Reply to Mathnasium vs. Huntington vs. Kumon

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[quote=Anonymous]Mathnasium PP here. 
I emailed the director of the Fairfax Mathnasium about Singapore Math and here's what he said: (he did give me permission to cut and paste his email)

[b]First on Singapore Math -[/b]

The hallmark of the curriculum is the careful guidance of students, done in a child-friendly pictorial language, not only to technical mastery, but to complete understanding of all the "whys". This differs from typical U.S. curricula, which either aim for dogmatic memorization of "rules," or expect students to reconstruct mathematical ideas from hands-on activities without much guidance.

Singapore math is structured around 3-4 key areas - 1) Deep understanding of limited concepts rather then several concepts 2) Concrete- use of real objects 3) Pictorial depiction - drawing out and 4) abstract - solving problems with numbers etc..

[b]Now on Mathnasium- [/b]

As you know, Mathnasium is a highly customized program on individual student needs. We do cover one way or another most of the key components of Singapore math (and several other programs), depending on needs of the student.  For example, for your younger kid - he gets concepts much deeper, so with him we spend more time on a concept and master it rather then jump to next.  To illustrate it further, when we were teaching him multiplication we did not stop at 2 digits by 2 digits or 3 by 3.. we went to 8 by 7 or crazy number of digits, as he got the concept, period - if there are 2 numbers he can multiply them.  We did not use concrete (Mathnasium manipulatives) or pictorial (Mathnasium desktools) but directly jumped to abstract side, as using manipulatives or desktools would have slowed him down and he would have got bored on why we are doing this.  Some other topics like fractions, we inherently incorporated pictorial (desktools) in our learning plan as it helps him.

Now for some other students that are in same grade as your younger kid, we do use manipulatives and desktools (dice, cards, sticks, mathnasium drawings etc.) so that they understand basic concepts (e.g. multiplication or addition).  Once they get it, we start pushing them to abstract side or solving problems using just numbers or equations.

At Mathnasium one of our key goal is to develop math sense within a student. This develops a deeper understanding of math, it connection to future math topics and the world, and reasoning behind the math taught. Memorization of mathematical algorithms and understanding of it is mastered and integrated throughout the curriculum.

We use our flexibility to tailor the program to suit kids needs - kids practicing different kind of math (Singapore, Saxton etc.) get different learning plans or teaching styles - with common goal of developing the math sense.

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