junepep
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Posts posted by junepep
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I thought that my eldest might have been able to start STOW last year at 5.75, but my youngest would have only been 4.25 (yay decimals!). After looking at all of the fun activities and stuff, I'm glad that I waited. Kit definitely wouldn't have gotten as much out of it last Sept and Mim wouldn't have gotten anything out of it at all (beyond perhaps an everlasting hatred of history).
We wound up doing little mini units on prehistoric times, Rome/Greece (mostly gods/goddesses/culture) and Egypt just because they came up in every day life (because of MEP's roman numerals and the statues & mummies @ the Met museum & listening to the SOTW audio books in the car). I feel like it gave them both a taste, without overwhelming them.
If you're anxious to get started, why not play the audio CDs on car trips and then if your child gets curious about something specifically then you can get a few books from the library, watch a few documentaries, get some coloring pages from the internet or pick up some toys or activity books relating to the topic from amazon (or the local library again - but mine is sort of sparse on activity books). Good luck!
edited for clarity :D
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I think that it's just expensive for what you actually get. Every time I go to buy it I look at what's included and just decide that I could just throw something together myself.... but then I never do ;)
I remember reading this thread two years ago about it, I take long breaks from the forums though, so perhaps it's been discussed in depth since then :
http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/245063-which-one-little-passports-or-top-secret/
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Oh my goodness!! You weren't kidding, I just wasted the last hour and a half doing a set of 5 challenges :D That was so fun.
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Definitely the library. But barring that, perhaps Barnes and Nobles if you're a member and you happen to have a 20% off coupon handy. That's how I bought mine.
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Ah, I love reading those Saxon math threads, but the history threads are my absolute favorites for hyper-hyperbole and simply blatant off-topicism (yes, I totally made that word up ;)).
Seriously though, don't take it personally, this is just one of THOSE topics. It's not you.
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Hunter brings up a very good point - I fall on the explicit end of the spectrum, but lefties DO need accommodations to make handwriting (and scissor use, can opening, etc) easier. We can do it the 'hard' way, but why should we have to?
I teach both of my (right handed) children explicit handwriting instruction. I also received explicit instruction as a child. Proper letter formation truly does make writing easier (as well as the transition into cursive imho, although I use a demi-script in my every day writing). However, outside of how to hold a pencil and the initial formation of the letters I would do whatever is the most comfortable for your child.
As a side note, I actually hold my paper horizontally with the top of the page facing my right arm to write. I can then hold the pencil and write comfortably with my arm in an L without smearing my pencil marks or holding my hand in that crab form that is so common with lefties. It seems so odd to people who watch me write, but I *hated* having my ink or pencil smearing all over the place (and actually, it's far easier -- for me -- than holding the page vertically or at a minor slant like most righties do). Lefties do weird things with their paper and sometimes with how they hold their hands when writing - it's okay. It won't make their handwriting poor nor should it adversely affect them in the future. I respect Mrs. Spalding, but the only time that I've ever produced dyslexic letters or have trouble with left to right reading processing is when I write with my right hand.
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Everyone has put it so nicely, I'll just chime in to say that I've really enjoyed doing BFSU with the girls. I had to reformat it into something a bit more useful for me, but other than that (relatively minor) nitpick I think that it's been great for us. I definitely haven't found anything that I like better. It really does seem to build a solid foundation.
We take about 3 weeks per unit for a few months and then I drop it for about 4mos to do nature study/gardening, sometimes we drop it longer than we should (I think that it might take us longer than 3 years, but we started super early) and happily they both seem to retain the info through the breaks :). Once you get over the wall of text style presentation I'm sure that you'll like it too. Don't be afraid of it - it hasn't taken me more than an hour of prep every couple of weeks or so (assuming that you don't accelerate through it). If you'd like to see how we handled the first few segments I put up what we did on my blog. It's not very organized, but maybe it'll be helpful to you: http://lovelearnplay.wordpress.com/2011/10/02/bfsu-ab-1/
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The materials that they use in school to teach in Mexico are available online:
http://basica.sep.gob.mx/reformaintegral/sitio/index.php?act=buscadorlibros
An explanation of how to access them in English:
http://www.mommymaestra.com/2013/04/free-pdfs-of-spanish-textbooks-for.html
They're pretty wonderful imho, although we're no where near being able to use them ourselves yet ;)
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I'm a little late -- but WELCOME!! :)
There are so many helpful, wonderful people on these boards who are happy to share their knowledge. I don't know what I'd do without them.
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I'm a lefty and I cross them right to left. It's much easier for us to do it this way, and it hasn't affected my cursive.
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I'd second listening to the audio book in the car wherever you go and perhaps you could also pick the most fun activity out of the three chapters that you hope to finish each week and doing it so that they're not feeling like it's work, but something fun. It'll be work for you over break, but if your kids like projects it'll just feel like you've got this awesome treat for them each week over the summer.
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Writing fan fiction about My Little Ponies (the original TV series) is actually how Lauren Faust got her position on the MLP: Friendship is Magic team. So, if she's looking to potentially be a screenwriter or something like that it might be a wonderful idea to treat it as schoolwork as long as she is open as people have said to having it graded and/or assessed.
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I've got the planning down, my love of spreadsheets notwithstanding I wound up sticking it all into MSWord for history ;) I wish that I could figure out a better format for it all, but the plan is to choose some online activities, a hands-on activity or two, lapbooking & some coloring pages, and 2-3 books each week to read from the library -- I've set it all up together in files for each week. I'm still a bit nervous about how exactly it's going to work, but at least I've got a plan right... Right?!!?! ;)
It should be a ton of fun. Here's a link to the start of them - I've got 35 of the 45 weeks that we're going to be doing up so far:
http://lovelearnplay.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/week-1-the-earliest-people/
I just wish that I could have come up with more lapbook ideas, I got to about Sargon and my mind just went totally blank - but I've still got two months, so maybe I'll be able to whip up a couple more :D.
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That article is very cool Kathryn.
For better or worse, my opinion about the Harding family changed when their children being unremarkable/normal became a product claim rather than a self-effacement. Going to college (even a bad one) at age 12 is an accomplishment. One that I genuinely believe that most 12 year olds are developmentally incapable of achieving regardless of any advantage given to them by their parents. To claim otherwise does in fact diminish the Harding's claims about their future product and send up warning signs for me. I think that using their claims as a basis to discuss efficiencies in education are going to keep returning to a debate about the Hardings themselves. However, I would really love to read a discussion about the benefits of efficiency and acceleration. That would be an amazing thread.
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Ahuh.
Ya'll feel the same about SWB selling her claims? Do you also discount the possible value of her insights or suggestions bc she sells materials based on it?
I don't care that they are selling their ebook, which is described as simply an on-going journal of what they have done so far, that they will add to as they bring up the rest of their children.
I don't care that they are offering, for a price, to tell other people how they can implement some of the same methodologies.
Obviously no one has to buy from them.
Obviously some people aren't going to think it's for them.
But I don't discount that it might be worth learning about just bc it's for sale or might not be for me.
I'm glad I did some research into how Joyce Swann did things bc I learned some valuable to me things.
For example, one of the things I had never really done the math on was the simple "acceleration" involved in just year round schooling and having a set plan. That blew my mind and there's nothing particuliarly hard or crazy or even above average smart about it.
Learning how people do things radically different doesn't mean I have to do it like they did or buy the farm to get one hay bale.
It might not be a big difference to you, but it is to me. SWB and her mother wrote the WTM with the idea that you could use it to generally homeschool your children in a classical-ish way. Their approach isn't trying to say that you can have the brightest, most accelerated children, it's saying that you CAN educate your children at home. I've found their materials very user friendly for a newbie homeschooler (myself) and in the end they just make my life easier.
There's a difference in my mind between selling materials that help new homeschooling parents ensure that they're not 'missing' something important and doing their children a disservice and selling materials that purport to send an 'average' child to college at age 12. One of those sets makes me wonder whether they've got a bridge to sell me on a charming countryside estate in Brooklyn as well. In the end, it's not the sale of materials as much as the claims made about those materials that is disturbing me, and perhaps some of the other posters here as well.
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I never know what I want to do with my blog, I'll be very active with it for a few months and then wander off and get sucked into some new project or activity. I doubt that anyone could read through my blog and think that I've got everything together but I enjoy puttering around on it. I really do enjoy sharing the materials that I've thrown together for our homeschool, and links and sometimes a bit of whining about how we're stuck and I'm not sure what to do, or how I've just now found the best curricula ever!! LMAO
It's all good in the end, and I've found that it's nice to have a reference of where I was at a given point. I don't diary and I don't even keep up the blog that well because I'm so easily distracted, but it's still nice to look back at what's there despite the acute embarrassment.
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It's interesting that this thread has begun so much more negatively than the previous one, but I have to admit that I'm far more likely to think negatively of this family now that I know that they're trying to market their approach. Doing something radical because it's the best thing for your family is far different imho than trying to sell that approach to other families with a lie that "average" children will be capable of performing (emotionally and academically) at a college level at age 12.
There is no 'secret' to education or parenting that will turn every child into a prodigy and I'm disturbed that they claim that there is.
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It's pretty much the same program no matter what level you use, the sentences are just pulled from books for older children. Basically each level is broken out into segments and those segments can then be used individually to teach grammar. He goes through a fairly non-standard sequence, but you wind up covering everything that you would in another program eventually. If I remember correctly only 3rd(?) and 6th are complete. He's just been slowly working on the others.
Also, you can either print out an entire level at a go or you can have your DC do it online. I prefer the printed materials, but some families will obviously prefer to just work through the pages and materials online. I find the online pages confusing though ;) too much going on (much like the rest of the site).
Hope this is what you were looking for! :)
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A friend is currently 1/2 way through MEP Reception with her 2.5yo daughter and it's going very well :)
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Yay! It looks like you have plenty of bloggers, so I'll just advertise this year :D (which is sooooooo for the best LOL). I'll wait until Fri to link to it :)
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I pick up several different books at the high end of the grade level that I think that she's at from the library. I use lexile ranges, to determine grade level but there's a huge amount of controversy over which measures are accurate. Once she has the book in her hand I ask her to read a page at the beginning and a page or two in the middle out loud to me. I check to make sure that she doesn't have more than 5 reading errors and then ask her to narrate the passage back to me. After she's done with her narration I ask her a specific question or two about the passage that would have to be inferred from the reading, but perhaps not directly stated to ensure comprehension. If she aces it all then I bump her up a level and check again the following week, and I just keep going until I find something that's a challenge to read-a-loud &/or has challenging vocabulary, but isn't causing her to struggle and call that her readinglevel.
We love the Scholastic Book Wizard to help us find books in the right age/reading bracket (because a lot of material at Kit's reading level is wildly inappropriate), there are many books listed, not only those published by scholastic: http://www.scholastic.com/bookwizard/
As for MCT, I'd second that you want your child to be reading at a strong 4th+ grade level before asking them to do MCT. Even then you might find that they would benefit from waiting another year. There's a bit of memorization and their output levels should be fairly high (even if they're just narrating their stories and decoding the sentences to you out-loud, eg - one of the assignments is to create a story about a part of speech which illustrates it's nature). That said, we started early and I don't regret it so far, although we do go very slowly. I'm hoping to drag it out for at least two years and then do a creative writing year before starting Town :). After looking through FLL and some of the other early books at the store I decided that I'd rather supplement the heck out of MCT than use something that wouldn't work for us.
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I moved to phonics-based spelling (AAS) once my 4 y/o was a fluent reader. I think I waited until she was 5.5 y/o before seeing if she'd like to use pencil and paper for dictation -- until then she just used tiles or we wrote together on the whiteboard.
I fifth(?) not drilling it and just going on to AAS or some other gentle spelling program. I did the same thing as five more minutes, except instead of just using letter tiles I wound up using it as our "handwriting" program, so we started with 3-4 words that she'd have to write in her very neatest handwriting and we would practice 3-5 letter formations on a letter of the day that needed work (she'd picked up how to make most letters from reading though, so if your daughter hasn't then this might not work).
I've done such a slow introduction to writing because it was so painful for me to write as a child, it's probably slowed down her spelling progress, but it's been worth it to me to see her smile about writing. Plus the slow progress has helped to solidify some of the weirder phonics rules and corrected a speech problem that I hadn't noticed (she'd been pronouncing L as W and TH as F -- o.O she'd just sounded a bit slurry sometimes when she spoke, but it really turned up in her spelling).
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If you haven't already, you might consider apologizing to your daughter for this. From her point of view, this would be a very difficult burden for a young adult to carry.
Why on earth should she apologize for having a heart-to-heart with her daughter? It is not a "difficult burden" to know that you disagree over what you and a loving parent think is best. Her daughter now knows that she has a mother that is not only willing to listen to her, but who is also willing to allow her to have the freedom to choose her path in life -- even when her mother thinks that path might be a mistake.
Offering school was the best choice imho, but offering it without having a heart-felt conversation about why cakemom had been so opposed to it, and discovering why her daughter had been so keen to attend could have been damaging to their relationship in the long term. What if something deeper than -it would be like getting to go to co-op every day- was behind this sudden push for school? This way, although it was emotional, both of them were able to let the other know that even though they disagreed they still respected and cared for each other. It also brought home to her daughter that this is not a simple decision without deeper consequences, which made her stop and make a deeper consideration of the matter at hand.
Online math for 5yo
in Accelerated Learner Board
Posted
Math Seeds (from the people that created Reading Eggs) I haven't tried it yet. Also, I believe that it might not go past 3rd grade math - I keep meaning to check it out because I received a free trial in the mail, but *shrugs* my oldest it fairly beyond it and my youngest doesn't like to play on the computer.
My oldest likes to play : http://www.fun4thebrain.com/ - but they're just for fun, not for learning.
PS - Timezattack (which is free) is awesome too, but can be frustrating if your child isn't fast using a keyboard (or uses a non-standard laptop keyboard without a number pad)