Scary Smart
The girls were working through some new addition cards, using counters. I demonstrated how to line up the counters and find out the sums. The first card I gave to Sarah was '9 + 3.' She just looked at it.
"Use your counters, Sarah," I said. "Remember how we lined them up?"
She didn't budge. I started to get another card, to show her again. Then she said, "It's twelve."
". . . Um, yeah. . . How did you know that?"
"I just thinked about it."
Alrighty then.
posted by Rebecca @ 10:41 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Yeah, I was like that.
I'd say give her the option. Mental math is a really good excercise if she's ready. If you start to wonder if she's just guessing, you can always ask her to explain.
That's pretty exciting.
Hey with parents like both of you and both your both your parents (bragger) the kids can't help but be smart.
LOL
That's really cool- and they're just four?
Btw, if you don't mind my asking- are you using a particular curriculum for your girls? I am pretty sure I'm going to at least start pre-homeschooling my boys and I am looking around at curriculum and just wondered if you had any reccomendations or tips. Thanks!
We're just mixing and matching right now. I suspect we always will. Most of it is material that I found at education supply stores or Amazon, or stuff that was passed down to us from other homeschooling moms. Some of the workbooks and readers came from WalMart of all places.
But I do follow the Well-Trained Mind, by Susan Wise Bauer. It's a great, in-depth overview of classical education (the trivium) from preschool through high school, with loads of practical advice and schedules and recommendations for curriculum.
She also makes wonderful one-on-one curriculum for reading. It's not necessary, if you just do it the way she describes in the preschool chapter of Well-Trained Mind. Teaching reading one-on-one is pretty simple if you take it slow and keep it moving along. But if you feel more confident with a curriculum, it's better to use one like hers, designed to be one-on-one, because most reading curriculum is designed for a group setting, which is slower and entirely different in methodology. Her plan is to get them reading fluently before first grade, so they can start reading for knowledge right away.
She also writes interesting history, mythology, and language texts for early elementary. We're using her First Language Lessons book right now for grammar and syntax. Her teaching style is very simple and effective. We'll definitely be using her history later.
Hope that helps!
Oh yes! Thank you so much! I will definitely check that book out!
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