Stuck

Over a month ago, I optimistically posted that our math project for the next week or two was learning the addition facts. Here are the things I have done since then to facilitate dd6 in learning her addition facts:

1) Online games - turns out she's not much of a gamer (online puzzles, mazes, coloring games, etc. are liked, but not shoot-em-up, kill-the-alien-sum type games), so the free games on http://www.arcademicskillbuilders.com/ and other education game websites didn't do the job.

2) Addition fact songs scattered strategically throughout a newly-burned CD for car listening - dd3 now knows most of the addition facts, but dd6 must have already passed the stage where she memorizes every little thing she hears in passing. Most unfortunate.

3) Flashcards - moderately effective at reinforcing the sums she already knows and at giving me a chance to explain how to figure out other sums from the known ones, but kind of boring for both of us and so used only a few times.

4) We made 100 paper cutouts for the 0-9 sums in 10 different colors. I taped these on the kitchen wall and periodically ask her some of them. If she can answer one quickly, then I take it down. Over half are still hanging on the wall. Dd3 keeps answering my little pop quiz questions before dd6, which annoys me and probably frustrates dd6.

5) Cuisenaire rods - I pulled these out today and let her use them to show all the different ways to make sums up through 10. She enjoyed it, so maybe we'll use them again.

6) Addition Bingo game - dd6 enjoyed our Addition Bingo board game, but dd3 became temperamental and didn't want to play the game correctly, so I hesitate to get it out again. Same goes for Chutes and Ladders. (Ah, board game strife. When do they learn to cope with losing? Come to think of it, I still won't play Risk because I don't like that I never win....)

7) Various worksheets printed off from the internet and pages from sundry math workbooks - rather randomly chosen to keep her writing down math and reinforcing all the math that she has learned thus far.

We are stuck in our math worktext at the first page of double digit addition. I told dd6 a month ago that she needed to know her addition facts in order for her to learn double digit addition. She believed me, and now she absolutely refuses to work on double digit addition until she has memorized her sums. To tell the truth, I'm bored of working on 0-9 sums. But we'll keep at the task until it's mastered because it's truly fundamental. And because she won't let me move on.

Drills

Drilling in math is fun. At least, it was for me in elementary school. I keep coming across the idea that "drill is kill"; I've seen it so much that I have almost started to believe it. But then I think back to what I remember about elementary school math. In 6 years of math (kindergarten was not so academic way back then...), I have only four memories of what I did in math:

1) In 2nd grade, we made little colored picture cards with the times tables on them. For instance, all the "two times" would be pink pencils, "three times" yellow bears, and so forth. We used the cards to practice our times tables.
2) In 2nd grade, we wrote all the numbers up to 1000 in a book made of ten sheets with a grid for 100 numbers on each sheet.
3) In 6th grade, we did timed drills on arithmetic. I thoroughly enjoyed the competition with myself and my classmates to accurately recall and write the answers in these one-minute drills. Probably because I usually did very well. :)
4) When we learned to calculate interest, I was proud of being able to calculate and show my work for ten consecutive years of compound interest all on one line of paper; I don't think the teacher appreciated my itty-bitty writing.

Why did I enjoy, or at least remember, only repetitive activities? Aren't repetitive activities supposed to be mind-numbing? (As an adult, I do find repetitive activities boring, but children aren't just little adults.) There's not a constructivist, "fuzzy math" activity up there, although I suppose you could still find elementary school children today counting up to 1000 jelly beans in a group at some point in their schooling. Imagine my surprise to read today that editors of The Mathematics Teacher, in refusing a paper for publication, stated that "rote drills do not constitute an authentic mathematical practice". Apparently, I didn't actually do math in elementary school. Funny, I ended up a top math student in high school (the kind that went to state contests) and earned a BS in mathematics. All that "inauthentic" math practice back in elementary school gave me a good foundation for mathematical achievement later on. Remembering my own past, while anecdotal and not likely to convince any true believer in the stultifying effects of math drills, helps me be more firm in my resolve to give my children the kind of math foundation I received. I bet in a few years they'll beat me on timed drill contests!