SierraNevada
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Posts posted by SierraNevada
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DS 7 is in it right now. I think it is a good class. It is very flexible with what is required. More advanced students can do the problems but they don't require the problem sets to even be done. The book is marginal. They actually have two separate books. We bought one hard copy and the other book is an online copy. DS really likes the teacher. I wish there were tests or something to better cement/check long term retention. There is really very little output required. But for a first physics course, we have liked it.
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We homeschool because public school couldn't meet the asynchronous needs of ds7. But even if they could, food allergies and my anxiety with someone else looking out for him would make me homeschool no matter what.
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All great ideas, thank you. You are right about math not being up to college chem ready. But chemistry is his passion-- so I think he would be willing and able to learn any math needed along the way. But I could be wrong. It has been so long since I took it. I don't remember there being much beyond basic algebra-- equation manipulation. I'll definitely look into some great courses type of stuff. And no, we don't need to return anything back to the school when we are done with it. Thank you all!
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It's been a long while since I have even looked here. We took an unexpectedly long break from school. We also enrolled in an online charter so we are giving up a little control for $. Actually it is time that DS learns from someone else and has more diverse classes. Anyway I get 150$ per subject to spend on math, music, LA, and science. What great books would you get? I already have so much, so I need thinking outside the box. For example. We already have the Pre-a text (Aops) we are using. I just need supplemental books. Maybe Zacarro books? Joy of Math? For LA I already have MCT-town. And for science I'm thinking of getting a good college level chem text. Any great suggestions on about those levels. Thanks.
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Double post
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No it doesn't get better. We've only done Fractions on, but I find the teaching non-existent to horrific. I really like the Bridge problem sets though as they connect math to the real-ish world. Ds loves the speed of a single chapter. Five to ten problems can be done with no complaining at all. But if these books were the only exposure to math concepts a child will have then I'd burn them before I'd resale them. ;). Their single saving grace is that DS will do the chapters happily with no complaints. (Sometimes up to four chapters in one sitting.) I think they are a good review book if child has already had concepts somewhere else but needs more review.
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DS7 used to write book reports for fun after he read a book. Or at the very least tell me what a book was about. But for the last year or so anytime I ask about a book he just read all I get was, well, "read it yourself". If I probe more it yields nothing. Now DS reads a lot. And once in a while if he doesn't get something-- is confused by the plot-- he will ask me. So I believe that he understands what he reads or he wouldn't read it. Butt he just won't converse about books anymore. I don't want to drive the fun out of reading by forcing a conversation about the book. But I do want to develop the skill of outlining what has been read. Any good idea to tackle this skill and still make it fun?
Maybe his books got too complex for him to easily summarize? Maybe his ability to read shot ahead of his ability to distill it all down into a nice paragraph?
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Spelling Power is nice because you can find the right level then go from there. You don't study a word list for a full week. One list a day. If you spell it right first try you move on until you find words you can't spell. We don't use it exactly like it was intended but close enough. At first I was very put off by the size of the book and getting started with it. But once I did it was so easy and I found it was great for a natural speller to fill the gaps.
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Where I'm from it's:
K-6--Elementary
7-9-- Jr high
10-12--High school
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Murderous Maths
Number Devil
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Thank you Horselian. It's kind of frustrating to have to find resources for the not so common languages. At least it's not a really obscure language! Good luck with Danish.
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Ds has decided he wants to learn Swedish. After a long time of trying to start him on Spanish or French, something I know a bit of, he has finally settled on a more obscure language. Luckily Duolingo came out with Swedish recently. But that is all we have so far. I can't seem to find many Swedish learning programs. There are a few college texts online that would probably work. Any suggestions? I'd like a work book of some sort. Any you tube channels, or websites out there that could help?
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Yes I would, and did. Same situation. Very rural, no kids about, non-active Homeschol groups, no friends for me either, but clean air, open roaming room and no traffic. So I traded it in for a big city, bad air quality, heavy traffic, no yard, but friends that we see as much as we'd like. And is it worth it? Absolutely. With an only child it was a necessity. I'm all for doing whatever it takes to help your children, and yourselves have good meaningful relationships. 3-4 years is a long time in the life of an adolescent.
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We have started pre-a using (just Life of Fred) with the idea of going to Aops next for a second round. We also did SM and BA alternating (also LOF). I ended up not finishing out the SM5b books because it was just easy for him and with two rounds of Pre-A planned he will get plenty of everything in 5b. We also only used the BA chapters that were new/oddball topics. But seeing as how all those topics will be covered anyway, again, in AoPS I don't know that it is necessary. It certainly seems like an acceptable way to accelerate. I guess the thing you ought to question is do you want to accelerate into Algebra because he is really ready for it now and needs the acceleration to stay engaged/challenged in math. Or do you simply want to accelerate into it to help him move up in physics, but he really could use more time developing in lower math? Both are fine, so long as you know your intentions. For us it was the second answer...DS really wants to do the LOF Chemistry book he got and I told him he needed to at least cover all the LOF Pre-A books before he started it. So we started them while still not completely finished with BA4 and SM5b. I will probably have him finish them off as they won't take much time, maybe one day a week. But the more I see pre-A, the more I realize that it will completely review anything I missed and I expect that Aops will do a very thorough job of it.
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Yes, I'd love it to incorporate North and South America. The only issue I feel is that there is already Joy Hakim's, "History of US". It does a great job and gets at your likely target age range. So, if it were written to the middle school, maybe high school crowd, I would be more pleased. Don't forget.... please have Jim Weiss do the audio version again!
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Life of Fred Chemistry?
I haven't seen it but am ordering it for my chemistry obsessed boy.
Second T. Gray books, The Elements by McHenery, Disappearing Spoon, Uncle Tungsten (although I "think" I recall some adult material in that one).
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For DS6.9 I'm planning on focusing on motor tasks:
Ride bike, tie shoes, use scissors, swim
He is planning on focusing on piano, history and chemistry.
What I'll likely work on academically is wrapping up elementary math and moving into Aops, and writing stamina.
Excited for the new year, and to have a seven year old!
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We recently started Spelling Power and now that I'm into the swing of it, I love it. It is great for natural spellers.
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That was awesome. Love her intonations!
Great work.
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Agree with EKS. Just start reading Grammar Island with child, then, the whole thing just flows from there, and it won't seem so scary. I was really concern with how to start it too. But once I just started doing one books at a time Grammar Island>Sentence Island>Building Language>Poetry>practice book (at one or two sentences a day), it worked so well. Good luck!
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After many years of good intentions with only minor dabbles into a foreign language, I finally have Spanish lined up in a mini co-op like class. The class consists of a couple of friends and a relative that is a native speaker helping the kids out once a week. My job is to find a book that they can use to guide them. Age ranges will be 5-8 yr olds, HG to PG kids, all able to write, spell, and have had at least some exposure to English grammar. Any great recommendations?
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A stretched child makes noticeable improvements. A under challenged or over challenged child makes no improvement.
That may seem like I'm just kind of restating the question, but when I realized how simple it was, it helped me tune into that zone. If they are ready to give up and bang their head against the wall, they won't be learning anything. If they are banging their head out of boredom there is no learning going on. I can almost see the brain growth going on when we are in that good zone, I notice improvements daily.
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We have all of the sets. DS is really mathy and science-y, and loves those two best. He is also history obsessed but doesn't like the history set much. He thought the geography series writing was sub-par. He would recommend the science set. I think he has read them all at least five times. He LOVES them.
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We combined BA, SM, and LOF....but we skipped a lot of stuff in BA, and we don't do every problem in SM. We did one program at a time, not rotate daily. So we spent a few months going through just LOF. Then, we'd go back to SM, then, at a good breaking point, we'd stop for a few weeks to do a chapter or two in Beast. SM is most like our spine, and in BA we only do the chapters that are extra topics not seen in other programs, like the perfect squares, binary, exponents, logic puzzles, counting, and rounding-estimating. We used the other books of BA (text-comic book) just for fun reading, even if we didn't do any chapters in the workbook out of it-- like the upcoming 4C has no new topics in it for us, so we will just get the text for fun. Not rotating through the programs weekly has added a bit of review in, but since each program approaches things differently it also adds in some novelty to old topics. It has worked well so far (about ready to finish and move to Pre-a). I don't know anything about MEP, so I have no insight if that plus SM is too much and too similar. But for us, the three programs staggered has worked well. I love that we have been able to use the strengths of each program and I think it was a good move for us seeing a lot of different style problems. BA has its strength in visual, discovery approach, out of the box thinking, SM is pretty solid in just ... basic math, I guess taught the way I learned more or less and story problems, and LOF is great in real life story problem approach, seeing math being used in daily life.
Dysgraphia?
in The Learning Challenges Board
Posted
Testing results are back (Wisc and WJ only). DS was given a tentative diagnosis of dysgraphia or dyspraxia --based on abysmal coding scores (6 SD below IQ). They noted all written tasks were painfully slow and much complaining about hand pain. I knew he wasn't advanced in handwriting but had no idea how bad it was for him. Now what? Do I get an official diagnosis from a dev ped? Do I just keep going with most his output being typed, on whiteboard, or dictated. He has no issues with composing writing. Just writing speed and hand pain. He only ever had reversed one letter set (b/d) and always recognizes as soon as he does it. Any ideas, advice...what to do next?