Chapman Kids Blog

"In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." –John 16:33

Year: 2009 Page 11 of 15

Homeschool: How to prepare for CLEP tests – US History part 1

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On Wednesday, April 1, 2009

In General

Note: This post is one in a series on how we prepared our homeschooled children to take various College Level Examination Program tests. The introductory post for this series explains why we take these tests, what parts of the preparation worked for us, and what parts of the preparation did not work.

The CLEP test: History of the United States I (Early Colonization to 1877)

Other posts: Homeschool: How to prepare for CLEP tests – US History part 2

Primary study materials:

Secondary study materials:

  • A History of the USA by Joy Hakim (not recommended – this is what Kelly used)
  • US History text (something to replace the Joy Hakim materials for Christian – we will put it here when we find it). We have found what we believe is an excellent text A Patriot’s History of the United States by Schweikart and Allen.

Tertiary influences:

Discussion:

The Sonlight Core 3 and Core 4 programs instilled a wonderful love for American History. We were very disappointed with the selection of Joy Hakim’s A History of the USA as the central texts for the Sonlight History Program 120 as it provided what we felt was very weak preparation for future study of American History. We believe kids who have been in a solid homeschool program can handle texts that provide much more depth and much less political correctness than that provided by A History of the USA. Because of that, Kelly’s preparation for the CLEP US History I test was based almost entirely on the REA CLEP History of the United States test preparation book. That made it a lot drier than it needed to be.

Results:

Kelly took the US History I test when she was 14. She easily got a high enough score to get the college credit for the class, butB on it, but felt she could have done better as, according to the REA preparation book criteria, she would have gotten a grade of B in the class, one point away from an A.

What we would do differently:

When Kelly prepared for this test she used the study methods described in the previous CLEP preparation post on the Freshman College Composition test. That included taking notes from the text on one day, typing those notes in on the second day, and reviewing the typed in notes on the third day. Everything required to do well on the test was in the book, but Kelly felt she might have been better prepared, if she had made and studied more flashcards with dates, events, and people on them. The REA US History I CLEP study book had a glossary at the back. She believes if she could have included the glossary definitions in her flash cards, she might have improved here score. She also felt that if she would have augmented her base set of flash cards by using the boldface words, historical figures, dates, and definitions in the REA book, that would have helped her, too. She is scheduled to take the US History II test this month, so we will see if those new techniques work for her.

Kelly prepared for these tests as a standalone effort–not as part of her History studies. The big difference between the way we will approach the way Christian prepares for these tests from the way Kelly prepared for them is that Christian’s preparation will be an integral part of the normal seventh grade survey of US History that we had planned for him all along. Another change is that we will try to find a solid history text to replace the A History of the USA texts in the Sonlight curriculum even though we will still use their literature books. Christian will work his way through the REA book and whatever history text we find, making flash cards and taking notes from both. We will have him take the US History I test half way through next year followed by the US History II test at the end of the year. We will both describe the new methods and report the results on this page when we have them.

Homeschool: Learning how to cartoon

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On Tuesday, March 31, 2009

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Kelly and I talked briefly yesterday about turning the Betty Blonde comic strip into a little bit more of a formal, homeschool exercise.  Up until now, Kelly and Christian have drawn their comic strips as a hobby.  We decided that Kelly has enough time in her schedule to start drawing her strip during the day.  We are going to increase the size of the paper she uses.  Right now she is drawing the entire strip in four rectangles on a single piece of 8½ x 11 inch copy printer paper.  She has read a good number of books on how the working artists do their strips, so she has some ideas about how she could use better materials and a better process to produce a more professional product.  An example of where she learned some of these things can be found here.

So what we are going to do is determine what materials we need.  I think all we really need is the right kind of paper, pencils with the right kind of lead, an electric eraser, good pens for inking, a good drawing board, a comfortable chair, and a good light.  Then we need to get approval from Mom for a good place to set up everything and she will be off and running.  Her one year anniversary is coming up in a few months.  We have plans to do a T-shirt giveaway and start promoting the comic strip a little more at that time, so we really want to have the quality right.

We already carved out thirty minutes per day for Christian to work on his C++ programming, but I think we can make a little additional time for Christian to work on his 3D animations.  When he was ten or eleven he started working with Blender to animate some stories in a way similar to his claymations.  I found a great tutorial for Blender today that might be both very fun and very educational for him.  The idea would be for him to work his way through the complete tutorial, then do a three minute video.

Re-organizing again

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On Monday, March 30, 2009

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I had a lovely birthday! My wonderful family in Monterrey surprised me with a beautiful bouquet of tulips, mom and Christian and I made chocolate cupcakes with pink cream cheese frosting (Mrs. G, I’m hoping to make the cake soon. Maybe this weekend!), and Jenna stopped by with a pretty lamp for my room. Mom also made a quiche for dinner, hence today’s Betty Blonde. She remembered to chop and peel and break and mix the ingredients though, so it came out perfectly. 🙂 It was really a great day.

Last night I completely re-organized my schedule – again.  Usually I’ll wake up, read the Bible, eat breakfast, and head to the computer for math homework. Going to the computer first thing in the morning is not good for me. There’s way too much temptation to check Facebook, read blogs, and catch up on news and e-mail.  Thus the alterations to my daily schedule!  Today I woke up, read the Bible and ate breakfast. Then I went upstairs and turned on the classical station (which unfortunately for me was having a radio-thon) and spent an entire hour on CLEP US History II. I got SO much work done.  It was really incredible. Even though it slowed up my morning a bit, I got way more work done than I would have if I had started with my math and done my CLEP in the afternoon like I usually do.  I can’t avoid doing homework on the computer. I’ve got math, Spanish, and blogging to do, but today I placed non-computer homework in between all the computer homework.  It has worked very well so far!

Homeschool: C++ Programming

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On Monday, March 30, 2009

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Christian got reinvigorated on his C++ Programming again this weekend.  I think part of it was because Lorena and Kelly left us in the Barnes and Noble for four or five hours over two sessions on Saturday and Sunday.  Saturday morning, Kelly had a piano competition followed by her birthday shopping spree.  We needed to have a second bookstore session, because Lorena and Kelly did not get to participate on the first one.  Christian and I were not needed for either of those, so we situated ourselves in the nice easy chairs by the electrical connection in the corner of the store, bought our selves something to sip (hot cocoa for Christian, coffee for me), and programmed away.

I talked, previously, about the messiness of learning.  C++ is definitely one of those topics that I learned in a very messy way.  Fortunately, Christian has been through a lot of the messiness already.  He spent most of a year learning C# so he has a pretty good handle on object oriented programming.  In addition, he has had several false starts on the whole C++ topic.  The were false starts mostly because we could not decide which programming environment he should use.  We fooled around with several different ones, but finally settled on Visual Studio Express.  We talked a little bit about precompiled headers, I helped him with an example program, and we were off and running.  I think he worked his way through three full chapters of C++ Primer Plus.  It is a great book.

If he keeps up a good pace, we really should try to do a micro-controller project this summer.  I think it would be great to program something that includes a fountain with goldfish, a webcam, some motors, and a server to control and view it from the internet.  We have an old spare computer and an I/O board we can use.  I think we even have some stepper motors.  We really enjoyed some goldfish we kept in a wooden half barrel.  They are available at Home Depot.  We could make something a little more elaborate this time.

I planned to get a new fuse for the multimeter we blew out last week when we were testing the ham radio, but we did not get around to it, what with Kelly’s birthday and all.  We will have to wait until next week.

Christian’s award

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On Saturday, March 28, 2009

In General

Christian received this in the mail today:

Happy 15th Birthday Kelly!!!

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On Friday, March 27, 2009

In General

Kelly was a beautiful baby.  Happy Birthday!  We love you!

The belly of the beast

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On Friday, March 27, 2009

In General

It can get really lonely when you are a long way from home.  I am 3000 miles away from all of my family.  I must admit that, being Milo’s son, I can’t lay claim to being from one of the more sophisticated branches of the Chapman clan.  Nevertheless, those more worldly wise members of the family have often treated us well in spite of our lack of cultivation.  I had no idea how much they really cared.  It seems that ever since we left the comforting and secure confines of rural Oregon, they have been quite worried about us.  They were actually quite beside themselves.  They knew that, while we were not exactly in the belly of the beast, we were close.  We are in the south and there is some limited safety in that.  Most of the folks out here are still pretty suspicious about the revenuers, but Raleigh is only a few hours drive south of Washington, D.C. and that kind of proximity is pretty scary.

My family really wanted to help, but felt they had little to offer, exhausted and depleted as they were after their own escalation of hostilities during the notorious Klamath Water Wars.  Still, they wanted to do something, they just could not think what.  They knew that Milo’s branch of the family is more into gladiolas than Glock’s, so they felt pretty helpless.  But then Merle’s boy, Travis hit on a solution.  I don’t know whether he had been talking to the North Idaho branch of the family, but the solution was perfect.  It turns out that there is something, readily available in all of Klamath County I understand, specifically designed for the sort of apocalyptic conditions we are facing.  It is the official Klamath Falls, Oregon, Obama Survival Kit.  Merle, his baby brother Mark, and Travis felt so strongly that I needed this, that they all chipped in and bought one for our little family.  Pure love.  I understand Mark put off buying a new varmit rifle and they put on a Rocky Mountain oyster pizza fund raiser, just sos they could get the money together to send us an Obama Survival Kit of our very own.  And here it is…


Obama Survival Kit

It consists entirely of a Mossy Oak® pattern camouflage NKJV Bible.  It brought a tear to my eye.  I am thinking about saving up, buying a case or two of these for our brothers up minding their stills in the hills west of here.

I just wanted you all to know how much we appreciated it.

Learning can be hard and messy

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On Thursday, March 26, 2009

In General

The kids and I had an interesting discussion last night on the way home from our bible study about the frustration of learning difficult things.  We talked about three frustrations in particular even though I do not think we identified them specifically in a neat little list while we talked about them.  The frustrations were that some topics are 1) too vast to know everything about them (politics, economics, world religions), 2) too complicated to understand without lots of intense effort over months or years of study (mathematics, quantum mechanics, object oriented programming), and 3) too agenda filled to get to the truth from any one source (stem cell research, global warming, Christianity, homosexuality).  Many people are comfortable with what they know either because “they do not know what they do not know” or they do not feel a need to improve on the knowledge they already have.

Kelly started the conversation when she said, “Dad, you know why you believe stuff, but there are lots of things like economics, wars in different places, and other stuff like that, that I want to know about, but I am not so interested that I am willing to read a lot about them.  I know if I read World Magazine from cover to cover, I would know a lot more about those things than I do.  I try to do that, but I get really bored and end up only reading half or a quarter of the articles that don’t interest me.”

I gave her my standard lecture about how difficult it was for me to make the switch from sequential programming in C to object oriented programming in C++.  There was just too much stuff to learn all at once.  No one item is difficult by itself, but one has to get their arms around a ton of those not so difficult items all at once to make any sense of the whole.  One of the older guys saw my frustration and recommended I get my hands on several books and, more importantly start reading one of the programming trade rags (Dr. Dobbs Journal) on a regular basis.

He said, “There will be a lot of confusing information in those articles, but if you just skim through them, even if you do not understand what you read, you will have engaged with the vocabulary and one or two of the concepts for the topics.  Each time you read through the magazine, you will understand more of what you read.  Pretty soon, you will not only understand the stuff with which you are frustrated now, but you will be able to pick up brand new material more easily.  Mostly, remember that you will be confused when you get started on something new.  Just do not let that confusion frustrate you.”

That advise served me well.  We then talked about some of things Kelly had learned just that way, the most recent of which were probably knitting and Geometry, but which also includes riding a bicycle, reading, piano playing, intelligent design, analysis of world views, comic drawing, desktop publishing, and a broad range of other items.  The thing that might be a little different now is that the topics are getting broader and have people with different agendas demanding adherence to their viewpoints to the exclusion of other viewpoints.

So, in addition to the frustration of learning complex or vast things, there is the problem of knowing what is really true.  We then talked about the importance of knowing what we do not know.  We remembered some discussions with people who expressed very strong opinions based on false premises.  I explained that I have held (and probably still hold) very strong opinions that I based on false assumptions.  I told her that, in discerning what is true, our first attachment must be to love of God, then truth, but that they really go hand in hand in every circumstance if we take them deep enough.  This is a discussion I expect and hope will be an on-going one.  I know it was helpful for me to think about it.

Homeschool: How to prepare for CLEP tests – Freshman College Composition

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On Wednesday, March 25, 2009

In General

Note: This post is one in a series on how we prepared our homeschooled children to take various College Level Examination Program tests. The introductory post for this series explains why we take these tests, what parts of the preparation worked for us, and what parts of the preparation did not work.

The CLEP test: Freshman College Composition without the optional essay.

Primary study materials:

Secondary study materials:

Tertiary influences:

Discussion:

I think the kids performance on this test was more a reflection of their learning over the whole course of their home and school experience than any targeted study they performed to prepare for it. We were fairly systematic in the way we taught grammar, composition, and vocabulary during primary school. As part of those studies, the kids performed many formal and informal writing exercises. That meant that the preparation for this test was more a matter of a review than new learning. Notice that virtually all the secondary and tertiary materials listed above are common elements of many homeschool programs. These are the specific materials Kelly and Christian completed before starting test preparation with the REA book, but I am confident that Abeka, Bob Jones, Calvert, and many other programs would provide more than a sufficient base from which to excel on this test, too.

The REA book was a great tool to help coordinate the test preparation. REA recommends that students first take a practice test to understand where they need to concentrate their studies. Both of the kids passed their first test with scores high enough to get college credit, but with a less than comfortable margin for error. As this was the first test for each of them, we gave them a specific procedure to follow in their first pass through the book. That procedure was the following:

  • Step 1 – Read two to four pages of the book (depending on their other homeschool workload) and hand write notes on each item that might appear on a test.
  • Step 2 – Type the notes from the previous day into the computer.
  • Step 3 – Study the notes that were typed the previous day.

After they worked their way through the book, they took a second practice test. The second test identified weak areas that they then reviewed for a week using their notes. They repeated that procedure with the third test and for a repeat ofall three practice tests. After that they took the test.

Results:

Both the kids took this test when they were thirteen years old. Kelly was in the eighth grade when she took it and had a scaled score that, according to the REA book, would give her an A if the course were graded. Christian was in the seventh grade when he took the test and also received an A score according to the scaled score in the REA book.

What we would do differently:

After studying for several tests, Kelly has begun to use 3×5 cards both to take notes and to create flash cards. She got good results on her recent CLEP Introduction to Psychology test using this method. The REA US History I CLEP study book had a glossary at the back. She believes if she could have included the glossary definitions in her flash cards, she might have improved here score. Because many of the other REA books do not feature a glossary she builds her base set of flash cards by using the boldface words, historical figures, dates, and definitions she can find in the REA book. She is scheduled to take the US History II test next month and the Sociology test the month after that, so we will report both her thoughts on how this method helped her study and the effect it had on her scores.

Weight loss backsliding (again)

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On Tuesday, March 24, 2009

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I got a very embarrassing note from Lyle yesterday.  It said, “I see no one has posted for a while, hope you all are not gaining everything back.”  I have not thought about the weight loss death match (see the graph to the left of this post) for over a month.  Even worse, they put a bunch of pictures up on the bulletin at work from the company Christmas party yesterday.  I noticed that I looked a lot skinnier in those photos than I do now.  Mind you, I did not look skinny, just skinnier.  I got on the scale this morning and found I was up over two pounds from when I started the year.  Well, I am not the only one who has not posted for a long time.  There are unnamed others who have not posted for a long time either.  Lyle is the only one who has been faithful.  Guess what?  He is down a bunch already this year.  I have no excuse!  I have been walking all along, but I need to get back to a better focus on my eating habits and have a little self discipline.

Bryan?

Durham Performing Arts Center

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On Monday, March 23, 2009

In General

We went to the Durham Performing Arts Center to see Fiddler on the Roof on Friday night.  It was an amazing good time.  The venue was absolutely fabulous.  It was easy to get there, the parking was easy going in and out, the theater itself was absolutely world class.  My immediate thought was that would be an incredible place to see an opera, Celtic Woman (we understand they will be at the DPAC in June this year), or anything else of the like.  Of course it was perfect for Fiddler.  It was especially gratifying because this was Chaim Topol’s farewell tour.  He is the actor who played Tevye in the 1980’s revival of Fiddler in London and in the popular movie of the same name.  We took Kelly’s new friend Jenna with us.  I do not think we could have picked a nicer event for Kelly’s fifteenth birthday present.  We got the least expensive seats available and we were quite a long ways from the stage, but there is really not a bad seat in the house.  The acoustics were amazing.  We will definitely do it again.  Even though it would not be necessary, we might even try to get some better seats.  We will definitely bring two or three sets of opera glasses instead of one.

Saturday, we spent most of the day driving around.  We had not been over to Beaver Creek for a long time, so we just decided to go there to hang out at the Borders bookstore for a couple of hours while Lorena shopped.    That is one of our most favorite things in the world to do.  We normally go to the Borders over by the Costco on the other side of Raleigh, but the shopping (other than Costco) is not so good for Lorena.  We always get a cup of coffee for me and a couple of hot chocolates with NO white chocolate sprinkles and enough whipped cream to make them taste good, but not so much as to make them difficult to drink.

Housekeeping note:  Last week I started a series of posts on how we prepare for CLEP tests.  I have decided I will write posts for that series on Wednesdays until I get caught up to where we are now.  After that, I will write posts as we move through the material.

Stripey Scarf!

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On Saturday, March 21, 2009

In General

Here’s the scarf that I finished last week:

Fiddler on the Roof!

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On Friday, March 20, 2009

In General

Tonight we are all going to see Fiddler on the Roof at the Durham Performing Arts Center for my birthday. I am super excited!!! Jenna is coming with us, and that’s all she and I have been able to talk about for the past week. 🙂  To the dismay of my family, we’ve been singing showtunes and Disney songs to express our enthusiasm. I think ‘Matchmaker’ is happy. They think ‘Matchmaker’ is sappy. I tell ya. Anyway I was listening to the radio the other morning and the news announcer was talking about the play and how cool the venue was.  It’s also the star actor’s farewell tour, which makes going to the play that much more cool!That really made me MORE enthusiastic!!!! Yay! I’ll write about it on Monday.

I passed my CLEP psych finally! Thank goodness. Unfortunately I have a CLEP sociology coming up, and the material in that book looks way more politically correct than the material in my psych. book if that were possible. It’s OK though. Provides for some entertaining reading.

On Saturday we’re going to dissect a crayfish with the neighbor kids. Honestly, this critter has insides that are a lot more messed up than those of the worm. It’s going to be epic. 

I also finished my stripey scarf and started Thinkwell Precalculus! I love it! It’s a lot easier to understand, and really really easy for me to use. It’s also got plenty of extra material so if I get stuck I can go and look at it. I think this is going to be really good for me

If I were a rich man, Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum…

A friend passes away

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On Friday, March 20, 2009

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We got the sad news yesterday that our dear friend, Edie Plews passed away yesterday morning.  We met in Joe and Edie’s home in Newberg for Sunday morning fellowship meeting for many years.  We loved her very much.  Our condolences go out to all her friends and family.

Homeschool: How to prepare for CLEP tests – Introduction

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On Friday, March 20, 2009

In General

One of our readers, Ruthie, and I have had some discussion in the comment section of this blog about what we do to prepare for the College Level Examination Program (CLEP) tests. Most homeschoolers do not have access to the Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IP) programs available at many high schools. Kids in those programs have a leg up on other students when they go to college. We wanted something like that for our own children. The CLEP tests provide us with a mechanism to meet the testing part of that goal. College Board, the same company that makes the tests for the AP program and the SAT, make the CLEP tests. All the military branches provide the CLEP tests to their personnel for free. They are well established tests recognized by a broad spectrum of the higher education community. any colleges give credits to students who score 50 or above on the CLEP subject tests. Based on discussions with Ruthie and others, I have decided to write about how our kids prepare for the tests.

There are a number of reasons why we chose to include the CLEP tests in our homeschool activities. I will go into those reasons in more detail when I write the sections on the different subject tests because they vary. That being said, there are three reasons that hold true for us for all of the tests:

  • The tests do a pretty good job of demonstrating mastery of materials often presented in freshman level college classes. Knowledge that the student has a grasp of the material is valuable to both the student and the teacher.
  • The student receives credit for the material which advances them toward a degree more rapidly and less expensively than if they took the class in a conventional college setting.
  • The textbooks and other study materials and the time to learn the material can be varied based on the needs of the student. In a conventional setting it is not possible to postpone the test for a month or switch textbooks midstream. We have done both.

Am I qualified to write about this? Maybe. Our daughter Kelly passed her first CLEP test, Freshman College Composition, when she was thirteen. That was almost exactly one year ago. Since then she has gone on to pass the Spanish, US History I, and Psychology tests. She plans to take the US History II, Sociology, and Biology tests before the end of our school year this June. Our thirteen year old son Christian passed the Freshman College Composition CLEP test last week. He plans to take Western Civilization I and either Psychology or Spanish this school year. Even though Kelly and Christian have passed all the tests they have taken so far, they did better on some than others. There were a couple very high scores, a couple mid-range scores, and a couple of squeakers.

While every parent rightly believes their children have exceptional qualities, this is not Lake Wobegon. All children are not above average. We have no illusions that our children have the raw intelligence of Newton or Einstein, but they have performed well on nationally normed standardized tests, read and write well, and enjoy studying. I think many homeschool students can do very well, even at an early age on these tests. I also have no illusion that the methods we used to prepare are the best way to prepare for the CLEP tests. The reality is that we did not do such a good job of preparation on a couple of tests so far. Maybe we learned something though. We will certainly try to prepare Christian differently for those tests where our preparation was not so great when Kelly took the test. This is made all the more challenging by the fact that Kelly and Christian have very different learning styles. What was not so good for Kelly might be great for Christian and vice versa. I will try to report on what we did, how we did it, and our results in a way that could help other homeschoolers who want to use the CLEP tests as part of their homeschool program.

CLEP Exam Links

The following is a preliminary list of the topics I will try to cover in this series of posts. I am sure it will change some as we go forward, but I will try to keep this page updated as an index to all the Homeschool CLEP preparation. My plan is to write three or four more posts on Wednesdays until I have covered everything we have done so far. I will write subsequent posts as we get to them. I will update this page with links and any modifications that make sense as I think of new things that might be helpful. I will make a standalone page with this index and a link on our ?Pages? list as soon as I have enough posts for that to make sense.

Annual “State of the Blog” post: Up over 6000 hits for the year

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On Thursday, March 19, 2009

In General

On March 19 of last year the counter on the front page of this blog had a little over 28,000 hits.  At the time of this posting the hit counter shows we are up over 6000 hits to to 62,585.  That is probably not a highly accurate indicator of how many people come to the blog.  It counts only hits on the main link to the blog.  It counts every time the page is accessed making no distinction between hits by multiple users.  Now, we have a statistics application that runs on the blog to capture blog activity a little more precisely.  The bottom line is that we are getting very close to 1000 unique visitors and 7000 page views per month.  Even though we have been keeping the blog for around five years, we really did not start tracking hits until a couple of years ago.  We did not add the statistics package to do more precise tracking until six or seven months ago.

One of the most interesting things we found from the statistics is that new readers come to the blog because we are fairly high on the Google result list for searches on information about Mark Kistler’s Draw Squad, Sonlight Homeschool curricula, Singapore Math, Teaching Textbooks math, Amigurumi, homeschool socialization, and several other topics.  We do not know how many first time visitors stick around to read more of the blog nor how many return to the site to read more later.  We do know that some come back because they have commented here.  We love it that we have established a little bit of community and that people feel comfortable enough to comment.

The blog started out as a record of our kids homeschool journey.  The thing we like about the blog is that it has evolved into a narrative that is interesting to write, not so much because the things in it are so exceptional, but because the things in it are so, well, regular or normal.  When we write about homeschool, crafts, or technology projects, they are part of the narrative flow.   We really try not to characterize our thoughts as the last word on a subject, they are just our thoughts.  This is the stuff that interests us and we are glad it is of interest to some other people, too.

If you are a lurker, we are very happy you are here.  If you would be willing to leave a short comment letting us know you are here, we would grateful for that, too.  Thanks to everyone out there for making this blog fun.

CLEP Test day! – RESULTS!

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On Wednesday, March 18, 2009

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Lorena will drive the kids to Johnston Community College in Smithfield this afternoon to take CLEP tests.  This will be Christian’s first.  He will take the Freshman College Composition.  He seems to be very well prepared so we are excited to see how he does.  It was a little scary, but a lot exciting and fun when Kelly took this same test as her first about a year ago.  Kelly will take the Introductory Psychology test.  I think she is pretty well prepared, too.  If they pass these tests, Kelly will move on to take US History II and Christian will take Western Civilization I.

We have been thinking about what to do for a third language.  We really were not thinking about doing another romance language, but are starting to rethink that a little.  Our problem is time and resources.  We have wanted to study a language for a year or two, then go someplace as a family for a six to eight week immersion course in the summer.  Lorena has always been enamored with the idea of learning French.  Quebec is within driving distance and we have friends there.  So, now French, along with Russian and Mandarin, is on the table.  We pretty much have to decide what we are going to do within the next two or three months.  We want to have at least one full year of Rosetta Stone behind us before we go.  Of course the kids do not have to stop at three languages, but the older one gets, the harder it is to learn a language well.  Any thoughts on this by any of you will be grateful considered.

Interesting old post:  When I checked my blog statistics page this morning, I noticed that someone had visited this old post on socialization.  It was not that what I had written was so interesting, nor was it the really bad comic that I drew.  It was how the reader found the link to that particular post.  It seems they had performed a Google search on Koehler “Socialization Skills in Home Schooled Children”.  I think the thing they were looking for was this document that describes a study that compares Socialization Skills in Home Schooled Children Versus Conventionally Schooled Children.  I read through that very interesting document again, making a note to myself to recommend it to people who have sincere questions about this subject.

Results:  Woo-hoo!  They both passed.  Kelly is now up to 24 credit hours earned.  Christian has his first 6.  Congrats to both of them.

Silence: Not always golden

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On Tuesday, March 17, 2009

In General

The vast majority of the big events in my life have involved waiting in hallways. Waiting to take a test, waiting to play the piano, waiting to receive a set of scores…  Last weekend I sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair next to three other girls in similar uncomfortable plastic chairs.  One was playing air-piano, another was staring at nothing, and the third sat with her chin in her hand, looking very thoughtful. As I sat there, clutching my books and trying not to hyperventilate, the silence seemed to grow stronger (it usually does in these situations) and every note the first girl tapped on her music book almost seemed to make the atmosphere more awkward and tense.  I don’t know if everyone else felt that way, but I know I did. It may be due to the fact that in my household, it’s rarely quiet for more than two minutes.  I don’t know.

Anyway I broke the silence. I had to for the sake of my sanity and to take my mind off of the upcoming performance. I’m glad I did! We all talked.  We talked about piano and piano teachers and piano practice and piano lessons. We talked about school and New York City and Monterrey Mexico and homeschooling and little brothers and the environment.  We talked about the weather, we talked about the city, we talked about the country, we took and gave piano advice and wished each other luck. And then one by one we went to play in front of a couple of harried and hurried adjudicators.

That’s the cool thing about waiting in hallways with people. It’s almost like a mini party or something. That’s why I always force myself to speak up. However..

Although it is good to speak up sometimes, one must always remember the old adage ‘Silence is golden’. Observe:

We were coming back from an orthodontist appointment today, and Mom decided to stop by a local cake bakery to look around for my birthday.  When we walked in, I decided to be mature and ask a question. So (without a second thought) I asked the elderly clerk:

“Do you do cakes here?”

He replied with a long drawn smart remark, asking me if birds fly, if there was water in the Pacific ocean, and if there was snow on Mt. Everest.

I’m having brownies this year.

Precalculus: Teaching Textbooks or Thinkwell?

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On Tuesday, March 17, 2009

In General

YEARS LATER NOTE: Since using these programs, the kids described here graduated Magna Cum Laude in Statistics (Kelly) and Summa Cum Laude with Honors in Applied Mathematics (Christian) from a large state university. At the writing of this note (June 30, 2016), they are both midway through PhD programs at national research universities here in the United States. You can read more about that here.

In the last post about math, I wrote about why we switched from Singapore Math to Teaching Textbooks when the kids started Algebra at the request of a friend.  We are huge fans of both of those programs.  They served us well with both Kelly and Christian who learn in very different ways.  We planned to stick with Teaching Textbooks through Precalculus.  The kids understand the system, like it, and performed well on standardized tests after using it.  At this writing, Precalculus is a relatively new program for Teaching Textbooks.  We had previously purchased Thinkwell Precalculus because it was so highly recommended by Sonlight, the company from which we have purchased the vast bulk of our homeschool materials.

The Thinkwell Precalculus program sat on a shelf for about six months while Kelly finished Teaching Textbooks Geometry.  Like all the other Teaching Textbooks programs we had tried so far, their Geometry program is stellar.  Kelly could listen to a lecture, read the same material in a textbook, and get help with exercises she did not understand well.  She knows how to use the system and now has a thorough understanding of Geometry.  The Teaching Textbooks system works so well for us that I got to wondering whether or not I should have switched to Thinkwell for Precalculus.  The upshot is that I went ahead and bought the Teaching Textbooks Precalculus program, too.  At this point, there are no video lectures with the program like in the previous ones.  We thought that would not be too much of an impediment.

Kelly started the Teaching Textbooks program several weeks ago.  Some of the lessons went very well, but about a third of the lessons required a significant amount of explanation on my part.  Kelly and I like to work together and I do math for a living so that is not such a big deal.  Still, she was frustrated because she felt like she understood the material when she read the text, but was often unable to answer the exercise questions correctly.  Kelly gets math.  She performed very well in previous math oriented materials and on standardized tests.  Last night she did Lesson 16 and struggled again.  This is exactly the wrong time for her to get a bad taste in her mouth for math just because the materials are not well suited for the way she learns.

I did not know what to do because I did not want her to be frustrated with this important material.  Then, I remembered that we have a completely different system that is highly recommended by Sonlight.  They sell Saxon Advanced Math, the program that covers Precalculus, but say this at the bottom of the page the describes that product:

Sonlight is happy to sell you this product. We want to make sure, however, that you are familiar with the Thinkwell Pre-Calculus, which we recommend as “Best in Category.”

After correcting Kelly’s assignment last night and talking to her about it, I thought we might go ahead and crack open the Thinkwell materials and take a look.  We were amazed.  It really looks like a wonderful program.  Not only did we look at the introductory materials, but we watched the instructional video that describes the material with which Kelly was struggling in Lesson 16 of Teaching Textbooks.  It was presented with a level of clarity with which we had previously come to expect from Teaching Textbooks.  We decidee to switch systems starting today.  I watched her go through the tutorial on how to do the exercises, then do some of the exercise questions.  The whole program is very well thought out and has what we believe is a better record keeping system than Teaching Textbooks.  The one area where Teaching Textbooks appears to be superior is in the way that they provides such clear explanations on how to work the problems when a student gets stuck.  We have not used Thinkwell long enough, though, to make too strong of a statement on that.

Since we have so little experience with Thinkwell to say that it will be better than the Teaching Textbooks in its final incarnation we will reserve judgement for now.  Still, the Thinkwell Precalculus certainly looks better for us now than the current state of the Teaching Textbooks Precalculus.  I will write about this more when we have a few months experience with the program, and then again after Kelly does some more standardized testing.

Links:
Teaching Textbooks Precalculus
Thinkwell Precalculus
Saxon Advanced Math

Paying the price for pickled jalapeños

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On Monday, March 16, 2009

In General

We went to lunch at Mo’s yesterday with Troy and Youngin.  I do not know if it was what I ate there or something I ate later, but I paid a BIG price last night for whatever it was.  We had a good weekend.  That is all I have time to write this morning.

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