Welcome to the ZenMath eNewsletter from Door-2-Math ! 
October 2007

Greetings! You may notice that things look different. I've made quite a few changes to the newsletter format and software to make it more useful and enjoyable for you to read and to comply with the anti-spam laws. So if there are a few kinks, please bear with me! Anyway, moving on, I have 2 articles in store for you today: Math Amnesia: The World Worst Math Problem and from the Drop off Lesson series: Week #1: Why Addition is THE Most Important Math Topic. Also please take a look at the sidebar for some useful links, valuable giveaways and important dates. As always please send email to mathdoc@door2math.com for questions/comments. Enjoy and Happy Zen Math! 

Math Amnesia: The World Worst Math Problem GAP! 
No, I'm not talking about the store at the mall, although this article could also be titled Gap for Kids! I'm talking about the ‘math amnesia” commonly occuring when a parent sits down with a child to help out on homework or to explain a math concept. Exhausted as you were the night before, you swear that you covered simplifying fractions with Johnny. You remember every fine detail!! The joke you made trying to lighten the homework mood, the pen you used that ran out of ink, down to what was on the other side of that piece of recycled paper you used to explain how and why you can go about simplifying a fraction!! Johnny, on the other hand, remembers nothing. Zip. Zilch. Zero. For a split second, you thought that maybe those health experts don’t know what they’re talking about!! After all, all that fish you cooked ought have enough Omega-3 fatty acids to help at least one brain between the two of you!! Then you think, wait a minute, this has happened before. Here comes Johnny’s math amnesia again!! Click to continue...

Drop off Lessons for My kids: 

This column is a collection of 'drop-off' lessons that I came up with to make good use of time while driving my kids to their schools. The lessons are roughly ~10 minutes for each child and we talk about math in the car. Alexa was is currently 10 years old and Byron is currently a 6 years old. Although I have a general idea on what, how and why I'm introducing each topic to my kids, I do not have a set time line. This is important because I believe the most valuable thing I can pass to them is to help them have fun with math. To that extent, if ever, they say they don't feel like 'playing with math', I find other things to have fun with them (play with puns, with jokes, with foreign language, etc., etc.). Children are so precious and they grow up so fast !! I hope you'll find those drop-off lessons interesting and useful. Nothing beats the joy of hearing my own kids brag to their friends that 'math is easy and fun'. 

Week #1: Why Addition is THE Most Important Math Topic 

If you take the math pyramid upside down, that is work backward from, say, Calculus as a high school senior to adding in Pre-k, it’d be apparent why addition is so important: Calculus needs Trigonometry, and Trig needs both Geometry and Algebra; Algebra needs fractions and fractions need multiplication and division – both of which are built on addition (multiplication is simply a faster way to add and division requires subtraction, which in turn is just the opposite of addition). By now, you might be thinking, addition…but there is not much to it! Yes and no. You’re right -- simply act of adding is not difficult at all. I mean how hard can it be? Yet, it’s not just about adding that we are teaching a youngster who just started with math – this is a golden opportunity for learning habits, develop believes about math in general, or how about work ethics or further developing mental capacity? 
When my daughter was 2, she showed interest in counting rice balls in her plate one day during dinner. From there, I guided her through the milestones of addition, and by 2nd grade, she was doing division and fractions, and has not slowed down since. And that’s not the important part! What’s gratifying to me is that she learned her math facts without tears and, till this day, she looks forward to ‘getting more math tricks from Mommy’ as she puts it. I’ve always believed that a child’s curiosity is the most precious commodity there is. If we the parents can gently guide their curiosity toward the ocean of knowledge, who’s to say that you don’t have the next Einstein or Michelangelo sitting right at your dinner table? 'Til Next time, Happy ZenMath!!

Math Amnesia Continued: If the scenario sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Since day one of my math coaching business, I’ve been hearing about this frustrating ‘math amnesia’. So what can a parent do? ‘Know thyself’ is where we start. What you might not know is this: how you go about helping Johnny the night before largely determines what he’ll remember today. I know, I know. It’s probably not what you’re expecting to hear or you may passionately disagree. But hear me out. Hear me out because you care about Johnny’s amnesia more than being right. Think about this: who was holding the pen last night? Who was doing most of the talking and showing? Who was doing most of the writing? Who was asking most of the questions? If your answer to any of the above question ends up with ‘I was’, then you know why you are not the one with amnesia! You did all the work, and why would you be the one ‘can’t remember?’ Johnny didn’t do any of the work and that is why he doesn’t remember. 
Often what happens is a parent does most of the talking, and most of the writing and after the explanation, the parent comes away thinking that he explained the material well and the child should now know it and is utterly amazed when a child gets a bad grade on the same concept! This is where the gap comes in. The gap is the difference between what the parents think the child gets to what the child actually gets. Take the physician dad I had in my office the other day. Mary, his daughter is a brilliant young lady who was struggling in her 5th grade math. Since the Dad expressed desire in learning how to work with his daughter at home, I gave Dad the exercise of explaining how to convert units from the English system to the Metric system, which was what Mary was working on that week. Just as I’ve seen over and over, within minutes, Mary’s pencil ended up in her Dad’s hand, and Dad rotated the paper he was writing on away from Mary so he could see better. 
From where I was observing the entire exchange, the father was completely absorbed in demonstrating to himself that he understood the step involved in unit conversion! Another 5 minutes gone by before he looked up and concluded: ‘Now, Mary, isn’t that simple?' ‘Yeah, Dad. So what’s the answer to this question?’ ‘Well, 55 miles per hour is of course 1.4 km per minute.’ ‘Okay, Dad.’ Now, when this happened at home, imagine Dad’s surprise the next evening when Mary asks the exact question again. In Dad’s mind, he knows for sure that he went over this Mary the day before and he is genuinely puzzled about her apparent math amnesia. What he didn’t know that he didn’t know is this: he explained the math concept to himself the night before. Not Mary. Once I explained what was happening to his math instructions, a light bulb went off and exclaimed: ‘No wonder!’ 
By the time the program ended 6 months later, Mary’s math confidence went through the roof with straight A’s. So what can Johnny’s parents do if they do intend to work with him at home on his math homework? Here are a few simple rules can shrink the gap, and reduce the apparent math amnesia: 
- Don’t grab pencil. This is probably one of the best things you can do for your child while offering help on math homework. By grabbing the pencil, you effectively taking away the child’s tool for being engaged. A lot of parents ask, ‘but how can you explain then?’ Exactly! It’s a lot discipline on your part to not grab the pencil, and in doing so, you’re giving Johnny the time and space to think it though on his own. Don’t have the patience? Find someone who does. Your child’s math confidence is at the stake. 
- Give follow-up homework. I know, you might be thinking ‘but I was trying to reduce the amount of homework in the first place!’ Follow-up homework is important for two reasons: re-enforce what Johnny just learned and condition him to think through on his own before soliciting your help. Who among us is not after self-sufficiency for our children? 
- Occupy yourself while helping. One of the best thing that has worked for me while I help my own 3rd grader on her math is this: sit by her desk, facing her and with a book in hand. This accomplishes a few things: first, I’m not standing, so I give myself more room to be relaxed; second, I’m facing her, so I can not possibly write as well upside down and I might as well not grab her pencil in the first place and third, if she needs more time to go through her mistakes and find her way, I’m can read while giving her the time she needs. 
Oh, trust me! Even on a good day, it’s TOUGH! I know that while our children are resilient and can forgive our mistakes, I also know from working with other students, their emotional bank can only bail us out so far! One more outburst than they can handle, we might just lose them all together. Once the math wall is drawn, believe me, it goes up like crazy! So Moms and Dads, next time you sit down with your child to help with homework, bite your finger nails if you have to, but do not grab that pencil!