Trying Out Mathletics

When we first decided to homeschool, I did hours of research on learning styles and curriculum resources.  I compiled a list of websites with splashy graphics and flash-based games for my weaned-on-a-computer, born-with-a-mouse-in-his-hand, 10-year-old son.  To my surprise, after a few weeks of schooling, I heard, “Mom, these websites make home school seem too much like playing and I get distracted. "  So away went the websites and out came the worksheets and work texts.  

It took me another year to discover that my son responds better to a mastery-based approach to math instead of a spiral approach.  Goodbye Teaching Textbooks, hello Math Mammoth.  We subscribe to Maria Miller’s website in addition to using her curriculum. When she wrote about an offer from Mathletics, a three-month subscription to try out the program in exchange for three blog posts relaying our experiences, I decided to give it a try.  We trust Maria because we love her math curriculum.

Disclaimers up front:  

• I'm not a powerful mommy and/or home school blogger.  
• I don’t post pictures of my clean and organized homeschooling room and my wonderfully creative lesson plans because those things don’t exist.
• I don’t host giveaways from companies who have sent me their swag.
• I maintain this small website for our homeschool, Rivertown Academy, so I can track my son’s progress and keep the State of Missouri off my back. 

The good news?  I will provide a completely unbiased opinion.  I have no intention of praising Mathletics if it doesn't deliver.

I’d like to think I have a smart kid.  He reads at an advanced level, fluently and with excellent comprehension.  Reading is one of those skills that came easily to him.  He didn't have to struggle over phonics or sight words.  He just picked up a book and started reading, some time around the age of 24 months.  He also didn't struggle with learning to touch type.  He taught himself.  Even though his fingers go nowhere near the home row, he can now type 90 wpm.  

Hurray for us, right?  The problem is, if he can't sit down and have an immediate understanding of a subject, he resists. (“Resists” is my nice term for “digs in his heels and decides he hates the subject, is not good at it, will never be good at it and it will always be hard forever.”  So far this extends to all sporting activities and math.)  

The dreaded math.  He attended a private school for a few years that used Saxon Math in its curriculum.  To this day I can't say the word "Saxon" or "manipulatives" without him visibly flinching.  In the three years we’ve been homeschooling, we’ve tried nearly every math product offered:  Teaching Textbooks, IXL, ALEKS, Reflex Math, Touch Math, MEP, Right-Brained Math, and Singapore.

Reflex helped with fluency but eventually became boring for him.  His fluency growth plateaued after a few months.  IXL frustrated him because nothing less than 100% mastery of a skill would do.  (One day my little perfectionist even hyperventilated himself because he had reached 88% mastery and with one wrong answer, dropped to 71%.  After he finished breathing into a paper bag and had a nice lie-down, that was the last day we used IXL.)  ALEKS was intriguing for a while but the huge, empty pie charts that filled so slowly discouraged him.

So, he's a tough customer. Not only is he a tough customer, he has a serious mental block when it comes to math fluency.  If I ask him to give me the answer to 8 plus 4, he starts barfing out random numbers: "Ten? Thirteen?? EIGHT?"  Then I look at him, my calm homeschooling mom demeanor cracking, my voice rising, and ask "How in the world can 8 plus 4 EQUAL 8?" to which he responds, "I don't know."  

Then we try to work on "completing the ten," so I say, “How much do you need to add to the 8 in this problem to equal 10?”

This he knows. “Two, of course.” Duh, mom.  

“If you take that 2 away from the 4 in our problem, what do you have?”  

“You have 2.” Duh again, mom.  

“So, instead of 8 plus 4, we’ve turned the question into 10 plus 2.  How much are 10 and 2 added together?”

“Twelve.” 

“Then 10 plus 2 and 8 plus 4 are really the same question with the same answer, right?"

"Hey, you're right!" he says.

"Now can you tell me what 8 plus 4 equals?”  

I sit breathless, waiting for him to say twelve and he shouts out, “Fourteen!”  

I am not the only homeschooling parent whose child struggles with math.  We all recognize the signs of desperation in each other.  When we casually ask, “So, what math program do you use?” the subtext is, “Will my kids use it without arguing/flailing/screaming?  Will he/she truly understand the concepts and not barf numbers at me when we’re reviewing fluency and practicing skills?”
 
Believe me, if Mathletics can help my son, I will be shouting it from the rooftops. I will shake my home schooling friends by the shoulders and insist they try it.  I will write posts about it. Heck, if it works for my son, I will even write the Mathletics web address on my forehead in Sharpie and walk around town.

I'm waiting patiently for our log-in information.  My son is excited to try another math program, though he did ask, “Mom, Mathletics isn't a sports thing is it?” 

I have no idea, my child. Let's hope not, since you wouldn't know a soccer ball from a basketball if it bounced off your head.  We’ll find out. It's going to take more than a dancing crab or a creepy dog professor to impress us.