Archive for August, 2006
August 10, 2006 at 3:06 pm · Filed under My Musings
I’m a reluctant flyer. I prefer to have my feet on the ground, and when given the option will usually choose to drive instead of fly. Not so easy when you live on an island, but I figure it’s a fair payoff for living here. 
Of course, when I made plans to travel to California for the HSC conference and visiting friends and family, the airlines were not on red alert (well, actually it’s orange, but “orange alert” doesn’t sound as good). While I’m grateful for the heightened security and really, the new restrictions on what I can carry on won’t affect me much, it just makes me a little bit worried, you know? Because things could go wrong. There could be a huge delay and we could miss our plane. They could change the rules right before we get to the airport and I wouldn’t be allowed to take any carry-ons at all and I’d have to entertain my children with the barf bag during the flight. We could have a hair emergency and not have access to hair gel for five hours. Useless, unwarranted worries, all of them, but I worry nonetheless.
August 9, 2006 at 8:25 am · Filed under home education
I kid you not - E came in and told me yesterday that this “new math” is FUN. I introduced him to the partial quotient algorithm method of division discussed in a previous post and he is totally getting it. To the point of asking for more math to do yesterday. Incredible.
Edited to add: I’ve been generating practice problems for him here.
August 8, 2006 at 7:17 am · Filed under Uncategorized
I have just recently started using Bloglines to keep track of the blogs I read. It is so easy. No more clicking through to different sites to see if my favorite bloggers have added a new post. Bloglines keeps track of my favorite blogs for me and I can check ONE place instead of lots.
This is an easy option for people like me who get confused with “rss” and “feeds”. Once you have an account opened (it’s free!) you simply highlight the address of the site you want to add, click over to Bloglines and add it to the mix.
August 7, 2006 at 3:31 pm · Filed under My Musings, publishing
Amazon has implemented a new program called Omakase links. You put your associate code in and they will magically provide you with suitable book links based upon your site’s unique needs. I’ve added one of these to the bottom of my sidebar – out of curiosity more than anything. I’m wondering how accurate it can possibly be. And I wonder if my previous post mentioning a Speedo and pierced nipples will result in a strange book recommendation. At the moment it seems to be recognizing the fact that I look at team building books often.
I will say, I like the way it looks – as opposed to those atrocious product buttons, which, when I have time I will redo manually.
August 7, 2006 at 10:56 am · Filed under My Musings
To the anonymous man in Borders: Dude. We all like to flip through books at the book store. It is truly the best way to know if a book suits us or not. (Unless of course, a book is recommended by a friend. That is an even better way to know.) But if you do flip through the books, please don’t lick your finger every time you turn the page. That’s gross.
To the person who invented GameCube: I don’t like you so much.
To the person who invented Olay Regenerist: I love you!
To the man at the beach: 60 year old men should never wear a Speedo. Especially not with matching nipple rings. Really.
To Miranda: Thank you! The partial quotient algorithm method of division that you suggested makes SO much more sense to E. Not to mention, me!
To my mom: My children are happy. They are socialized. We are not harming them or doing a disservice to them by homeschooling. You would think that after NINE years of this, that would be obvious.
To my librarian: I love that you wear glittery antennae to work everyday. It took me awhile to get used to it, but now that I have, I think you’d look weird without them.
To the writer who asked for help: I am always more than happy to share my experiences and offer help if I am qualified to do so. But after I write a very long informative message to you, it would be really, really nice to just get a “thank you”.
August 4, 2006 at 4:23 pm · Filed under publishing
Education Express - a tutoring program that caters to home educators - is offering a class based on Team Challenges. An entire class!
August 4, 2006 at 8:46 am · Filed under home education
Ron picked up my division frustration post and ran with it.
The issue with learning something like long division is that a child who knows how to multiply, compare and subtract can follow the mechanical process of long division without learning a thing other than they have to do more of stuff they already know how to do.
I believe that is the reason most kids who start having problems with math at ages 8-12 have problems. It isn’t that they aren’t capable of it, but that they see no reason for it. They are just doing the same things in different ways to different numbers. And it’s boring….
…What we did was use real problems. Packages of items that contain X items costs Y. How much did each X cost? This package contains 18 items. That one contains 24. Which one is less expensive per item? Opportunities for real math are all around us
I agree with him, to a point. When we were doing early math, real life problems were a mainstay of what we did. Even early division was pertinent as we divided pizza and apples. As we’ve reached the process of long division we’ve slipped away from doing real life problems in lieu of practice problems (hot dog buns simply don’t come in packages of 1,876!). I’m going to make a concerted effort to again incorporate real math into our schedule – thanks for the reminder, Ron.
But, here’s the problem. Sometimes math is boring. Even so, we need to know the process. Even if we use real life problems, the fact is kids need to understand and remember the method, the steps they must take to get to the answer. With long division, there are no shortcuts – miss just one step and the whole answer is off. No matter how relevant we make math, kids still need to understand each function and how to solve a problem whether it’s real or hypothetical.
With E, the boy in question, he simply has a hard time absorbing the process. He has consistently had problems with retaining the functions of math on paper. And yet, he does this amazingly complex math in his head. Because he can do mental math with small numbers, he has a tendency to try and do part of a division problem in his head, forgetting to write down a key figure, only to end up in a quandary because his answer isn’t coming out correctly. He may, as Faith said in the comments of Ron’s post, just not be ready. And that’s why we are stepping away for awhile - I’m thankful that we can. I don’t worry about his math skills – he’s very quick with those and has a great understanding of numbers and how they work. But at some point he will need to learn – and grasp – the process of long division, complete with all of the boring steps. I just don’t think it’s going to be right now.
August 3, 2006 at 12:37 pm · Filed under publishing
Awhile back, Melissa posted about having a built in test-audience for her books – her kids. Well, I’m lucky to have a similar built in audience. But while Melissa reads her stories aloud to her kids as they are in progress, my kids are project testers.
My next book will be Great Medieval Projects You Can Build Yourself, in the same series as my colonial book. So, I’ve been researching and reading (rereading in some cases – we’ve studied ancient history around here almost constantly since B was 5 and in love with ancient Egypt) all things medieval. And, as I’ve been writing, I’ve been developing some cool projects in my head.
Yesterday we had some time to spare, so I set out to test an idea for making mock stained glass. While the kids designed their patterns, I read aloud to them about stained glass. During the middle ages most people didn’t know how to read, so many bible stories were pictured both in stained glass and wall paintings so that people could “read” the stories. I did not know that before I started researching this book!
Here’s one:
They turned out pretty well and the kids enjoyed it – this activity is definitely going into the book.
August 3, 2006 at 7:59 am · Filed under publishing, home education
From Para Publishing:
- 58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.
- 42% of college graduates never read another book.
- 80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.
- 70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
- 57% of new books are not read to completion.
–Jerrold Jenkins.
- Only 32% of the U.S. population has ever been in a bookstore.
–David Godine, Publisher.
- 1992: 20% of adults in the U.S. read at or below the fifth grade level.
–National Adult Literacy Survey reported in Publishers Weekly, January 6, 2003.
These are hard facts to process for a family that needs a wheelbarrow to bring books home from the library!
August 1, 2006 at 3:41 pm · Filed under home education
How is it possible that a child can understand and complete the process of long division one day, and have forgotten how to do it by the next day? We have been going over this for months (and months!) now, and each day it’s like I’m introducing a new concept. We’ve stepped away from it for a long time, hopeful that he would become “ready” for it, but that didn’t help. This morning we decided to take another break and focus on multiplication facts and learning those so that they come easier. It is good that we can be flexible, I think!
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