Who knew that 4th-grade math would be so mental? No really, there’s a chapter in my daughter’s book that is labeled: Mental Math. My head hurt that night, trying to mentally grasp the justification of making the parents go crazy trying to help their child understand the grouping, carrying, breaking down, place value of numbers in a way that makes no ‘at first glance’ sense.
“Mental math is the main form of calculation used by most people and the simplest way of doing many calculations. Research has shown that in daily life at least 75% of all calculations are done mentally by adults.”
In New York City, Common Core Math fundamentals are not as common as what you recall when attending grade school. The 4th-grade math that our children are doing is beyond what we or those born earlier than 1980 are familiar with.
Let’s examine this math problem:
Take a minute to solve the same example, the old fashion long division way, do you get the same result? Using mental math, I’m getting a headache still trying to figure out why we are multiplying 6 x 10 = 60 — where did the ten come from? Why are we multiplying it by 6 and then subtracting the answer from 100?
Although we have been introduced to another year of common core math, we were not quite ready for this mental math. If you are also getting a headache, here are some websites that we study to make ourselves seem smart when we are reviewing homework with the 4th grader. The game portion of many of the sites, keeps my daughter focused on something entertaining allowing her to retain the information in the worksheets.
Helpful Websites for Mental Math:
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YouTube Search – the chapter name of your child’s math book
Some Vocabulary for Mental Math:
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Addend – Numbers participating in addition.
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Associative Property of Addition – The property of addition that states- changing the order in which numbers are added, doesn’t affect the result of the addition.
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Associative Property of Multiplication – the product of three or more numbers remains the same regardless of how the numbers are grouped.
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Distributive Property – Distributive property states that multiplying the sum by a number gives the same result as first multiplying each addend by the number and then adding the products.
Additional common core vocabulary for 4th Grade mental math can be found on Splash Math.
Do you understand 4th-grade mental math?
Help me by sending some tips in the comments.
8 thoughts on “Going Mental from 4th Grade Math”
Math isn’t my strength…
Common core makes absolutely zero sense to me. I’m so glad that our state hasn’t made the switch yet. I don’t think I’d have to switch to it even so, since we homeschool.. but man, that’s a headache and then some.
Don’t worry, you’re not alone in the sense department. lol She passed her last test, so we’re glad that she at least understands it.
This is super informative! My oldest is in 1st grade. I can’t even imagine 4th grade math now compared to when we were in 4th grade… Thank you for this post!!
4th grade math is a headache. At this point we’re so glad when she passes a test because we know how convoluted the steps can be to get to an answer. Thank you for reading.
Hahaha oh man! I thought I was good at math? Yikes well I don’t have kids yet but now I know that I better prepare myself for this!
Hopefully when you do have children, the standard for learning will change back to something we all understand.
Nope. I’m pretty glad I’m not in school these days! Common Core math is ridiculous.