MEP. A math story.

This post has been written in response to some questions on the AO forum regarding our process with MEP maths, particularly how to start students in the middle years, or how we've skipped years when needed. I've added some of my general thoughts about teaching math as well. But, you are formally excused from the table if this is excruciatingly boring fare for your palate. You don't even have to feel bad. Just click away. ;)


So. Here goes...

Another realm open to Intellect has an uninviting name, and travelling therein is difficult, what with steep faces of rock to climb and deep ravines to cross. The Principality of Mathematics is a mountainous land, but the air is very fine and health-giving, though some people find it too rare for their breathing. It differs from most mountainous countries in this, that you cannot lose your way, and that every step taken is on firm ground.    v4p39

Once upon a time, we came to a definitive crossroads in our math story. One boy continued to struggle as he always had, and at the very same time, we ran plum out of math books. While I'm not a big fan of curriculum hopping, if it were ever to come to pass, this was the time. Should I stick with the same ol' or go with something new? If something new, should I go with a non-curricular approach, popular at the time with some of my friends, or with a more traditional math program? Hmmmm. Have you ever asked those questions?

Though my boys could *do* math, I realized that there was a serious lack of understanding of the concepts. This was not necessarily the fault of MUS, but most likely due to the fact that I was not really teaching them math. I didn't know how to teach math. With that said, I really don't think your average later elementary kid is just going to 'pick up' on math on his own. Yes, there are kids who like math and catch on quickly, and can work independently, and can make their way through the elementary years without much trouble. This was me years ago and now this is my second-born. Fast forward, start high school math with more abstract concepts, and if one still lacks a deeper understanding, it is by no means easy anymore.

So, we found as we were working through Math-U-See, on the whole, they could do the lessons that were asked of them, but they didn't really understand what they were doing. Read more MEP transition nitty gritty here.

Enter MEP. It was practically love at first sight.

First of all, the entire curriculum is available for free online for one's perusal. That's convenient. It's all in electronic format. That's convenient. And it's the best math curriculum I've ever seen. That's really convenient!

You see, somehow I had never realized that math could be a living subject. MEP takes complex concepts and breaks them down to the point that most are introduced as far back as YEAR ONE, and are continually touched on and subsequently built upon by lots of roundabout ways, concrete activities, and real-to-life approaches, throughout every year, so that at some point, one just kind of already seems to know how to measure volume and solve for an unknown factor, etc. without really ever having had to struggle to learn it. Well, that's been our experience, anyway, with those children with whom I have used MEP from the beginning.

Trouble was, with my older boys, I didn't know how or where to start. You see, it has been said that MEP is difficult to accelerate because of it's richness. Well, it is that same richness that makes it difficult to know where to begin. When all along your other math program hasn't introduced those building block concepts, how far back do you have to go to fill in the holes? You cannot start a fifth grader back at Y1 simply so that he gets the whole scaffolding thing. Because the fifth grader knows LOTS of it already, he needs some foundation repair, that's all. Foundation repair is more difficult when you have an existing structure, you know. However, that's whats we needs. SO, where do we begin then? We are not going to pour a whole new foundation. We're just going to patch up. And that means, we'll fix problems as we come to them. We want math to be challenging without being frustrating.

For us, this meant, I needed to start the boys about a year behind where I thought they should be in MEP. Get this, NOT where they should have been according to MEP standardized levels. They were approximately 2-3 years behind that schedule. Students taught with MEP are in standardized schools and are started at 5 years old and are given an entire schoolyear to work steadily through each year of the curriculum. In standardized schools students don't have the luxury of skipping up a year or working on a personalized plan. They do MEPy__ because they are __ years old, and are in __th grade. Period. Not so, with my childrens. Almost everything around here is custom built. Including the garden gate and my closet shelves. Custom can sometimes mean makeshift. But not always. In the case of educational plans for my eldest children, they are almost always makeshift because often I have no idea what I'm doing. I learn from them, and hopefully the second batch will turn out better as a result. :)

So, we put them back in MEPy4. With daily one-on-one lesson time, one child picked up quickly and was actually up to speed within that year, I believe. The other, who had been struggling with MUS, now struggled with MEP. It's not magic, after all. Math struggles seemed to run in his veins (he's now built up an immunity!). But, math is a subject that needs teaching. And in 30min/day per lesson, we made the transition. I admit that MEP requires teacher time. But as a homeschooling mom, that's what I'm here for, right? :) Now, wait a second, I totally get the whole 'I have lots of kids though!' thing. I am not saying it's easy. It's not. I was sort of rebellious at first. But I'm SO glad we stuck through.

I had my struggler take a term to do a Life of Fred book. We plowed on with MEP. There were days. Let me tell you there were days. Little by little we worked through the new concepts and the new way of looking at math. I resigned myself to the idea that he might always be a year behind his younger brother. And he would probably never love math. Some people are built for math and others are not. That's absolutely okay. But, they must be disciplined to DO math, to take the time, even if it isn't their strong point. And we learned this.

We are so made that truth, absolute and certain truth, is a perfect joy to us; and that is the joy that mathematics afford. Also, there is great joy in standing by, as it were, and watching our own thought work out an intricate problem.   v4p63

Last year, miracles happened. Or it finally clicked. Whatever. In AmblesideOnline's y7, Javen was in y6 and Cullen in y7. Everything was going fine. Most days. Except for my anxiety that they would only finish junior high math in high school. Uh, slight problem. WAY back when I was researching MEP, I came on a homeschool conversion chart. I don't know who made it, or how true it is, but it says, that since MEP years 7 & 8 have a lot of repetition, they might be skipped. I was pretty much banking on it. So, when we got to the end of that year, I hesitatingly went forward and put them both straight into y9. It worked. And guess what?! I'm not sure when the pivot turned but, struggler, struggles no more.

Can I hear a big “Hallelujah”, please? :)

SO. whether or not MEP was meant to do just that, we've found that it is possible. I think it is a workaround for kids who don't start off in MEP, and I would still recommend going through the years in order, at the regular speed. I think that's best. But, if you didn't start way back at the beginning as did my younger children, there is still hope!

Now. An important note.
I have seen success with my boys and now with my younger kids using MEP, not because it is a miracle math curriculum. Though I am quite infatuated with it. :) I am confident our success is because of time spent every. single. day. with. each. student., working through the lessons, not verbatim mind you, but usually covering 50-80% of the lesson plan. I have learned the hard way, that I must take the time to check their work (this is how to check for comprehension), and go over problem areas (this is how to ensure mastery). As I postulated at the beginning of this post, for 90% of kids, it isn't going to be enough to send them off to teach themselves math. And though it is a significant chunk of my time, at the end of the day, I really believe it to be worth it! :)

I hope this has been helpful!
Please feel free to add your thoughts and experiences in the comments! ;)

MEP Y9 Maths without a printer? {well, almost}

While it is possible to teach MEP maths without a printer, I must admit that, doing it completely without a printer is ever so slightly challenging. Technically however, it can be done. I'm going to show how we prefer to do it, with only a minimum of printing, and how we could almost do without.

What we do:
Though at first it seemed to me that I was skimping on MEP by only printing out SOME of the materials; I got over it. Quick. And now that I've adjusted, I have seen that MEP is none the worse for almost entirely electronic implementation. AND I'm SUPER glad that I've saved myself (and the environment!) over the years from using SO much ink & paper! For every MEP year, I print* the Student Practice Books. I look at my kindle* or computer screen for the Teacher's Lesson Plans & other files. {If I had been certain that I was going to use MEP with ALL my kids EVERY year, maybe I would have gone and printed them all...? Probably not. I AM skimpy with my printer ink and paper and I don't like having TONS of printed off materials to try and keep track of with lots of kids doing lots of years. AND it would have been REALLY expensive if I'd taken ALL those files to the printer.} 


:: 
If you do NOT have a printer, the practice book is really the ONLY thing you MUST print if you also own a kindle/iPad or computer. This could be sent to the print shoppe.
Obviously, if you LOVE paper and have unlimited ink and such, or hate electronics in general... you could print it ALL. 
In which case, you should STOP reading this post.
::

What you need for MEP - Year 9:
Note: The upper years of MEP, beginning in y7, are a little different than the lower years in that, the curriculum is arranged topically (seems a little more mastery-ish than the previous spiral-ish approach). It may seem like it is more printing, but if it is more, I think it's only slightly more.
Also, there are three tracks in the upper years, Standard, Academic and Express. Each track increases in the amount/difficulty of the student's work, which also translates to the amount of problems and pages finished per lesson/booklet.

Student(s):
1 Practice Book per student (PRINT!* technically, students could do this off of a kindle screen, writing out all of their work and answers in their exercise books, though imo, this would be rather difficult, and unnecessarily exasperating...) For us in y9, this turns out to be, one little mini-booklet over a week or two*, for a grand total of 18 books per year. When printing booklet style, each practice book is only about 6-8 double sided sheets of paper.
1 Exercise Book per student (purchase whichever size notebook, preferably with graph paper)

Teacher:
Teacher Lesson Plan/LP** (Kindle/iPad or Computer or PRINT!* - I print this & write planning notes, I ONLY print the Academic pages, as that's the track we're using)
Overhead Sheets/OS** (Kindle/iPad or Computer, IF you use these)
Activity Sheets/Answers/ACT1,2** (Kindle/iPad or Computer, IF you use these)
Practice Book Answers/PBA** (Kindle/iPad or Computer)
Mental Practice/MT** (Kindle/iPad or Computer)
Revision Test/REV** (you could have students copy down the questions, OR do them orally OR PRINT! - if you use them as traditional tests)
Extra Exercises/EX** (I don't use these, but you could do the same as above)
Teacher's Notes/TN** (I look this over at the beginning of a new math section, there'd be no reason to print, imo)
For the younger years: 
Copy Masters/CM** (Kindle/iPad or Computer or PRINT if you don't have a dry erase board, these work really well for working out the problems with the students.)

(**denotes the abbreviations used in actual .pdf file names downloaded from MEP website)

Here's how I do MEP maths EVER-SO-EASILY-Electronically!!
On our computer, I keep a file on the desktop called >> MEP. There I have >> Y2 – LP & CM files, >> Y3 LP & CM files and >> a folder for Y9 materials, which contains >> LP, OS, ACT, PBA**, etc. .pdf files for the Y9 book we're in. 
Note: That will make a LOT more sense to those of you who have already looked over the MEP materials or have previously worked through one of the upper years of MEP.

At math time, I open up the MEP folder on my computer, and open ALL the files in it. LPs & CMs for y2 & y3, and ALL those files in the y9 folder (listed above). If everyone does math, there are about 12 .pdfs open on my computer at the beginning of math time. I follow the lesson plan for the given child's year, and as I finish using each .pdf resource listed in the lesson, I close it. When everything is closed, we're done! :)




Previously, I kept a dry erase board handy or a notepad to work out the example problems. But we discovered something recently that we're having a LOT of fun with... We write right onto the screen of my laptop when using the overhead sheets and the activities!! :) We use fine tipped wet-erase markers that wipe right off with a wet tissue when we're finished! Saves even more paper! And it's fun. ;) The kindle fire screen is also glass, so the same could be done there! 

:: PLEASE NOTE:: 

Computer/kindle screens made with permeable materials will STAIN!! 

Please check your device BEFORE writing on it!!

* MEP maths is a complete curriculum available online for free. It has been implemented in schools in Europe and many homeschoolers have successfully adapted it for use with their students.
* When printing materials, I find it WAY more economical - and only slightly if ever annoying to the student when doing measuring exercises - to print them booklet style as opposed to the full sheet size (which prints 2 pages per sheet of printer paper, in order to fold the pages that can be then opened/read as a booklet, not to be confused with multiple pages option which just prints 2 consecutive pages side by side, per sheet of paper).
* Transfer the .pdf files to your kindle via USB.  ** See above for the key to abbreviations of specific files.

Helpful Links:
MEP - Centre for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching website
Queen of getting started with MEP for homeschool, imo: Jeanne @ A Peaceful Day!
MEP thread on the AmblesideOnline forum (must be a member to read & post)

Keeping a Math Notebook.

This link, via this blog post by my friend Mama Squirrel, has got me thinking about math notebooks. I hadn't even really thought about how what we have already been doing is so awesome! We already use a notebook for math! ...and it's all 'cause of MEP math.

Don't you love it when that happens?!


Now, when we used other math curriculums, we printed out pages or the kids filled in a workbook. I'm guessing that's probably the road most traveled when it comes to math.

But thanks to MEP, we use a workbook, called a 'practice book' AND a notebook, called an 'exercise book'. The practice book has all the problems printed out which are then to be worked out in the exercise book (we use a notebook w/ graph paper). But lots of times, there's stuff that needs to be remembered. That all goes in the exercise book too.

Take today for instance. In our math lesson today, we talked about the square root of numbers and calculated the surface areas of a cuboid, a square-based cuboid and a cube.

We looked at some in real life cuboids, looked at some diagrams (via the copy masters!), worked it all out, and summed up the ensuing formulas. The square roots and the formulas were then copied into their notebooks (exercise books).

Last week, my year 2 student, learned about the calendar, how many days are in each month, etc. After her lesson, she copied down the months of the year into her math exercise book! It's now there for reference. I love this.

Because the math lesson usually takes about 20-40min per student, they do their math 'copywork', if there is any, directly following the lesson, and then later return to do the math page in their practice books.  It works really well.



Other things to record in a math notebook:
Names and descriptions of shapes.
Formulas for calculating area & volume.
Days of the week.
Months of the year with number of days per month.
Multiplication facts.
Addition facts.
Conversion charts - Metric to Imperial
Meter -> centimeter -> millimeter.
etc.

MEP organization... in pictures

Our math organization in pictures... :)


We use MEP.  We like MEP.  That is, those of us that like math like MEP...
and thankfully, most of us around here like math.

MEP is available to homeschoolers, and we can access all the MEP lessons, teacher's books, overhead masters, manipulatives (number cards and lines) online for FREE.  However, in order to use the curriculum, it must needs be printed.  In this post, I'm going to show you how I did that.  And how we keep our math things in order.  :)   If you would like to have a feel for how we do math, you can hop over to this post at Jeanne's ohpeacefulday!  we do very much the same thing.

[If you don't use MEP, this post will be very boring.  You have permission to skip to the end.
your welcome.]

On the computer...

1) First of all I have a folder on my computer named MEP (very intuitive, yes?)
2) Inside that folder are more folders... Year 1, Year 2, Year 3, etc.  (yes, I downloaded them all at once)  Some of the files used to be password protected, but the password was accessible by e-mail. 
3) Inside those folders are folders titled... Practice book, Lesson Plans, Copymasters, and Spanish (MEP has years 1-3 in Spanish!  woohoo!)
4) In each of those folders are the pdf files that correspond for that year's math.

This way I can find what I want very quickly (even offline) when I have to print off the next section.

Getting ready for Year One...

1) I print off the Practice book first.  This is the book that the student actually looks at for her lesson.  For year one I print the pages full size* and put them in a binder.  For my boys in year four I actually print them as half sheets of paper to save paper and ink (more on how to do that in a moment).  There are 175 pages if you print off the whole thing at once.  Double sided that would be almost 90 sheets of paper.  I only print one pdf file section at a time, 15 double sided pages.

(note the pages from the files are size A4... 
that means you should check the 

option when printing that says fit to printable 
area or adjust the page/paper 

size settings if you print to normal letter size paper - 8.5x11)

2) Next I print off the Lesson Plans.  These ones I do print in booklet style to save paper and ink.  [How to print booklet option: After I click the print button, in my printer settings I look for the option that says Page Handling or Page Layout (or something similar to that) and I choose booklet printing (not to be confused with multiple pages per sheet which will print the pages side by side not like a booklet).
(258 pages divided by 4 per sheet = 65 pages)

I make sure that the page size is set to A4 and the paper size to whatever paper I'm printing to.  My printer handles the rest.  I can fold them in half and have a little book... but I cut mine down the center and have it spiral bound like this: 

You'll notice it's crooked... yeah, my printer was having issues. VERY troublesome.

3) I print off the Copy Masters that correspond with the lessons I'm teaching.  You could print ALL of these off at the same time or in sections like I do the Lesson Plans.  It is nice because they have divided the lessons up in the same way for Practice Book, Lesson Plans and Copy Masters.  I print them off booklet style again but I don't spiral bind these I leave them loose leaf and tuck them inside the Lesson plan book to hold the place.  I don't use them all... but they have been SUPER helpful and it is worth it to have them handy... (150 pages divided by 4 per sheet = about 37 pages)









4) Lastly,  there are the posters.  You will need Posters 1-10 during the first half of the year one book.  I was printing them off as I came to them which was rather disruptive to the lesson.  It is easier to have them printed off ahead of time and stored in plastic sheet protectors like this: 



Of course, there are a lot of MEP users who just pull them up on the computer screen and look at them.  That might work for you too.  I prefer to have them printed.






5) Here are our math things.  I collect crayola marker caps from the markers that have dried up, poker chips, little stuff that we can use as counters like pop lids, bottle caps, etc.  I also have a handful of dice and some peanut butter jar lids for sorting.  I printed off the MEP number & shape cards and keep those in one of those snack size zip locs...  All of this goes in the little orange basket that we pull out each day at math time.  Also seen above kept in a sheet protector are the number lines.  I keep one copy in the notebook and I give one to Bria to keep in her notebook.  We use the number line quite often.

For a comprehensive discussion on the compatibility of MEP and CM read Jeanne's post here.
Jeanne has another post that blows this one out of the water for an intro to MEP.  It's pretty long and has EVERYTHING you'll ever want to know... I'm just showing the different steps for getting organized that I've used which pretty much line up exactly with what she's already noted.

Here's the link to the yahoo group for MEP homeschool users

HAH!  My friend Phyllis just gave me an award!  She's so nice.  Don'tcha think?  Well, I'm posting it here... I'm kinda unsure about the whole award thing.  Not that I am ungrateful.  I am not.  Well, you can read more about all that HERE.

catch-up

We've been back for almost 2 weeks from our cross-country trip... everyday that passed was yet another day I did NOT blog! ;) Once arrived, we DID school however, and here's a quick list of some of the things we've done:

This week (12/14-12/19), we started week 13 of Ambleside Online's year 5! Week 13 marks the beginning of the 2nd term, meaning we've finished several books from the first term, which in turn will be replaced with some new books, yay! That's always fun! Always Inventing, Story of My Life, Exploring Creation with Astronomy are some of the new ones.

Including some hit and miss, try-to-school-while-traveling days, we have a good 3 weeks of MEP math under our belt! We've been experimenting and changing up and I think we are a little closer now to getting down what we're going to do. Jave will start math in the morning during the scheduled math time (max 40min) and I'll work with Cull & Bria in the afternoon. This is still a work in progress. I don't want to alter our schedule until I have a pretty good idea of what is going to work. I didn't want to have to do two sessions of math during the day, but it is working very well to separate the boys (read the whole adjustment process here).

With Exploring Creation with Astronomy, we are all listening together, AOy0'ers - AOy5'ers, in an all-in-one-course. This is the first book we are officially combining EVERYBODY on (besides Bible reading which starts at birth, family fun read alouds & nature study... okay we've done *some* combining) I'm very much looking forward to having even more subjects to combine. Until now it has very unofficial, the littles could listen/participate if they wanted to. Now, they GET to :)

So, I've been trying to separate time to blog, it just hasn't happened yet. Micah is gone this long weekend, so I probably won't have time 'til the week after next since it's CHRISTMAS!! woohoo!

Anyway, hi and bye for now!
Amy

Math Modification - MEP; adjustments

Hello,
I am having some difficulty deciding where to place my two guys and hope there might be someone here who can give me some advice :)

We tried MEP some years ago (I love that it's free and readily available, as well as the comprehensiveness of the program) but I quickly gave up for having more babies as well as the fact that we were living a very unsettled lifestyle at that time (not a negative necessarily!) and I could not handle the teacher prep/involvement time. We opted for MUS (which I don't dislike, though after a recent review of MEP, in comparison, MUS seems quite a glossing over math concepts). This has been fine for us for the last 2-3 years.

However, I live in S.America and found myself having finished our math (Delta) too soon (thanks to dh and his frequent assigning of extra math pages) and I don't have anything to finish the rest of the school year with. I have been adding in 'living math' activities and plan to continue with that, but feel like I need some curriculum spine to keep us regular and accountable.

Here's our scenario:
I have 2 boys (11.5 & 10.5) who have always been taught together in every subject. However, my second son is definitely the stronger/quicker in math. Until now, I have just worked hard with my first to keep him up with his younger brother (mainly because of rivalry/competition issues and I don't want him to feel badly that his brother passes him up... he already has expressed that he 'hates math' and 'isn't good at it' - mainly I think, because he senses that his brother is better/quicker at grasping the concepts).

A couple of weeks ago, I re-started MEP with the Y4 second book. #2 boy is really thriving and is truly challenged (though occasionally stumped, with help quickly grasps. However, our problem is, that #2 is constantly growing frustrated/distracted as he has to wait for #1 to comprehend the concept). #1 gets very frustrated when he can't 'get it' and slumps and enters into a state of mind where I truly believe that he cannot get it unless he wills himself out of that mood or we have to take a break. Now, if it were only him, I would say,
take a break! We'll come back to it after lunch or whatever. But teaching the two of them together I feel I have to spur him on. I give #2 a break until I'm done explaining to #1 (which seems to just emphasize the fact that #2 surpasses #1, adding to the problem?) The other option would be to teach them separately if not separate books, at separate times of the day. This I find hard to imagine with the time requirement; I also have a Y1 daughter and a son who will start Y1 next year.

I'm looking at this thinking... maybe this program is okay if all I teach all day long is math! But our curriculum (AmblesideOnline) also requires a lot of teacher involvement reading aloud, and masterly inactivity :) SO... my
questions are:

1) Is this program doable for big families?

2) Do I risk separating my boys into different years for the first time in their lives and put the younger ahead of the elder?

3) If I do separate them, how on earth do I manage having kiddos in 3 different years (4 next year!)? Does anyone else do this?

4) Should I send my #1 further back? He has always, probably always will have trouble with mastering math concepts.

5) Maybe I should stick with MUS for #1 and MEP for #2 and then they wouldn't realize they are at different levels (yeah right... competition is prime with them since birth, they will compare!), or at least they wouldn't feel as bad about being at different levels?

Please help, any advice is welcome.
Thanks,
Amy in Peru

Javen 11.5yob, Cullen 10.5yob, Bria 6.8yog, Siah 5yob, Mya 2yog

Hi Amy,
I will attempt to answer your questions as I have taught 4 different years at the same time and use much of AO at the same time.

> 1) Is this program doable for big families?

The program is doable, but it requires order and some creative 'juggling'.

> 2) Do I risk separating my boys into different years for the first time in their lives and put the younger ahead of the elder?

I would strongly suggest you separate your boys. It sounds to me you are hindering the youngest and frustrating the oldest. Competition in this arena may only make the oldest feel stupid and inadequate and the youngest superior. Not necessarily traits you want to foster between bothers.

> 3) If I do separate them, how on earth do I manage having kiddos in 3 different years (4 next year!)? Does anyone else do this?

I have managed doing this by teaching 2 at a time. I sit at the head of our dining table and I have my highest yr child on one side and a younger yr child on the other. I spend about 10-15 min. with the higher yr...doing the teacher inclusive activities. Once they begin question #1 in their PB, I bring the other student. I do the teacher inclusive things and sort of 'volley' back and forth
between the two until they have completed the lessons.

Doing 2 at a time is still a lot of time in the day, but it cuts it in half. I have also utilized my yr6 dd to teach my yr1 ds. This has been a tremendous help as then I can focus on my yr2 ds who has a harder time with math. My yr5 dd gets the concepts quickly and usually just needs me for the LP activities.

Like I said, it can be done, you just have to manipulate things to see what works for your family. I also believe that reading and maths are the most important 'subjects' in the primary level. If my children are proficient in both of these areas when entering the secondary level they will be well ahead of the curve. There is plenty of time to read all those wonderful AO selections and then some!

> 4) Should I send my #1 further back? He has always, probably always will have trouble with mastering math concepts.

If he is able to manage the yr you have him in and can relax a bit knowing his brother is no longer 'in the picture', then leave him there. You may find his attitude improve when he is not feeling like he is in his younger brothers shadow. He may even surprise you and begin to 'try' more. It amazes me how children will try when they don't feel like they are under a 'time crunch'.

I don't mean to imply you have done anything unkind or harsh. Sometimes a child's insecurities are not based in any real 'threat', but they feel hindered non the less.

> 5) Maybe I should stick with MUS for #1 and MEP for #2 and then they wouldn't realize they are at different levels (yeah right... competition is prime with them since birth, they will compare!), or at least they wouldn't feel as bad about being at different levels?

Personally I would just separate them and let the younger move ahead at his pace and keep the older at the pace that is comfortable for him. The cool thing about MEP is that because it is spiral, all the concepts are taught in all yrs. So if younger son is doing geometry, so is the older. They are just doing it at different degrees of difficulty. My yr1 student is doing algebra as is my yr6 dd.

I hope I have been able to give you something to think about.

:)Leslie

Leslie and Helen,
Thank you for your responses! I have another quick question or two...

As far as management, I think I can see that doing the 2 at once may be a possibility and I'm willing to try it. I will probably have to re-work my schedule for two math sessions (yuck) but I'll try working with #1 first in the
day, and then later on with #2 (y4ds) and #3 (y1dd) at the same time. If #3 needs extra help I may bring in #1 (y4ds) to work with her, he ideally having already finished his lesson. (Previously my #3 didn't really need help additional to the MUS video so we did everyone's math at the same time.)

My question is:
I'm very uncertain that my #1 can manage where I've got him. I always teach with the front assuming that he is quite capable, but the lesson is taking at least twice as long as is recommended. Matter of fact, many times I've ended up having to do one lesson over two days because of the time factor. I'm not sure if he's just new to the different approach to math (MEP vs. MUS) or if it is his comprehension of the math itself. He has always had some difficulty with math, memorizing addition facts (used his fingers, still sometimes does), multiplication table (he's mainly just slow with recall, though still forgetful of some sets like the 6s for example, until we rework them again), etc. Should I not go by the recommended time, and just give him the time he needs? I am
reluctant to get too far into this second y4 book only to end up putting him back? Of course it would be easier for me to be teaching y4 second book to both boys but separately...

Thanks again,
Amy
Peru

Hi Amy,
Sorry it has taken me so long to get back to you. Here are my thoughts... I would do MEP with your #1 son for 30 min. If you don't finish the lesson, that is fine. Pick up where you left off the following day. MEP is VERY different than MUS and it definitely has a learning curve for both student and teacher. If your son in not naturally 'mathy' you will want to give him ample time to
assimilate. Also, I would just like to add that he has an entire lifetime to 'get' math. He is young and now is the time for you to take your time and not rush just to get through a book. Slow and steady wins the race ;)

:)Leslie

Leslie,
Thanks so much for responding - again. :) Your advice to go slowly/methodically through is just the conclusion I had come to myself after this week.

I'll just update you a little on our progress:

This week, I have separated the boys and it has gone MUCH better as far as attitude goes. #1 was much encouraged, as was I! I taught #2 the same lesson each day in the afternoon and he was able to zip right through. This seems so logical a solution, that I wish I would have just tried it before now (I was
reluctant to have two math sessions a day :).

However, the other part of the problem was that #1 was taking at least 2 hours (sometimes done in one lump, sometimes in shorter hunks) to get through one day's lesson! This continued despite having separated the boys. One contributing factor is that there are about 5 million interruptions a day and my children (very understandably for children though not excusably) take advantage every time I leave the table - to change a diaper or answer the phone or the door, or whatever - to run outside or do something way more fun than math! We are continually working on this... habit of attention!

But besides distraction, the other problem was that he really struggled (took a long time) with some of the newer concepts. (I very much acknowledge this 'learning curve' you mentioned for him as well as for me). In conversation with him last night we talked about the possibilities of keeping him where he is, or putting him back to the beginning of y4 and being able to move through those lessons possibly a little faster. He opted for moving back. We are not going to tell his brother or one of his friends, of whom he is worried that she will
think he isn't smart because he is 'behind' her in math! I told him that with this math, who knows but that when all's told, he may just 'understand' math better than she does in the end!

I think that going slower through as you mentioned would also be a possibility, as I think he would do just fine. But this way (moving back), he has the opportunity to work a tiny bit below his level for awhile in order to gain
confidence in MEP method while concreting skill in some of those areas that are newer to us in this curriculum. He also likes the idea that he can go as fast as he wants to, in order to put himself back in step with his brother. So, we shall see :)

Thanks so much for your help and thoughtful replies. I think we are really going to like this math, under the new arrangement. I am enjoying teaching it.

Amy in Peru