We spent last week trying out the new math program and doing the final projects for our unit. The kids had a lot of fun making posters explaining the three laws of motion and "catching dreams" for the BFG.
The ALEKS program has been a huge success so far. Both of the kids love the independence it provides and the immediate reinforcement for mastering problems. In four hours of work both of the kids mastered over 30 concepts. That pace scares and amazes me! That's at least 10% of a year's curriculum in 1 week. Apparently, I've been holding them back even the way I'd been teaching math.
It has also been working well to give them a weekly list of tasks to complete. Even though I was sick two days last week, they got everything done without me pestering them.
They're looking forward to the programming class their dad will be teaching Monday and Tuesday. I'm looking forward to taking two days off!
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Links for reading and math
I've found the links that were suggested to me at NAGC. This is for finding age AND level appropriate books. Thank you to our local librarians for helping us locate this site!
The other is an online math program called ALEKS. If you are using it for home school math there are sites that will allow you a one month trial period instead of the 48 hours they give on their site. I'm not endorsing the product, because we have not used it yet. I will write up a review after we have tried it out for a month or so though. Just reading about it has me excited. Let's hope it lives up to my expectations.
The other is an online math program called ALEKS. If you are using it for home school math there are sites that will allow you a one month trial period instead of the 48 hours they give on their site. I'm not endorsing the product, because we have not used it yet. I will write up a review after we have tried it out for a month or so though. Just reading about it has me excited. Let's hope it lives up to my expectations.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
NAGC
I was very lucky to be able to attend the National Association for Gifted Children's national convention here in St. Louis this weekend. The tone for the day was set by an amazing young woman who performed her poem "Well". I knew from that moment it was going to be a good day. Here's Ms. Phillips reciting her poem at the 2009 MSA. Trust me when I say it's worth a viewing and have your kids watch it too.
I learned several things that were helpful, and reinforced the idea that we're on the right track. I met several people in the gifted field who offered their help and gave me lots of ideas including a new math program to try, and a searchable database for books that use age AND reading level to sort. One of the most interesting things I learned was really something that my intuition had already told me. That is that gifted children for some reason will not retain knowledge that they already know if they're forced to continuously repeat the task. I found this out through math drills I was making the kids do. Aiden (who's strength is math) was getting worse as each day went on while I was making him do fact quizzes. At least I learned quickly, and after about a week of doing the quizzes I stopped. Thanks to Heather's advice we're back to quickly progressing through math and he's doing fine now.
It was also interesting to see that over half of the parents in one of the seminars geared toward highly gifted kids were homeschooling their children. All of the mothers I talked to after the seminar had too much difficulty with schools, and their kids were thriving at home. I also found out that of the parents whose children were either of high school age or older only one of the kids out of about 6 graduated from high school. The rest of them tried a semester, went back to homeschooling, and started college early.
Due to some discussions I had, we're trying something new at home. The kids are going to have a weekly list of tasks that must be accomplished by Friday night. I'm not going to structure the days for them. Instead they can do the things on their list whenever they want. This way if they're enjoying working on the science stuff, they could spend all day with science if they wanted. Zoë has already told me that she's planning to do her math every day so she doesn't end up with 5 math assignments to do on Friday. How great is that! An eight year old who recognizes that math is her least favorite subject and she's better off doing it in small pieces instead of overwhelming herself. That is priceless knowledge!
It was wonderful to be surrounded by over 2500 people who care about educating our most neglected group of children. I feel refreshed, reassured, and armed with new knowledge. Now I just need to find some time to sort through all of the information I got and start saving for some of the amazing summer camps they have at colleges around the country.
I learned several things that were helpful, and reinforced the idea that we're on the right track. I met several people in the gifted field who offered their help and gave me lots of ideas including a new math program to try, and a searchable database for books that use age AND reading level to sort. One of the most interesting things I learned was really something that my intuition had already told me. That is that gifted children for some reason will not retain knowledge that they already know if they're forced to continuously repeat the task. I found this out through math drills I was making the kids do. Aiden (who's strength is math) was getting worse as each day went on while I was making him do fact quizzes. At least I learned quickly, and after about a week of doing the quizzes I stopped. Thanks to Heather's advice we're back to quickly progressing through math and he's doing fine now.
It was also interesting to see that over half of the parents in one of the seminars geared toward highly gifted kids were homeschooling their children. All of the mothers I talked to after the seminar had too much difficulty with schools, and their kids were thriving at home. I also found out that of the parents whose children were either of high school age or older only one of the kids out of about 6 graduated from high school. The rest of them tried a semester, went back to homeschooling, and started college early.
Due to some discussions I had, we're trying something new at home. The kids are going to have a weekly list of tasks that must be accomplished by Friday night. I'm not going to structure the days for them. Instead they can do the things on their list whenever they want. This way if they're enjoying working on the science stuff, they could spend all day with science if they wanted. Zoë has already told me that she's planning to do her math every day so she doesn't end up with 5 math assignments to do on Friday. How great is that! An eight year old who recognizes that math is her least favorite subject and she's better off doing it in small pieces instead of overwhelming herself. That is priceless knowledge!
It was wonderful to be surrounded by over 2500 people who care about educating our most neglected group of children. I feel refreshed, reassured, and armed with new knowledge. Now I just need to find some time to sort through all of the information I got and start saving for some of the amazing summer camps they have at colleges around the country.
Problem Solving
Friday was our first problem solving day. Four of our other friends from the gifted program were able to join us, and we had a great time. I think the kids learned a lot, and I learned that EVERYTHING they do takes them less time than I anticipate. I started to get worried when 10 minutes into things Zeke and Haley were already done with 3 problems, and the others were on their third. They worked on logic links puzzles, brain teasers, giving directions to a partner to have them build something without looking at it, and discussed a Mars exploration trip and all of its challenges.
They came up with some great ideas to solve some of the issues of a trip to Mars. They wanted to make the astronauts live together in a similar sized area for about two months before the trip to see if they would get along. They couldn't decide if it would be a co-ed exploration, because as Ella pointed out, if they're gone for about 4 years, you could have babies in that time. Heather and I smiled at that. They also decided that they would take 5 astronauts and they should each have a different profession and would then be trained to be an astronauts. If I remember correctly they wanted a doctor, and engineer, 2 scientists (one physicist and one to study the planet), and a pilot.
I enjoyed watching them work on the lego structure assignment. It was very interesting to see how the different pairs worked together. For Zoë and Ella it was so important that they understood each other that they would hold up the piece they were working on and ask the other person if they were putting it in the right spot. I don't know Ella very well, but I can guess that she's a lot like Zoë in that it's very important to her that she gets things right and does what people ask of her. This was different from Haley and Zeke how liked the challenge of seeing if they could build it with just the other person's verbal directions. They were both a little surprised that the other person didn't build exactly what they were told. I didn't even get a chance to see what Aiden and Maddie did, because they were finished too quickly. I could hear Aiden giving some directions as I was walking around the other groups, and he told me that neither one of them were very close in their builds.
After all that we played a space trivia game. I was surprised how much each of them knew about space. All in all, it was a lot of fun, the kids had a good time, and next time I'll need to plan even more things to do!
They came up with some great ideas to solve some of the issues of a trip to Mars. They wanted to make the astronauts live together in a similar sized area for about two months before the trip to see if they would get along. They couldn't decide if it would be a co-ed exploration, because as Ella pointed out, if they're gone for about 4 years, you could have babies in that time. Heather and I smiled at that. They also decided that they would take 5 astronauts and they should each have a different profession and would then be trained to be an astronauts. If I remember correctly they wanted a doctor, and engineer, 2 scientists (one physicist and one to study the planet), and a pilot.
I enjoyed watching them work on the lego structure assignment. It was very interesting to see how the different pairs worked together. For Zoë and Ella it was so important that they understood each other that they would hold up the piece they were working on and ask the other person if they were putting it in the right spot. I don't know Ella very well, but I can guess that she's a lot like Zoë in that it's very important to her that she gets things right and does what people ask of her. This was different from Haley and Zeke how liked the challenge of seeing if they could build it with just the other person's verbal directions. They were both a little surprised that the other person didn't build exactly what they were told. I didn't even get a chance to see what Aiden and Maddie did, because they were finished too quickly. I could hear Aiden giving some directions as I was walking around the other groups, and he told me that neither one of them were very close in their builds.
After all that we played a space trivia game. I was surprised how much each of them knew about space. All in all, it was a lot of fun, the kids had a good time, and next time I'll need to plan even more things to do!
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Projectiles and Giants
Today we continued with our force and literature units. The kids had a great time testing projectiles (what kid doesn't look for an excuse to throw things!) and learning how to measure angles. They also seem to really be enjoying The BFG.
Math was very slow for Aiden this morning. He seemed like he was getting bored with things. Even though he only had 10 problems to do, it took him over 90 minutes! Hopefully as we get into harder things he'll be more interested. We have a little bit to cover with fractions and common denominators and then he'll move on to the 6th grade book.
Zoë is starting the beginning steps for long division. She asked me today why I keep giving her problems with the square root of 64 in them. I told her as soon as she memorized the answer I'd stop giving her the problems! She's also working on her report on solar energy for jet. It's turning out very good. It's not due until the 13th, but she's determined to finish it on Thursday so she won't have to worry about it anymore.
As a final note I thought I'd share a random quote from Aiden. As we were driving to my Aunt and Uncle's house to have brunch on Sunday he says (from what appears to be nowhere) "you know, I still find it hard to believe that there aren't a google of atoms in the universe. You'd think there would be."
Math was very slow for Aiden this morning. He seemed like he was getting bored with things. Even though he only had 10 problems to do, it took him over 90 minutes! Hopefully as we get into harder things he'll be more interested. We have a little bit to cover with fractions and common denominators and then he'll move on to the 6th grade book.
Zoë is starting the beginning steps for long division. She asked me today why I keep giving her problems with the square root of 64 in them. I told her as soon as she memorized the answer I'd stop giving her the problems! She's also working on her report on solar energy for jet. It's turning out very good. It's not due until the 13th, but she's determined to finish it on Thursday so she won't have to worry about it anymore.
As a final note I thought I'd share a random quote from Aiden. As we were driving to my Aunt and Uncle's house to have brunch on Sunday he says (from what appears to be nowhere) "you know, I still find it hard to believe that there aren't a google of atoms in the universe. You'd think there would be."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)