challenging our big boy with mathnasium

This post was created in collaboration with Mathnasium Phoenix. As always, all opinions expressed here are my own.

As we head into the new year and prepare to send the kids back to school, as well as start back up with their after school activities, I wanted to pause for a moment to tell you about one of the activities we’ve been doing with my oldest, Mathnasium.

If you follow along on my Instagram Stories, you may have seen me sharing some of our trips our local Mathnasium here in the Phoenix area recently. We’ve been going 2x a week, for about an hour after school. A lot of you had questions about it, so I am going to try to answer them all for you here!

First of all, if you haven’t heard of Mathnasium, it offers fun and effective supplementary math programs for children in preschool through grade 12 in a supportive, pressure-free and fun environment. They operate on the core belief that virtually any child can excel at math. The Mathnasium Method™ is a unique program that provides each child with a customized learning plan and personalized instruction in a way that makes sense to them.

My boy wasn’t really struggling with math, and wasn’t really overly-excelling in it either. I would say he was right on par with the pace of his teacher’s lessons at school.  This is what I initially thought a place like Mathnasium was for – students who were behind or who were gifted. Which it actually is great for both of those types of students! But what I learned is that  Mathnasium is designed for EVERY student – whether they’re far behind, in need of more challenges, or somewhere in the middle like we were.

Adriano is pretty quick to pick up on new things, especially math related. But I’ll admit, I was a little hesitant at first to send him to Mathnasium because I didn’t want him to feel like he had to go, if he didn’t want to. But ever the adventurous spirit, he was so eager to try something new. He had a lot of questions about what it would be like, but wasn’t nervous at all about trying something new. And we agreed he only had to try it, and then we could go from there.

But to my surprise, he LOVED it more and more each time he went! To the point that every day when I picked him up from school, he would ask if we were going to Mathnasium. Even though I told him over and over we only were going on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It’s so fun to see your child light up about something like that! I definitely think that it was pretty special for him to get to do a “big kid” thing on his own away from his brother and sister. And also he was very motivated by earning points, which he could trade in for fun little prizes whenever he chose to do so!

He is my first born baby, so confession number two is that I was a bit nervous to drop him off and leave him somewhere for the first time ever! All of the activities he’s had up to this point have required a parent to be present, which usually leaves me wrangling these two (ineffectively) for however long said activity takes. So it was kind of a mama-mixed-bag-of-emotions having an activity I could take him to and just leave! Which really meant that most Mathnasium days, we ended up here. Sorry about that, wallet. 🙂

One other thing I really loved about Mathnasium was that he could use some of his time there to work on his math homework. Which was really a relief because even though he was busy at an after school activity, we didn’t have to worry about still getting to all the homework when we got home. Before Mathnasium, I would often find myself having a hard time helping him with his homework at night because I am always being pulled in a million different directions at the end of the day. That one-on-one homework help he got there was so helpful to us all!

Ok, hopefully that answers all of the questions you guys had. If I missed anything, please ask it in the comments and I will do my best to answer it there for you!

There are several Mathnasium locations in the Phoenix area. Visit www.mathnasium.com to find one near you!

Thanks again to Mathnasium for providing us with this experience in exchange for my honest review! As always, we only partner with brands that are a good fit for our family’s lifestyle and all opinions expressed here are my own.