Math facts

Mathematics matter too much to Hershbergers to allow any offspring to escape learning arithmetic facts.
After visiting grandchildren used their fingers to add numbers during a game, we decided one daily activity during this summer’s visit would be age appropriate arithmetic fact sheets and flash cards. My husband organized, supervised and evaluated their work and improvements.
The family tradition of home tutoring in math began my first year of marriage into a ready-made family. For years, I flashed math cards at elementary aged boys. When we finally found one child who learned arithmetic with little effort, I did not worry when his third grade teacher encouraged her class to work at their own pace as long as they completed at least one page of math every day.
Near the end of the year, that same teacher unveiled our son’s retarded progress. I frowned and determined he would catch-up and finish his book the last six weeks of school. If he did, my husband promised him a balloon bouquet. Whether he wanted the balloons or not, he had to do a lot of extra math pages every day to try to catch up with his personal capabilities.
I can still feel his teacher’s scowl from across the years for interfering with her methods. I still don’t care. I knew he could do better and he did. He completed the work and the last day of school handed out balloons to all his class mates. He never fell behind in his math work again; and, in college he proved my expectations with high grades in calculus and upper level math logic courses.
We based this summer’s math program on the summer I worked with another son who failed to master his arithmetic facts on time. He completed daily homework, but had not absorbed speed and accuracy.
The first day of summer break, I began with flash cards. It took him hours toanswer. I let him win the flash card power struggle. I had better things to do. I typed up all the arithmetic fact questions on four pages and told him I expected him to complete all four pages in less than 45 minutes. I promised when he could do that five days in a row without mistakes, we would go to the ice cream parlor and he could order anything he wanted.
His older brothers and their friends – who had not been offered that deal – begged for an equal chance at ice cream. I gulped at the thought of paying for all that ice cream, but agreed. The neighbor kids faded after a couple days. His brothers zipped out accurate answers for five days and flaunted their huge bowls of ice cream with all the extras.
Meanwhile, little brother took four or five hours to do the pages that his first day – because he tried to stand on his head and lay on the floor protesting the impossibility of the project. I ignored him. I could wait – all summer if necessary. The next day, he took a couple hours. After that, he managed to be out of the house and playing in less than an hour. After a couple weeks, he was not missing any problems. The third week he said he was dreaming math facts, and I knew he had conquered the information – but it still took him more than 45 minutes.
His father intervened and timed each page separately with breaks between. Division took 12-13 minutes, addition seven or eight minutes. By the end of July, he proudly ordered a huge bowl of multi-flavored ice cream heaped with whipped cream and sprinkles.
This summer my husband has passed along the arithmetic tradition to the visiting grandchildren. He typed up the math sheets, arranged number grids and insisted they do flash cards. They are getting faster and more accurate. Even has the one entering first grade this fall has conquered adding zeros, ones, twos and threes. We knew they could do it – after all they are Hershbergers – they have a proud tradition to maintain.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times.)