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On the whole, was your AL ready for logic stage early?


Sarah0000
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I know many ALs work ahead several years in one or many subjects. In your experience, was/is your AL firmly in the logic stage in terms of mental/emotional development (related to schoolwork) or is it more like they do a higher level content but more in a grammar stage way?

For example, I see many people say their kids do higher reading comprehension activites but perhaps orally instead of written. Or higher maths but perhaps short of proofs. Or...?

My oldest is almost 9yo and I'm seeing a change in him in how he approaches some of his schoolwork. It seems more like what I've read about the logic stage student extrapolating connections. He's always done that but it seems much more evolved now and as a consequence much of his schoolwork is too easy again. Grammar stage activities like copying, reciting, and narrating seem like busywork now and he kind of rolls his eyes at them. We don't do a lot of that anymore but it still pops up in some of his programs.

He has a third grade reading book with story maps and other story plot things and he says it's for babies. He's really getting into BF History of Science which he follows the lesson guide on his own, does the reading, does the experiments and notebooking on his own, and I believe that's targeted for 3-6 grade. His Spanish book is for grades 4-6 and is way easy, but he needs the vocabulary practice. W&R Narrative 1 and MCT Town is really easy for him. I don't plan on skipping levels in those things but I'm thinking of looking at logic stage (middle school) programs for history, science, foreign language, logic, probably others.

Just looking for general experiences as we enter this new area. I'm not trying to rush him or anything but suddenly many of his things seem like busywork. 

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I don’t really believe in these things coming in stages. I mean, I’m sure DD8 will become more sophisticated as she gets older, but I wouldn’t say she’s only capable of memorizing.

Anyway, DD8 has always rolled her eyes at busywork and we’ve been doing proofs since age 7.

Edited by Not_a_Number
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I'm not quite sure how to respond, but I'll give it a shot. 🙂 I think logic stage isn't a thing that kids enter into all at once across all areas, regardless of whether they're accelerated or not. It's a gradual process and some things will happen before others. So yes, younger kids who are accelerated in content may very well have areas where their ability is closer to what's typical for age (or even delays in some areas).

When DD#1 was little, the limiting factor was writing stamina. She would get physically tired of writing, so she couldn't produce "logic-level" output. Sometimes I had her do things orally, especially if it was clear that her hand was tired but her brain still had more to say. Eventually her writing stamina caught up and I adjusted expectations to what she could actually do.

With DD#2 when she was littler, the limiting factor was too much text on a page. Like, she could understand content but would be visually overwhelmed when looking at a book with smaller print and fewer pictures. So sometimes I would read with her or to her, until she got to the point where that wasn't overwhelming any longer. 

At this point (she is 8), the biggest issue I see is that she has a difficult time writing things she disagrees with. She can craft a good argument, but her black-and-white thinking shows up when I ask her to craft an argument for something she doesn't agree with. This is mainly an issue with things in Writing & Rhetoric that ask her to praise a certain character or historical figure, but she doesn't find the person praiseworthy. I am adapting some assignments to account for this - letting her write about a different character instead, or letting her choose to vituperate the character instead of praising him/her. I am assuming that this will not be an issue when she's a bit older.

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Gifted or not, I do think that all children go through these stages but my gifted kiddo was much more asynchronous about the thinking skills. For example, she had high verbal understanding and word reasoning skills but her math skills were just average. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that she went through the stages in her own way. She would make great leaps in one area (her gift being reading and verbal reasoning) but plod along normally or just slightly faster than normal in other areas (like math). All my kids were like that though. Gifted or not. Their leaps in understanding though might not be as big as my gifted kiddo but they still made asynchronous leaps going through all the developmental stages at their own pace.

I also think reducing grammar stage to "just memorizing" is a bit of an oversimplification. A grammar stage student, regardless of their physical age, is learning basic skills. Basic reading skills, basic arithmetic skills, basic thinking skills... these things do not come naturally to all children. Some, if not many children, even gifted ones sometimes, have to be taught these basic skills. They lack the life experience and analytical thinking to do much more than learn the basics and learn how to apply those basic skills to daily life. I know the last time I read TWTM it talked about memorizing a lot in the grammar stage and I don't really agree with the notion of memorizing for no reason or an obscure reason. But that's a whole other post. But grammar stage students are doing so much more developmentally than just memorizing.

Some kids are born analysts. They come out of the womb analyzing the world. I was one of those kids. It took me the first half of my life (literally my entire childhood and first few years of young adulthood) to figure out that most people do not think and analyze everything like I do. Analytical children (usually) do not have to be taught thinking skills but not every child is analytical in nature. It's as if they asynchronously skipped the learning thinking skills stage and went straight to analytical thinking. Nothing wrong with it, just not something that can or should be expected of all children. Even all gifted children.

To answer the OP, yes, somewhere around 4th to 6th grade, most kids will start to think in a more sophisticated manner. In some kids, it is like a switch was flipped and others it happens more slowly and almost sneaks up on you. In some kids it might even happen early than 4th grade or later than 6th but at some point, every kid will go through the metamorphosis to more complex and analytical thinking. Nothing in the world can force this change in thinking so don't worry about pushing him. If he is ready, go with it. He will let you know when you've hit a developmental wall. And yes, gifted kids sometimes need "meatier" content but aren't ready for the physical demands of more written work. I would absolutely adjust the assignments to their needs if they are otherwise ready for the work.

Edited by sweet2ndchance
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On 10/5/2020 at 2:50 PM, Sarah0000 said:

. Grammar stage activities like copying, reciting, and narrating seem like busywork now and he kind of rolls his eyes at them.

DS14 falls asleep doing copy work. DS15 treats copywork as art work. Even my chatty DS14 doesn’t like narration. My kids made reciting more fun for themselves by either singing the words (like an opera) or trying out different accents when reciting. Some reciting is useful for getting the correct accent for foreign languages. 

My kids were definitely more all over the place in development than me. My husband is the least asynchronous and least “accelerated”, a “perfect fit” for the lock step public school system. 

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I find the whole "grammar stage, logic stage" thing the least useful part of "classical" homeschooling. I'm sure it can be done well and that many here so it well, but I've seen kids become obnoxious little whippersnappers because they've been given a bunch of facts that they like to spout off to wow the adults around them, but they haven't been given the larger picture of what those facts mean, how to use them, or how hard the rest of the puzzle is. It's easy, to take a real example I've seen, to say E=Mc squared, and even to know what those letters stand for, but if learning that equation is the achievement that means you "know Einstein" rather than the spark that makes you want to learn more, it's worse than wasted time. Again, that's not the inevitable outcome of the grammar stage, but it's a risk that goes along with teaching facts in isolation, especially facts the kid isn't expected to be able to understand yet. Also, my kids have been asking why since before they could talk, and they've generally been able to understand and apply the explanations given. I'd rather teach them hows and whys that they can understand than a bunch of whats that they can't yet understand.

If I were to divide learning into stages, I'd say that first children should be taught to observe and come up with lots of questions. Then, they should learn to work hard to find answers. Next, they should learn to communicate their findings with others and be challenged on the conclusions that they draw. After that, they should know enough to be able to make even better observations, ask even better questions, and learn more about the answers which they can now communicate even better. No ages are attached to this, of course, and it doesn't ever end.

Edited by Xahm
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16 minutes ago, Xahm said:

I find the whole "grammar stage, logic stage" thing the least useful part of "classical" homeschooling. I'm sure it can be done well and that many here so it well, but I've seen kids become obnoxious little whippersnappers because they've been given a bunch of facts that they like to spout off to wow the adults around them, but they haven't been given the larger picture of what those facts mean, how to use them, or how hard the rest of the puzzle is.

Yeah, I've seen this, too. And I simply haven't seen it be all that helpful to kids. Obviously, kids this age DO excel at picking up facts, and I'm not against using this, but I feel like letting kids this age become fluent and proficient with IDEAS pays off more. And yes, they are often simple ideas like place value, or the fact that people in history really were people, or how natural selection works, or why a compass works... but they are still "why?" questions, and integrating them into your understanding early is a good thing. 

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3 hours ago, Xahm said:

 I've seen kids become obnoxious little whippersnappers because they've been given a bunch of facts that they like to spout off to wow the adults around them, but they haven't been given the larger picture of what those facts mean, how to use them.

Thank you for bringing this up.  I've seen this with Pi Day, so common in schools.  I had my dd's friend in the backseat and she was reciting the digits of pi as they learned in school for some contest.  So I asked her, "What is pi?"  As in, how is it defined?  What does it represent?  She didn't have answer for me.  Lost opportunity.  

Edited by daijobu
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We definitely don't follow the grammar stage=memorization thing in that way. 

I think part of it is actually...me. I think sometimes he acts put out because its mooom quizzing him, again, ugh. Then I overhear him discussing things with his supervising teacher, or talking to online teachers, or lecturing his younger brother and suddenly he's outputting at a much higher level on his own. So we must be doing alright, but I do still want to educate myself more on teaching subjects at that middle school level. I just like to be well-informed before doing things when possible. I think I first started researching homeschooling about five years before I even had a kid.

Thanks for all your insights.

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Mine (DD) was not ready for logic stage until recently. She really hasn’t been capable of more meta - level analysis until the past 6 months. By meta level, I mean thinking more deeply about the meaning and nuances of literature and history - thinking philosophically.  I think you need a certain amount of exposure to the world, maybe a little loss of innocence, or even a little weltschmerz / lebensmude to really analyze and process at a higher level. Actually, maybe that’s more rhetoric level stuff...

In terms of thinking about the why and how (as opposed to just facts), that is how we’ve always operated in our homeschool. It’s how our daily discussions go. I think very young children are capable of this. BFSU, for example (in my opinion), does a great job of guiding parents (or teachers) to help kids think at a level that might be considered  “logic stage.”

Copying, reciting, and narrating, to me, are not just useful for the grammar stage. There was some SWB talk I listened to (maybe one about writing in middle school?) where she said that in order to become good writers, children need to have a rich store of language and content from which to draw. Copying forces one to stop and really examine and appreciate a piece of text - either the language, or ideas, or both. Narrating is critically important for rhetoric stage (IMHO) — before you make an argument, you have to establish a certain set of assumptions and facts before you can proceed. The skill of narration is, in itself, an act of analysis, as you have to sequence and decide which details are most relevant for accomplishing the purpose of your story.  

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7 minutes ago, JHLWTM said:

Narrating is critically important for rhetoric stage (IMHO) — before you make an argument, you have to establish a certain set of assumptions and facts before you can proceed. The skill of narration is, in itself, an act of analysis, as you have to sequence and decide which details are most relevant for accomplishing the purpose of your story.

Interesting! I'm not a classical educator and haven't read any of the literature, but I think we do this in the context of math. Like, I ask her to think about what order her argument goes in, and what the reader knows, and lots of good stuff. So I guess that's kind of like practicing narration 😄 . 

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On 10/5/2020 at 4:50 PM, Sarah0000 said:

I know many ALs work ahead several years in one or many subjects. In your experience, was/is your AL firmly in the logic stage in terms of mental/emotional development (related to schoolwork) or is it more like they do a higher level content but more in a grammar stage way?

My kiddo is only just inching into logic stage type thinking at age 12. He was not at all accelerated in that way at a younger age.  In fact, some of the conflict we had with teachers or other adults was that they expected him to be able to reason and manage emotions with the consistency of an older child.   

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