-=> Quoting Alinda Harrison to Regina Finan <=-
 AH> RE: Rummy
 AH> BY: Regina Finan to All on Mon Mar 03 1997 07:08:20
 
 AH> I find another thing that helps my 8 yr old concntrate on
 AH> alphabetizing is to have her write out the alphabet at the top of the
 AH> page before she starts. That way she has a visual reference. With her
 AH> that is sometimes necessary as she looses track (gets distracted)
 Jeremy has this problem alphabetizing.  He will do good on the first few
 and then all of a sudden you see the frustration coming out because he
 can't remember anymore which alphabet comes before or after what.  I tried
 the writing it down first, but his concentration gets so bad with the
 letters that even that doesn't always help.  I decided to work in small
 amounts of words.
 AH> halfway through very easily. She has the same problem with math. When I
 AH> started her on homeschool this year, I found I had to go back to the
 AH> very basics of addition with her. She kept insisting on counting
 AH> problems out on her fingers, which is not necessarily a problem in and
 AH> of itself, but she would get half of them wrong because she would loose
 AH> concentration in the middle and miscount. Now she knows the facts well
 AH> enough without counting that it's just a matter of keeping her sitting
 AH> and focused on the paper. When we can do that, she usually gets them
 AH> right :) 
 Yes when I started homeschooling I went back to the basics.  My kids are
 good at math.  But I found that the concept for Jeremy on borrowing was
 difficult.  He still has a hard time remembering what to do on addition
 and substraction and regrouping.  Jonathon who won the Michigan Educational
 Assessment Program (MEAP) in math does well.  He only has problems adding
 more than 5 numbers together.  It is because he can not follow a straight
 line down the page or put numbers on a page in a straight line.  Which of
 course messes him up.  If I do it with him one at a time he is okay. At
 first when we did these problems, I thought he was having trouble adding
 and we worked on it over and over again.  Finally, I found out it was not
 a concept or academic problem.  It was a learning problem.  His brain
 does not work in straight anything.  He has a stigmatism in one of his
 eyes that can not be corrected.  It is only very slight, but it affects
 looking at long numbers.  Also he understands what to do, but what he
 sees does not match what ends up in his brain.  Mass confusion.  I decided
 it since he can do it if I block out other number and adds perfectly, we
 went on to something else.  I will have to wait until he understands better
 how to conpensate for this learning problem.
 Regina
... All I need is a Wave and a board to surf it on.
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