Timed Math Drills
I don’t know about you, but I hated timed math drills when I was in school. They made me sweat, squirm, and hate life for 5 minutes a day. Math was the one area in school where I didn’t just instantly “get” everything and I hated struggling.
Often, I hear homeschoolers talk about avoiding things like math drills in an effort to make math “meaningful.” I agree that math instruction should apply to real life and be taught in ways that are fun and enriching. We have certainly been known to play lots of math games and use food and manipulatives to keep things interesting.
But, I have decided that Cole will be doing timed math drills this summer. As much as I hated them as a child (loathed, dreaded, avoided)…the truth is that they also happen to be really effective. We both want him to memorize these math facts over the summer. Cole is on board – he wants to be on target with his skills – but he is a nine year old boy, it’s summer, and he wants to maximize play time, too. Timed drills give us both what we want. He wants to spend as little time as possible doing anything related to school work (who am I kidding, me too!) and I want something effective with the ability to see definite progress.
I never thought I would be using these, but here I am. Hopefully, we will see the results we need to see over the next 2.5 months. When he can do 50 problems in three minutes, we will move on to the next set. *fingers crossed*
