RightStart Math

I'm teaching Sparkle math using "RightStart Mathematics." We finished up Book A just before Christmas break and are now in Book B. This math program has good reviews and is supposed to give a good foundation in understanding place value. The lessons are completely scripted and build on each other in ways that aren't obvious at first. I also really like how it teaches multiple different ways to solve the same problem. So math remains the one subject where I go "by the book." We usually take at least two days to do each lesson, as Sparkle doesn't have the attention span to do an entire lesson in one day. Sometimes the program drives me nuts, and I'll put off the next lesson and do math games or a worksheet until I feel up to doing the next lesson.

Normally we do math as part of "afternoon school" during Glitter's nap, as the program involves a lot of manipulatives, and it's hard enough to keep Sparkle focused without Glitter grabbing at things.

Here is a picture from Sparkle lesson today. She built representations of 1, 10, 100, and 1000, then matched the appropriate place value card to each representation. It's hard to see the "1" as it's just one bead on the left side of the small abacus. The "1000" is a stack of ten abacus tiles.


I was amused when the lesson gave suggestions on what to do if you have only one abacus, considering that I have *three*. The rest of the manipulatives are in the blue tinted box next to Sparkle, and the teacher's manual is on the right. The abacuses are kept on the bookcase where the girls can play with them at will.

The abacus is the heart of the RightStart math program, and when I saw how it works I knew that I wanted to use it. The beads are arranged rows of five blue beads and five yellow beads, and the order of the beads switches for rows 6-10. The beauty of the abacus is that you can enter and read numbers from 0-100 on the abacus without counting. You can clearly see the individual beads (ones) as well as rows (tens). There are no parts to loose. It also has a second side that is useful for larger numbers (in the thousands) that we haven't gotten to yet. If you look at the middle abacus in the picture above you can see that the beads aren't in the proper pattern. My brother gave it to Sparkle as a birthday present when she was two, and the beads were in a different pattern. I recently restrung the beads to roughly match the other abacuses.

The math program uses math games to drill math facts. I never seem to find time to play them, so I have started Sparkle with a math fact worksheet during worksheet time. Right now it is a half a sheet of paper with only five simple problems. I figure that once she is used to doing a daily math drill sheet I can gradually increase the difficulty of the problems.