Division in BJU Math 3

[ballzy]

We are up to the chapter on division in BJU Math 3 (chapter 10). My ds only finished up to C in RS, so I don't remember doing much division there except really basic stuff. I don't know if RS teaches division in a special way like they do subtraction, so should I just teach it the regular way, or should I get the Activities for the Alabacus so that I can teach everything the RS way?

I really liked RS, but ds started hating it during C and really didn't want to do D. I think we only did the first few lessons of D before swithing to BJU, so I'd still like to teach the RS way, but I don't know how since I only have the TMs up to level C.

Thanks.

Colleen

[OhElizabeth]

You could get Activities for the ALAbacus, as you say. With division, you're talking about repeated subtraction. RS does it by having them DO repeated subtraction till they figure out the shortcut (division), just like they did repeated addition to learn the shortcut (multiplication). Of course you're just wanting the 3rd grade level, not the 4th, lol. The other thing RS does is to take them all the way to a number dividing into a 4 digit number, just like we went all the way with addition, subtraction, etc. RS teaches short division, something I had never heard of. Basically it's just letting them do the computation mentally and scratch to mark their carries, if that makes sense. Guess you'd have to see it to have to make sense.

So when I did this with my dd, which is what we've been doing this year, I went all the way to 4 digits, had her think of it as repeated subtraction, talked about the house, and then just did 1, 2, or 3 daily, painfully slowly, till she got confident. We did it with the short division notation (marking the carries in the problem, all computation mental, which suits her). When I was doing those 1-3 problems a day, I had her doing OTHER topics from the BJU math text, so she wasn't getting overloaded with too much division, if that makes sense. (I tend to skip around and look for something easy like geometry or time or measurement or something when things are hectic or overloading. That's a good time to use these chapters.) After she did those to get comfortable, then I put her back into the division chapter in BJU and let her start through their progression of smaller to larger. Once they can divide into 4 or 5 digits, the rest is easy and fast in comparison, hehe!

If that didn't make sense, yes get the Activities book. I had level D in front of me and own level E, so I was able to refer to them. If you want to use BJU but teach it the RS way, get the Activities book. You might even be able to find it used on ebay or something. I think it retails $20-ish and sells used for half that.

[ballzy]

I think I will have to get the Activities book because that was hard to understand, LOL. Would I also need the worksheets to go with the activities book?

Colleen