One of the hallmarks of teaching at the Bend Learning Center is teaching the foundational skills before expecting a child to do too much. Too often children are expected to do things that their brains haven't developed the skills to do.
A child can't be expected to do multiplication if they can't skip count by 2's, 5's, 3's and 7's. Children need to know how numbers move and change before trying to memorize multiplication. If they don't then you will see they will miss problems like 3 X 7, repeatedly. They may be able to do many of their multiplication but they have gaps and their math skills aren't useful at the next level.
Math Foundational Skills
Understanding factors, skip counting, what a fraction really is, how a decimal works in real life are all foundational skills. When a child knows these skills then they can gracefully move through math. When they don't the gaps will make math a chore and they will end up hating it.
So we at the Bend Learning Center work on foundational skills and the love of math. We don't have kids just memorize, but organize math in our minds. When math is organized then the next lesson is much easier to learn. Much like in a closet that is organized you can find many things in moments and move on. When math isn't organized in our brains, it is like the messy closet. Each problem is just a bunch of hunches, and guesses often leading to a poor looking finished product.
