It doesn't matter what the kids thinks. Bedbugs are a nightmare from hell. I would've had my kid strip in the backyard and burned the clothes in the yard. I might've even shaven their head in the yard. But I'm that guy who shaves my kids bald over lice. I hate vermin with an intense passion.

Thanks Hive Mind. The pocket of the academic world we're in is smaller than some schools, but quite cozy when it comes to mentorship. Pal's Math mentor is really wonderful and has been very generous with his time also. I honestly feel that Pal is loathe to truly leave his mentor, but he does have a real knack for math so if he decides to go that way we want him to have "the best" opportunity and exposure. He's been able to participate tangentially in some research stuff, but his bigger benefit has been the one-on-one study with a real mathematician.

Hey Hivers, how much does your UGrad schooling matter if you want to go to top-tier selective school for a PhD from a homeschooled background (I don't' think it matters much, but I'd rather check now). We have a good thing going with DE and Pal wants to continue locally for his full Bachelors (though he's eyeing a BS/MS program) so he can continue to enjoy the same school-work-life balance while I cover his living expenses. He's got a local mentor that he enjoys working with and doesn't want to give it up, but his mentor is encouraging him to go out-of-state for his (hopefully) PhD. Pals' on track to get his Masters shortly after his BS. He's currently taking a ton of Math and CS classes because he's indecisive on whether he's CS or Math. There's a BS/MS program for both those fields and he still has time to decide since he's technically still just DE. I don't know jack about Graduate School and honestly I don't support going out of state for school unless it's cheaper/pays better than staying in state, but I figure it's worth exploring.

Soon, I will turn my academic energy towards my younger children. The Youngsters Language Plan so far is pretty scarce, but the basics are that they will be raised and educated bilingually from birth begin to learn a modern language (likely German) at ~6yos and continue into adulthood Amiga (2yo) is bilingual. She speaks, understands and converses in Spanish and English. Spanish I think her Spanish is a little stronger because she hears it at a higher ratio because me and The Boys speak Spanish to each other and with her. She is speaking phrases with up to 4 words pretty meaningfully lately so hopefully full coherency will be achieved within 6 months. English In English, she's consistently at the 2-3 word utterances, but she seems to comprehend equally sophisticated speech in English, which I didn't expect from her. Japanese She babbles a couple of psuedo words in Japanese and knows a handful of basic items in Japanese from The Boys. There's no parental intention to teach Japanese to her in a lasting way. I don't foresee her developing aural or oral fluency in Japanese nor do we have any intention of promoting or sustaining the language beyond toddlerhood. Interestingly, aside from cognates she doesn't seem to mix her languages much.

Thanks! Art Pac looks like a promising direction to move toward. I'll take a closer look at them. Any idea which of the many books cover the basic techniques?

I'm looking for a coloring book that is specifically designed to gradually build a persons coloring skills by using images chosen that allow them to practice different crayon techniques such as blending, hatching vs cross hatching, pressure, etc?

So, this month I'm revisiting Make It Stick because I want to create a topical unit designed around it's principles. I have the ultimate dream of creating a robust curriculum for Amiga based on it's principles. I'm also trying to get The Memory Book for my read next week.

Do you know the German phrase for such a school book? I'd like to know what to search for on websites. I know that a lot of schools are moving away from printed books, but it's important to me that I have traditional books. I'd like to be able to compile a 1st-4th grade set of readers auf Deutsch. They're for me. I've been interested in learning German fluently for a while and I'm currently toying with the thought of teaching Amiga to speak and read German when she's older. Duolingo doesn't suit our purposes.

Yes, it's been my experience as well that that Deliberate Practice is definitely a skill that should be directly taught if you want your student to "learn how to learn". When The Boys were young, I did all the meta work of observing, reflecting, analyzing and tweaking for them and made adjustments as needed without running things by them or explaining much of the reasoning. They gradually matured into more and more useful input and more and more appreciation of the explanation, but it wasn't until they were older that they really had the maturity to think through something that they were learning and care about getting better in such a way that they were able to engage in deliberate practice independently.

Thanks for this! However, I'm only looking for Native materials and I want the basal readers for graduated reading practice because it's my understanding that German textbooks tend to be (used to be?) well put together with a good mix of folktales, poems, fables and factual articles--which sounds ideal for reading practice and knowledge acquisition at the early stages. Also, after everything we went through with Spanish (and Japanese) I'm drawn to leveled compilations of reading material.

I'm looking for something for German phonics and then a few quality basal readers (something that'd be used in 1st-3rd grade). For Phonics, I'm open to any phonetic-based resource that goes up to multisyllable words and includes some multi-paragraph reading passages.

Deciding on the content is absolutely essential in a knowledge-based curriculum--even if one doesn't choose to make it memorization-centric, though I'm leaning very heavily towards that direction.

Does anyone have any strong opinions on Bloom's Taxonomy vs the Bloom's Revised Taxonomy? I think that I'll be reading the books to see in detail what each one is all about. I was going to go with Revised, just cause--and I might still do that--but I feel that I should at least make sure that I take the time to understand the Revised Taxonomy vs the original Taxonomy.

As far as deciding what knowledge to include, is concerned, there are 3 series/types of books that come to my mind. Yes, it's the year 2023 and "you can Google ideas" but some people prefer a finite and concrete resource as a jumping off point. Textbooks and Test books - A great deal of knowledge can be harvested from well written textbooks and books that are designed for test preparation. The Teacher's Book of Lists Series - This is a series of books, I don't own them, but I've seen a couple of them in used bookstores over the years that are reference books for Subject Teachers to plan lessons/units with. Some of them were released in the 90s and 00's, and some have been revised (a few times) since then. The Writing Teachers Book of Lists The Reading Teachers Book of Lists The Literature Teacher's Book of Lists The Vocabulary Teacher's Book of Lists The Social Studies Teacher's Book of Lists The American History Teacher's Book of Lists The Elementary Math Teacher's Book of Lists The 5-12 Math Teacher's Book of Lists The Science Teacher's Book of Lists The Music Teacher's Book of Lists The Art Teacher's Book of Lists The PE Teacher's Book of Lists The Health Teachers Core Knowledge (AKA What Your __ Grader Needs to Know) Series. I've been advised not to use the earliest editions from the 90s as they contain factual errors in some content knowledge subjects. What Your Preschooler Needs to Know What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know What your First Grader Needs to Know What your Second Grader Needs to Know What your Third Grader Needs to Know What your Fourth Grader Needs to Know What your Fifth Grader Needs to Know What your Sixth Grader Needs to Know A more comprehensive version of these books are called the Core Knowledge __ Grade Teacher Handbook. They're meant for schools and a lot bigger/meatier than the home-version of the books you buy at Costco or Barnes and Noble. A Possible One Book Solution Living Memory: K-8 Memory Work for the Secular Homeschool This is the 2nd edition of the 2008 book which is out of print.

Is it vastly different from Talent is Overrated? In other words, if one reads TiO carefully and completely, does Peak offer something different?

You know how in handwriting workbooks, they'll have a version of the letter with the arrows/guides to show formation and it's position relative to the top-, mid- and baseline? I want a book with a full page letter model. each letter is on a single page the letter formation is shown the topline, midline and baseline are shown color would be preferable, but at this point I'll take black and white I feel like this resource should exist and definitely should not be so hard to find.

I mean, is it limited to only a few things? How many activities/domains can you name that can not be improved on via Deliberate Practice?

#rimshot A small part of me will never forgive myself for not seeing that, the other part will never forgive you for saying it, . Though I guess he'd have to be called The Tiger Dad or maybe even The Cub Father.

For the time being, TIO will be the last book that I read that's not strictly on the topic of developing/training memory or the development and use of memorization skills, because I'm short on time and don't have the bandwidth for lots of side-tracking. I'm going to try and determine if my current scope and sequence makes sense or if it could be optimized specifically for a memorization-centric, knowledge-based curriculum. Currently, I doubt that I'll change much, but I'm still going try and see if it would make sense to change anything anyway. Food for thought, questions to ponder.

At the risk of sounding really cocky, it's both exceptionally reaffirming and a little weird to see how much of what I did with The Boys aligns with the more thorough exploration of talent as well as how we struck upon some methods used in a widely superior education system. #YayMe Chapter 5 of TIO explains Deliberate Practice, In reflecting on The Boys time in younger years, I categorically failed to provide systematic and sustained DP outside of a few very specific domains. There was even a specific job that I had where I used elements of deliberate practice on myself, without quite realizing or meaning too. Going forward, I'm interested in how I might develop regiments of deliberate practice in a wider variety of academics. I wonder how I could develop a particular Skill-Based curriculum around the idea of Deliberate Practice.

I updated the booklist in the OP.

I'm working on Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else. by Colvin. So far, this book reads like it was maybe a 5-10 page research paper on Talent and Deliberate Practice but it's been stretched into 200+ pages to sell as a book. I'm not mad at Colvin--authors have to eat, too, I suppose--but I wish the book was more too the point. He could remove at least 80% of the anecdotes from the first chapters and the truly good bits wouldn't be any less potent. Amendment: Despite the unnecessary wordiness of TIO I have to say that I highly agree with the premise that innate "talent" (defined as the ability to achieve more easily) does not account for the vast majority of expertise or top performance in virtually any field where it's measured. It really feels more like a waste of time to read this book, but I'm going to press on because it's good to see data and conversation on something that I've experienced and witnessed--though I guess I'm opening myself up to a confirmation bias. Also, it won't hurt me to perhaps stumble across some fresh inspiration for how I might improve some things in my approach. However, within the early chapters the book address both Mozart and Tiger Woods--two very popular examples of "talent". Mozart's father was an accomplish composer and musician, a "domineering parent" who began training Mozart at the age of 3 and was an accomplished pegagogue who'd published a book on violin teaching the same year that Mozart was born. Mozarts earliest works weren't particularly good, his first masterpiece was produced at the age of 21, so after eighteen years of intensive training by an expert. Despite the myth that Mozart composed in his mind and then just wrote things down wholesale, research and manuscripts show that Mozart wrote music the way ordinary people do. He wrote, revised, reworked and rewrote portions of his music constantly until they were done. Mozart's music is celebrate now, well after his death, but according to a Mozart-Scholar (Neal Zaslaw) "During his lifetime, it was right down on the ground along with that of the other composers." Tiger's father was a teacher "I love to teach," he's quoted as saying. He was an athlete and had a lot of experience teaching and training young men, and at the time that Tiger was actually born, dad was fanatically interested in golf and had worked to achieve a ranking in the top 10% of players within only a few years for himself. So, Tiger is born to a golfing expert who loves to teach, wants to teach/train his son up in golf and both parents have decided that Tiger is the biggest priority in their lives. Tiger, at age 19, makes it on the U.S. Team after 17 years of intense and tremendous practice with professional-quality teachers first, under his father and later under other teachers. It's not "talent" that propels people to the top of anything. I'm a few pages out from finishing Chapter 2. I'll be reading more this weekend.

We've actually worked with both over the years, for different circumstances and situations. For us, they've each had their respective merits, and their respective draw backs.

What?

Since reading how Foreign Language was taught/acquired to high levels in Soviet Russia during the 1960s. Some features of the Soviet Foreign Language system, as explained in the book What Ivan Knows that Johnny Doesn't include Beginning a FL in the 5th grade Use of a textbook that combines grammar with reading practice Giving attention to both pronunciation and conversation in the classroom Teach reading phonetically, then use the ability to read phonetically, to read controlled text. Continue this training until students have a reading vocabulary of ~2500 words mastery of grammar Which is interesting to see the parallels between how we've handled foreign languages for The Boys. We began Spanish in 1st grade, learned to read it phonetically and practiced reading until they could "read" with oral fluency. Spanish was learned through more explicit study of functional language and less systematically--it was very time consuming and probably not very efficient the way that we learned Spanish--however, it did work. However, with Japanese we actually did something quite close to what's reported as being the Soviet Model, without knowing it. 1) They began Japanese in the 5th grade 2) They used a textbook that was grammar-pattern drive 3) They invested a lot of time and energy into pronunciation and conversation practice from jump 4) They learned to read phonetically (both kana systems) and now are able to read/use Kanji a lot more fluently. 5) They've continued this training for years and The Boys now have a vocabulary numbering into the 1000s. It was fascinating to see that, through a bit of trial and error, we stumbled upon a "proven" method for FL, where as many thousands of professionals haven't. I've been rethinking some things about how to shape foreign language instruction going forward, so this has given me much to think about.