Mars adores reading and walks around with her nose buried in her book. I mean this literally. Her father’s come close to a coronary watching her – “The stairs! The stairs! Put the book aside before you crash down the stairs and break something!” I’m pleased that she loves reading because there was a time when I was worried about her seeming lack of progress. My fears were completely groundless of course – but then you do develop some measure of paranoia when everyone asks you why your daughter isn’t reading at such-and-such age. (She read independently at 6 in case you are wondering.)
Anyway, she is so much like me that it is uncanny. She reads constantly, loves learning new words, has a strong inclination for the humanities and enjoys Science, especially natural history. She’s been trying her hand at writing stories and poetry as well and this has been a great source of pride for me. She is a novice for sure but I’m so glad that she has put her thoughts and feelings down on paper. She had never dared to before – she had never thought that she could or should, always harbouring this notion that she was never good enough.
So like her mama, Mars is doing well on the language front. Unfortunately, like her mama, she is less inclined towards Math. OK, let’s just come right out and say it… she hates Math with a vengeance and would do anything to get away from it.
I’ve tried to inject a bit of fun into her lessons and alhamdulillah there’s been a positive change. I prepared her a Math notebook – the cover has cowboy and horse clipart (she is horse mad!) and and old western style font. I’ve uploaded some of her notebooking sheets here if you want to download them. (Just click on the image below.)
Some 'fun math' books we've used
I’ve used some fun Math books like the following:
Do any of you have Math phobic kids? If so, what have you done to help them along? What resources have you found useful?
If you have a kid who is allergic to Math, you would understand why I am always on the lookout for creative Math resources. I’ve thrown out all the books that have made Mars cry (oh, I kid you not…) and have embarked on The Smarty Pants Math Club :P It’s really just a funny name for our Math lessons (got the idea from Marilyn Burns’ Math for Smarty Pants). We are using CIMT’s Mathematics Enhancement Programme (free! ahem!), living Math resources and worksheets we’ve downloaded online.
Dad’s Worksheets is one of the sites we are using for additional exercises. This dad has reviews of Math books and resources he has used, downloadable handwriting and graph paper, Spaceship Math (oh, my kids love them catchy names :P) and tonnes of worksheets (5,137 and counting!!)… all FREE!
So pay the site a visit… it is really all that and a bag of chips :)
