mastery

On Tuesday, I had a whole grand plan for the day laid out. Both boys chose to start with math. 9 yo was in the throes of long division. He did a page, and then another, and then he asked me to give him any long division problem that I wanted, and then he made up his own problem and kept adding digits to the dividend until he could finish dividing without remainder.

He mastered long division and he could not wait to get more problems to prove his mastery.

Meanwhile 7 yo had a pre-multiplication unit. It mostly involved skip-counting, and he did page after page of math, probably 10 pages in all, till he was done with the unit. He understood the concept, and each page was another opportunity to apply it.

I thought math would be quick that day; instead it took over an hour. Both boys engaged in learning out of their own free will, and did not want to stop.

That same day a friend posted this post about unschooling math. I agree with some: kids will take lead in their learning, you will learn the math that you need to function, curiosity about math will go a long way. What I have a problem with is the blank assumption that math is hard, abstract and impenetrable subject, to which only people with a special aptitude take a liking. And the first thing that bugged me is the assertion that long division is useless.

People roll eyes at long division (and at fractions). They think nobody uses it. They also never memorized times table, so long division becomes tedious. Whenever I had any problem come up in kids' presence that required long division, I always grabbed a paper and did it out, the long way. They saw it, and even if they did not understand what I was doing, they saw that it is useful, and accessible. Oh, and I spent quite a few hours working with 9 yo on times table. We drilled it from Math Mammoth. I got flashcards and tested him. I hung up two multiplication tables. I asked questions which required multiplication. He does not know it super well (he HATES memorization), but he came around once he saw how useful it was to just know the product for 2- and 3-digit multiplication rather than work it out every time. Now that we hit long division, he saw that it is simply applying that multiplication and, voila, it works! Moreover, he can check himself by multiplying.

At dinner that night, out of the blue, 9 yo asked: "Is fifty divided by 6 equal to 8, remainder 2?"
"Yes."
"So to go on a five hundred mile trip, we need 8 hours and 20 minutes."

Before you think this is trivial, watch this:

watch date

As I was woken up this morning by a cranky 2 yo, I was greeted by this sight in the living room: 6 yo is sitting on the couch, reading "It's Not the Stork!" 8 yo is sitting nearby, reading a chapter of American History highschool textbook. I guess I could check science and social studies off the list for today.

My kids had a watch date this morning. That's like a playdate, except that you plan to watch movies together. For this, we got together with another homeschooling family. Everyone pulled out their favorite DVD or show. There was Ultraman, Pokemon, Aquaman and Barney. There was freedom of choice both what to watch, whom to watch it with, and whether to watch it.

There was also peace and quiet and semi-civilized tea-drinking for two mommies.

Afterwards, we did do some schoolwork. No, the kids did not gladly grab their pencils and eagerly cracked the books. There was whining and moping (quite a bit) about the two items on the agenda. Both boys did math. 8 yo came up to multiplication of 12s. Those he got quite quickly. Now the challenge is to get the rest of the table down pat so that Bruster's sundae will happen. He was convinced that he was getting it today, but he is still shaky in 7s and 8s. Part of me says: drill it now, and he will thank you later, even if he is not seeing the benefits. Another part says: it will come with necessity and then the motivation will kick in. The reality seems so be somewhere in between. After we finished math, we moved on to Chumash. He finished the second perek of Chayei Sarah, the really long one. Today we just had to review the last pesukim and then I asked him to do a review project. As I was tucking in 2 yo for her nap, he calculated that there are 67 pesukim, and if each pasuk had 4 words, that means that he read 268 words in this perek. I grinned and said that he knew that many pesukim were longer than that, so he has quite an accomplishment on his hands. I did not dare breathe about successful application of multiplication.

6 yo finished reviewing addition facts to 10. He knows them cold now. He also has been listening in to the multiplication practice, and he memorized quite a few of the facts. Sometimes I have to stop him from blurting out the answer before his brother had a chance to think. There are definite advantages to one-room schoolhouse/Montessori multiple grades approach.

8 yo decided to type up a short summary of the perek in Word. This involved fancy fonts and clip-art. Also this involves computer skills and typing. Two birds with one stone...

Fortuitously, I came across this article today. So my kids are learning, but not in a linear, easily assessible fashion. I guess they are getting a modern education.

Postscript: It is 9 pm. I tucked the kids in at 8 pm. At around 8:40, 8 yo wandered out of his room. Highly uncharacteristic, usually when this kid hits the pillow, all you hear is the sweet sound of snoring. He said that he is on edge about something and cannot sleep. When we spoke about it a bit, it turned out to be monsters, with griffin bodies and snouts and claws, watching him. After a bit more talk, he said that it's a scary part from SciQ, and some other movie watching that he did earlier today. No talk about saying Shema again and talking about Hashem's protection seemed to soothe him. I suggested drawing the scary monster tomorrow, and he seemed horrified at the thought.

What have I done? I forgot that this is the same kid who was afraid of dragon in Baby Einstein and of the falling cow in Sesame Street. This is the kid who does not want a movie night because all movies are too scary. Basically, even though he was excited to watch unlimited movies in the company of his friends, his psyche was not ready to process what he saw. When the kids were watching, my friend commented how cartoon violence is removed from people violence. Beneath all the tough big-boy exterior, here is a kid who is not ready for people cruelty and violence.

Big mistake on mommy's part here. We are going back to nature documentaries.

diving into books

I got up early and worked out. By the time I got home, the kids were all up, but nobody was in the mood to get dressed or have breakfast. Eventually, they did get dressed. My husband was home, so he regaled with Greek myths. 7 yo read a few of those, so they had a lively discussion.

Davening did not go so well, lots of running around and chasing each other. Then the oldest went to do Rosetta Stone, while 5 yo picked handwriting. Today's letter was i, he claimed he already knew how to write it, so we skipped to e. Now e is a big deal, as he realizes that once he can do e, he can also write shin. HTW uses baseball example to teach e, so he loves "running around the bases", making the curve part. I hope he remembers it. Then he picked megillah. I read to him probably 7 perakim in English, stopping every once in a while to make sure he understands. 2 yo walked around, sat on my lap, sat next to us, etc. She is definitely getting unschooled here.

Then the boys switched. 7 yo asked to do math first. We finished up length and I explained why there are metric and customary units. He is eager to do multiplication, so I printed out some pages from teacher's corner, setting one of the factors less than 6. He did it in a flash ( thanks to Schoolhouse Rock). Now I have to check whether he knows higher numbers.

Then he did arranging sentences from the megillah. I found this activity on http://chinuch.org/ I explained how the sentences will be formed and he dove right in, making sentences. 5 yo finished up and came up to help at this point. 2 yo kept moving the cards around, but at the end, they did form all possible sentences.

Then we went for ice cream and the library. It feels giddy to be able to take your kids for ice cream at 11 am and not to worry about school or crowds or lunch, and just enjoy it. Afterwards, we got to the library. Mercifully, they had a toddler class that morning, so my 2 yo was not the only one running around. 7 yo found Encyclopedia Brown and got lost inside. 5 yo  scanned shelves. I was trying to find books for the toddler group tomorrow. Then everyone helped my check out. When we got home, the boys just pulled out their books and were not heard from again for a while. I keep on forgetting that on the days we go to the library, I will have to distract them from new books to get anything done.

Later, much later, we did finish formal school work. 7 yo read 7 more pesukim from the megillah, did his spelling and another page of Lashon HaTorah. 5 yo learned tzadi sofit, which he called a lamed carrying a pretzel. He even drew a house for tzadi sofit--somehow this pretzel letter moved him. In Yesh Lanu Lama, we read the next page. Then we did math, even and odd numbers. 

All of this was finished by 3 pm. Then the boys watched "Alice in Wonderland" from 1915. I had to explain about black-and-white silent movies and how music came separately. I also realized that reading captions ( I do not know what is the proper name for those flashes of story in between) is good reading practice for 5 yo. They were quite drawn in.

After Alice, 7 yo went back to reading something or other. 5 yo checked on his beans and noted their roots. Then he wanted to make masks, something that I wrote down in optional section. I made an eye mask for 2 yo; he wanted a full face mask. I ended up drawing the shape fro him, with eyes and mouth, he cut it out and wrote ninja on it ( hehe, spontaneous writing). Then he decided he wants eye mask after all, so more cutting and coloring.

After dinner, 7 yo made a mask too. I am discovering that what I thought was itty-bitty bullying problem as probably larger than I thought. Last year, he dressed up as Batman for dress-up day ion school. From that day on, a certain girl teased him, calling him Batman, even though he did not like it. He sort of brought that up, but never in a way that warranted action. Now, with this new mask, he tells me that she cannot tease him, because sometimes he's a ninja, and sometimes he's a ferocious beast. Now that he's home, he hasn't seen her in weeks, yet he's still concerned. Hm, how do those itty-bitty bullying problems affect people?