Long Division

Kara is in a phase with school where she loves reading anything and everything and she'll do worksheets about it after.  It's delightful.  Whether we're practicing reading comprehension in English, doing Bible work/memorization, Science, History, Health, etc, she is a little sponge.  She can sit next to me when I read to her, or she can be given the work to do on her own.  It's amazing.

But, that's not how you do math.  You don't read a chapter book and answer comprehension questions.  (Side note, this explains why word problems are her favorite part of math.)

You have to do drills.  And worksheets.  And those offend Kara.  Terribly.

So, math is fun for Kara if we're doing charts, fractions, money, measuring, etc.  But plain old addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division is no fun right now.

This is what my morning was about - how addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division aren't fun.  I gave her problems like this:

3415 + 6982

4201 - 978

3452 x 4

1596 / 2

The addition and multiplication ones were done phenomenally, but the subtraction one tripped her up.  Even though we've done ones like this plenty of times in the past.  And the division one brought her to tears, even though we've been doing division problems like this for a few months.

But I hate tears.  I really, really do.  And with Kara's very smart brain and accommodating personality, tears in school are 100% my fault.

It's time to regroup and spend the weekend researching fun ideas for subtraction and division.  And, I'll be sure to mix in "fun math" like fractions, money, etc.  I am learning not to settle on any one way of teaching because as Kara grows, her learning styles grow and change.  This is normal when you homeschool!

Poor girl.

Just so you know, we had pottery today, which Kara said she wasn't sure she could go to because she was having too bad of a day, but once we got there, she cheered right up and she's been good ever since.  :-)