OrdinaryTime
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Posts posted by OrdinaryTime
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HgWe just got back from it, too! It's HUGE! We really enjoyed it...until my four year old DD got lost. Scariest 30 minutes in my life lately. Security was so helpful, and she's fine. It may take mom a glass of wine or two to recover fully!
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Good for SWB! Now I'm feeling very happy I just bought The Writer's Jungle a few weeks ago.
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I was thinking last night - very tangential - but my husband and I have very similiar Myers-Briggs personality tests as well, EXCEPT for the Judging/Percieving measure. I am 100% J; he is 100% P. It seems his ability to see the big picture so clearly really facilitated his math abilities long term, though I think his elementary teachers thought he was slow because he didn't care to do the repetitive work. He didn't get bogged down slavishing following formulas while my inner J-ness loved math in elementary because I found it so predictable and could just follow the steps. I gloried in following the steps. :) But it hurt me later on when it came to problem-solving. Anyway, I can see how early formal introduction of math algorithims could be particularly harmful to my particular personality. Just rambling here!
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I was talking to my husband about his last night (I keep trying to make him read the Benezet article!) trying to ferret things out. He has amazing natural number sense. His estimation abilities are so good, he can often estimate an almost perfectly correct answer. He hardly ever attacks a math problem without first estimating. I remember doing estimation workbook pages in elementary school and wondering what was the point. It just seemed silly to me to estimate when you could just do the problem and get the exact answer. This summed up my whole approach to math - just get the exact answer. I didn't even see, much less care, how quantities related to each other, how to "play" with them, or anything. I'm just not sure if the wild difference between my husband and I are more nature or nuture. We have similiar IQs (though he is more intelligent) and similiar elementary educations. He definitely has better math "genes" than me. I don't know, but I find the whole concept fascinating.
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Hmmm... I rocked at oral presentations. It was a big deal to my dad that we speak well in public so we practiced at home and then started competing through 4-H in Illustrated Talks in 3rd grade. I - and all my siblings - always won our county competitions and even won state and national competitions a few times. We all are horrible at math. I mean, huge gaps between our math abilities and language abilities. It could just be that even though we had very good "reading, reciting, and reasoning" training, our math training was actually so bad it pulled us backward.
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I definitely think your experience is fairly normal, Eleanor, which is why I always recommend the book with a disclaimer. The first part of the book should be chewed on for quite sometime - probably a few years - before one reads the second part. Even then I think you can take or leave the second half of the book depending on your temperament The first part is about becoming the kind of woman who can, as you say, write her own rule. The second part of the book may be helpful to some who really, really lack organizational skills or who really like pre-made schedules and ideas, but it's not much good to anyone if the first half of the book doesn't really sink in. If one takes her organizational advice as a recipe to holiness, well, that is not going to work. BTDT!:tongue_smilie:
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However,at the same time, I excelled with English expression, reading comprehension, reasoning in written communication, etc., all the activities that Benezet focuses on to supercede early math programs. So I'm not sure simply doing more reasoning and communicating outside formal math is the whole answer, though it certainly wouldn't hurt. I'm very interested in Benezet's ideas about the importance of estimation and general thinking about quantities in a second-nature fashion. I do not think this way at all, which is why I often was like the kids' in Benezet's examples who don't realize they are waaaaaay off on an answer. My husband, on the other hand, has these kinds of abilities in spades - and is excellent at math. This seems to be the crux to me.
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I'm :bigear:.
I read the Benezet article in January and was very intrigued. I could relate personally to his descriptions of students trying to find the right operation to use in problem, like operation roulette. That was me in middle school, even though I was at the top of the class in math. I understood the operations very well - even conceptually - but in isolation. I had almost no ablilty to actually problem solve in concrete circumstances. Which made me a very lousy MathCounts team member.:tongue_smilie: I think my schooling was partly to blame for this outcome. I was almost trained not to think through my math education, but to simply apply formulas.
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The first audiobooks I started my kids on were collections of short stories, not full chapter books: Frog and Toad, Little Bear, the Frances books. The kids would hold the books and follow along with the pictures while reading. The language is modern with uncomplicated sentence structure for early readers. After listening to these types of collections for awhile, my kids were able to move on to the Little House books, Mr. Popper's Penguins, Charlotte's Web, etc. with relative ease.
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The second half of the book is extremely practical. It goes through step-by-step how she created her own rule of life. It goes through making daily, monthly, and yearly schedules. Making zillons of lists for all kinds of things! I think she has lots of good ideas in this section, but trying to exactly re-create it may not work for many moms. If your able to take what works for you, I think it is very valuable. I especially caution very young moms with just babies and toddlers who read it; her schedules work better when you have some older kids, too, and not just little ones on very unreliable nap schedules!
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I think Mother's Rule is a very solid book. The first half is more inspirational/big picture. She talks about her journey to the Lord, marriage, motherhood, homeschooling, etc. How she found herself completely burned out with 5 kids in January who were going to be on that school bus the next day or else. She shares her way out of the chaos of her soul and home. She outlines an extremely helpful way to begin bringing order into your spiritual, emotional, and home life by setting priorities in this order: God, Self, Spouse, Children, Home. You then would write your own "rule of life" - almost like a religious order - based upon this heirarchy. I found that part of the book most helpful to me long-term.
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I think the Mother's Rule has the opposite problem; it is a little too detailed. Many young moms read it and feel if they don't implement Holly's entire organizational program exactly like she does, they are total failures. I don't think that is Holly's intent, but is does seem to happen often. I think it is kind of what happens to folks with WTM; they read it and think they must slavishly do everything in the book exactly as written with the exact resources. Then a couple of years later when everything is crashing and burning, they listen to SWB talk about her ideas and realize she didn't mean for them to follow it like a recipe, but serve as a general road map.
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Re the comment about the poor clueless priest in confession: a good friend of mine's husband teaches at a large, solid Catholic seminary. She is generally appalled at the ignorance of the seminarians about "real" family life and marriage. Now she hands out Holly Pierlot's A Mother's Rule of Life and Danielle Bean's Mom to Mom, Day to Day as ordination gifts. :) She figures the new priests can at least read them and have some idea what the moms coming into confession might actually be struggling with in their lives and maybe point them in the right direction.
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Ha, I actually know who "Laura" is IRL. I roomed with her SIL in college. Her family is a riot! Best facebook friends in the world. And can I just say that Simcha Fisher is my favorite person on the internet.
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Thanks for sharing!
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I was raised Catholic by a loving mother who kept a beautiful home and let me understand the value of creating a home and a devout father who read me all the right books - and I can barely make it through some days! I really can't imagine doing it without the guidance I was given. You ladies impress me.
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Oh, I have several IRL friends who have struggled for years trying to figure out homemaking skills/methods/rhythms that I find second nature thanks to my mom's training and example. Either their mothers hadn't the time/ability to be full-time homemakers or their mothers were home, but didn't value the role and pretty much worked to ensure their daughters did NOT gain any homemaking skills and focused solely on preparing them for a "serious" career. Plus many of these moms are often converts to the Faith. New to Catholicism, to living the liturgical year, to having lots of kids and thinking that could be a good thing, to being a homemaker....and then add homeschooling on top of all that!! I can't believe some of these women are still sane. They have my utmost respect.
Cont.
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Just a note: I'm in NO WAY advocating that girls' are only given home ec courses and no real education! I know there is that mindset out there, and I wholly reject it!! I do think that homemaking is a real skill, though, and we shouldn't just think that by getting married and giving birth a woman is going to magically be infused with homemaking knowledge. It is something that needs to be taught and formed in a person if they want to do it well.
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Sounds great! I heard Ginny Seufert talk last year at our Catholic homeschool conference in VA. She is a kick! Funny and helpful and humble. Loved her. I love how she addresses the whole issue that a whole generation of women recieved no formation in homemaking, which is really a special skill. Our generation was trained for careers, and then when we find ourselves at homes with zillions of kids and mountains of laundry and piles of dishes - and no clue how to orchestrate the whole mess into a peaceful, joyful home. There is a real generational poverty here, and I'm so glad she points it out.
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Oh no! I will keep praying.
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I read TI aloud to my 7 year old this year. Not a total winner, but not a complete stinker either. The language is a stretch, but the plot keeps moving. I think it a better choice than RC. I haven't read CC.
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I'm glad to see you here, Faithr! It's great to have more homeschooling veterans sharing their wisdom!
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Elizabeth Foss has some lesson plans to go along with Ruth Heller's books. They don't cover all the books, but are a great way to get you started. I plan to do a similiar introduction to grammar as you, momto2Cs, using Ruth Heller's books and Sentence Island. My kids are very young, though, and we are just starting grammar. Foss has some good ideas in her plans for older kids, though, and how to cover grammar using their own writing and current reading.
Is anyone else going to the USA Science & Engineering Festival in D.C.
in K-8 Curriculum Board
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Thanks! My heartrate is finally back to normal.
We brought our own lunches, which was fine. No security checks of bags. We parked in a small lot on New York Ave, just 1/2 block from the main entrance. It was $20 for the day. Expensive, but very easy and no worries about feeding the meter. The best route in from the south or west was taking 395 in, getting off at Mass. Ave, taking a right on 6th, and then left on New York Ave. Getting home was even faster. New York Ave. straight to 395 North.