Thursday, March 1, 2012

Re- thinking our learning styles

Is it just me or is that a regular process for Homeschool Teachers to once in a while look back and feel that it's time for some changes. I've been going through some major adjustments which I wrote about in "my first real Melt Down" and I'm absolutely happy with the outcome.


Recently I've been feeling that we could make Mathematics more interesting then just me handing him 2 pages of Math a day and say, more or less anyway: There you go, let me know if you have any Questions..
it's not so much him, but more me getting bored with the same routine since .. almost two years now. So I've started a research talked to mom's and also took a closer look at the Curriculum "RightStart Mathematics" which Leap Creature works with once a Week on his School Day. We at home are going through Coins right now and at school he'd learn about Fractions.. I'm thinking for myself: Weird that's way advanced.. so I'm flipping passed about 200 Pages and show him 4/4 and 3/4 and he gets it perfectly right.  I'd ask him if that's what he learns at School and he answers affirmative. Today during the Math Lessons the question was 6, 12, 18, 24, __ what comes next, with some multiple Choices and right away he'd say 30 and starts laughing. I must've had a bid of a stupid look on my face for I was very surprised for him to just know the answer immediately!! we never did any skip counting by 6. I'd ask him if he guessed and he said no. I'd ask him if he knows what number we're skip counting and he says 6. Ok is that what you learned at School? He said yes long loooong time ago, I just remembered. Well .. maybe JUST maybe we should switch to the curriculum they use at school. 


I read lots of Reviews about the Rightstart Mathematics Curriculum (as well as others such as MathUsee, Saxon Math, Singapore Math) but the RS Math just stands out in the sense of Parents saying they feel like their Children actually understand the concepts. I feel as if Leap Creature tries really hard to know whatever it is that we do in Math (not that he wasn't good, he is good. Slow but good *smile*) but I'd like to give him the gift of understand Math. The Curriculum is research based and is supposed to be very complete. It says that the goal is for the Child to understand 95% and only memorize 5%. One down side the Reviewers would mention is that the Teacher/ Parent will be involved in about a 30 - 40 min. Lesson with the Student but that doesn't bother me the least since I have to kind of be with him anyway or not much will be done. I've ordered the worksheets, they should be here within one week. I will get the tools by tomorrow and then it's: ready, set, GO !! 


Time will tell and I sure will write an Update about how things are going in a few month time. 





2 comments:

  1. I'm glad you were able to find a curriculum that works well for Leap Creature and you! Math is fairly crucial so it's great that you wanted more... thankfully my girls LOVE math and science which I'm doing my best to encourage. Next year we're going to enter in the science fair (we received really late notice this year so there wasn't enough time).

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  2. Thanks Serena, yes he gets excited now every time I pull out the Right Start Tools. I also believe that it's one of the important Subjects and would love for him to like it... I never did maybe that's why trying hard for him to feel differently about Math.. That's great about the Science fair :-)

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