07.25.06

Summer travel - round 2

Posted in Life, the Universe and All that Jazz at 1:22 am by Meg

Well, I’ve been in one place for too long.

No, actually now that we’ve gotten settled back in our house, it’s time to go visit some family. So, on Thursday afternoon we’ll be taking off for about 10 days. It’ll be great to see people and a lot of those that we’ll be seeing, we haven’t seen for a few years.

Talk about a loop though. First we’re going down to Atlanta for Boy to play in his Magic Junior Super Series Championship. They are playing for college scholarships and I put him at a long shot, but he’ll have fun. We haven’t really figured out what we’re going to do on Saturday while he plays. We’ve been there before and did a lot of the touristy stuff already. Anyway, when he’s done on Sunday, we’ll head north. Monday night we’ll be stopping at my sister’s place in western Maryland. She has a beautiful pre-revolutionary horse farm and hubby hasn’t been there yet. Tuesday night we’ll be at my step-sister’s place in my old home town in the Southern Tier part of New York. I’m curious to see the remains of the flooding.

From there we head up to Rochester for a couple of days with Hubby’s brother and his kids. While we’re there, there’s a bbq planned at his Aunt’s house and so we’ll see all of her family. Then it’s west to Buffalo and Niagara Falls in visit Hubby’s parents and his sister (and her family). We’ll be there another couple of days before we come home.

So, I won’t be around for a few days.

Read the rest of this entry »

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07.24.06

Belts

Posted in The creative side of life at 10:46 pm by Meg

My mil asked me to make my fil a new belt. His old one was too wide for the belt loops on some pants that he had gotten and he needed a new one. This is his old one old belt He had really liked it and had even gotten an eagle belt buckle to wear on it.

Since the old one wasn’t carved (it was embossed, or stamped) I wasn’t about to try to replicate it. After thinking about it, I decided to use some eagle stamps, that Tandy sells, with a carved background.

He has a wallet that I made him years ago that has mountains in the background with a tree trunk and (I think?) and eagle in the foreground. I figured if I made the belt to sort of match, it would work.

Here’s a couple of shots of the finished belt. I’m pretty pleased with it, though I am concerned that I may have made it too short. We’ll see when we give it to him next week.

belt

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07.21.06

Math

Posted in The nuts and bolts of it at 2:05 pm by Meg

That friend, that was asking about high school, was also concerned about what her daughter should be doing in math.

First consider the public school norm for a K12 math program - for grades 1 to 5 do basic arithmetic, grades 6 to 8 do ‘algebra readiness’ and then start the high school lineup (prealgebra, algebra 1, geometry, algebra 2, precalculus, etc.).

Since I don’t have any idea of where this child is, let’s start with a very general overview.

Basic arithmetic is the stuff that you can pick up fairly easily on your own. I’ve actually seen where Sudbury Valley programs say that you can formally learn everything needed (with a motivated, possible older, child) in about 20 hours. Given her age and intelligence, I wouldn’t worry too much about missing skills at this point if you haven’t been doing anything formal.

Algebra readiness is a load of crap. MIddle school math is a tough time in the public school. My impression is that they do a holding pattern. The main idea is that they are trying to review and improve (even out) the basic skills of the kids while they wait for them to be ready to start algebra. As such, most of it can be skipped. Most recommendations are to cover the first year and then go ahead and jump into prealgebra. I expect that this big step is where this friend is concerned.

So where to put the child? A 6th grade book might have this table of Contents (TOC):
1. Decimals
2. Patterns and Variables
3. Number Theory and Fractions
4. Adding and Subtracting Fractions
5. Multiplying and Dividing Fractions
6. Ratios, Proportions, and Percents
7. Data and Graphs
8. Tools of Geometry
9. Geometry and Measurement
10. Integers
11. Exploring Probablilty
12. Equations and Inequalities

To paraphase, Can she handle decimals and fractions (adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing)? Can she move between ratios, proportions, and percents? Can she read and draw graphs? Does she understand measurement and some basic ideas of geometry? (ie. a triangle has 3 angles whose measure adds up to 180 degrees or a figure with 4 sides has multiple names depending on their length and if they are parallel) Has she had any exposure to probablity? (ie. rolling a die or a bag full of colored beads and she wants the blue one) and lastly, do equations throw her for a loop, (y=3x + 5) or can she plot them for multiple values of x?

If she can handle most of these concepts alright, then consider going right into pre-algebra. Just take it slow, have a good text, and be prepared to review when you need to. If you are concerned, just pick up a middle school level text for this year and go into pre-algebra next year.

And that brings me to my second point. A lot of homeschoolers use and highly recommend Saxon Math. Now I haven’t looked at their high school texts, but I did look over their lower texts at the request of a friend. I don’t like them.

They use a very different structure. Since I first looked at them, I’ve seen an explanation of why they are organized this way, but they can be very frustrating and discouraging for a lot of kids.

To show this structure, let me take a typical text as comparison. The book takes an area (say fractions) and builds a chapter around it. It contains about 10 lessons that build from the very basics (review) to the level of competence needed at that level (grade). The end of the chapter contains extra review and a competency test. The problems in each lesson are split into 3 sections; 1. pure concept (straight out of the book) 2. expanded concepts (more involved, real world, and word problems) 3. review (both of previous chapters of the book as well as basic skills needed in upcoming lessons). This constant building and growing means that as they get feedback regularly on what they did incorrectly, they can fix it and understand it by the end of the chapter. They finish the chapter feeling confident in their abilities. As you can see, since it starts with the first lesson covering the basics, she will have a chance to pick up concepts that she may have missed in previous years.

Saxon has a very different outlook. Taking that same area (fractions) an early lesson in the book will have those basics (review), but then there won’t be another lesson on fractions for a couple of weeks. The next lesson won’t be for another few weeks and so on through the year. During the time between each lesson there will be review questions that cover fractions tacked onto whatever the day’s lesson is. The author’s idea is that that time gives the student an opportunity to absorb and understand the concept before they go on. What I have seen in my friend’s kids and heard from others is that unless they are fairly confident and strong in math, they will not ‘keep’ those skills and each time they have a lesson in fractions, they will need to go back to those previous lessons. It quickly gets frustrating and the kids begin to feel like they do not understand anything connected with math. The actual problem sets seem to follow a similar pattern to the typical text, but with more emphasis on those review questions at the end since they tie in so strongly with the organization of the book.

Now I don’t know if those people that I’ve ’spoken to’ about problems with Saxon have fully implimented the text, but I do know that many of them haven’t like it.

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Dragons

Posted in The creative side of life at 12:40 am by Meg

Boy finally had a chance to celebrate his birthday with his friends and 8 hours later they are still going strong. The main plan was playing lazer tag this afternoon. He had a fun group of a dozen kids for games, pizza and cake. Thanks to Kixque, I made him the dragon (Sapphira) cake that he wanted.
P7200013

From the lazer tag place, a smaller group of the just the boys went to play in a Magic booster draft and now they are filling up my livingroom deep in a D&D game. No one is leaving until late tomorrow morning, so I’m taking odds on whether they will end up getting any sleep.

I’m not staying up with them so I won’t know how late they’ll stay up. Read the rest of this entry »

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07.17.06

Free Trip to Italy

Posted in Scholarships, Contests, Reading programs and the like at 7:49 pm by Meg

The Museum of Science and Industry is raffling off a free trip to Italy as part of their Leonardo Da Vinci Exhibit. Even the runner prizes sound great to me.

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HIGH SCHOOL

Posted in COLLEGE, The nuts and bolts of it at 1:43 am by Meg

I had a friend just email me with a question about a canned curriculum. Her daughter is a year ahead of Girl and she is starting to think about high school and all that. There was more to it than that, but it got me thinking about high school.

Now, for the record. I am totally against canned curriculum. While it must be nice that they’ve laid it all out for you, the ones that I’ve looked at (and I admit it hasn’t been many) go as far as to layout a daily plan of what and how each course should go. As I’ve said before, I’m all for a syllabus, but I want the ability to be flexible. Flexible both in my ability to make what we are doing be the best for my child and in what we are doing on any given day be responsive to what else is going on in our lives. IMO, canned curriculums can’t give you that.

You can be going along, watching your children grow. Everything is hunky-dory until they hit middle-school. Most often it hits as you plan for 8th grade. All of a sudden you start to second-guess yourself as you realize that NEXT YEAR - is HIGH SCHOOL! And now every decision goes through the microscope.

And when you really come down it. It’s not that school is much that harder, it’s that college is now that much closer and it’s suddenly hit you that your time is coming to an end and the college is going to expect so much from your child. (And won’t you have egg on your face if you haven’t gotten them there?)

So, as part of planning for 8th grade, you start to scramble. Not only do you have to figure out your plans for the coming year, you need to layout plans for the 4 years after that.

That’s a whole lot to take on. And don’t those canned programs look like they will make it easy? Then there’s the distance learning programs run by different colleges and universities, pricy but they have the implied acceptance of your child into their undergraduate program. And there’s the programs like Clonlara and NARS, who will give you more freedom but will take your money in return for a promise to hold your hand and build you a transcript.

As always will homeschooling, there are so many different things to spend your money on.

Do these programs work, are they a good idea? Yeah, for many people and for many reasons they might be the best fit for your child. But they aren’t the only way to approach high school. (Though remember, if your child wants to go to a service academy, say West Point, you may be required to work within an outside program.)

So, let’s get to the point. Why do we panic about high school? I’m working on the assumption that we all see our kids continuing on into higher education. If that’s not where they are going, then high school becomes a trade school, and unless your state puts requirements on homeschool graduates, the whole high school pressure situation is off.

But how do you deal with the high school pressure on your own? Well, the idea is to supply the child with the background that the colleges want. And to find that out, you go to the colleges themselves.

The best time to do so is before your kid is in high school. Now, most kids won’t have any idea of where they want to go to college at this point (or what they want to study,) but go ahead and check with a few colleges and see what their general incoming freshman requirements are. Most colleges will post it on the web and while there might be additional requirements for homeschoolers, you’re not ready yet to even worry about them.

As a quick survey, here’s some listings:

Since my friend is back in New Mexico, I started with UNM. The local state college/university should be the first place to check. Between costs and location it may be your child’s back up plan if they can’t get in where they finally decide they want to go. UNM is looking for this preparation - High school GPA of 2.25 (C+) or better overall on a 4.0 scale and 2.25 or better in the following required course areas:

4 English courses, including at least one 11th or 12th grade composition
3 math courses, including algebra 1 or 2, geometry, trigonometry, calculus or higher
2 social science courses, including U.S. history
2 natural science courses, including at least one lab science in biology, chemistry or physics
2 foreign language courses in the same language or proof of proficiency in a second language

Then there are the private colleges. Costs usually become the factor on whether your child will be going to them, but many offer scholarships, so don’t ignore their requirements.

As examples, here’s Syracuse University’s - Be taking, or have taken, a college preparatory curriculum, including four years each of English, science, social studies, and mathematics (through geometry and intermediate algebra) and a minimum of three years of a foreign language.

Cornell’s (an ivy league school) -16 units, including 4 of English, 3 of mathematics, 3 of science, and 3 of one foreign language (there are extras for different degree programs)

And Harvard’s (another ivy league) - An ideal four-year preparatory program includes four years of English, with extensive practice in writing; four years of math; four years of science: biology, chemistry, physics, and an advanced course in one of these subjects; three years of history, including American and European history; and four years of one foreign language.

Once you’ve looked at a few, you can see what they have in common. Your goal for high school is to be able to create a transcript, or portfolio, that will (as a minimum) show that your child has met these requirements. There are many different ways to do. Nearly any style of homeschooling can produce a transcript/portfolio that will satisfy the colleges.

So now you have the framework to plan out high school. In a couple of years (hopefully) your child will have some idea of what they want to study (and where) and you can go looking again. This time you want to pay closer attention to those niggly details and the extra hurdles they put up for us.

Is high school a big undertaking? Yes, there’s no way around it in our society.

As a homeschooler, can you do it on your own? Yes again, it just takes that old dedication to find or design a program that fits your needs.

I did go through the ‘pre-8th grade’ panic with Boy. In the ‘Interesting Links’ part of the sidebar is the Indiana Foundation of Home Schooling. They are a state-wide (Indiana) organization that was founded just to help people home school through high school. While they are focused on Indiana, they do have a lot of good information for anyone. For anyone who is close enough to make it to one of their programs, I highly recommend it.

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