Today I want to share with you two of my favorites: My colleagues and I share all sorts of ways to internalize those facts without the stress of flash cards. It makes the whole process of mathematics more doable. Remember, memorizing math facts is like reading without sounding out words. So what would be an effective way to teach math facts without creating a stressful environment? The minute my child perceived that I was less than happy with their performance and stress entered the equation, their learning stopped. However, I must confess that my fictional scenario was not very fictional in my household. I was an ardent flash card proponent and used them in conjunction with other methods to help teach facts to my children. In the presence of stress, the amygdala, a small part of the brain, actually shuts learning down. This biological cascade cannot be prevented. Holinga calls it an amygdala hijack, which means that learning is temporarily interrupted until the stress dissipates. There’s nothing we can do to combat it because it is a physiological response to the perceived stress. Research tells us that when stress enters a learning situation, learning stops. Karen Holinga for showing me what I was doing in error. Specifically, what happened to my child is that their learning was literally hijacked. What? What happened here? Quite by accident, I derailed my child’s learning train by introducing stress into the learning equation. Has this ever happened in your home? Flash card learning is going along swimmingly, until you encounter one fact that your student stumbles on, and then, from that point forward, the whole thing descends into a rough deal. In a flash I have inadvertently and completely derailed the process I’m trying to accomplish.
#Math flash card plus#
My child dutifully says, “Six plus four equals ten.” I enthusiastically say, “Excellent!” And then I hold up a flash card that show 5 + 9, and my student hesitates in a wink of an eye I say, in likely what sounds like a whiny voice, “Aw, come on! You knew this yesterday!!” and waggle the flash card at them. I say to my child, “Six plus four is…?” and expectantly grin.
#Math flash card how to#
Yes, I am poster child for how to use flash cards the wrong way.Īllow me to paint a picture for you: I sit down with my child – usually across a table (already putting a physical barrier between us…) – and I hold up a flash card that shows 6 + 4. They are probably the single most used tool in a homeschool mom’s tool belt, and I am about to tell you that you’re misusing them. Visit any homeschool household and look for the “tools of our trade” as homeschool moms, and you are going to find math flash cards.
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