I think BW will get you where you want to go, but maybe not in the way you are wanting to get there ;). I think there are two issues at play: you want to personally know why, and you want to teach your dd to know why. It may be most convenient to learn together through your dd's program, or (if your approach to learning doesn't really mesh with your dd's, or you feel better having the answers ahead of time, not discovering them as you teach them to your dc), it might work better for you to learn them first, through whatever resources works best for you, and then teach your dd through whatever resources work best for her. Now, BW is really good for parent/children to learn together, since it is all about harnessing what you already know intuitively - knowledge which you have - and building on it, extending it and learning to use it in a conscious, deliberate way through a lifestyle that all ages can profit from. The idea is that you start with what you know - intuitive spoken ability with your native language - and start making that knowledge conscious, instead of just unconscious, so you can wield it on purpose, and not just be at the mercy of "sounds right/wrong but I don't have a clue why". You build the ability to say, "sounds right/wrong, and here's what I did that caused it to be that way". You are building skill in writing from the inside out - starting with what you already have, and learning to use it in with more and more conscious skill and deliberation, learning techniques that will deepen your knowledge and increase your skill the more you use them. But unlike more explicit rules-based programs, which want to build an external framework and practice it until you've internalized it (usually because they believe you are starting from scratch), BW wants to start with the internal framework that is already in place and build on it. It doesn't start with the explicit rules and such, but *ends* with the explicit rules, once you've fully internalized what that rule *is*. BW chooses to do so through creating a natural writing lifestyle - to introduce the new knowledge through the motivation of needing it to accomplish what you want to accomplish. However, you don't have to do it that way - you can add in more explicit teaching while still building on the internal framework. (Not to mention you can have a very "learn through doing real writing" approach while still coming from the perspective of building an external framework from scratch.) I do believe that BW equips both parents and children to learn and understand and use explicit rules, but it doesn't do that by *starting* with a list of external concepts to learn and apply. First it teaches you to be comfortable relying on your own intuitive knowledge (while building up that intuitive knowledge), so you don't feel like you *need* that external list of rules in order to "write right" ;). Only *then*, when you understand that rules can be helpful but aren't the end-all, be-all of writing, when you know how to make the rules work for *you*, not you work for the rules, does BW start introducing explicit rules. And then it's more like giving a name to an old friend, instead of learning some strange new language. Only when you don't need the rules any more are you ready to use them in a constructive way ;). But, if you still want the rules first, you can still use BW, but also first teach yourself the whys, or at least get yourself some good reference books on the whys and familiarize yourself with them enough that you can look things up as needed. That's what I'm doing, at any rate. Or you could use BW as your overall framework for LA - it's meant to create a writing lifestyle - and insert formal spelling/grammar/writing-exercises into the overall routine. Instead of teaching grammar strictly in context, you can do a formal grammar text, but within the overall BW framework that will help keep you focused on *why* you are studying grammar. Same for writing exercises. Anyway, the point is, you want to know the rules yourself and you want your dd to know them. You can either learn them first, or learn them together. You can learn them through the BW approach of "learn how to harness your intuitive knowledge in a conscious, deliberate way", or you can learn the rules in an explicit way and consciously practice them until they make sense on an intuitive level, whichever way works best for you. And you can use that knowledge to do BW with your dc, or go through an explicit rules approach with your dc, or both.

Sometimes Lutherans kinda get lost in the shuffle - people have this vague idea that we are sorta like evangelicals, but with a liturgy ;). So this group is for Lutherans and people interested in what Lutherans believe: come learn about the way of the first evangelicals :).

Thanks :) - I've actually been working on understanding and integrating Bravewriter and SWB/WWE on and off since last September - I've spilled all sorts of virtual ink trying to make sense of it all. Here's a post I made with some of my thoughts: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/442909-thoughts-analysis-on-integrating-wwe-and-bravewriter-approaches/ No idea how helpful it is for anyone but me, as it was the culmination of four months of musings - it might have a "dropped in the middle" feel to it :doh. But posting in case it is helpful, as it is at least my interpretation of how SWB and Bravewriter/Peter Elbow have answered some of those questions. Also, my reading list: WWE, by SWB ;) - the first few chapters, in particular, lay out her philosophy clearly, and in my linked post I went through it point by point, comparing it to Bravewriter/Peter Elbow and adding my conclusions The Writer's Jungle, by Julie Bogart (aka Bravewriter core book) Writing With Power, Writing Without Teachers, Vernacular Eloquence: What Speech Can Bring to Writing (excellent book, some of his draft chapters are at his website: http://works.bepress.com/peter_elbow/doctype.html#other ), Voice in Writing Again (PDF article: http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1022&context=peter_elbow ) - all by Peter Elbow I *love* Peter Elbow. Definitely of the "write for real only" camp, and extends his writing philosophy to life in general - his approach to writing is an extension of his approach to life, and that resonates with me. Very democratic in his leanings - everyone has something worth saying, and has the potential to say it with power - in contrast to the classical "focus on the most worthy of what has been said and thought". Why Johnny Can't Write, by Arthur Whimbey and Myra Linden He's definitely in the "go artificial exercises" camp; his methods of choice are text reconstruction and sentence combining. But he isn't really traditional, either - he believes a lot of the traditional grammar/writing exercises are ineffective, but he wants to replace them with effective methods, not do away with them entirely. Interesting counterpoint to SWB. Eta: also, wrt philosophy, Whimbey is much more practical and narrow in his writing philosophy than Bravewriter/Elbow - he just wants to teach kids to write, and never mind what they then go and use that skill to do. Whereas Elbow sees teaching writing as encompassing the entirety of writing, in fact as a subset of the entirety of life. And so Elbow's beliefs on other things - like the importance of authentic work instead of artificial exercises - comes into how he approaches teaches writing. And Whimbey disagrees with that - that rejecting empirically useful writing exercises because of a non-writing-based philosophical objection is beside the point wrt finding the best way to teach *writing*.

I am messing around trying to find mine. Some distinctions I've noticed that seem to be significant: How similar is standard written English to conversational spoken English? Are they more similar than different, so you can use how you naturally speak as a base for learning to write (Bravewriter)? Or are they more different than similar, so that learning to write standard written English is comparable to learning a foreign language (SWB)? Is "writing" significantly different from "learning to write"? AKA, can students learn to write by writing as writers do from the start, writing "for real" from the start (Bravewriter, writer's workshop). Or do beginners need to do things that experts don't do, in order to *become* experts (David Willingham is a cognitive scientist who maintains that experts are fundamentally different than beginners, and so having beginners act like experts do is *not* a very efficient, or effective, way to teach beginners to become experts). Related to the above, are artificial writing exercises, done solely to learn a new technique that you can then use later for your "real" writing, helpful or not? Do they allow for targeted, efficient practice of just the new technique, so you don't get bogged down in extraneous steps when you just want to practice this one thing? Or are they too artificial to transfer over to real writing? Or are certain types of exercises - for example, those using the real writing of others, perhaps, instead of "fake" writing; or those that allow students more freedom to choose topics of interest - more effective at promoting learning that transfers over to real writing than others? Do students need to do "real" writing - done because the student has something they want to say - as part of their school writing, to make sure they don't confuse "learning to write" with actual writing? If so, what is the appropriate ratio of "real" writing to "practice" writing, writing exercises that are strictly for the purposes of learning to write, and abandoned when mastered. If not, what is done to ensure that students are exposed to what real writing is (copious reading, biographies of writers)? How wide or narrow is the definition of "writing" when it comes to educational purposes? Strictly academic? Anything that is written: essays, letters, blogs, poems, stories? Some middle ground? What constitutes "appropriate" school writing assignments? Wrt spelling/punctuation/grammar-rules: drill until it is second nature, to get it right the first time? Or know enough to copyedit it to correctness at the end, but not worry about it until then? Know what you are going to write before you start to write it? Or using the process of writing itself to figure out what you wanted to say? Related: outline first, write second. Or write first, and then organize what you wrote (using an outline or other method of organization)? How important is formal, explicit grammar knowledge? How important is informal, intuitive grammar knowledge? And how do you teach grammar so that it transfers to writing? Anyway, I would search for some Bravewriter threads on the boards - it has a definite philosophy that is right on the surface, and is good to consider, whatever you do. Discussions on SWB's writing CDs and writing programs will probably outline her philosophy (and if you look at the sample of the instructor's text of WWE, it outlines her philosophy very clearly). Also, discussions of copy work/dictation/narration, and how SWB differs from Charlotte Mason in her use of those techniques. Those are the methods I've looked into most. Eta: I've really liked the discussions at kitchentablemath.blogspot.com - despite the name ;), they cover a lot of ground on writing, too. Eta: I've really enjoyed reading books and articles by Peter Elbow, some of which are on his website: http://works.bepress.com/peter_elbow/

I make the Baker's one bowl brownie recipe. Melt 4oz of unsweetened chocolate with 3/4 c butter (if you do this in the microwave, as I do, you want to just heat it until the butter is melted and then stir till the chocolate is completely melted). Add 2c of sugar. I then heat it in the microwave for 1-2m on 70% power, to help the sugar dissolve more (helps get that nice flaky crust on top). Add 1tsp vanilla (I use more like 1T), and three eggs. Add 1c flour (I use whole wheat - that makes them healthy ;)). Bake at 350 in an aluminum foil lined pan, greased. I bake for about half the time the recipe says - 17 min and they are just perfect. Not remotely overdone, yet not raw, and once they've cooled they stay together great.

If you are thinking of exploring the world of loosey-goosey writing ;) for inspiration and application, you might like Peter Elbow. He was one of the main inspirations for Bravewriter, and I've really enjoyed his books. He's as loosey-goosey as they come ;), but does have a core of discipline, too. His latest book, Vernacular Eloquence: What Speech Can Bring to Writing, is all about applying the virtues of conversational speech to writing. It's more (exceptionally awesome :)) ideas than nuts-and-bolts practicality, but that's how I like my books ;), and it makes it easier to apply to whatever nuts-and-bolts approach you like. He has some draft chapters of Vernacular Eloquence at his website, if you want to get an idea of where he is coming from: http://works.bepress...type.html#other . I've also really enjoyed his Writing With Power and Writing Without Teachers - in my experience, you can get a pretty good idea of whether you will like them from reading the samples.

Question: You are saying that your students *have* something they want to say wrt birthday cards and such, but they can't say it using the essay format. Could they say it orally? I mean, if you said, "Hey, what do you want to say to your mom for her birthday?", could they tell you *something*? And if so, why not write down exactly what they said, on a scratch sheet, and then use whatever they've learned wrt organizing thoughts and copyediting to tidy it up a bit. It's basically the middling stages of WWE - where the adult takes down their oral narration and then the kid copies part of it over. Also, I know you don't want loosey-goosey stuff, but Bravewriter et. al. are really good for this sort of thing - for harnessing what they *do* know - how to speak fairly coherently in their native language in familiar situations - and using that as the base for learning to write. It's expressly meant to avoid the very problem you ran into - where your rote knowledge of explicit rules has overruled your intuitive knowledge of language so that you write *worse* than you speak, are in fact worse off than if you'd never learned anything and just wrote exactly as you speak. Really, if they can say something to their mom to her face to wish her happy birthday, they can write a message in a birthday card. If they can say it, they can write it (assuming the physical ability to form letters/words is there, which it sounds like it is, since they can write an essay to a formula).

I'm doing apples with my dd6, and there've been some stretching problems - same basic concept, but now applied to much bigger numbers than anything we'd seen before. One example is when the book is talking about finding the number of objects in a set. All practice to this point had been with sets where you could find the answer by simply counting the members in the set. And then there's this problem, where it tells you that the set of all integers from 1-17 has seventeen members, and the set of all integers from 1-18 has eighteen members, and then asks you to come up with a set that has 500 members. My dd was stumped the first time we tried and the second time she came up with a perfectly valid answer, but still didnt get the pattern, even though I walked her through the examples. But she hadn't missed anything - she just couldn't make that conceptual leap right now. That is why I like doing it with her, though - I can help her make connections she wouldn't have gotten on her own.

Does your son know what a domain and codomain is? I mean, if the problem was to invent a function with the domain being the people in his house and the codomain being the integers from 1-100, could he do it? That he gets what he is trying to do, basically, but is just getting overwhelmed by the thought of *all* the natural numbers? If so, I don't know that he's missed anything, per se, just that this is a stretching sort of problem. (Although he might not quite get codomain entirely, as it's the answers that might *possibly* come out, not the answers that *will* come out so it's not a matter of having to invent a function with the *range* being all the natural numbers, but a function that will have a range of *some* of the natural numbers.) Bbl

I know this is an old thread, but here's the transcript for the video: http://mathprize.atfoundation.org/archive/2009/Rusczyk_Problem_Solving_Presentation_at_Math_Prize_for_Girls_2009.pdf Agree with pp - it's very much worth reading/watching :yes. (And worth bumping this thread for ;).)

I am using them with my new 4yo, mostly because she wanted to do lessons, too ;). She can't blend yet, so she just sounds out the individual letters and I then blend them together for her. We've only done the first ten lessons over the past six months or so (we repeat a lot) - I'm not terribly worried about progressing quickly, as this is mostly for fun atm. We were stuck on lesson 2 for quite a while, as it introduces 'b', and it took dd4 a long time before she could tell the difference between 'b' and 'd' (we did lessons 1 and 2 a *lot*). Anyway, I really like it. I especially like how it teaches how to make the letters with your hands, as that has helped both dd4 and dd6 learn the difference between b/d/p/g (in fact, through dd4's lessons I learned that dd6 had *no* idea that b/d/p were different letters, and having her make them with her hands helped teach her) and get an idea of directionality. It's been very effective at teaching dd4 her letters and sounds, which is what I was hoping for, and she loves the silly stories - she's always very excited to do her lessons.

One of the cognitive scientists who doesn't believe evidence currently exists to support the idea of learning styles believes most of the visible preferences are primarily a matter of ability than style (here's his brief FAQ on what he thinks: http://www.danielwillingham.com/learning-styles-faq.html). So it's not a visual-spatial *style*, but visual-spatial *ability* (sometimes paired with a relative weakness in auditory and/or sequential ability, sometimes not).

A couple thoughts: First, ITU the bolded - Dd6 is the same way. Fun, fun, eh? ;) Second, if he can successfully use the technique you were trying to teach him to do CWP problems without help, then I'd say he doesn't need any more teaching or practice exercises - the point of those are to build understanding, and so if he *has* that understanding, enough to do CWP, then I'd say he's had all the math *teaching* he needs, even if it was a sum total of 5 minutes with manipulatives. But he might benefit from working more *problems* - fluency can take time to build. I know that I understand math concepts easily, but it takes a lot of working with them before I really internalize them and can use them automatically. Now, I got by for a long time with rederiving everything I needed as I needed it, but eventually it just takes too much time, and you are too far behind everyone else, who learned all those intermediate skills to fluency. (STEM majors are unforgiving that way.) Anyway, all that to say that in your shoes I'd add more thinking-type problems. Zaccaro's Primary Challenge Math is rec'd a lot, and you can pull problems from MEP or CSMP, both free online, and with tons of problems that have you use concepts in new and novel ways. Also, I might try to require him to give his answer to the CWP problems in a full sentence, with units attached (which, if you look at the CWP worked examples, they do each time), if just orally. "Sally has 53 bunnies", not "53". Making sure you are answering the actual question is an important skill, and keeping units attached both is good practice for later and is a big help in keeping track of what you are doing. And it's exactly the sort of thing mathy kids like to skip as they race for the answer, and sooner or later it will bite them :doh.

This is an interesting article on loom knitting: http://knitty.com/ISSUEspring07/FEATloomknitting.html This one, too: http://isela.typepad.com/instructions/LoomKnittingBasics.pdf I hadn't really looked beyond the little instruction book - there's more potential than I realized. I do like my needles, though :).

I do enjoy knitting with needles (wooden ones are my favs, too :)) - I don't use the loom myself, except to show dd6 how to do it - but from attempting to teach her, the loom seems far more entry-level than the needles. I did tons of loom stuff and finger knitting as a kid (plus cat's cradle and string games), and I think all that was a big help in developing the kind of hand-eye coordination that knitting and crocheting call for - made them fairly easy to pick up.

I think loom knitting is easier to learn than knitting with needles, although I learned to knit with needles first, so I understood what I was trying to accomplish on the loom (what the stitches looked like). I actually got the loom as a starter thing for my dd6 - seems to be more forgiving wrt hand-eye coordination than knitting. All you need to sort out on the loom is how to wrap the yarn, while with needles you need to know how to wrap the yarn *plus* manipulate the needles and tension the yarn - the learning curve is higher, imo. ETA: Knitting with needles is a lot more versatile though - I think looms are pretty limited in what sorts of items you can make.

This is my favorite: http://www.joyofbaking.com/ApplePie.html - It has lots of butter, so you know it's good ;). It is the only pie crust I've had that I genuinely *liked* :). Also, general things that help re: making the crust - really keep it cold. All those places where they say to use ice water or cold butter or let it set in the fridge before working with it - they really mean it :giggle.

I think her reason for wanting to know the exact location sooner was so that she could judge if the inconvenience was going to be great enough that she'd rather drop out of the program at the semester break (which I'm guessing is in a few weeks) rather than having to deal with it.

Has your dd asked them, point blank, "hey, you say baby is ok at this size for xx weeks along. But my lmp and my 11wk ultrasound say I am actually xx+2 weeks along. If baby is really xx+2 weeks old, is the baby still ok at this size, or would you be worried?" Eta: my due date with ds1 was changed partly based on a pair of ultrasounds that both said he was three weeks farther along than my lmp indicated (and it really mattered, because he was being monitored for health issues, and his results were ok if the new due date were accurate, but worrisome if his old due date was accurate). The OBs asked me if I was sure about my dates or if the ultrasound dates could be plausible before officially changing my due date (after I told them that the ultrasound dates were plausible based on possible conception dates, and I wasn't sure on my lmp).

That happened to my dad in high school. Every year they had a new English teacher (new to the school and often new to teaching, too). On the first essay of the year, Dad would get Cs or Ds (his spelling and hardwriting are pretty bad, plus, per his comments, I don't know that he had a lot to say on typical English topics). And then the teacher would learn that Dad was "one of the smart kids", plus the son of a very talented, charismatic teacher at the school, and magically he'd get As on every subsequent essay ;). Helpful when it works for you, but sucks when it works against you :hug.

Koine's Anno Domini and Emmanel Lux - traditional hymns and carols (including Advent ones) set to very well done contemporary arrangements :). ETA: O Come, O Come Emmanuel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AvhPG17f6U&feature=plcp Also, love, love, love Piano Guys (they do both play the piano, though mostly one sticks to the cello)

We're using an older edition of Let's Read: A Linguistic Approach, by Bloomfield and Barnhart. I am using it a bit differently than intended, in that I explicitly teach the individual phonograms and have dd6 blend them together to read each word, while the program's intention is to present each word as a whole, using a lot of discrimination practice (man/mat, ban/man, ban/bin) and nonsense syllables in the early sections to allow students to correctly intuit the individual phonogram sounds (the stated reason is that phonemes don't exist in isolation, only in syllables - too easy to say /buh/ for /b/ - so they teach them inductivey through a careful presentation of one syllable words). After painfully teaching myself to blend as an adult (so I can learn Greek and Hebrew), I'm convinced that blending is an important skill to have. But the variety of practice in Let's Read is awesome for fluency practice, and their progression and presentation is wonderful (the authors' linguistics knowledge is evident, and put to good use).

Dd6 needed to start with -an, -at, -ad, etc. She knew all her letter sounds, but too many different combinations thrown at her at once threw her off. She needed to work through each possible -an combo to fluency before adding in -at words, then work those -at words to fluency before adding -ad words, etc. We spent thirty-six lessons gradually adding in all the different cvc combinations and practicing them to fluency - probably the equivalent of 75-100 beginner Bob books, in terms of amount of text - before adding in blends, and she needed every bit of it. (I figured out she needed that much practice through experience with faster programs.)

WRT voice in writing, I really enjoyed this Peter Elbow article: "Voice in Writing Again: Embracing Contraries" (free online here: http://works.bepress.com/peter_elbow/23/). He packed a ton of good, intriguing thoughts into it, all in very readable prose :).

I relate to this. I was never taught expicit grammar or explicit writing techniques - I write and punctuate entirely by feel (honed through the thousands of books I read as a kids). On the one hand, this has worked pretty well for me - generally, if something feels right it is. Otoh, if something feels wrong, I have zero idea what to do about it, and this lack has bothered me. So I was primed and ready to agree with the classical emphasis on explicitly teaching skills. In fact, for many years, I did not get the appeal of BW. Then somehow it clicked for me this May during one of the Hive's BW-fests ;), and I *got* it, in spades. And have been trying to reconcile my old love of classical with my new love of BW ever since ;). I think one thing was that I sort of took my intuitive language sense for granted - that the classical explicit skills focus would of course be *in addition to* an intuitive sense. It never occurred to me that not everyone naturally develops an intuitive language sense - I sort of thought it magically happened (much how many "develop intuitive sense and all will be well" advocates sort of assume that fluency in skills will magically happen - or at least that it can't be taught, much as some explicit skills folks assume that an intuitive sense can't be taught). You know, I think what I like about both approaches is that they say that the important things (from their perspective) can be taught. BW shows how to encourage and nurture an intuitive language sense and WWE shows how to teach and develop explicit skills (and to be fair, WTM as a whole has plenty of intuitive language sense building, but I can't recall how explicit SWB makes that point, and I don't think she addresses the related issue of building an intuitive math sense terribly much at all, at least not remotely as much as she addresses explicit skill building). You aren't left with the idea that huge swaths of important aspects are impenetrable to change - that they will, or won't, happen, and there's not a thing you can do about it. And as I think both explicit skills and an intuitive sense are vital, they make a great combo, because between the two of them, they show you how to nurture and teach both sides. Also, BW has the great, great aspect of showing how it all relates to the *point* of writing - the ultimate reason for learning all those skills and developing a language sense in the first place - because it allows you to do things worth doing. And here's how to do it.