Whatever happened to learning flash cards for your math skills? I don't mean to sound old but that's how I learned and I still can do all my addition, subtraction, and multiplication by heart.
I'm helping my first grade grandson learn math this year as well as spelling/ language skills and this week Common Core math was introduced. This stuff is a pain in the butt put simply.
Take a look at the page that was sent home. Instead of just teaching him that 7+8=15 we have to make 7 a friendly 10 by moving 3 dots to create it. Then you add the friendly 10 to the remaining 5 dots to get 15. Seems like an extra step to me. And then when you learn subtraction you use number bonds to teach. Again why not just teach 8+7=15, 7+8=15, 15-7=8, and 15-8=7?
Are your kids learning this method, and how difficult was it for you to teach them this way. It's like having the alphabet laid out before you and teaching spelling by adding and subtracting letters from the list.
How do you feel about Common Core?