tinderbox

Lesson in decimals, lesson in metacognition.

June 19, 2013 By tinderbox

Alex has really been enjoying her first exposure to decimals in MEP 4b, so I didn’t expect any trouble today, when the lesson introduced decimal addition. That was my first mistake.

As often happens in MEP, the first step was to give a problem orally and encourage the child to come up with ideas for how to approach it. The problem went like this: “Alex was digging a trench in her garden to plant a hedge. The first day she dug 2 meters, 70 centimeters. The second day she dug 3.8m. The third day she dug 4m, and the fourth day she dug 3 6/10m. How long was the trench altogether?”

Alex wrote down 2m 70cm, 3.8m, 4m, and 3.6m and announced that the sum was 12.84m.

“Okay, it looks like you added the whole meters first, and then you added the centimeters, which was a good strategy,” I said. “The whole meters you added and got 12, and then you added 70 and 8 and 6 and got 84. Let’s take another look at that part. This .8 meters right here – how many centimeters would that be? Eight-tenths of a meter is most of a whole meter, so could it be eight centimeters?”

Light dawned. She changed the .8 and .6 to 80 and 60cm, added them together, and gave the correct answer: 12m 210cm, or 14m 10cm. Awesome.

What was supposed to happen next: I was supposed to show another couple of ways of solving the problem – converting all the lengths to straight-up centimeters, and then making a place-value table and slotting the numbers into it so that the numbers are lined up properly for column addition.

What did happen next: Alex started sighing and rolling her eyes during my explanation of alternate solutions, and then I snapped at her for being rude, and then she started complaining that she was confused, and then I tried to illustrate by walking her through another problem but going straight for the place-value table, and she escalated to crying and yelling that it was just getting more and more confusing.

I put the math lesson away. I broke out the Base 10 blocks. We agreed together that if the “flats” were 1′s, the rods would be tenths and the little unit cubes would be hundredths. And then we worked through several decimal addition problems, each time with the blocks first and then on paper, until she fully understood that you can only add hundredths to other hundredths, and tenths to tenths, and so on. I took the picture at the top of this post, figuring that I’d write a nice little “method” post about using Base 10 blocks to teach decimals.

…Until we were in the car on the way to pick Colin up at day camp, and Alex started a different sort of conversation.

“Mom, you know when you were showing me the different ways of doing the same problem? I didn’t understand that all that was about adding decimals, so first I got really bored and then it made me think that the way I did it was wrong.”

“Ah,” I said. “And it seems to me that that’s where things started to go badly with our math. Because you got bored and stopped paying attention, and then you were confused and frustrated, and I got mad because you weren’t paying attention.”

“Yeah,” she said eagerly. “I got frustrated and then I got really mad, and that usually means tears.”

“Uh huh. Let’s think about whether that could’ve gone differently. Like, if we could jump in the TARDIS and go back in time, what would’ve helped? It seems like I should’ve been more clear at the beginning, like, this is why I’m showing you these other ways, because these are the steps to learning to add decimals.”

She agreed, but couldn’t contribute anything she might’ve done differently.

“Well, how about, what if when you first started to feel frustrated, you told me, Mom, I’m don’t understand why you’re showing me all these different ways. Would that have made things go differently?”

She was dubious. She explained that she’s just the kind of kid whose feelings explode. I suggested that she may not be able to control how she feels, but she can learn to control what she does.

“I guess so, but when I get upset it’s really hard to think of what else to do. I’ve tried bottling up my angry feelings, but I only have so much bottle and then I explode!”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I totally know what that’s like. So we know that bottling isn’t going to work. Usually the best thing is trying to notice before the feelings get really strong, and doing something then, at the beginning, while you still have options.”

That made a lot of sense to her. We went on to have a nice, sympathetic conversation about how tricky that is – including that I can’t always do it myself, which is why I sometimes yell at her. A huge part of becoming a grownup, I explained, is learning to understand yourself and notice your feelings so that you can have more control over how you act. But I’m not perfect at it, and I don’t expect her to be either.

I’m amazed that she was able to initiate, and apparently benefit from, this conversation. The real lesson today didn’t involve decimals; it involved metacognition – “thinking about thinking.” That ability to be reflective about your own mental processes is hugely, hugely important – especially to a kid who’s a bundle of nerves, like Alex. I am unbelievably proud of her.

Filed Under: Math, philosophy and politics

All cursive, all the time.

May 16, 2013 By tinderbox

Alex is obsessed with cursive. She’s been tearing through the basic book that’s languished on the shelf all year (I don’t value cursive, so it’s always been optional) and writing her spelling and dictation assignments in a hybrid of cursive and print. Little cursive notes appear all around the house.

So yesterday I made a decision. “Hey Alex, what would you think about setting Writing With Ease aside for a while and doing cursive copywork instead?”

“I would love to!”

And she did, too. I picked a funny passage from our latest read-aloud and she copied several sentences with good will. Then she wrote an extra sentence so she could demonstrate her skill with capital I. Then she asked for more copywork. Win!

The only problem is that I find it pretty challenging to write out a “perfect cursive” example. (I know you can buy something like StartWrite to do it for you, but I’m cheap.) My cursive skills are not awesome or automatic, and I learned a script that’s slightly different from the one Alex is learning. Still, it’s worth the extra trouble to see her glow with pride.

The proliferation of cursive writing everywhere in our house makes the drive-by comment someone made on my last post all the funnier. This person is so familiar with our family that she began her comment “It may help your little perfectionist (and “Miss Amy,” presumably his teacher)…” She explains at length how useless cursive is, how adults don’t use it, and how it should never be required. Very nice, but I would’ve found an article on “what to do when your kid makes you teach cursive even though you don’t want to” a lot more relevant to my own situation.

Filed Under: Writing

Cursive and the perfectionist.

May 9, 2013 By tinderbox

Let me tell you, when a perfectionist starts to learn cursive it is fun times.

“Augh! Look at this y! It’s horrible! Look at how messed up it is!”

“No, Alex. I’m not going to look at your messed up y. Finish the row, and then circle the y you like the best, and I’ll look at that one.”

“Z is hard too! Miss Amy says that she never mastered cursive z. Do you think I’ll ever be able to get it?”

“If you could write cursive letters the first time you tried, you wouldn’t need a cursive book. Just keep practicing and then circle your best z.”

And miraculously? This totally works. Circling the best letter, which I guess implicitly means disowning all the less-perfect ones, seems to shut off the perfectionist critic in her head. It keeps her practicing.

She can’t wait to be able to use cursive all the time:

Filed Under: Writing

Wordless (almost) Wednesday

May 7, 2013 By tinderbox

The Farm Experience program is going swimmingly.

Filed Under: BHCC, excursions, Field Trips

Big news…

May 6, 2013 By tinderbox

I’m quitting my job this summer.

My academic research psychology position just isn’t making me happy… to put it mildly. Instead, I’m going to strike out on my own. Seeing a gap that needs to be filled, I’ve decided to open a clinical practice that focuses on the assessment needs of homeschoolers.

Right now, if you’re a homeschooler concerned that your child may have a learning disability, an attention issue, or special educational needs, your main option for an assessment is the public school system. Under federal IDEA law, the schools are responsible for identifying children with learning differences. However, many homeschoolers find that the public schools don’t really satisfy their needs.

The evaluation is likely to focus on questions of eligibility for special education services, school-based intervention programs, and classroom accommodations. Parents may be given very little advice about how to modify their homeschooling practices to remediate or accommodate their child’s difficulties. Understandably, school personnel aren’t knowledgeable about homeschooling curricula or different homeschooling philosophies which may impact educational choices. And many homeschoolers feel judged or misunderstood when they interact with the public system.

Private psychologists will also do assessments, of course, but these can be quite expensive and may be nearly as unsuited to the homeschooling context. Families may find themselves spending a lot of time educating the professional they hired about homeschooling.

Enter me.

I’m going to be able to provide assessment services that are well-informed about homeschooling, and recommendations that are written to the layperson and focused on the homeschool environment. Afterwards, I can consult periodically with families as they work with their kids to strengthen weak areas and work around problems.

Other families might just need a simple IQ test to establish their child’s eligibility for a program for gifted kids, or simple achievement testing to determine grade level in various subjects – say, when their child is coming out of school and they need to pick appropriate curriculum levels. I can do that too.

I think this will be a tremendous opportunity to serve the community, and it will also be work that I’ll really enjoy. And having my own practice, setting my own hours, will allow me to work less and have more time with the kids. I’ve been unhappy about racing through homeschooling most days to go running off to work, and I’ve worried about what it would be like to have both kids home. Now I’ll have the chance to set up a much more sustainable rhythm of work, schooling, and home life.

I’m excited!

Filed Under: policy & planning

Looking ahead to third grade.

May 2, 2013 By tinderbox

Our new school year starts on June 1st. One of my goals for third grade is that Alex start to take a little more ownership of her education, so I asked her what she would like to accomplish this year. Without prompting, she came up with the following list:

1) Learn to write in cursive, quickly.
2) Learn how to multiply fractions.
3) Know the area of a circle.
4) Know the area of the Circle of Life.
5) Be able to write an essay by the first day of fourth grade.

Not such a bad list! #1 hadn’t initially been on my own list – I honestly don’t care if she writes in cursive or print. I learned cursive in elementary school, labored over it for four years, and instantly switched back to printing the moment I hit junior high. It did not impair my efforts to earn a Ph.D. But since Alex wants to learn it, I let her pick her script and ordered a handwriting book in the style she chose (Zaner-Bloser, pretty close to the Palmer script I was taught.)

The other kind of writing has been much on my mind. In third grade, I really want to focus on translating Alex’s strong verbal skills into writing.

I don’t think she’s quite ready for Paragraph Town, the next level of Michael Clay Thompson language arts. (Boy, would she love getting to move on to the next MCT poetry book, though. Music of the Hemispheres was one of the highlights of this year.) I intended to just have her focus on writing short paragraphs or themes in history and science, but on impulse I bought Writing Strands instead. It’s written to the child – I think it’s time to start making that shift – and it has a mix of creative and expository assignments. One of the things I like is that it focuses on working on the same piece of writing over several days. It looks like Writing Strands 3 will take about six months to complete, and then we can move on to MCT Town level towards the end of third grade.

In math, with regret, we will mostly be leaving Beast Academy behind. They’re now saying that they’ll come out with each new set of books five months apart – and a set of books is only a quarter of a grade level. We’ll still buy the guides for enrichment, and perhaps the practice books as well, but Beast Academy can’t continue as Alex’s grade-level work. Instead, over the next year or so she’s going to work through a compacted version of MEP 4b-6b. Beast Academy has shown me that Alex just doesn’t need as much practice and repetition as there is in MEP. She thrives on moving a little quicker. I’ve reduced the rest of MEP down into about a full year’s work (it will take longer if we intersperse with Beast Academy), and we’ll move at that pace as long as she feels comfortable with it.

The last new thing I want to add for third grade is art. We did great art lessons with Five in a Row in kindergarten and first grade, but since then, sadly, Alex has mostly been on her own. She does great mixed-media and fabric art projects on her own, but I know that she would benefit from some actual instruction. We’re going to try working through Mona Brookes’ Drawing With Children, and see where that takes us.

In addition to these new things, Alex will be keeping on with Lively Latin, All About Spelling, Story of the World, and Intellego science units. That seems like more than enough!

…And!

The really major new thing we’ll have going on this year is that Colin is dropping out of nursery school and becoming a home-preschooler, for reasons I will explain in an upcoming post. Yay, I get to do Five in a Row again! Colin is ecstatic about not having to go to school anymore, although he did cautiously ask if I could give him easy homeschooling, at first. I’m not going to leap right in to a lot of academics with him. Besides Five in a Row, I think I’ll try to spend some time at the table with him most days, doing varying activities: fine motor skills, board games, cutting and gluing, games with math manipulatives, mazes, learning to write letters, and continuing on with a little MEP Reception, or, as it is known in our house, “Colin math.” Oh, and books. Lots of time on the couch reading books.

It’s going to be awesome.

Filed Under: Five in a Row, Math, policy & planning, Writing

Soil is a filter.

April 25, 2013 By tinderbox

We’re studying soil now in earth science, which dovetails nicely with the farm program that I wrote about in my last post. Today the kids spent a surprising amount of time playing on a soil website, watching little animations and doing click-and-drag activities. I thought this would be pitched too young for Alex, but she and Colin both loved it.

Then we set up an experiment to understand how soil acts as a filter. The directions were confusing, and our results were not as spectacular as promised, but it still turned out to be a good activity.

We punched holes in the bottom of two paper cups. One was half-filled with sand, and the other had about an inch of sand and was then half-filled with dirt. We put each cup inside a smaller paper cup to catch any water that leached through the soil. We were supposed to see big differences between the sand and the soil, and we didn’t.

First we poured dirty water full of miscellaneous gunk into the top cups. The water that came out the bottom wasn’t clear, but it didn’t have any visible material anymore – the soil and sand filtered out all the cruft.

Next we drained out both cups and started again with water that had been colored with purple food coloring. Alex hypothesized that the water that leached out into the bottom cup would stay the same color. Nope! It came out a light slate gray.

The experiment directions promised all kinds of cool results, like the water coming out hot pink, and we were not at all that lucky. But it still got the main point across: soil filters some substances and chemicals out of the water that seeps into underground aquifers, but it doesn’t filter out everything.

Alex did a nice job with her lab write-up. I helped out by having her formulate the sentences orally first, so that I could dictate them back to her, but the essentials are hers. (Oh, and I wrote the tiny labels on the pictures.)

Filed Under: earth science, Experiments, science

Kayam Farm experience!

April 19, 2013 By tinderbox

This week the kids started a new activity through the Baltimore Homeschool Community Center: a “Farm Experience” at Kayam, an organic farm north of Baltimore that focuses on environmental and Jewish education. (The homeschool program is secular.)

For the next six weeks, they’ll visit the farm one morning a week for hands-on activities and lessons. Sadly, I don’t get to go – it’s on Michael’s day at home. I get to experience it through pictures and the kids’ jumbled reports afterwards. By all accounts, it’s amazing.

What did they do their first week? Fed the chickens, gathered eggs, planted radishes and potatoes, chased goats out of the chicken coop, did yoga, played games. Colin’s group hunted through a sandbox for buried seeds and then matched them up with pictures to figure out what they would grow. Alex’s group, the over-sixes, weeded a garden bed and learned about the awesomeness of soil.

They had one heck of a good time.

Filed Under: BHCC, excursions, Field Trips

Latin and the little brother.

April 18, 2013 By tinderbox

Sorry for the break in posting. I’ve had a lot going on, which hopefully I’ll be able to post about soon, and Alex has not had a lot going on – she had two weeks off for spring break, including a wonderful week of camp at a local nature center.

We have definitely noticed the step up in difficulty between Lively Latin 1 and Lively Latin 2. Alex is up to the challenge, but she’s not memorizing the vocabulary quite as quickly as she used to, and now she gets a new list in every chapter instead of every other chapter. When we picked Latin back up again after spring break, it was clear that we needed to stop and finish nailing down the recent vocabulary lists before we would be able to move any further.

Enter Latin Bingo:

I made Alex a quick little Bingo card with Latin words and gave her a bowl of dried beans to mark her squares. Then I called out words in English and she tried to find them on her card. Colin also got a Bingo card with words from Alex’s recent Latin vocabulary lists, except that he had to match the English words I read with clip art pictures.

I’m not as good as I’d like to be at finding learning activities that benefit both kids, given their age difference. I’m really happy with how this one turned out. Colin got some good searching-and-finding practice and a vocabulary lesson (which picture shows reward? How about announce?), and Alex got quite a bit of vocabulary practice. Because the kids’ Bingo cards weren’t identical, I called out plenty of words that weren’t on her list. She had to translate them into Latin in her mind before she could find them, or not, on her card. They played two rounds of regular Bingo and a round of “blackout Bingo,” and they are eager to play again tomorrow.

I might make this a regular feature for every chapter. Looking ahead, I see that next list has plenty of good vocabulary words for Colin, like breastplate, command, and conquer. Words that every four-year-old boy needs to know! And games are so good for morale.

Filed Under: languages, toddler world

Alex’s rock museum.

March 28, 2013 By tinderbox

We’re finishing up the Intellego Geology chapters on Minerals and Rocks this week, just in time for Alex’s spring break. The curriculum encourages doing some kind of response activity at the end of each section. For rocks and minerals, Alex is working on a “museum exhibit” of rocks that we’ve collected. We’re making label cards for each rock, with the identification (if possible) or whatever we can deduce about the rock. I am writing the label cards to Alex’s dictation, because I want her to concentrate on providing good content rather than on being extra-concise so she won’t have to write as much.

We’re finding two resources enormously helpful with this project. Don Peck’s rock identification key can be found on the website of the Mineralogical Society of America. For our purposes, this key is far superior to the other ones online because (a) its descriptions are extremely clear for non-experts, and (b) it is limited to common rocks you are actually likely to find. (I can’t tell you how many times we’ve tried to work our way through a mineral identification key only to be told that we are supposedly holding a rare mineral found only in South Africa, or something.)

We’re also using the Audubon Society’s First Field Guide to Rocks & Minerals. This is another extremely clear guide, with great pictures and descriptions of different types of rocks.

Filed Under: earth science, science