How is Mathnasium?

[Anonymous]

Moneydrainasium

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Re: catching up now.... I've been under that philosophy since first/second grade with my child. And here we are in 7th grade and it is EXACTLY the same. She has even gotten advanced pass on some SOL tests, so it's not that she's always behind the curve and never catching up. The truth is that my child doesn't pay close attention at school, nor when she does her homework. Whether that is a lack of maturity or simply not caring... I don't know. Since we moved to a "better" school zone and her teacher is the head of the math department, I think this is as good of teaching as we can expect. So, the only thing that is consistent over these last 7-8 yrs is my child.

I relate this only to caution you that "catching up" may not be a reasonable long term goal. Your child may "catch up" enough for this year, then go off course late fall next year, then need to "catch up" in the spring, etc., etc. Getting your child on track now may not "solve" this. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make that horse drink. You can take a kid to Mathnasium, but you can't *make* them care. It has to come from within. In the meantime, you just keep parenting and supporting the best you can...

Well, yes, if the problem is a lack of paying attention closely to details when doing math work, that isn't really a matter of missing skills. I don't think paying for math tutoring of any kind would really be appropriate in your child's case.

In my daughter's case, she truly is lacking some (maybe a good deal!) of the foundational skills in math at grade levels below her current grade. She already cares, DEEPLY, about being behind and not knowing things in math. She cares about detail and wants to get things right, so I don't think it is a lack or maturity, or of executive function skills. She doesn't make careless errors. She makes mathematical errors. So in this case, I think the intervention is warranted now, and better now than to wait two more years and have her be struggling in Algebra because she is still lacking some 5th grade skills in decimals, fractions, percents and ratios.

[Anonymous]

No need to get defensive. I was just stating one possibility.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No need to get defensive. I was just stating one possibility.

Oh, sorry! No I wasn't being defensive. I was giving more details about our situation for people trying to make a decision about whether paying for 12 or more hours a month of math tutoring might be worth it to help a student having trouble in math.

It sounds like in your case the tutoring didn't really help over the years because while your child may have done better for that year, the problems in paying attention or caring persisted? Perhaps other people would be in a similar situation. Or they might be in a situation where the student actually had bad math instruction over the years and just didn't learn certain things. In that case, the 12 extra house of math each month might be very useful to help them catch up. I'm sure that there are other situations to consider as well.

[Anonymous]

Got it. Thanks for clarifying.

[Anonymous]

Here's a video of how Mathnasium starts out teaching percents.

My daughter has been using this mental math method (instead of pencil and paper) and it has really helped her get a firmer hold on percents.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJBGDxdThYw

Me too. I didn't know I could solve "8% of what number is 18" in my head (I would have had to do .08X =18 and solve for x)... but now that I see the technique it is easy.

[Anonymous]

My daughter has been doing tutoring at a Mathnasium for about 2 months now. She's reviewing 5th and 6th grade math skills. Today she said she was working on breaking numbers in half, when the original number was an odd number with a fraction. For example, "What's half of 15 and a half?" Mentally. She said "It's 7 and a half, and then you break the half in half, so that's a quarter... so it is 7 and 3/4."

They do a lot of practice like that. Cutting things in half, and then half again. Also, skip counting.. by 5s, by 2s, by 1/2, by 3/4. I'm very pleased so far and feel like she's really solidifying her skills and her confidence in being able to handle math problems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here's a video of how Mathnasium starts out teaching percents.

My daughter has been using this mental math method (instead of pencil and paper) and it has really helped her get a firmer hold on percents.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJBGDxdThYw

Me too. I didn't know I could solve "8% of what number is 18" in my head (I would have had to do .08X =18 and solve for x)... but now that I see the technique it is easy.

I won't tell you how many times I had to rewind the video so I could learn the method. LOL. Not a reflection of the teacher, but a clear reflection of what happens when you don't have a fluent understanding of how numbers work. LOL. I was impressed.

[Anonymous]

I think with every math and reading resource available each resource has its pros and cons. Mathnasium took too much time for us to travel back and forth. It was also a bit expensive in terms of what the kids actually learned and retained. After talking to other parents it seemed that some tutors were really great while others needed a bit more experience and training. We then started using Beestar which has worked really well for the kids. They really enjoyed it and we've eliminated any traveling time. We can also practice various math skills at any given time.