Add It Up

I have been torturing Aislinn (and forcing others to torture Aislinn) for four straight days with addition flash cards, because I was given no notice that she will be taking a timed addition test where she must finish 30 random problems in 2 minutes. This was never told to me by the teacher, who apparently thinks that a 7-year-old in her 3rd week of second grade is ready to take in and report to me on all future assignments.

She is good at math, but this little endeavor is sapping all of her confidence, because she is not good at doing math fast. I never thought speed was a priority. I can see the teachers encouraging them to do problems faster, but not testing them on it.

To her credit, she got the flash cards out this morning while she was eating breakfast, at which point I told her "You are really working hard on this and I can't believe you are doing the cards without even being asked. Don't worry about the test tomorrow, because I know you are really trying your best."

Today she got 20/30 done on the practice test. Can we really expect her to do 1.5 times better tomorrow?

I was thinking of getting some multiplication flash cards so that she could learn them really slowly over a long period of time. She'd be ahead of the game before her crazy teacher starts the clock.

But then I remembered subtraction. Which probably starts next week.

So we're already behind.

Arggh.