

Some Pics From The Last Year

Since I've been gone for almost a year, I figured I should throw some pics out there!

The one who started the blog hiatus. Joshua Thomas, minutes old, born at home.

Isaac received his Chief Scout Award

Brianna and Olivia in Olivia's first ever race

Grandma teaching Olivia how to swim

Tanya and Brianna hard at work

Brianna and Tanya's "Joshua's Birth" stories

Watching the Perseid Meteor Shower

Learning to crochet

Brianna's Thanksgiving contribution - pumpkin pie made from scratch

For St. Nicholas' Day we made cards and cupcakes for the neighbours

Brianna had a blast breaking into her geodes and finding crystals!

Olivia's first non-parent-initiated thank you note. She insisted on sending this to the cable guy who "fixed the tv" LOL

Brianna and Tanya checking out Brianna's new microscope

Olivia's first writing of her whole name

A Pi Pie for Pi Day

Brianna loves to help teach Olivia. Here, they're working on math

Olivia's first big project

A request for Subway turned into running around the house mooching change off of everyone and having a mini money/counting lesson. It paid off though, she mooched enough money to buy everyone Subway! She was so proud of getting supper for everyone.

Handwriting

Today we added learning handwriting to our daily school work. Brianna is thrilled. She immediately wanted to write her name. I explained she needs to learn to form the letters then she'll be able to write her name. She did pretty good for the first day. Some wiggly letters, but not bad. She's happy this'll be part of her everyday stuff.

I can't believe the end of this week will be the end of our 2nd term! Right now we're doing 6 week terms for Brianna (and Daddy) to see how she's progressing. That means we've been at it for 12 weeks now! It seems like only a few weeks ago that we started!

She's really liking the new system we started (here and here). So far she's earned 4 stars towards her 20 for a free day, and is liking earning her electronics time each day. We've also decided that if she wants she can save her earned time and add it to the next day to make it a longer period.

Earned Time

Since we had SUCH a wonderful day yesterday *sarcasm* I forgot to post about our new systems.

The folder system is working great. Makes the day totally flow better. Brianna knows exactly what she's doing, in what order. She's not happy with the order sometimes, but otherwise it's a great system.

The dawdling system I know will take longer to really go into effect, but I'm liking it. Per Kassie's comment on the last post I broke it down to how much time each subject will take. But then I got to thinking. If she breaks her time on the 1st or 2nd subject of the day, so doesn't earn her star, where's the incentive to keep working? So I decided that all time leftover is earned electronics time. I don't allow very much electronics (to most families known as screen time) during the school week so Brianna likes this idea.

Changes

Couple new things going on around here. 

First off, I was tired of hearing what am I doing today? What am I doing next? So I bought a file folder of sorts. It has 7 regular sized file compartments and an extra expandable section that can fit her larger workbooks.

Now I can put everything in order of how it's gonna be done, workbooks or worksheets included. In the case of her larger workbooks, I've put them at the back in the expandable compartment and then left a sticky note on the next file to tell her which book and which pages.

This will also make grading easier as I'll have all the books and papers I need in one spot rather than having to go through all her binders and workbooks. Then, once I'm done grading, I can load up the next day's work.

Second change is for the amount of dawdling. I came across this on a blog I follow and thought what a great idea! Of course, like most homeschoolers do, I found an idea I like and changed it around some to suit our family.

I'm going to estimate how long it should take Brianna to complete *all* of her school work, adding a bit of extra time for the random drink/bathroom breaks and set a timer towards that.

I'm not sure if I'll do an actual bingo sheet or just make it adding up to a specific amount of days. But since we already have a reward system of sorts in place I figured I needed something else as a reward for no dawdling. So I thought, what about a day off with no school once she hits that number/fills her card? She's asked me about PA/PD days like school, so I figure it'll be a hit! 

Our School Based "Reward-System"

Brianna has always been a fan of reward systems and I knew, at least at first, she'd need a little help keeping on track outside of the typical school setting.

I bought (but, yes, could have made) what looks like movie tickets. Tickets, numbered 1-6, are earned by paying attention well during school-time, doing extra reading and doing well on reviews (since recalling information learned, even just yesterday, is a tough one for Brianna). Potentially, Brianna could earn up to 18 "points" in 1 day.

Then comes the rewards. I wanted fun things that were out of the ordinary since before we'd be too busy to do that kind of thing. Also winnings that could be earned fairly soon (within a week or 2) to big things that could take a few mths to earn.

So we settled on the following rewards that Brianna is super excited about:
- 50 points, $2 added to her Tim Hortons card
- 100 points, buying a new book
- 200 points, going out for lunch
- 300 points, going to a salon to get our nails done (what Brianna is currently saving for)
- 400 points, going out to a movie
- 500 points, shopping spree! (essentially she gets $40 to spend on whatever)


We're both pretty excited about this system. The rewards are all things we've never done before and are "bigger" ticket items. She's doing well so far with almost 100 points, which surprised me since I was expecting a lot more "bad" days where less tickets would be earned.