thebacabunch
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Posts posted by thebacabunch
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So we are using AoP prealgebra with my 7th grader. She is not highly interested in math. However, she is much better at math than she thinks. What works so well with AoP for her is that she can try to the problems before learning how to do them. That is how she wanted to do math all through our Singapore years and she was very frustrated that she couldn't. She often gets the math in AoPs the first time. She can often figure out the problems without instruction. I will say, though, that we spend A LOT of time going over the math because it is challenging. It is very different than the plug and play type of math instruction I received. Does she run to get her math book every day? Nope. Is she in love with Algebra and planning to become a nuclear physicist? Not even close, lol. Do I wonder if the AoPs approach is the right approach? Every single day. However, I am starting to see the things from previous chapters integrated into the newer chapters and she gets the things that she struggled with a little way back. The way it is being taught is so logical and so thought provoking that her math strengths (critical thinking and analysis) are appreciated as much as her math weaknesses (math fact memorization and calculation) are the focus in other programs. She can see her good math abilities and feel motivated to work on her weaknesses. KWIM? I feel like I am addressing her strengths and weaknesses.
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Hey, anyone in the Sacramento area? I am in a very VERY rural area right now and we will be relocating sometime within the next year. Anyone know of any LDS homeschool groups there? Anyone here from the area?
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Many of us have tried to be kind, tactful, and clear about why things are the way they are. You seem very set on being upset. Being upset isn't going to change anything. The rules of the group are what they are. You are not owed and invitation or an explanation. They don't want families that don't have a school aged kid. That is that. End of story. They aren't big fat meanies for not including people who don't fit the criteria of their group. Enjoy the rest because when you start homeschooling your life will be never ending taxi driving and a level of exhaustion that you cannot imagine. You will be worrying about how you can keep your house clean enough so cps doesn't knock on your door. You will be frantically trying to throw something edible together with a little nutritional value for a meal. You will be tearing your heart out wondering if you are making the best choices for your family.
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MCT is written for the gifted student. Many many gifted students do not need intensive mechanics study of grammar and writing. The ability to form good sentences is instinctive for many gifted students who pick up the mechanics of good writing from reading good literature and studying good essays. That is why these students are considered gifted. That is the population that MCT is writing for. In jr high and high school I was in the honors/gifted program and very little of our time was spent on mechanics or even the study of grammar. We would write essays that would be marked with the corrections that needed to be made. Errors were noted and synthesized. Writing improved. The bulk of our time was spent memorizing Latin and Greek roots, reading and discussing the classics and poetry, and writing not creatively but academically. Sound familiar? If you have used MCT it will. When I discovered MCT I felt like I found a long lost friend. Did the lack of intensive grammar study become a stumbling block in college? Not at all. I always got A's in college English. It was not a struggle.
I will say, though I embrace all of the upper level books with adoration, I do not use his Advanced Academic Writing. Writing is at the very core of academic study and have found the AAW to be lacking. I was actually taught more in the style of SWB and love WWS.
My 7th grader has been doing WWW for a few short weeks and her everyday vocabulary is now sprinkled with words straight from the text and she doesn't even realize it. :laugh:
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One of the biggest reasons to test a kids for giftedness is to have the knowledge you need to help gifted kids with the downside of giftedness. Often gifted kids are very sensitive and have behaviors that almost mimic asd. We are in the process of having our oldest dd tested (iq) by a child psychologist who specializes in childhood education. Though she is still combing through hours of test results, she has already told us that my daughter is gifted.
My dd is having real struggles with the sensitivity that often accompanies giftedness. Sometimes being unable to relate to her non gifted peers and constantly reading into the nuances and subtext of everything while her brain is still developing leaves her vulnerable to depression. When she has to work hard to figure something out she turns inward and gets angry with herself because she is so used to everything coming to her easily. She often feels isolated and is constantly complaining that everyone outside of her family treats her like a little kid (they don't, I have seen some of the situations she talks about. Mostly she is smarter than most of the adults she is around but is enough of a kid at 13 to think they are talking down to her when in actuality they are treating her like they treat other adults).
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Intelligence has to do with genetics, not Asperger's. People on the autism spectrum are as varied in intelligence as everyone else. Many of the things you are thinking are signs of Asperger's sound like being a teenage boy and a sibling.
Autism should be diagnosed. It is a relief for most people to find out they have it. I know it is for my 8 year old. That is where you need to start. Start by googling autism resources and your nearest big city for a start. Resources will pop up.
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most AP students cram before the tests and lose almost all of it immediately. History is a lifelong subject. It is subjective. I can't think, outside of doing well on college entrance exams or becoming a history professor, of a reason that we humans need to memorize names and dates. I think that would kill my love of history completely. History is such a gorgeous subject. I believe it is best savored in the sights, tastes, sounds, etc. Just my 2 cents.
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We don't. However, we do discuss when different artists, writers, and composers lived when we reach that point in history. I am still blown away thinking about Chopin composing his nocturnes at the same time that banjo music was taking off in America, lol.
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I am actually fascinated by my reaction to my least favorite subjects when I find really good books, curriculum, resources etc. on said subject. I gain an appreciation for them. I loathed math. I was confident that I could teach my kids because I got good grades in math, but I detested it. Once I started teaching my oldest Singapore math I started to find amazement in mathematics. I use tricks I am learning from math in my day to day life all the time. My husband is an engineer, for carps sake, and even he gets a little turned on by my kids math books and the different ways to do things. Things he now sees and does in a different way. Now I am fascinated with it. It can still be hard. My math leaning 8 year old and I were laughing because we found the angle mazes in BA to be so dang hard. I have to read my oldest dd's textbook chapters 2 or 3 times to get how to present it, but when I do the light bulb moment is magic.
I hated chemistry. All it took was reading about photosynthesis from Ellen Mchenry's Botany book for me to finally understand how chemistry works. I walk around looking at trees and plants like I am in on a big secret. I totally understand, PERFECTLY, how photosynthesis works. My chemistry classes were overflowing with information but so bland and out of context that I could have cared less. Now I understand how chemical changes work.
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The key for me is searching. Searching, searching, searching until I find curriculum that teaches me. When I learn to be excited about my subjects my kids see my enthusiasm. We have precious time together learning things.
My most hated subjects have become my favorite to teach. Maybe it's because I am learning about these subjects, REALLY learning them for the first time.
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Here is a perspective that I haven't heard yet: the kids. I taught my girls to read when they were 3.5 to 4 years old. They could write and do simple addition by the time they were 5 and ready for kindergarten. I wouldn't have joined a homeschool group then and here is why; with kids, maybe more so with homeschooled kids, there are rights of passage that mean something to them. Even though I had been schooling my kids for a couple of years and I was going to homeschool I didn't consider myself a homeschooling parent until my kids peers started kindergarten and my kids were legally opted out of our local ps. My kids felt so grown up and in a new phase of their life and now they were involved in a new community. Yes, siblings of homeschool aged children are often included at activities that are not open to families without homeschool aged children. This is typical of many communities. I know parents take younger siblings to the local ps activities for families like carnivals, etc. because it is a family event for the school kids. kwim
Also, it can be exhausting for hs parents to have some discussions with well meaning and eager future hs parents because these discussions go beyond the preference and highlight level with the occasional question about implementation of bits and bobs of a certain text to a discussion about philosophy, how to do homeschooling, etc.
I myself am excited when a friend or family member asks about homeschooling and I will sometimes give ideas or books to read, etc. I do think that a group led by a coop leader or a parent who's kiddos are done homeschooling and still have interest in being involved in homeschooling could start groups for those interested in homeschooling or in having a mentoring relationship. Maybe as an adjunct, a group for the preschoolers to get to know each other.
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The only counseling I do with my kids is explaining why I choose the books and curriculum that I do, which is to prepare them for college. I take their interests and expound on future career options with their interests. I show them the salaries of different professions and the vast difference in paycheck for high school grads compared to college grads. This is more than my high school counselor ever did for me. I think you sound like a very tuned in mom who wants to ignite a love for learning in her kids. Good for you!
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Interesting responses all. I wasn't even talking about my feelings about cc in general, just the responses I have gotten from parents and teachers about how rigorous it is and how hard the kids have to work. I just wasn't able to empathize with their point by point complaints about things being too hard. I wasn't seeing it. I actually feel bad about the math comment I made about my kiddo. It sounded a bit braggy braggerson when in reality it wasn't a good comparison as she has ASD and is good in math. She is in 3rd grade and still not able to write a paragraph, lol.
I, personally, have many problems with cc as I did with the last standards. That is why I homeschool. I was thinking about what I do with my kids, as well as what many many of you that I have seen on the boards do above and beyond what I do, and it is still far more rigorous than what common core expects of kids. I think the kids doing cc that started another way will have a bumpy transition and that the teachers will as well. I think cc math misses the whole point of Asian math while trying to ape and supercede Singapore math by trying to make the kids focus on the minutia while missing the breadth and depth of Singapore math. I used Singapore math as the example because it is the program cc writers were using as a framework for their own math criteria. I think that parents and teachers in the US do need a wake up call that they are woefully behind the mark as far as expectations and standards for our kids. The only kids who seem to sometimes get a bang up education are in AP classes. Our kids in the US are soooooo behind other countries. That is why we import so many doctors, scientists and engineers from other countries with higher standards. We have the population in the US to fill every one of those STEM positions but not enough who can go the distance.
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I was just reading an article about gifted children and how to know if they are gifted. Based from what I read, one option to know that your child or children are gifted is to wait and see whether teachers at your children's school would recommend a testing for gifted education program. Perhaps, this entails taking IQ tests, review of past grades and test scores, and observation from teachers. However, teachers' points and observations should not be the entire basis. As much as possible, parents should be the first ones to see the children's potential. Our insights and perceptions on our children are also important since they can help us in choosing the best school for the children.
A bit challenging for homeschoolers, lol/
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4th grade was the beginning of math drama here too. Poor kiddo! I started giving my dd candy and corn chips to munch on during math with lots of breaks. I started rewarding her for a positive attitude (she was getting so frustrated that tears, tantrums, book throwing, pencil breaking behaviors were common). I am enjoying my 3rd grader this year because next year is THE year when math gets really hard. Hang in there mama. You aren't alone!
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So now that school is back in session around the US I am hearing and seeing a lot of complaints from parents about the new common core standards and how unreasonable they are. I keep reading about mounds of homework and crying children. I am not interested in following the common core, per se, so I haven't really looked at the scope and sequence, reading lists, etc. Curious to see if we were actually up to standards now, I decided to give a look see at the new standards. I am now a little concerned for our nations students if the students, teachers, and parents think these new standards are so unreachable. The math is very similar to Singapore math. Maybe a tad easier actually. The parents and teachers are complaining that the kids are having to learn multiple strategies for solving math problems. One of my favorite things about Singapore is the practice of doing problems 3 or 4 different ways and mental math (that I am learning along side of my children) is so beautiful that I am angry I wasn't taught the Asian way myself. I am perplexed. It seems that teaching the kids to be deeper thinkers mathematically is angering teachers!
Now on to the reading lists. Controversial books aside (there were controversial books before cc so this is a non issue for this discussion), the reading lists seem reasonable and certainly not too difficult. My kids are 2 years ahead with their easy reading according to the new standards. This is not a brag, I think most of us here would find this to be true. Why the complaints? I am seeing complaint after complaint about all of the nonfiction reading. Really? My kids like to pick up interesting science and history books all the time. Why would parents and educators complain about this?
So, common core is more rigorous than the past programs. It doesn't look the least bit undoable to me. I am a classical educator so maybe I have a warped view of what a kid should be able to do. Even doing 3 different math programs (Singapore, Beast academy, and LoF) my third grader still only spends about 30 to 45 minutes a day on math. We have to do more than 1 curriculum so she isn't done with math in 15 minutes.
I have no idea how this post will come across. Honestly, I am just perplexed and don't want to offend my teacher friends and parent friends who are struggling with the new standards, so I guess I am just venting here.
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So not worth your time worrying about it. Also, don't eat your heart out worrying that you need to give a good impression of homeschooling. Not their business and not your job.
I only care about kids loudly swearing in the street, throwing things, or destroying property. Otherwise society as gotten a little used to the neighborhood being quiet cause most kids are inside glued to something electric. I love funny, loud, giggling boys.
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Good points crimsonwife! Honestly, who knows how the SAT and ACT tests will change as they align with the common core. They are expected to change and I hope the changes are reflected in newer practice tests. I have heard we will see analogies again as this is a "critical thinking" rather than a rote memorization skill. Who knows. Sigh.
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I don't know what more to say. Honestly. Grammar is the same thing. The sentences being analyzed get harder and the explanations and grammar are deeper once you hit Magic Lens. If my explanations don't resonate, MCT at the upper levels won't work for you. I explained it the way it is explained by the author. It is so similar to what I did in AP Honors English that I know it is rigorous. I don't give a rat's *^ about standardized testing until the SAT and ACT tests. Most of the English in those tests is about comprehension, vocabulary, analogies, and writing. I could care less if my kids score well on the star, common core, etc. They always score at the top of those tests and I have not done more than is in the MCT books. I want my kids to go to college, that is what speaks to my curriculum choices.
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To answer the question about what the upper levels of MCT cover in grammar I really don't know how to answer any other way than I have. The mechanics of grammar are really only 8 parts of speech with some in depth analysis of each part. There isn't anything new, it is just covered in a way that is for higher level thinking. Honestly, I think a lot of people cover grammar to death when it is a subject that is most appropriate as a full subject for grammar level students (meaning before jr high). After grammar grades everything should be review of harder texts and sentences. A good language arts program for upper levels should do a good REVIEW of grammar but focus on language, literature, and writing. MCT is not what I would consider an open and go workbook type of curriculum. It is beautiful and hard and requires a lot of student and teacher. At the upper levels serious consideration of writing SAT and college entrance essay writing should be more important than grammar; the grammar should now be a tool for considering literature and for writing excellent papers. Grammar can be used to wonder at the beauty of good writing. MCT is very focused on Latin and Greek stems, reading classic literature, and writing excellent papers. I think someone who only uses the grammar portion of MCT after the elementary levels is completely missing the point of what MCT is about. I would stress again that the upper levels of MCT are for gifted students. Even hard working kids would be completely at sea with MCT if they aren't able to read and understand appropriate vocabulary and classic literature that goes with each level. It is a curriculum that is gaining steam amongst classical homeschoolers because it is rigorous and classically based, but it is written for honors level kids. If a kiddo still needs intensive grammar instruction and can't see that the 4 level analysis teaches everything that is needed to write well (which is the whole point of grammar) it is not the right program. I would say that it is a different beast than the town, island, etc., levels and should feel like hard but rewarding work for the kids who have natural talent in the language arts. I seriously hope that this post does not come across as condescending. I don't know how I can better explain. MCT is part of a group of a publishing house for gifted and talented kids.
Of all of the hours spent reading, studying, and writing in jr high and high school honors and AP courses I would say that, maybe, 5 percent of our time was spent on grammar. That may be a high estimate.
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I just pick from some book lists. I do a 4 year chronological history rotation so I generally pick books written during or about those times. I do some discussion but mostly just read them with my kids. I really like MCT classics in the classroom or the mensa for kids grade level lists.
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The magic lens covers all of the parts of speech in depth. It is a very rigorous program. It is best done with Word within the Word, the poetics, and the literature. They pull examples from each other. This is a program for very gifted junior high students. It could pass muster as college prep (at least) for high school as well. I did a lot of the same kinds of work in my Honors and AP classes in high school. I had easier college English courses, lol. I highly recommend the upper levels of MCT. My 7th grader is really enjoying it (as much as any kid enjoys school) and learning a lot. She is a gifted student with a high iq and this is perfect for her. I would say that a teacher should be really honest about their kids ability to do high level language arts before choosing the upper MCT levels. My middle kiddo is autistic and excels in math. I highly doubt that she will be able to be successful with the upper MCT levels. The important thing to decide is whether a kid likes language, can read and understand the classics appropriate to the level of the books in the upper MCT trilogies, is a fairly good writer, etc. As an example, the grammar book is to be covered completely in the first quarter with practice analysis of pretty complex sentences taken from classic literature for the rest of the year. At the same time a kiddo is studying about 30 pages a week in the grammar text the student would also be memorizing a list of about 30 Latin and Greek roots a week with different practice activities for those roots during the week (including SAT level analogies, figuring out word meanings based on its roots, etc.) After the grammar book is finished and the practice sentences begin, the reading and analysis of poetry and classic literature begins. The 30 root a week lists continue throughout the year. In my opinion the program works best with all of the elements. The only part of the program that I swap out is the writing portion as I favor WWS which is also rigorous. It is a beautiful program and has all of the elements I was looking for based on my experiences in AP and honors classes. I read the poetry texts for fun because I think they are wonderful.
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Sorry, me again. Are frogs a special interest for your dd? You might try getting frog stickers or frog shaped gummies and using those as rewards for her work. My dd goes through a lot of pony and unicorn stickers.
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PS, I agree with the feeling you have of being berated, btw. Some people are blessed with lots of time and really precocious learners. I was in honors classes in silicon valley as a jr high and high schooler and our kids do need some rigor and the unpleasantness of studying things they don't like or curriculum that isn't hand picked and rewritten for them, to have any chance of being able to keep up. It isn't practical or realistic to do less and to be child led on the small bits they do. I know what our kids are competing with. They have to do things they don't like. Period. If we stumble across a curriculum that is a bit fun and engaging as well as teaching what they need to know we are doing well.
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Hang in there, mama! Homeschool is not the easy, quick, bed of roses many think it is. Give yourself a pat on the back. Learning is hard and it stretches us. A certain level of discomfort while learning is expected. I look for this. If things are too easy and require little thought or effort I change things up for my kids.
If she likes to be moving, have you tried giving her an exercise ball to use as a chair? That is a simple change that makes a big difference. Also if she likes computer time she can do some things on the computer for school. I love the quizlet site for some memory work. My kids would tell everyone they don't like school. It is the rare kid who likes it in my opinion. If she likes to be read to I would read to her every day. With my 8 year old I read a book to her every day. We read a different book together every day and she reads a chapter in a book of her choice every day. She doesn't like to write anything so we write stories of unicorns. If fll is over your dd's head you are at a level that is too high for her. My dd is in 3rd grade and we are on level 2 because that is where she is. It is no big deal. The lessons are virtually the same, but a little deeper each year. I am curious about the 30 minutes of memory work also. My kids love memorizing poetry and so we do that. I don't have them memorize a lot of other things, just math facts, Latin and Greek roots, a few important paragraphs from things like the constitution, the states and their capitals, etc. I would have a bloody revolt on my hands, lol, with 30 minutes of memory work. BTW, my dd is a diagnosed high functioning autistic and I am happy to share my few hits and numerous misses anytime you would like. I have deep respect for all parents who work hard to homeschool their kids. It is hard. It is thankless. You are a superhero. (ps, WWE is a lifesaver as I don't have time to come up with my own copywork either. It is not her favorite but I have noticed that her comprehension is so much better as is her handwriting).
I can't teach math
in General Education Discussion Board
Posted
Get the hig. Seriously. There is more to Singapore than the pictures.