sometimes waiting pays off with academics

Melissa has been struggling the last several weeks with 2 digit addition and subtraction, so we just kinda skipped that unit for now and went on with non-related skills. We've been touching it every day, and had NO success with it at all. Well, today we took the dry-erase board and pens out onto the back porch and spent about 20 minutes playing with addition and subtraction facts on the board. We started just reviewing basic facts, and then I decided to try doing adding tens. So I wrote 10+10 on the board, and talked to her about going from right to left instead of left to right (I think THIS is what's messing her up, we've spent so much time reinforcing left-right with phonics lol) and then we worked together on that problem (which we always did with pencil/crayon/marker/whatever on paper) to solve it, then did a few more together, and then she told me to write one and let her try it on her own. Stinker got it! So I wrote 3 on her board and told her it was a test, and she told me to go away while she did them and got them right (couple numbers backward but WHO CARES!) So I tried subtraction with tens, and I no sooner than wrote 40-10 then she grabbed the board from me and solved it with no issues. *sigh* Waiting and relaxing really paid off with her! I made her stop after we did a half dozen subtraction problems, and she got mad at me. Tomorrow we'll try 23+31 and similar addition/ subtraction problems that don't involve carrying and borrowing, but HOLY COW she hit it dead-on today. I wonder if it was just waiting a bit or the change from paper to dry-erase board that did it................... maybe both? Heck who cares, she got it!