Math U See progress - bad habits?

[scubamama]

My ds 6 is enjoying Math USee. He's a 1st grader (will be 7 yo in Feb.). We're in the Alpha Book. My question is - should I let him progress thru the units if he still needs the blocks for about 50% of the time to figure out problem? He'll set up the problem and before he's even done setting it up he'll say "Oh I know it!" Is this normal? Am I allowing him to develop bad math habits by not knowing his facts "cold"? We're just getting into subtraction. He really likes this program and says "math is fun!" and wants to go ahead, it's not a Mom's ego thing where I'm pushing him thru. I loathe math. I have kept that under wraps, though! :) Thanks for any advice you can give....

Math hating mom Michele,

6yo ds 4yo dd 16mo dd...

[Emmy]

I let my kids use the blocks for as long as they like but I also do not depend solely on MUS for them to learn their facts. We do extra drill, play math games, etc. I find the facts come over time.

We work through Alpha pretty quickly around here as well, there's no reason not to.

[Cadam]

I would let him keep going, and yes, using the blocks anytime he wants. I suggest a separate time in the day when you play math games that reinforce the facts.

There is a tetras like game at iknowthat.com and we also play addition war. It is like the card game "war" where you flip cards over and the one with the highest card takes both of them with the goal to get all of the cards. In this variation the kids turn over 2 cards and add them together to determine who has the highest total.

I know that MUS says they kids need to have the facts down by memory but if I didn't separate conceptual knowledge from rote fact memorization dd would be very frustrated. Really work on it so that he has them all, or almost all, memorized by the end of Alpha. It makes Beta so much easier if they know the facts.

He will naturally drop the blocks when he is ready. Until then, let him use them. That's why you have them after-all!

Just so you know where I am coming from I have used Primer through Epsilon. My ds is about to start Zeta and my dd is about halfway through Gamma.

MUS has worked really really well for my kids. Ds is unemotional about math but dd loves math. That love is worth an awful lot. I never liked math either but learning math the MUS way has really helped me to appreciate math. I understand it much better now.

[strider]

I agree with what the others have said.

Let him use the blocks as longs as he needs to do so. They just reinforce the connection between the numbers and real life.

Do math facts games or drill every day--just ten minutes a day is fine. Use a good variety, and make this your math routine for the rest of your kids' natural lives. :)

[Quad Shot Academy]

Mr. Demme, always says to not move on to the next unit until the facts are "down cold." I did move through addition with my daughter w/o having them down cold because she just wasn't committing them to memory no matter what I did. But then we stopped at the end of addition, until she had them all. Now she is doing subtraction and I am trying to not move on until she has all from that unit memorized. We do drill everyday on the MUS website.

http://mathusee.com/drill.html

Both of mine have grabbed for the blocks and then knew the answer. I think that is a good sign that he is about to have it memorized. Soon it gets easier to just think about it, than build it. I never discourage using the block though. I always tell them that it is up to them, but no counting on fingers!

[scubamama]

Thank you sooo much everyone!

Math hater,
Michele