C has been continuing to use EPGY at home, since his school has been less than supportive. After a long period of not requesting to use EPGY at school, C did ask for it two days in a row. The first day they had trouble getting it working and the next day they insisted he do his classwork first. His teacher’s reasoning was that she needed to see that he knew the material they were working on. While I can understand her perspective, we had C work up through EPGY starting at grade .5 to ensure them they he was not missing anything. He quickly did the worksheet with no problems, but then had only 12 minutes left to do EPGY. I think he found the whole experience frustrating and hasn’t requested EPGY again at school since. He really has never been the kind of child who is motivated by extra work. If EPGY can get him out of the boring work, that’s one thing. If he has to complete the boring work to then get the “reward” of yet more work, he’d not too interested. We found this out last year.
One positive thing about C’s school is there is very little homework. Well, I guess there is a fair amount of homework for the average child who needs to actually study the spelling words, practice the math and who reads at grade level. The reading the school sends home is much easier than the reading C does on his own, so he whizzes through it. He has never reviews the spelling or math at home, but has great grades. Therefore we use the time he would be spending on homework on EPGY sessions. Usually it’s just 20 minutes a night, and there were a number of days we skipped around the holidays and again in January (he only did about 10 sessions that month). Somehow he still managed to finish second grade math over the past three months and is now about a quarter of the way through third grade.
I suppose it may be because EPGY math is broken up between K-2 and 3-4, that there has been quite a lot of review so far in the third grade curriculum. It seems like C has spent a great deal of time reviewing addition with carrying and fractions, despite getting nearly all the problems correct. So far there has been very little geometry, which he usually enjoys. Hopefully things will pick up soon, because I can tell that he’s getting tired of the repetition. Previously EPGY would switch strands often enough that he wouldn’t get too bored. Currently it seems he can spend an entire session on one or two strands.
At C’s current rate, he will complete third grade math by the summer. It’s possible he may finish fourth grade math over the summer. I keep expecting him to hit a wall and slow down, but so far it hasn’t happened. Mathematical concepts seem to come to him easily. His biggest weakness is math facts, which he just recalculates instead of memorizing. I’m hoping that the repetition will help him commit the facts to memory eventually, or that he’ll at least start to use more shortcuts. We spent some time working on multiplication tables, but he’s had very little multiplication thus far in EPGY, so those skills are now getting rusty.
We’re not sure whether C will continue with EPGY next school year. His current school seems unwilling to support it and our public school has only offered to compact their curriculum. It may be that we end up continuing it at home or finding something else for enrichment, like the Life of Fred books. So far, though, EPGY has been working well for us overall.
