Snowflakes, books, and crunching the numbers!

I've been planning ever since Day One of this school year to update this blog regularly. As you can see, I've fallen a bit down on the job. Ahem.

But I did want to post a recent update, and leave the rest to the mercy of New Year's Resolutions.

Catherine read 61 books in November (yay!) which was her stated goal for getting her ReadIt! pizza. So we'll be having a pizza lunch sometime next week. (In truth, she read more. Those are the ones she remembered to tell me about so that I'd mark them on my list.) A mix of chapter books and easier readers.

Yesterday, Isabella and Catherine made snowflakes out of pipe cleaners, string, and supersaturated Borax. They turned out great. My advice would be to use as wide a jar as possible. The crystals form b/w the jar and the flake, and I had to pry it loose! Here's a link to the instructions if you want to try it yourself.

Oh, and our big news! Catherine is done with first grade math! We're moving on to Level 2A in Singapore Math, having completed Level 1A and 1B (along with Alpha in Math-U-See). Catherine's very proud of herself, and I'm proud of her, too. We've spent a lot of time working on the word problems in particular, and she's really developed a sense of how to think in mathematical terms.

As for Isabella, she's doing so great! Her speech is coming along nicely, and she "reads" (i.e., carries a book around) all the time. She's doing great at counting (though she skips "six" all the time ... poor Mr. Six!). Both girls are taking piano, and are doing great!

That's enough for now. Next homeschool post will be more in depth ... and with pictures!

Stanford Magazine: Homeschooling article

Stanford Magazine: November/December 2000: In a Class by Themselves

Here's an interesting article on homeschooling in the Stanford magazine.

The Guerrilla Curriculum: How to Get An Education In Spite of School by John Taylor Gatto

The Guerrilla Curriculum: How to Get An Education In Spite of School by John Taylor Gatto

Another thought-provoking article

Math Education: An Inconvenient Truth

Wow. The problem of our graduates being less than competitive in math and science is not going to be solved by putting a calculator in their pockets, nor by avoiding the teaching of basic, solid algorithms. The TERC and Everyday Math methods are interesting, and any student who fully understands how numbers work should understand how to fashion those solutions. But first the student needs to understand -- math, that is. Not how to press buttons on a calculator. (And can I just say for the record how pleased I am that we're using Singapore ... even though even that method will require more drilling of math facts than is set out in the books.)