T was working on his math today on
Time4Learning when he started having some difficulty. Since he has gotten so far ahead for his age, it isn't a surprise. Anyway, he was working on some addition and subtraction that had some nuances. After I talked to him about how to approach the problems I saw him revert to his hands as a study aid. With numbers under 10 there is no harm, but now that these types of problems are regularly featuring numbers up to 15 I had to think fast. Then I remembered the nuns in catholic school never let us use our fingers to count. We drew sticks and crossed out or added whatever the problem called for.
I am glad that I have been saving used envelopes and receipts as scrap paper. It looks like we may be in a new phase with math where it will definitely come in handy. He seemed to do better after he got confident with this technique.
By the way, I also use the back of junk mail to print out worksheets. Since I rely on the score reports for records and don't save the worksheets after I go over them with him, it is fine.
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