I've been thinking it for a while, but last week when my first grader bombed her math test I could no longer deny that she just wasn't catching on. I've been moving on to the next lesson when she wasn't really ready to move on. Her big brother moved on in his lessons and I had just been moving her along too (which is ridiculous not only because they are not the same people, but also because they aren't even using the same math book), all the while sensing that this wasn't working so well.

This week, I revised my lesson schedules and across every day of math for my daughter, I've written REVIEW.

Every morning, she counts even numbers and odd numbers. We do flash cards and practice, practice, practice.

In the afternoons, she's playing computer games or doing math drills.

Had she been in school a teacher might have caught on earlier -- or she might have been lost in the crowd and no one would have noticed -- but the nice thing about home schooling is that right now I can revise my schedule and help to get some of the basic facts down before we move on to harder concepts that are based on those simple math facts.

And I'm awfully glad that there are so many things like math games and flashcards already out there on the web, so that I don't have to reinvent all this stuff.