Deniseibase
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Posts posted by Deniseibase
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The Epic of Gilgamesh is the only Sumerian literature I can think of, you might try the Ludmila Zeman picture book trilogy. It's a bit more kid-friendly - Shamhat is not longer a temple courtesan, but a 'city favorite', etc - a little more appropriate for 11 than the original! :D
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Thank you again for the suggestions! We've had a lot of short talks about effort and study lately - including a very humorous one last week in which she was informed that her 5 year old brother, who had just put in a good 20 minutes of serious labor into his handwriting, was actually working much harder than she was because she was interrupting herself to get up from the table, pet the dogs, ask unrelated questions, etc!! I think a long talk may be in order - I DON'T see her turning away from a math related field, math has always been her 'thing', but she's always wanted to be an inventor or engineer, and just in the last few months, since she took a problem solving in math class with our co-op, she's been making a few noises about majoring in math. Maybe she's just trying out a lot of different things in her head and feels like making a change would commit her one way or the other? Or maybe she's just being pre-pubescent? Or maybe she's just being rambling and confused like her mother? :)
Thanks for all the advice while I ramble my way through this, you guys are great, glad I found this board!
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It's an older one, but have you seen Stand and Deliver? Also older, but we LOVE October Sky.
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Here's our current plans for 6th grade - still finishing up 5th so this could change!
Math - AoPS Pre-Algebra (not the online class, probably), no idea if this will take all year or just a semester not having seen the book yet tho! We're switching from Saxon PreAlgebra, which she is finishing up now.
English -Saxon Grammar & Writing 6, plus an hour of reading on her own of her own choice of books every day, and I will continue reading aloud to her every day from MY choice of books. Still deciding for writing - IEW? Bravewriter? Online class or work on our own? Still deciding....
History - SOTW 4, with lots of historical fiction to supplement and the test booklet, and using the ABCOQ method of note-taking
Science - Holt Science and Technology Physical Science AND our co-op is doing Joy Hakim's The Story of Science all year, so I'm planning on syncing the two up together as much as I can.
Latin - Latin for Children 2
Chinese - continue with the tutor we have worked with for 6 years.
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Yay! Glad you had a great day!
One thought tho - you said you were pleased that things took less time than you had scheduled, then later you said you couldn't go down rabbit holes every day - why not? Your kids are young, rabbit holes will teach them PLENTY, and hey, sounds like you might be able to make time for them in the schedule after all, right? :D Take it from me - in a few years you will be hard-pressed to find time for rabbit holes between martial arts, co-op classes, homeschool support group, and all that other stuff - enjoy that you have time for it while you can!!
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It doesn't seem to be a matter of what *I* consider challenging - it's what my daughter considers challenging, and as she is an 11 year old girl, that varies on the whim of the moment I think! :) There are many methodologies I would consider challenging - even Saxon would be challenging for her if she were working at a higher level. I'm not so much concerned about methodology as her maturity. I think AoPS would be a good fit for her because she DOES like math puzzles quite a lot - as long as I don't call them school!! :) So I guess what I'm really trying to get at is, I need some hints for leading this child into more challenging work of ANY kind, and the four options in my original post are simply four approaches I am considering to get her past the immaturity problem so that she can be working to her ability rather than trying to coast along with work that is so easy for her that even she acknowledges it is way too easy. Does that make more sense? Sorry to be so unclear, this really is something that I'm figuring out as I go along and talk about it, so I HOPE I am becoming more clear as I read people's posts and realize there are aspects that I hadn't thought of before! :)
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Kokotg, YES - thank you for helping my clarify this to myself! She is resistant to challenging herself in general IF she thinks it is 'education'!!! :-) That's what I'm hoping to be able to cajole her past - we've actually done several of the problems on the middle school forum on the AoPS site, and she enjoys them, but we've been doing it in the car, while dad is driving I looked up problems on my phone to entertain her on the car ride. BUT if I sat down this morning and said 'OK, for math we are doing some problems from the website' and gave her the EXACT same problems, she would sulk. She likes math puzzles - she just doesn't like it when we call it 'school'!!! :-)
Maybe I should just have dad drive us around all day so we can work on harder math ;-P
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The Story of Doctor Dolittle
the Oz books
loads of fairy tales - I like the Lang Fairy books
Andrew Lang's Arabian Nights or Tales of Troy and Greece
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I honestly think it depends on what they want to do. If you give my 5 year old ds lots of free time to explore what he likes, he will look at his dad's books and try to sound out words, ask for the pocket microscope to go outside and look at plant parts, and go through 27 pages in his math book, all on his own in the space of a morning. If, on the other hand, I gave my dd, now age 11, a morning to do what she liked when she was five, she would spend the entire time watching TV cartoons. (She does not now show nor has at any time ever shown any interested in making cartoons, drawing, filming, or anything that would make her interest in TV 'professional'.) Needless to say, my daughter's educational path is considerable more structured than my son's at this time! :-)
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Thank you all, for the advice so far! (Keep it coming! :-)
I should mention, since I wasn't very clear in the original post, I'm not planning on having her do the AoPS online courses at this time - I hope she'll want to work up to them, but it doesn't seem like the best choice while she's still uncertain about the material.
We tried LoF - borrowed the Fractions book from a friend - she's not a big reader, so it didn't go over well. She'd MUCH rather 'do' math than 'read' about it! She catches on to concepts really fast - usually with the Saxon lessons, she wants to barely glance at the sample problems and charge ahead - *I'M* the one telling her to slow down and read the whole lesson!! But, a fast pace with minimal text seems to work for her. I know AoPS has a lot of text to read, but it seems like it has enough problems in the text that it will work for her. I like that the chapters START with exercises - that will satisfy her desire to dive right in, it'll just be a matter of teaching her to 'keep reading onward' when she gets stuck.
Anyway, keep the opinions coming, I really appreciate all the input, everyone's ideas are helping me clarify what I want from the situation - thanks!!
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I have a 5th grade dd who is very good in math - she is finishing Saxon Prealgebra & can do most of the problems in her head, she scored in the top 1% for math on the EXPLORE test, she tries to think of formulas to find all the prime numbers, etc. So I'm always looking for math opportunities for her and recently heard about AoPS.
HOWEVER - she is still pretty immature, hates to write out her math problems, and has flat out said that the reason she likes Saxon is because it's 'easy-peasy' and she doesn't have to think to do it. (NOT words to win over your mom, kiddo!) I was looking at AoPS Intro to Geometry the other day and trying to solve some of the first chapter exercises with my husband, and she got very interested & started trying to come up with a solution - UNTIL my husband let it slip that we were looking at this as curriculum for her and she 'downed tools' and said it was boring and went off. I think a lot of it is that she is afraid to fail - she gets very upset if she misses any problem and our school motto seems to be 'But honey, if you already KNEW this stuff, why would we waste your time making you learn it?'
I know she NEEDS a challenge, but it's difficult to see how to give her one that she'll GET something out of when she doesn't WANT a challenge. I can assign her AoPS Intro to Algebra in the fall, and she would do the work, but with AoPS being the discovery method, I'm worried she will not get much out of it if HER interest isn't there, or that the first 'hard' problem will make her declare herself a failure...
Surely I can't have the only underachieving gifted kid out there! :001_smile: Any advice?
Finally, given what I've said above, what would you suggest for the fall?
Option 1 - continue with Saxon Algebra (her choice)
Option 2 - switch to AoPS Prealgebra when it comes out - the thought here is that yes she already knows most of the material, so it will be a gentler introduction to the AoPS method and we can focus on improving her attitude and work habits for a bit - then switch to AoPS Intro to Algebra when we finish the Prealgebra book.
Option 3 - switch to AoPS Prealgebra for a quick run-through, and then back to Saxon Algebra for the bulk of the year. This would expose her to the more challenging method, but give her another year to mature and work where she feels comfortable.
Option 4 - switch her straight to AoPS Intro to Algebra and make her suck it up and do the work. (my husband's choice - I think this will just make her hate math if we force her to do something she's not emotionally mature enough for - am I being too soft?)
Option 5 - I am open to suggestions! :001_smile:
Thanks for any advice!
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Have to throw out --- http://www.scienceforhighschool.com/index.shtml
Great, great high school science program.
Is this secular or Christian? I can't tell from her website.
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Well, I don't know that Saxon Grammar would be any less boring, but I would think it would be rigorous enough. As far as diagramming, we have just finished the 5th grade book - diagramming is introduced in lesson 32 and there are two diagrams per day for each of the next 80 lessons. By the end of the year we were doing sentences like "During the spring, we tourists viewed the magnificent beauty of the Grand Canyon from different locations in Arizona." There's not really any fluff, if by fluff you mean sidebars and extra activities and all that sort of stuff you find in school textbooks. There are three or four Mad Libs type exercises, but we liked those because they were quite specific - they would ask for "present tense action verb" or "concrete singular compound noun" instead of just "noun" or "verb", so dd did actually have to think.
I don't know how it would sync up to Rod & Staff, but there are samples online on the Saxon website - http://saxonhomeschool.hmhco.com/en/products/default.htm?level2Code=M0007
HTH!
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I am a teacher at my co-op for the 11-14 age range. We do five six-week sessions each year, with each session being on a different topic. This year the favorite classes for my age range were The Great Chocolate Caper (from a book put out by Prufrock Press, can't remember the author, sorry), a math puzzle class based on Paul Zeitz's The Art of Problem Solving (NO connection to the AoPS textbooks!), and a class called Spy School which taught beginning formal logic in the context of spy missions - it took for instance the classic Lady or the Tiger kind of problems and turned them into Spy or Bomb puzzles.
The one thing all these classes had in common is that the teachers were VERY enthusiastic about their topic, really seemed to think there was a lot of importance, and communicated that enthusiasm to the kids. So if you are looking for topics for a co-op class, I'd say the most important thing is to pick something you are yourself excited about and make it into a class.
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Has he read Eragon yet?
Terry Pratchett? I'd start with The Wee Free Men for a kid that age, the whole Tiffany Aching trilogy would be suitable though.
You could also go with something classic in the fantasy line - Tolkien or The Once and Future King?
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I'm one of those people who used the grammar & dropped the writing. Here's a couple typical assignments to explain why it had my dd in tears -
"What school subject do you think is most important? Why?" (journaling exercise)
Expository essay ideas: "Give instructions for making a breakfast that you like." "Explain how three people have positively affected your life."
These are not BAD ideas, but there's not much there to spark the fun, y'know?
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I have a similar DD - she flew through Saxon K & 1 & started 2 in kindergarten, made me skip most of Saxon 3 because it was 'too easy!', and did Saxon 54 in second grade. Now she is in 5th grade and finishing Saxon Algebra 1/2 and has slowed down a little bit. Earlier this year she encountered some issues with the distance formula and some problems with adding like terms, and we were able to take some extra time and really focus on going over those over and over until she thoroughly understood them. Eventually, no matter how smart your kids are, they will run into things that challenge them - and if you let them fly through the stuff that is easy, you will feel SO much less panicked when you have to slow down for a bit to ensure understanding on something harder! You won't run out of math to do - you may have to switch or add curriculum - we are switching to AoPS next year because otherwise at this rate she will run out of Saxon in 9th grade - but as long as your focus is making sure the kids understand and retain everything, let them go at whatever pace works best.
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I use Hake/Saxon Grammar - best LA decision I ever made for my grammar and writing hating dd! We had studied grammar for 4 years and she had no idea what a verb was - I was ready to cry. We just finished Hake/Saxon 5 (the first book, meant for fifth graders), and she knows now - plus a lot of other stuff! I'm not familiar with R&S but have also heard that Hake/Saxon is much like it.
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I have had a similar problem. My dd was a reluctant reader, and it has been difficult to get her to read anything challenging - last year, in fourth grade, all she wanted to read all year was Rainbow Fairy and Pixie Hollow books....
My solution was to let her read whatever she wanted on HER time, but to read some selected REALLY good books to her aloud. At first this did not get a good response!! But I have noticed recently that she is being more attentive of the read-alouds - we are currently reading Amos Fortune and have had several good discussions, initiated by HER, that tell me she is really thinking. Also, over the past year, her taste in books has improved somewhat - she is currently reading Eragon. I hope next year to be able to encourage her to read more classics if she can pick them out herself.
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I am currently doing SOTW3 with my fifth grader. It works fine for her. I found the activity book was really not very useful for this age, although the SOTW4 activity book looks like a better fit. We supplement heavily with a lot of historical fiction - fortunately, for that time period, with a fifth grader, there are TONS of WONDERFUL novels! We have read most of The Royal Diaries series, the Girls of Many Lands series, several Newbery books like Carry On, Mr Bowditch and Amos Fortune: Free Man, the Sign of the Sugared Plum series, By the Great Horn Spoon!, and more. Next year also looks to be full of great historical fiction :-) I'd say go for it - it's pretty easy to 'kick it up a notch'!
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We have tried EVERYTHING. Classical Writing, Bravewriter, Saxon Grammar & Writing (we like the grammar part), WWE, a couple others that I can't even remember, plus of course the fallback option of mom saying "Good heavens, I was an English major, this isn't that hard, I'll just make something up" and I'm sure you can guess how well THAT went! :eek: She HATES it - she's a big math whiz, but getting her to write is like pulling teeth! I have gotten her to the point where she can write a sorta mechanically correct sentence, and string a few of them together to the point where she makes a paragraph, but it's a paragraph like this one - "James was Mary's son so after Mary died he became king of Scotland. Later, Queen Elizabeth died. James was the only person left in her family. So James was a king of England." I swear that is some of her best work, too. A lot of it seems to be the mechanical act of writing, whether with a pen, pencil, or typing, seems to wear out her hands very fast. But even if I have her dictate to me and I write down the words, we end up with very mechanical pieces - which confuses me because she is very creative in ordinary conversation and playing with friends!
So, will IEW help? If so, where do we start - I've been to the website and just got CONFUSED. Can we use IEW with our current grammar program (Saxon Grammar, which I am NOT switching from because it makes sense to her and she is LEARNING it for the first time ever!)? We are a secular family - is IEW very religious?
Thanks for any help!
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Thank you to regentrude & HSDCY for explaining in more detail, that really helps! I KNEW I was missing SOMETHING :-D !!!
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Matroyshka, thanks! I think that's my dilemma - she's NOT too young for Algebra proper, but I'm afraid if we go from Saxon Prealgebra to AoPS Algebra, that on top of imminent puberty would be too much change! :-) But I'm afraid if we spend another whole year on Prealgebra, she will be bored, even with challenging problems and more theory, just because she does already know the material.
Sigh. I don't know why I let myself fret about these things before I've even seen the books :-)
Help Me Select Literature For My DD
in Logic Stage & Middle Grade Challenges
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That sounds JUST like my daughter except for the no talking animals part!! For my dd, it was the Warriors series that finally got her to make the jump from beginning chapter books like Rainbow Fairies to 'real' books, but the Warriors books have talking cats. Other books my daughter likes are the Pixie Hollow books & the Daughters of the Sea series. She also has liked a lot of historical fiction like Dear America and the Royal Diaries, have you tried any of those?