I tried to get some online work done yesterday, but was surprised to find that the 50 mph gusts had knocked out powerlines in many areas, so I had a (welcome) surprise day off. 

We’ve been having trouble with our 8 year old, who’s a bright kid, but suffers with ADHD and doesn’t focus well. Of late, we’re getting a lot of math worksheets back and they’re not complete; it’s obvious she’s having problems with fundmentals. 

You see, somewhere along the line, the schools decided that learning addition and subtraction by rote wasn’t a good idea.  After all, what use could it be to be able to add or subtract basic numbers without thinking?

Well, that hasn’t exactly worked for Madison.  So we’re back at flash cards, which she’s willing to do – which is great because if she didn’t want to do it, didn’t want to succeed, we would surely fail.

I had a flash yesterday and packed both of them off to the bowling alley.  I made a game out of having them keep score, and they loved it.  “Mackenzie, how many did you leave standing?  Okay, then if there are ten pins, how many did you knock down?” Each girl kept score for herself and they both seemed to take pride in putting the math to work for them.  From now on, I’ll be looking for other ways to make math fun while getting them to work with the basics.