TouchMath Kindergarten Homeschool Review

TouchMath has been a program that I have utilized both for my own kids and for various preschool classes.  Please visit the Preschool TouchMath Review Link on June 12, 2013.  I have found that TouchMath is a terrific foundation for teaching and learning basic math skills.  CJ has been exposed to the preschool TouchMath program for multiple years both for his own learning and being present while I was teaching his brother.  The preschool program by TouchMath has prepared CJ for a life of success in Math.  This became obvious to me when CJ was able to complete the assignments quickly, and quite often independently, throughout the TouchMath Kindergarten curriculum.  CJ was quick, accurate, and confident in his Math skills.  Topics that were not yet mastered were clearly introduced and set up for students to quickly gain confidence and mastery.   

Touch Math generously provided us with the TouchMath Kindergarten program for Review.  It came in the form of a digital download (PDF files) that I then was able to load onto my iPod Touch (or easily to another tablet or device).  I sorted through the files to find the student work pages and printed them in sets.  The curriculum has four main units. 

Unit A: Counting, Adding and Subtracting within 5

Unit B: Adding and Subtracting within 9

Unit C: Understanding Numbers 1-20

Unit D: Measurement, Data and Geometry 

Each of the four main units is broken into 6 sections.  Follow this link and click on the unit title to see the sections of each unit. This worked for me because I was able to bind the student pages into two packs per unit.  It made it much easier to have a smaller pack to carry around and work on.  Other curriculums that come pre-printed and bound are quite large for the whole year.  Not easy to carry up the flight of stairs with your pencil box for days you wish to do school in a different room. It's conveniently printed in black ink only, however I did feel that there is much wasted paper space.  It is part of the TouchMath model to not have instructions that are unreadable to younger students cluttering up pages, but I felt that many of the pages could easily have been printed 2 per page and saved a few trees along the way. 

When we sat down to do math I could easily reference the lesson plans on my iPod to guide the learning activities for the day and CJ could pull out his bound pack of student work pages.  We ended up utilizing pencils, crayons, scissors and glue throughout the curriculum.  It was also handy to have other manipulatives around (poker chips, unifix cubes, place value straws), though only a few of them were specific TouchMath products (TouchNumerals with Base 10, Texture Cards, TouchShapes).  

The Kindergarten Curriculum contains much of the same concepts that are introduced in the preschool program.  These concepts are now expected to be mastered in Kindergarten.  Some pieces were extremely easy for CJ.  He had done the preschool program for 2 years and mastered some of the concepts in the process.  We still went through every page, though often there were elements that he sped through to "get to the exciting stuff!" (addition).  The foundation of Touch Math is invaluable and has supported all my students in a life-time of confidence in Math.

Overall, I'm impressed with the Kindergarten TouchMath curriculum.  CJ and I both look forward to diving into the First Grade TouchMath curriculum right away.  He loves math and is eager to tackle the challenges of bigger numbers in addition and subtraction as well as learning more about measurement, time, data and geometry.  Bring on the math!

Into September 2013

We've made it into September of our first "official" homeschool year.  I feel like things are going swimmingly.  It is quite often that CJ wakes up early and we're able to get our lessons done for the day before EMan even wakes up.  We've been continuing our work on our TouchMath book which has now shifted into simple addition up to 5.  CJ has really taken to it and is mastering it quite a bit faster than I had previously expected.  CJ has still been struggling with numbers to 100 which TouchMath introduces in their first unit but doesn't take the idea to mastery.  We've opened up our MathUSee Primer to start working on the basic understanding of place value of numbers to 100.  It's slow work, but eventually we'll get there.  The boys are enjoying more laundry responsibilities these days and are loving our reading time together. 

Not the Best of Times

Homeschooling is not always the best of times.  We have moments that we struggle with every day.  We're continuing to work on number identification up to the #30 with a 100 chart and the straws pocket chart.  In order to make the work easier I requested that CJ order his number cards from 0-9.  This started a complete melt down and tantrum.  Sometimes we have to note that our child is having a tantrum because the work is in a frustrational stage (meaning it's too difficult for them), sometimes we have to recognize that everyone has bad days or mornings/evenings and it'd be better to pick it up again at another time, sometimes we have to recognize that they are pushing buttons and pulling strings to get out of something and we'd do better to hold our ground as the parent.  It's hard being a parent and figuring this out, but wouldn't you rather figure it out than let a teacher with 25 or even 30 other kids to attend to try and figure it out?  There are great teachers out there, but the quality that an individualized instruction provides our kids is worth the extra work, knowledge and relationship that we will build with them.   

First Day of "Official" Kindergarten

Today was our first "official" day of kindergarten.  We've been doing math and reading all summer long, but we're starting a new schedule with the start of preschool next week.  Each morning CJ and I will spend one hour together working on kindergarten work.  We'll do 20 minutes of scripture study, 20 minutes of math, and 20 minutes of reading.  We'll do plenty of learning throughout the rest of the day including play dates with friends based on our science curriculum, extra reading or math time together, etc. You can see our "Setting Up For Kindergarten" blog post here. 

 We're well on our way in our TouchMath Kindergarten curriculum and we're working on many varied reading skills.  I'm pulling from a number of different resources for reading, however one of the more prominent sources is the Moffatt Girls. Annie is fantastic and seems to always be creating things just as I figure out that I need them.

Trying a Co-Op

Have you ever pondered a cooperative learning structure for your homeschooler?  I'm part of a fantastic group that is focused on the education of our children.  As a group of moms with mostly preschool and kindergarteners we feel like we're trying to figure things out.  If you've been around Little Adventures Preschool long you'll already know that I ran a very successful playgroup for nearly 3 years.  I started the group with a few moms that I hardly knew when CJ was a year old.  I was once asked by one of the members what it was, in my opinion, that made the group so successful.  My honest answer is hard work and constant motion.  We utilized Meetup.com where everyone could see the calendar and RSVP to events.  I made sure that there was an event EVERY day at different times of the day and on weekends.  I had a full calendar that I sometimes despised because I just needed to stay home and do laundry, but we were having an excellent time playing and making new friends.  We tried a number of times with this group to put together a co-op preschool.  Tried, and failed.  One of the benefits of this group was that it was an open group to anyone who wanted to play.  We all had different goals and desires for our children and we enjoyed playing together.  For the co-op however this proved to be a problem.  It was something everyone wanted to take part in, but not do any work to make it successful.  As time went by the playgroup split and with my closest friends we started a new group.

The new group (called LEARN = Life Explored And Responsibility Nurtured) has some high expectations.  It's a small group with a common goal of being intentional parents with education for our children a top priority.  It is a group where each member is expected to put into the group as much as they get out of it.  It is a group of families that I trust with all of my being.  I know they will follow through with tasks and assignments.  They hold the same values that I do and will work to achieve common goals.  We thought that this type of group will run a successful cooperative style learning experience.  We were wrong.

We met one Monday to talk about what a co-op would look like.  Perhaps our experience will help you ponder yours.  We set a plan where we'd meet once a week at a set time.  Each mom would be in charge of a short lesson plan based on her interests in life.  Some wanted to do art, others math, myself: reading.  We had great goals.  One even went home and prepared six months worth of curriculum.

The exciting "trial-run" day arrived.  Families joined together to experience well thought out lessons from each mom.  It was an exciting day.  However, it was rather disappointing.  It was harder than we imagined to address everyone on their level (2 year olds to advanced kindergarteners).  We debriefed the experience and determined that in order to spend our time and effort doing this we need to feel that our children are getting out of it what we'd like them too.  Unfortunately, the co-op fell apart before we even started "for real".  I was hoping and planning on this co-op working.  However, it didn't.  I learned that co-op style learning isn't necessarily interesting to me.  Perhaps in the future I'll try again.  Maybe someone discovered how to make the co-op wheel spin more efficiently.  Or, maybe they just have much different personalities than we do.  For our group, we can remember a lovely day of a fruit based TouchMath lesson, a memory game, Cubism art and a transportation lesson.  It was fun, but it simply didn't work.

We've had a fantastic vacation visiting our family in Utah.  The boys are so excited about the kindergarten science plans I have.  We'll use the MythBusters Science Fair books and pick out activities that look great to us. While riding on the airplane the boys flipped through the books and marked anything that was appealing.  We have also been working on our TouchMath PreK unit 1.  CJ is struggling with the written form of larger numbers (most numbers with a ten and a one).  I love that one of the pages was a dot to dot to make a picture.  CJ wasn't in to coloring it but enjoyed the dot to dot part.  It's the type of page that I wish I had laminated though so he could do it over and over again.  It's a fun way to get in repetitive practice of numerals in order. On our trip we enjoyed being outside, exploring the aviary and jumping lots on the tramp!

TouchMath Kinder - Getting Started

We've gotten the TouchMath Homeschooling Kindergarten curriculum to try out for the year.  CJ used the TouchMath PreK curriculum for the past 2 years and I felt that it was one of the most comprehensive PreK curriculums out there.  Check out my review of it here. Were were excited to get the Kindergarten curriculum in our hands and start putting it to work.  We took it along with us on vacation as a little extra brain work during down time.

I like that the TouchMath Kinder pulls in many different science mini lessons into the math lessons.  They talk about a nautilus shell and penguins being birds for example.  The Kinder starts simple enough, starting with tracing the numbers and doing dot-to-dot type activities.  CJ is still struggling with the tens (like 30, 40, 50, etc) and asks what comes next for almost all tens.  Upon being told the tens he can count to 100 by 1's. I'm looking forward to using the TouchMath Kinder and hope that it addresses his misunderstandings in depth rather than just glossing over the concept.  Time will tell!