First I'd like to preface this by saying I am in no way trying to offend anyone who uses and stands by common core. I am not judgmental. I just don't feel it's right for us personally, but please don't feel as if I'm on here bashing anyone who uses it. Just wanted to add that.

I know this is such a basic question, but can anyone recommend to me an easy way of teaching my 2nd grade son the basics of double digit adding and subtracting with carrying and borrowing and whatnot? This is our first year homeschooling and he's been in a charter school up until this point where they used common core and taught the regrouping method in regards to Math. I'm trying to get him away from that method. I tried teaching him when we first started homeschooling using our current curriculum and he just could not grasp it. I don't want this to be a stressful experience for him, but I do want him to learn the basics of Math and I want to get away from common core as much as possible, so if anyone has any exercises or any other resources you could point me to that would help me explain this to him in an easy way that would be wonderful. Math is not my strong point so it doesn't really come naturally to me. Thanks for any suggestions you all might have!

- Andrea

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Welcome, Andrea!

Here's a way I mentally add that may help your son. Instead of adding the ones first, add the tens. Here's an example:

43
+58
----
90
+11
----
101

It's really hard to do this without showing you, but I hope this makes sense. First you add the tens and write down "90" and then on a second line you write down what the ones are together -- 11. Then you add them both together. There's no carrying, but your son sees how it works. Hope this helps!

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I have dgd use pennies (or beans or whatever) and put them in piles of 10's and ones according to the problem (top number). I ask her if she can take the bottom number from the top and she says no so she brings a pile of 10 over from the 10's. Then she subtracts the ones and then the tens.

I like Martha's way, too.

Similar to Sis, I have used legos for this. Any stack of legos 10 or greater has to go on the left. Stacks of lego smaller than 10 go on the right. It seems to help a bit. (it's easy to see at a glance if the stack is the same height as another 10-stack)

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I'm with Anna. We use legos also. My ds loves them and so do both of my DD's but that was the best thing. Of course M&M's are always a favorite too!! Haha

I can totally relate to what you're going through since there was a time I went through these Math problems with my daughter as well. But somehow we've managed to find our way through it and now it's pretty set up with very few hurdles coming our way.

As a beginning, try using some objects of everyday use to teach your son the basics - things like pennies, cookies, buttons, books, cans, or even people - by personal experience I can tell you that this does work more often than not, since kids don't relate such objects with maths problems. It worked with my daughter. Once she could actually see/hold/touch these and perceive them as actual physical objects, she could relate to the problems better and it helped a lot in making her master the basics of addition, subtraction and even elementary multiplication.

To supplement this (and other methods which you may already be using), I would suggest putting into use some of these activities and worksheets (I used them myself and still do at times) - http://www.mathblaster.com/parents/math ... activities - they are designed specially for second grade students (same as my daughter and your son) and have an interesting mix of things to do. Might help.