Day: April 7, 2009

I have a serious problem with pronouncing words correctly. I know what they mean, I can (usually) use them in context. The problem is I read them before ever having heard them so I constantly mess up. For example adolescent. Until today, when Dad corrected me, I’ve always said it uh-DAWL-uh-sent. Same with mature. According to Dictionary.com, the official pronunciation is ma-toor, but I’ve always said it ma-chur. Gambol is Gam-bowl. Sanguine is San-gwine. And tacit has always been tack-it to me. Wanton is supposed to be WON-tn, but I say it Won-tawn. Victuals is Vick-chooalz. Cached is Cash-ayed. Egregious is uh-GREE-gee-ous. Chagrin is shuh-GREEN. The list goes on and on. There are lots of words that I have butchered even more than those listed above, but I honestly can’t remember them. This butchering happens a lot, and sometimes it’s pretty embarrassing. 🙂 But honestly, why can’t people just be reasonable and pronounce words like they are written?? Yet another reason to move to Mexico.

Today I went to the doctor and got my decennial tetanus shot. I was slightly apprehensive (it’s ap-ri-hen-siv isn’t it???) because I seem to remember a horrible sting not unlike that of a hornet, 10 entire minutes of bawling and a cruel doctor who gave me an ugly dinosaur sticker. Girls of five have no use for dinosaur stickers, especially when there are Barbie princess ones nearby. My fears were in vain however!  All it was was a little poke, and a band-aid, and then I was through. This time I didn’t get a sticker though. I don’t know what those people at the doctor’s office think. Girls of fifteen want Princess barbie stickers just as much as girls of five do. 😉  On top of that, my own family didn’t even offer me a balloon or lollipop, or even a sympathy hug!! Even when I flopped onto the couch and sighed loudly, and looked mournfully at my bandaged flesh wound, they did nothing . What kind of a supportive family is that? I ask you!

Luke Holzman from the Sonlight blog wrote a very interesting post today about math.  He describes a post by another blogger in this way:  “Cherish has a very interesting post on our aversion to math which is often linked to school teachers.”  Both posts rang very true to me and got me to thinking about why I love math.  I think much of the reason that I love math is that my dad loved math and expected I would do well at it.  Also, I had a great Algebra teacher in the ninth grade that made it seem elegant and interesting.  Because my parents expected I would understand math and do well at it I expected I would understand it and do well at it.  Both of our kids do well at math.  They are not Newton, but they do very, very well.  Lorena and I both grew up around people who understood math.  My sister and I both have engineering degrees and Lorena has three brothers with engineering degrees.  Our expectation of our children was that they could excel at learning math.

Because we knew math was possible, we were very careful in the selection of homeschool materials for that subject.  I wrote about why we switched from Singapore Math to Teaching Textbooks when the kids got to Algebra.  It was specifically because the kids started to struggle with that material and we knew that it was not necessary to struggle.  It was not the kids fault that they struggled to understand.  They worked hard at their math, did everything the program asked, yet they were still not getting it.  So we did a little research and switched.  The same thing happened again when we switched from Teaching Textbooks Precalculus to Thinkwell Precalculus.  The recommendations provided by Sonlight for when to start using Teaching Textbooks and when to start using Thinkwell have been spot on for our kids.

Still, there is an even bigger point in all this.  It is not just about understanding the material.  Sure it helps that we know Kelly is smart enough to understand precalculus, but it is just as important that she derives some joy from her studies.  We could have stuck with Singapore Math when she got to Algebra and Teaching Textbooks when she got to Precalculus.  She would have eventually gotten through the material with a good level of understanding, but we saw the joy of math dying.  That is the beauty of homeschool.  When we saw the joy dying, we could actually do something about it.

Luke left this link in the comments.  It was too good not to put up: