Right Start Math and the younger child?

[Savoir Faire]

We are starting Right Start math with our daughter in May...for "first" grade. (She'll be just shy of six.)

I've been kind of unsure of what to do with my 4-year-old son at the time. He LOVES math and numbers and you can just tell it is his thing. Even his preschool teacher, at conference time, said he has an "engineer brain." (I had asked if she ever wrote in tally marks or Roman Numerals because he had started to write that way in chalk on our sidewalks.)

She suggested that we give him the opportunity to go along with sister with math. We already let him do that with plenty of other things...but for some reason, Right Start had some thing on their website about boys needing to be 5.5....which doesn't really make much sense to me.

Do you know of any younger children who have done this program?

[Queen Gwen]

Yes, people have younger kids do RightStart, particularly RightStart A.

Much of RightStart A and B comes out of Montessori teaching methods for math, and Montessori has plenty of math materials for ages 3-6.

One difference is that with RightStart the teacher (or curriculum) is setting the pace rather than being as child-led as is Montessori. It could be that the recommendation to wait until age 5.5 comes from that -- that it's the teacher (or curriculum) deciding what the child should learn each day rather than the child deciding to explore something. Or maybe the author had simply received a lot of feedback from people that it worked better when they waited. But that doesn't mean 5.5 is the correct age for every single boy.

What age is appropriate for starting RightStart also depends on what level you're planning to use, too. I know that in our family it worked better to wait until dd was ready for RightStart B, and do Montessori stuff in the meantime; we tried RightStart A when she was younger, but after about 3 weeks she lost interest so we dropped it. She wasn't scarred for life by the experience, and I sold the book to someone else. So you could just give it a whirl and see how it goes. If your ds loses interest, move to something else.


(Full disclosure: I really don't like RightStart A, and I consider several things about Level B sort of dumb, too. So I skipped parts of Level B, adapted other things, and mucked around with it quite a bit. In other words, RightStart at our house looks different than RightStart at someone else's house. However, we've used every single level of the program other than A. So we like the program, but don't think it's the only perfect way to teach math to every child.)

[dotnetdiva]

Hmmm, we started at age 4. The questionnaire they start with they ask if a boy is 5.5 because if they are, they might want to go straight to RightStart B. Otherwise, start with A, like we did.

Boys are typically more mathematically inclined, so I'm not sure why they had the boy age be higher on that. I loved math, so I was not the norm, and hope my daughter will too.

[WhaleinGaloshes]

My daughter is 4.5 and we use RS level B. I filled out the questions they ask to pick a level and that's the one that was recommended. We go slowly, I'd say we do lesson 1-3 times a week and average 2. But about 1/4 of the way through, I can report that she likes it and retains it from one lesson to the next, applies the skills that have been taught (it moves pretty slow) and we love playing the card games.

[sbgrace]

I can't see how it would hurt to include him. If it doesn't "stick" you could always come back through it with him. Also, B repeats A (at a fast pace) in my understanding so there is some built in review as well. My kids really love RightStart.

[Savoir Faire]

Thanks gals. I totally expect my son to be smarter than me in math...in about two years?

I figure we'll just let him tag along like we do on other stuff. If he decides to go along, then good....if not, I guess we'll just wait until he's a bit older.