Last night I went out to the sit in the screen porch while I corrected math for the kids. It was wonderful. It was a little cool, but I like it that way. Every thing smelled fresh from the recent hard rains. The large oak, maple, and pine trees behind the house were swaying in the breeze. Kelly sat out there with me. It really has been amazing to watch the kids learn math. It is a different feeling than when they learned to read. Both Kelly and Christian learned to read over a few short months, but math takes a lot longer. They are both in algebra right now, Christian in Algebra I and Kelly in Algebra II. They both really get it. The Teaching Textbooks program we use does a stellar job of presenting new material both in the text and on video clips.
The kids do the problems after each lesson every day. Sometimes they get almost all of them right, but they usually miss a few and sometimes they miss many. We go back and correct every problem they miss using a process that works well for us. First they try again without any help. If that does not help, I help them rework the problems. There are detailed explanations of all the problems to which we infrequently resort if I am very, very busy, but it is one of the small joys of our day to work these hard math problems together. The really good part of the program is that it repeats a lot of material in a way that is not so boringly repetitive that the kids hate to do it. Just this week, it was neat to see Kelly’s genuine excitement when she learned how to solve systems of equations for the first time.
She said, “They said it is Linear Algebra.”
I looked at it. It is linear algebra. I remember that excitement myself.
We often talk about what will be ahead for the Christian and Kelly in the community college. After we finish Calculus, I am not sure whether I will have them repeat it in college so they can get a handle on how to take a college level math class before they jump into the higher level classes. I think we will just wait and see how much we like the calculus material, how well they do on it, and then how they do on the placement tests. Since we have decided to keep the kids at home through their senior year in high school (a fairly arbitrary thing if you are a homeschooler), I have been looking for goals that are both challenging and useful. How good would it be to get the kids through all the math they would ever need to take in college before they even start? That probably means Differential Equations and Linear Algebra for the both of them.
The ability to “do the math” is truly a gift. We are making progress in that direction.
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Dad did all that stuff,but he can’t remember it! He says that when I’m in college he’ll take it again with me so that I can help him. 😉
That is what I ought to do, too!
Oh, that’s a good way to work the corrections. We’ve been doing it similar, but just the other day I tried something new. Since they are in the same math, I had them correct each other’s work, and following that, we reviewed the problems they both got wrong (while correcting.) Hmmm, not sure if that makes sense, but they seemed to benefit from the change.
Then the end of the year review came up and they both did so bad (!) that we are taking a few problems every day and doing them together. One of them illustrates the problem on the chalk board, and the other “corrects” it if needed. We’ve started off on the next level of math (Singapore 4A) but will stretch this review process out for a while to (hopefully) cement last level’s work in!
It seems like you have a good plan. The thing that I have noticed with our two is that if they do not get repetition, they do not retain the math as well. I thought we could take the math at a faster pace and not do all the problems, but very quickly got disabused of that idea. I think my biggest job in homeschool right now is to assure that the concepts are sinking in. For us that means making sure the stuff that sank in on week three was still sunk in week eight. I think your idea of switching up how stuff gets corrected every now and then is a good one. I had always done all the correction for several years, then this year, because I have been so busy, Lorena started taking it on. It was a very little change (check marks mean good in Lorena’s world and bad in my world), but invigorated everyone when we were starting to drag a little. At any rate, it sounds like your two are blasting right along.