Jump to content

Menu

Problems with Logic and Vocabulary


Recommended Posts

I took my children out of ps a year ago now. I quickly realized they were not at the place I thought they were in reading, spelling, and mathematics. So much for "leaving it to the professionals." Anyway, so last year and this year are huge catch-up years.

 

This year I decided to add in some logic exposure so we started Logic Countdown. It had small bites and it is somewhat independent. Logic Countdown has a lot of word analogies and they are getting quite a few of them wrong because their vocabulary is not what it should be, IMO. But they enjoy the brain exercises of the logic puzzles.

 

So should I turn LC into vocab and logic work, which might kill their enjoyment of it? Should I add in a vocab program along the lines of Sadlier-Oxford? Should I try one of CTC's Mathematical Reasoning books instead and wait for their verbal ability to catch up? We read classics together, but this might take a while. 

 

Thanks for any input.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you want to keep using the Logic Countdown book, you could just skip to another section.  When my son did that book, I let him jump around.  I just made him start at the beginning of a section so that he would know what to do.  But you don't really have to work through the book in order.  And I would then take the words from the analogy section and make a list of them.  Then go through the list orally with them Teach them the new words then turn them loose on the analogies.

 

Or you could put the book away for a bit while you teach the new words.  Then give it back :)

 

Alternatively, you could get the Building Thinking Skills Book (perhaps Level 2).  It looks like all of the beginning chapters are figural puzzles.

 

The thing with vocab programs is that you still might not catch the words that are needed for these analogies. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We also had some difficulty with those. It was an odd mix too - like my kids wouldn't know a "big word" here, and a scientific word there, and an old-fashioned word here... I think my kids have a pretty good vocabulary actually, so we just skipped a bunch of those. No problems with the rest of the book (though some of them were still tricky for them!).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You know, if we're talking vocabulary, Test Your Vocab is still collecting data on children's vocabulary sizes.It's five minutes and they'll tell you their estimate of how many words the test taker knows. That might help you decide if your kids just have a few odd gaps or if you really, really need to remediate, stat.

 

(For what it's worth, their research suggests that people with large vocabularies, at all ages, are simply those who read a lot, particularly fiction. So increase reading time?)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the link Tanaqui. According to that site my kids are average. I still have concerns, but I guess the situation isn't as dire as I thought it was.

 

I do think more reading is in order. I am not sure how effective those vocabulary programs are, when I was in school we copied out definitions and wrote our own sentences. It felt like torture at the time ;)

 

Farrar- thanks for sharing your experience with that section. It's nice to know we weren't the only ones having trouble with that. The section is skipped and we are moving on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...