I am one of those lucky teachers who also gets to experience life as an elementary school parent.  I have been blessed with boy-girl twins who are now in 4th grade and I also have two lovely stepdaughters who are in high school.  Lately my 9 year old girl has had some meltdowns over her math homework.  Last week she finally broke down and sobbed, “I’m no good at math and I hate 4th grade!”  Since she lives and breathes for school each day, I knew that the last part of her statement wasn’t true.  I did know, however, that math facts have always been tricky for her even though many other things come easily.  So I called her teacher to discuss math.

Her teacher is wonderful, and she assured me that she does quite well in math.  I told her that as a “teacher mom” I have given my daughter games, worksheets, and flashcard to work with in the past.  Unfortunately she has been quite resistant to my help (not terribly surprising – I mean who wants their “teacher mom” to take a teacher role at home.)  I asked her teacher if I could please have something that came from her to give to my daughter.  This way it would be an assignment instead of a mom-inflicted event.  She suggested three different math fact websites to try.  This has been a HUGE sucess, so I thought I would use my blog to share these resources with other parents and teachers to try.

Play Kids Games

http://playkidsgames.com/

Cyberchallenge

http://www.mathmastery.com/cyberchallenge/ 

Mathmagician 

http://www.oswego.org/ocsd-web/games/Mathmagician/cathymath.html 

It’s so much better than flashcards – for my daughter AND for me!