Myrtle
-
Posts
576 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Blogs
Classifieds
Store
Posts posted by Myrtle
-
-
She is lost. For example, she has memorized 4+4=8 but is always "surprised" when she is handling manipulatives. It's as if she does not SEE that four and four more will always actually make eight. Once 10 comes into it she is completely flumoxed. No matter how many times I show her a group of ten with tangible objects and show her to count up the ones, she has to start all over again.. She does not retain that there is a group of 10 and then some more. When we have tried adding 5+4=9, 5+14=19, she can do the first because it is memorized, but she does not get the concept of the second AT ALL.
Oh Dorothy, this is very close to the problem that my six year old is having! I successfully took two boys through a "conceptual" program and now I'm flumoxed as to why my daughter would have to spend over a year on learning her addition and subtraction facts within 10. Like you say, she doesn't "see" these things. At this point she has memorized her addition facts to 20 and doesn't use the "making ten method."
At any rate, I just went into the other room to ask my husband to confirm what I thought his opinion is (he has his MS in math) and he said that if the kid knows their math facts to proceed forward and not worry about the "concepts" with manipulatives. The whole point of the manipulatives is to make the math easier to understand, but if they are doing the math by hook or by crook then it's counterproductive to spend forever on the "gimmick" that is used to teach them what they already know.
I'll give you an example. In Saxon word problems they kids are taught to classify word problems as "Some, some more" or "Some, some went away" (I'm not sure of all the details, but this is what I can remember from the sheets that I've seen) Based on how the kid classifies the word problem he then knows he's supposed to subtract or add. However, that classification is supposed to help the kid. It is the case that some kids who already instinctively know how to do word problems naturally, end up being more confused by the gimmick than by simply doing the problem in a straight forward basis. In the case of these kids, it's better to let them just do the math. Likewise, if bar diagrams are a hurdle in preventing a kid from successfully completing word problems, let him write out his work and skip the bar diagram which is supposed to be an aid, it's not really "the concept."
My second son, who is as close to a "mathy" kid as I have, was confused by the visual triangular circles that are used in Singapore to demonstrate fact families. He could fill them in when I broke it all down into steps and trained him intensively on this, but somehow when it came to word problems he'd get it all mixed up in his head and show his work wrong. I ended up skipping this gimmick and explicitly teaching him what subtraction is, which is the inverse operation of addition. Now that doesn't sound very exciting or visual, but it turns out that real math concepts amount to dry definitions with symbols rather than all this manipulative stuff. The manipulatives are not the concept. The manipulatives demonstrate a concept, but then so do other things.
Here is what worked with my son. If A + B = C, then C - A = B.
Turns out that really is the defintion of subtraction. Very anticlimactic. So now he gets his numbers right because he remembers a formal definition of subtraction.
Now back to my daughter, we are simply going to go forward. If she doesn't understand the concept of "groups of ten" when she's seven, she's certainly understand it by the time she's in the seventh grade and has been taught how to decompose numbers, use the associative law, and will be able to express formally the thought that 7 + 8 = (7 - 2) + ( 2 + 8) = 15.
She'll know how to express multiplication as the product of two sums using the distributive law when she's in the 7th grade working on order of operations. If you are in a quality math program it will go back and teach the "whys" of arithemetic. That is ostensibly what algebra is supposed to be about, it's "generalized arithemetic" and any program worth its salt will have students go back and do operations on numbers using algebraic manipulations rather than algorithms so that in the long run they will understand "the concept" of what they were doing.
-
We use Singapore math and science. 7th and 8th grade science is general science and then in the 9th and 10th grades you have the option of biology, physics, or chemistry. The Singbox site also sells exams at these levels as well as well as A-level curricula (I think this is something like the British version of an AP course) but the Singaporemath site does not. After that the kids can do dual enrollment at cc.
I don't know what you mean by "old fashioned" math. We have found that the highest quality of math texts were published in the 1960s, not before, not after. In fact, we just did a massive review of a 1960s pre-calc math text that's on my blog right now. No drill and kill, it's all "conceptual" done rigorously, and the used copies of these texts are less than $10 a piece.
For general literature we plan on doing Greek and Roman classics in translation, I don't know if that counts as "secular" since it's pagan (??) and I haven't considered what to do about American lit, I could just check out the what books are required by public universities in their courses on American lit, or use their anthologies. For history, how about Boorstin? Another idea is to get on the list serves of the various AP courses and find out what the high school teachers are assigning in AP English, AP bio, etc. Perhaps your kids aren't ready for a full monty AP course, but you could use the same materials.
We do philosophy and have in mind to read many of the recommendations in WTM such as Kant, Hume, and Plato...
Wheelocks for Latin, Athenaze for Greek, not to mention there are tons of options for foreign language.
Now if you want atheist, rather than secular, one idea is to contact the Randian homeschoolers and find out what they use.
-
My dd age 7 is really struggling with basic math concepts. At first I thought it was a memorizing math facts problem, but no, she can memorize them, she just doesn't "get" them..
Thank you for your advice.
Can you be more specific? If she knows her addition and subtraction facts what is it that she's not getting? Is it word problems? Can you give an example of the kind of problem which she can't solve?
-
I regret not making my son use cursive more often when he learned it in the fourth grade. He's in the sixth grade now and does exactly what you describe, he takes longer to complete assignments, makes more mistakes, more erasures, etc.
Because he wasn't doing any copywork in cursive or reading anything written in cursive he had lost his ability to do that and it was personally humiliating for me to discover this gap in his literacy. He gets plenty of copy work now and I plan on requiring it most of his subjects.
Most people I know use a hybrid of script and print when they are trying to write something very quickly. He won't have that option unless he really learns cursive well.
-
Is it really important in the scheme of life to know how to not only find personal pronouns, but also indefinite, demonstrative, relative, interrogative, reflexive, and reciprocal pronouns as well? And be able to find them ALL in one exercise assignment?
I don't have any suggestions to remediate your problem, but it is in fact the case that if he takes a foreign language in college he will need to know how to handle all the parts of speech in a single sentence. For example, the placement of an accent mark in Spanish of quien vs. quién depends on if that word is being used as an interrogative pronoun or a relative pronoun.
I am using Easy Grammar with my son but what has enabled him have facility with the finer points of grammar is not his direct study of English grammar but his study of Latin.
-
If public schools had an open campus I'd enroll him in a few classes in the ninth and tenth grades and still homeschool other classes. In the 11th and 12th grades I'd opt for dual enrollment at the cc level and homeschool at the same time.
Public high school courses that I imagine that I'd enroll my child in would be art, music, speech, shop, home ec, possibly even English if they performed a class play.
I would still want to do math and history at home.
-
Singapore Science is very easy to use.
- Almost all the materials can be found around the house.
- The labs are not absolutely essential to the lessons. I recommend that you get the activity/lab book and pick and choose which you want to do.
- The only thing I felt like I wanted in MPH 5 was a good microscope (for a few lessons) and I knew I was going to have to buckle down and get one of those before high school anyway.
- The texts are very short and simplistic, however, the tests, workbook, and "Higher Order Thinking" skills more than make up for this. In general, like the math program, they cover few topics, aren't very wordy about--it's questions that pack the punches.
- Singapore science is one of the few subjects that my son can do independently of me. Woo Hoo!
-I bought the Teacher's Notes for MPH 6 and while they were useful, I saw that it wasn't something that I needed to have. I won't buy them for the other levels for the younger children.
- The activities, workbook assignments, tests, and Higher Order Thinking Skills assignments all put together still do not constitute 180 days of lessons, perhaps 90. This left us plenty of time to do outside reading in science topics a la WTM style.
-One drawback in the 5th grade are the references to native plants in Singapore, "What is the reproductive method of the blah blah blah" and we'd have no idea what plant this was, so it would behoove anyone to review the assignment before giving it to the child and look these things up online first. It seemed like MPH 5 was non-stop plant reproduction and reproductive plant parts. We saw a lot of drawings of plants and the kid was expected to figure out why two plants couldn't reproduce or could reproduce, or what stage of the life cycle some plant was in.
The second half of the program was all about circuits and was wonderful to use this at the same time we were playing with Snap Circuits. My son learned how to draw simple circuit diagrams and when we hit the section of our New Math book that taught Logic and Switching Circuits, he needed to explanation at all to understand that. If you end up doing MPH I'll send you a copy of that lesson.
-
This is a tough one to answer! There's always some huge unexpected or one-time expense every year.
Years 1,2: A ton of used history and science books for supplemental reading. All of it you could find at the library but I just wanted a small library of my own and I was starting from scratch. This did turn out to be a good idea.
Year 2: Got worried that Singaporemath would discontinue its 3rd edition and bought up the entire series way in advance for all three kids in one giant purchase. My youngest was still in diapers.
Year 3,4: Spent more than I intended to on "Research and Development." Sometimes a program looks perfect and it just doesn't implement well.
Year 5,6: High school quality microscope and slides and related supplies.
Year 7 is coming up and we are well settled in what works and what doesn't for most things, but it looks there will be a big expenditure on chemistry lab equipment and supplies as well as having to buy for two kids 5 grade levels of a curriculum that's about to go out of print.
In general, the costs seem to be more for the first kid and much less for the younger ones since you already have so much and have a better idea of what you do and don't want to teach and how you want to do it.
-
My son finished Easy Grammar 4th grade and had no problem going into Henle in 5th. As far as grammar is concerned ,Henle gives definitions of anything that's more sophisticated than the 8 basic parts of speech and gives plenty of practice translating between English and Latin as well as sentence diagramming so that those defintions and applications "stick."
My son gained far more ground learning English grammar via Latin than trying to prepare himself for Latin grammar via studying English.
-
I've got to ask, though...why didn't you call the police? Very scary that she was there!
That question went through my mind as well.
No way I'd allow a drugged out stranger in my car not knowing if they were armed or not, not knowing if they might vomit or urinate in the vehicle. This person could have easily been wanted on multiple felony warrants. Too bad the police didn't get a chance to do a background check on her to find out either way.
-
It may be the case that this new edition has been out for a long time and the MOE is continuing to print up old editions for export. I think this may be true because it seems that the 3rd edition math that we homeschoolers use stopped being used in Singapore 7 years ago! From SGBox.com
"NONE of the primary schools in Singapore is using Primary Mathematics (Third Edition) for 1st Grade / Primary 1 through 6th Grade / Primary 6 beginning 2001, as it is based on the old and outdated 1999 Reduced-Content Singapore Math curriculum. It has been replaced with several new and better series that are written based on the new and improved 2001 Singapore Math curriculum in all the primary schools in Singapore from 1st Grade / Primary 1 through 6th Grade / Primary 6."I don't know how much "better" it is, but the point I'm trying to make is that there are all sorts of editions of math and science floating around. I ordered the 7th grade interactive science six months or so ago only to order the new edition when the old edition was discontinued. The thing to do is to ask Jenny on the singmath forums if there are any plans to discontinue to the primary science series for a newer edition.
I don't know that the newer editions are preferable, I remember a post a long time ago by Jenny saying that they were including more nationalistic content in both the math and the science and from what I've seen the new science edition of Interactive Science also seems to include more "fuzzy" writing, technology, and internet assignments than before with only the most tenuous connection to science.
-
What does she want to do with the other 21 hours a day if not work?
Will the ratio of work to free time she is proposing approximate the level of discipline required of her as an independent adult while financially supporting herself or what will be required of her as a student in college?
As we progress through our children's education we try to move them steadily closer to the adult expectations.
So for example, at the age of 18 my child should not be shocked when he's required to spend 3 hours in class, 6 hours studying, and a few hours of flipping burgers each day, only to come home (back to the dorm, apartment) to wash a load of laundry, grocery shopping, before getting online or partying. That loosely represents an average day in my first semester at college. I had no transitioning issues with that because up to that point I was in high school seven hours a day, had homework, and worked a part time job.
If a young person is unaccustomed to having to force themselves to concentrate on a string of assignments when they'd rather watch tv or talk on the phone, I would worry that they don't have the discipline it takes to make it through college...or for that matter to compete in the work place with peers who are willing to work 10 and 12 hour days and some weekends.
When our oldest son complains about working or studying too much, this is the justification and lecture we give him.
-
I didn't want to hijack the thread below, but I am curious about the placement for TT. My ds is 3rd grade, currently using Horizons, and he seems to place in level 5. :confused: Is that accurate? Do most dc place higher in TT than in traditional programs?
Also, for those of you that have used TT, do you like the program? Do your dc like it? Is the instruction sufficient? Are there enough practice problems? How does it compare to more traditional math programs
Last yr when my dd was in 2nd grade (doing Horizons 3), she placed into either TT 6 or 7. (I can't remember exactly anymore) Horizons is NOT that advanced.....it is pretty much on grade level. There is absolutely NO WAY that she could have jumped into Horizons 6! She is definitely on par this yr with working through Horizons 4.
If I were going to use TT, I would contact TT and find out exactly who wrote the textbooks, the specific qualifications of the author(s) (not simply 2 degrees in whatever.....exact degree titles), who reviewed the materials prior to publication and their specific qualifications, what state standards are they meeting, and compare the Standards of Learning (SOLs) and TOCs (table of contents) of equivalent grade level textbooks.
The most significant question is has TT been approved by any State Boards of Education as meeting their SOLs? (not TT's saying they meet them, but has the textbook been reviewed by a state board and approved.) This is key in my opinion for algebra up.
My husband and I have been discussing the value of comparing placement tests as an evaluation tool for parents wishing to compare programs.
In other words, are the items on a placement test indicative of the topics, depth of topics, and rigor in a particular program? For example, do you think it would be productive to compare the algebra placement test for Saxon (this would be for a student who has completed arithmetic and pre-algbra), Singapore, Horizons, Teaching Textbooks, etc, place them side by side and look at the quality of problems on each and then infer something about the quality of the arithmetic program? While a placement test does not indicate the rigor of the level that the student is placing into, would it indicate the level of rigor the student was exposed to in the program prior to that level?
What about a placement test such as TT 5th grade where there is no prior level offered?
It seems that one problem with this approach is that the parent himself would have to know enough about math to see the mathematical skill and knowledge required to solve a particular class of problems on the tests and they'd have to recognize when the presence of a topic is "superficial" (e.g. fractals in the third grade) vs when it's covered in depth so maybe my solution is circular reasoning. Just thinking aloud.
-
For addition and subtraction I printed out pie charts in Excel with the number of pie pieces I needed.
For multiplication and division of fractions I folded a piece of square paper. For example, you fold it in seven vertical strips to represent sevenths, color the number of sevenths indicated in your problem. Then fold it horizontally according to the denominator in the second factor, and shade in the numerator. The overlap of the shaded area represents the product.
Another option is to teach the distributive law when you teach multiplication of integers in the earlier grades and when it comes time to multipy and add fractions you have them apply it to fractions.
I bought some expensive fraction overlays and never used them, folding and cutting paper turned out to be so much more fun.
-
Alan Villiers' The Cape Horn Road
This video was filmed in 1935, I believe and documents what life was like on the tall ship Joseph Conrad now at the Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut.
You will note the cat that makes a brief appearance at the beginning of that video. As it turns out Villiers wrote a wonderful children's book about the adventures of that cat called, "Joey Goes To Sea" which is still in print! We just finished reading it and it's full of the Curious George misadventures. At some point in the video (or perhaps in the the second video) he tells you about the cat overboard and the seagull that attacked it and how they rescued it.
For older children he wrote "Stormalong" which are of the adventures of one of the 14 year olds on the Joseph Conrad. Unfortunately, it is no longer in print but I managed to get my hands on an older copy through a used book site.
-
Some years ago I counted up all the problem sets in the book and all the problem sets in the workbook, including tests, and I did this across all grade levels and the most that any grade level had was 145 problem sets and the least was 90. Therefore, if all you do is one problem set per day, and you work through the summers you will get very far ahead.
My oldest son with a tested IQ of only slightly above average f(but dyslexic, writing issues, ADHD ) finished the series more or less in the 5th and my now second grader with a receptive language delay has finished 2nd grade (just did a blog entry on what we're doing now between 2nd and 3rd) and is ready for third grade math which I anticipate we will begin within the next four weeks and we'll continue in it throughout the summer. If he begins 3rd grade math in March, he should finish it around the end of this calendar year.
My youngest is nowhere near capable of working through a problem set per day. She is six and in the first grade and my records indicate that she began Singapore 1A in October of 2006! She's not even in 1B yet, since it took an eternity for her to remember her number facts. If everything proceeds at this rate perhaps she'll finish P6 when she's 20 ;-)
Since the lessons are arranged topically it's easy to see that you don't have to do absolutely every last problem in every single problem set. For example, my seven year old is more than familiar with place value which is taught at the beginning of 3A and I'll probably spend one day discussing the lesson and the next I'll give him the test without any problem sets at all.
-
Lap top at the table, (with kid sized mouse so he doesn't gum up your keyboard), kiddie software, headphones.
-
Have you seen samples of Shirley grammar? It's very structured with a lot of practice and very little variation to confuse kids. It's also direct instruction/scripted and the lessons are conducted the same way day after day so the kid knows what to expect, what question will come up next, and how to answer it. Check into samples of this at a homeschool bookstore if there is one near you to see what grade level would be best.
-
When I gave my young children numerical grades it distracted them. It caused discipline issues as they argued with me or simply had tantrums because they didn't get a perfect score.
That just didn't work.
The only thing I put a numerical score on now are their cummulative math tests (and I do it for me and not them) and even so they don't appreciate the idea that missing points in one particular area indicates that they need (or rather that I need )to review their skills in that area. I think an older child would have less difficulty understanding that.
On the other hand, and this is going to sound hackneyed, simply acknowledging their effort has resulted in them trying harder, working longer, and choosing more challenging books to read.
-
I'm not sure what you mean by book two.
Right now I'm using "Daily Guided Teaching and Review for Grade 2" with both my 1st and 2nd grader.
I intend on keeping my 1st grader working through this book until she becomes a third grader or finishes the book next year in the second grade--whichever comes first.
If she has a miraculous improvement in her reading ability I may keep her with her brother and promote her to Easy Grammar 3 and Daily Grams grade 3 next fall whether she finishes the book she's in now or not.
Before the children (1st and 2nd grader) begin a lesson in book I review the definitions of all 8 parts of speech, I administer a spelling test on prepositions (using the list from the third grade Easy Grammar), I review capitalization and punctuation rules that they have already been exposed to by writing examples relevant to their lives on the board.
Without this kind of "prep" I don't think this program would work at all--at least not with my kids.
-
If I log out and then forget to click "Remember Me" it will keep me from getting to where I need to go when I get around to doing something other than reading posts.
-
I didn't need them for 5 or 6.
-
I wanted to ask another question about supplementing with the Challenge Word problem books. If you don't use Singapore as your main program, how do you know how to teach and solve using the Singapore concepts (like the bar diagrams)? Is there teaching in the Word problem books? Or is there a teacher's manual that will explain the concepts?
Thanks!
Well, technically speaking, bar diagrams are not concepts. They are heuristic devices that illustrates arithmetic concepts. More precisely, bar diagrams are simply graphic organizers.
The actual "concepts" involved are order of operations, the associative law, etc.
Singapore works kids up to working through multistep bar diagrams in the following manner
Single step problems via bar diagram
Two step word problems with prompts, no bar diagram
Two step word problems with prompts and bar diagram
Two step word problems without prompt but with bar diagram
More steps are added in later grades. If you haven't mastered bar diagrams with only one step, it is very difficult to see what to do starting in the middle with two steps.
With my ADHD son I did 4 or 5 multistep problems in one sitting. My non-ADHD child can do twice as many. Since every topic in the textbook includes word problems I would work the Challenging Word problems before giving the midyear and year final test. We'd just sit down and do them day after day until they got done, and I'd have the kid work on whatever topic he needed the most help with.
-
, and now he gets to start right where he would have last year without having done NEM?
It's not that bad! :-)
A student who has finished NEM I already knows how to: Evaluate and simplify algebraic expressions and use the distributive property, represent the general term of a sequence by algebraic expressions, factorize algebraic expressions of the form ax + ay and ax + bx + kay + kby, solve linear equations with whole number, fractional, and decimal coefficients, solve algebraic word problems involving linear equations.
That's a big chunk of an American algebra I book!
Here's an idea. When you choose your algebra book, go through the end of chapter or end of unit reviews until he gets to a review that he can't do and then pick up from that section and move forward.
Use this scope and sequence of NEM figure out what he still needs to learn. When he gets to geometry the following year there will probably also be several sections you can skip over.
curriculum used when combining kids
in K-8 Curriculum Board
Posted
I was hoping someone would respond to your post because I'd like to combine more things too. Mine are 16 months apart in age and right now they work the same programs at the same time but at different levels.