We recently started Jones Genius (tail end of matrix/early Math 3) with our 4 year old, we are still just working on counting and number recognition with our 16 month old.
I thought it would be great to hear what a day with the program looks like for other folks. What challenges have you faced and what have you tried to overcome them. Have you modified the program at all to fit your family? If so how, why and did it work?
For us my son was already pretty proficient in addition and working on subtraction so after speaking with Dr. Jones (who is always very availible and has even called me at home twice to talk about our program) we purchased the Math 3 and he also sent us a “Matrix sampler”. Each day we do our counting practice we have always done (to 100 by 1s, 2s, 3s, 5s and 10s). Then we practice backward counting from 20. We do one of the dot placement worksheets for review and then one of the 50’s worksheets in addition and subtraction each. Our goal before moving on to Math 3 is that he can do both of these worksheets in under 20 minutes total.
Now for our challenges. It is hard to keep a VERY talkative little boy focused on math worksheets. He does a problem then he wants to talk about some random thing. If I sit next to him and point at each problem and say okay now do this one…and if he still sits there prompt his with which one is bigger…? He can do each problem in a matter of seconds, but if I leave him to his own devices the worksheet will take 20 minutes.
On one level I feel like if I just leave him (he’s not frustrated or anything, just chatting, daydreaming, singing etc…) eventually he will realize that if you just do the problems you will be done quickly. My husband on the other hand thinks I should sit next to him to help him stay directed and help him practice staying on task. I feel like doing that is teaching him to rely on me to keep him on task when I want a my kids to be self directed learners, also the time doesn’t seem like a fair measure of ability if I am continually prompting him. What do you guys think?