JavaBean’s Journey

Last week in history we studied Stone Henge and since a trip to Europe is out of the question right now, and we have Car Henge just a few miles away, we took a field trip there this afternoon.

They really are my children.

Once in grade school, I really have no idea what grade, I was  not at all happy about math. Not at all. I didn’t like it. I didn’t understand it. I didn’t really know how to do it correctly. I would rather do anything but math.

I attended an A.C.E. Christian school and if you are at all familiar with A.C.E you know the students work in PACES. PACES are little books the student works through before taking a test over the entire book called a PACE test. If you pass that test you were allowed to move on to the next PACE. If you failed the test you erased the entire book and redid it.

I saw some math PACES a few million times. I honestly don’t know what my problem was. Or actually I do know but that is another blog post at another time.

In the next century.

We had to set and complete our academic goals every day. What that meant was we would have to look ahead in our book and write down the pages we were going to accomplish the next day. As we completed them we drew a diagonal line through the goal signifying it’s completion. Every morning our teacher would come around and check our goals. If they weren’t done, but we had a “homework slip” we could get a “pass” so to speak if our homework was done.  If it wasn’t done, we received a demerit. If you got three (or more) of those pesky things, you received a special reward of staying after school the next day.  You could spend anywhere from 20-60 minutes with the teacher and it wasn’t because you were teacher’s pet.  If you received 7 demerits you got to spend a few precious minutes with the principle. And that was not at all a pleasant chat.

In view of all of this, my deep dislike for all things math and my wanting to avoid at all costs demerits (and trust me I always seemed to get more than my fair share), I had the idea to hide my math PACE under my chair in the midst of a lot of papers.

This went quite well for me for what seemed to be a number of weeks.

“No, I still haven’t found my math book.”

It worked quite well until my teacher thought I needed some help cleaning out the papers under my chair. “Oh look! There it is! Who knew?”

I realized on Friday of last week that I had not seen Elizabeth’s math all week. I was a little surprised when she only brought me one of her books, but I honestly thought since their books have a lot of Practice pages and Reviews sometimes only one book is worked in.

I was willing to go with this until I realized the book she brought me was the book I had checked on Saturday morning and nothing had been done in it all week.  Actually, she had done work in it. But if she saw a fun activity on another page and what she was doing was not “fun” in her mind, she simply stopped and went to the fun math.

We spent an hour getting it all caught up.

Then I saw her grammar. Apparently she’s an equal opportunity avoider.  This week will see me sitting with her for almost all of her work now.

Have you experienced this? Aside from killing your child(ren) how did you deal with it?

A few weeks ago I was pulling my hair out over Ariana’s math, and her lack of motivation to do it. I still don’t know for sure if she just didn’t understand what she was doing, how to do it or was just convinced she didn’t like math and couldn’t do it.

Earlier this week she asked me if she was going to have to start with math again. I told that she was indeed, going to start with math and when she asked me how long, I told her until she was able to focus on her math on her own like she did when I was sitting right next to her doing every single problem with her.

Since that moment she has been much improved in both focus and ability.

I realized yesterday that I had yet to check Elizabeth’s math for the week. I thought it was a little strange when she only brought me one of her math books.  But at the rate she loses things I thought she probably just lost it and I’d send her to look for it later.

Imagine my horror (surprise almost sounds like a good word about a good thing and this was most definitely NOT a good thing), when looking through it I found answers that were not corrected from last week. Yet she had been telling me she had been doing math all this week.

Upon further investigation, she was doing math all week. And doing it very poorly. Apparently if she doesn’t want to do part of it, because she wants to do a “fun math activity” that is coming up, she just skips the un-fun part and moves to the part she wants to do.  I could have cried.  I was astounded. Of both girls Elizabeth is the one who I never had to really wonder if she was getting her math right as most of the time she did.

I certainly hope a lesson has been learned and we don’t have any more of that.

I dream of being organized.  I am organizationally challenged. I have a lot of grandiose ideas every year in August. Ideas about how I will be so organized “next year”, no more flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants. I will be an organized goddess.  And it works.

For the first day.

My friend, Fiddledeedee, is looking for organizational tips. She wants to know how we are organized for the start of school. I thought about telling her I order a truck load of Starbucks. But somehow I think she is looking for other tips actually pertaining to school.

Her post got me to thinking about how I do get ready for school. Not just the first day, but every day. I could start really simple with “I wake up. Get out of bed and if my feet hit the floor, I’m good to go”. Which would not be too far off.

Because my children are typical and forget everything they learn in a nano second. We do not follow a typical school year. We start in September and school for 3 months before taking one full month off. Our schedule is September-November, December off, January-March, April off, May-July, August off. It works well. The summer months are usually leaner on school because we are close to being done.

I used to keep the girls school books in a crate and haul them out when we would start school. But that went by the wayside, because those things were heavy. Now I keep all the books, curriculum and other reading “school” type books on a bookshelf on the main floor of our house.

Also since I don’t have a room set aside for school, I have found a clean dining room table to be the best organizational tool known to man.

So how do you get organized for school? I could use some tips.

A 10 year-old, fifth grader getting math. And I have sticky floors.

I think it’s a good trade off.

(this is a copy from my main blog…http://virginiasreads.blogspot.com)

I know it’s Tuesday but yesterday was a busy day with no computer time. So today you get my Go MAD Monday post.
I really had trouble this week. I seem to be so busy I forget to go M.A.D.  I don’t know I’m just so self-centered that other people don’t even hit my radar or if I’m just so busy giving my life for others that nothing stands out as “you did this to make a difference in someone’s life”. I do know I don’t often sit down and think, “Go MAD Monday is coming up and I need to do something for someone else because I need blog fodder.”  It seems rather fake if the only reason I do something is so I can blog about it.

We home school. This year has been different and difficult to say the least. If you follow my homeschool blog, you might know a little taste of the year we’ve had.

My oldest is now a 5th grader and her sister is in 3rd grade. For a couple of years A has become convinced that she hates math and therefore doesn’t want to/can’t do it. We use Singapore math and it is advanced. She is learning things in math I opted out of in high school.

We switched curriculum last year and had her redo third grade math. She struggled. She finished third grade math and started fourth grade. She didn’t quite complete half of fourth grade math before the year was finished. So this year she is finishing fourth grade and I’m hopeful she will be able to finish 5th grade as well. The things she is learning, she is learning well enough to do quite well on her achievement tests she takes every April.

Last week I had a meeting and came home to find all three of my family members doing school at the table, Elizabeth was working on correcting her grammar and Ariana was doing math. In tears. When at 9 o’clock we sent her to shower and go to bed, I said I was finished with that math. Every night for over a week our family time had been spent working on school and I was done. I was done with every waking moment spent on school. I was done done done. I reasoned, “If I wanted to do school all night long, I would send them to school and we’d work on homework all night long. I homeschool so I can avoid that.” (among other reasons.)

I planned on printing off math sheets for her while I perused curriculum again. But I hate to waste money.  I already had math curriculum, surely there was some way to use what I had already.  I decided to, instead of telling her, showing her and having her do it while I got something else done, we would start first thing, when she was fresh and we would work every single problem together.

I started that last Wednesday, September 8. We spent just over an hour working on math. And she finished three pages with all the answers correct.  We were completely done with school by 12:15. It felt so good.

I continue to sit with Ariana and we spend an hour working on math. It is amazing the difference a little sacrifice on my part has made in her. I think I heard her tell Dear Man she liked what she was learning in math!

What did you do to “Go MAD Monday”?

Yesterday my 10 year old, fifth grader and I sat at the table for just over an hour working on math. She did three pages and they are all correct!!

I think she really needs/ed that. It is one thing to TELL someone how to do it, have them read the directions and then go off to do it (even if it is just across the table), and yet another thing entirely to SHOW someone how to do it and sit there while they do it. And yet another thing if you WORK the problem together.

In other news, I ran a mile today and then drank a mongo-cup of coffee and I’m now going a million miles an hour.

I like the movie, “A League of Their Own” about the ladies professional baseball team.  My favorite line in the whole movie is spoken by Tom Hanks’ character, “What??? Are you crying? There’s no crying in baseball!”

I find myself changing the quote though, “What? Are you crying? There’s no crying in math!”

We started lo those many years ago with Miquon Math. I had heard wonderful things about it and for the most part I agreed. But then it seemed it threw math at the children so quickly, they were barely learning to add and they had subtraction thrown in. Then it was multiplication and then a little…very little division. Now I did like knowing (for the FIRST time in my life) that multiplication is just fast adding. I did like that and I liked being able to explain multiplication that way.
Last year we had gone completely through Miquon Math with one child and needed to move to something else. I looked at Saxon Math as it was highly recommended but I wasn’t sure it was for us. So I looked at Singapore Math and since it seemed to be so closely related to Miquon, I chose that.

We had Ariana review 3rd grade in Singapore because there was a difference. To say she struggled would be an understatement. She finished 3rd grade math and barely got started on Fourth grade when we were done for the year. (on July 31)  We just picked up where we left off and it has not been pretty.

She is working on school in some form or fashion from 9am-9pm. Not continually but still doing school work and most of it is math.  I can’t do this anymore. I just can’t. We have no family life because all of life is school. And quite frankly, if I wanted to be doing school all evening I would send them to school and work on homework all evening.

Ariana is doing geometry, she is learning things in 5th grade I didn’t learn until I was in high school.

I realized I have a couple of options. Initially I was frustrated and said I was just done with that math. I would print math pages for her and call it good.  The more I think about it though, the less inclined I am to do that.  I think we start our school day with math. I will plant myself next to her at the table and we will work until it is done.

I will also teach her that while she is incredibly smart, we still have to work to develop our natural talents and abilities.

Last week was nasty school-wise. I don’t know why, it just was.  I’ve been told a few million times it was because they were off for the summer and had forgotten a lot. Except we school year-round and they were only off for the month of August.

Anyway, yesterday was the fourth day of school and it went so much better!! Here are a few pictures.

We are using Mystery of History. I LOVE it.  We are in vol. 1, The Ancients. It starts not in some unknown place, in an unknown time, about an unknown person. But it starts In the beginning. It starts in Genesis with creation.  The girls needed to make their own creation book. The above is “page 1″ in Elizabeth’s book.

Ariana doesn’t always look like this…just when she does math.

This is how one does math when one is seven.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll post some first day pictures that will actually be taken on the second day. Today was…well one of those days we all have. One of those days you just want to walk your children a block and a half to the highest ranked elementary school in town.

And think about picking them up in May. Then again…when they graduate might be a better option. :/