2.26.2007

Brain Cobwebs!

OK, so we took a week off of school for our trip to sunny Florida. Today we are back in the swing of things with school and you would think that we were back to day one!

Can I just say that I am sick and tired of Saxon Math 7/6? My oldest is doing splendid with it... but I am doing really poorly. I have to re-teach myself what my dear old 7th grade math teacher was trying to pound into my head ages ago! And what is with these Investigations? I loathe the Investigations. Here we are rolling along happily doing lessons and the occasional test when WHAM! an Investigation pops up and it leaves my daughter and I in a "Huh? What are they talking about?" kind of funk. Personally, who really cares how to do a model of a bathroom and then figure out the actual length and width of the bathroom-rounding to the nearest foot mind you. Just give us the cold hard facts folks-teach us how to simplify fractions, how to figure out the sum of the angle measures of triangles and quadrilaterals, and how to find a whole number when a fraction is known... because that is what you will use the rest of your life right? UGH!

I talked to my sister Colleen today and asked her if she had done all of these blasted Investigations when her daughter was doing Saxon. She said "Oh Good Lord no!" That was good enough for me because my niece Jessica is a top student in her freshman class, so obviously those Investigations were printed in the Saxon books by mistake... they are somewhat like a yellow street light, you can ignore them and roll on through~

Actually, my daughter really enjoys math. Saxon is challenging-especially since she is in 6th grade and doing 7th grade. Next year she gets to skip on to Algebra. That is when I will start sneaking the book into my bedroom at night and re-teaching myself the lessons before we start them. I will tell you, it all makes so much more sense now than it did when I was a kid! This math stuff is a piece of cake to understand now that I don't need to learn it.

I am just thankful that we are homeschooling math-seriously! When I was a kid I did not understand this stuff and before I knew it, the teacher was moving on to Chapter 23 and I was still confused about chapter 11. Homeschooling gives my children the opportunity to be confident in what they have learned before moving on to the next challenge... or in my son's case, it offers him the opportunity to finish his Phonics and then go stuff his little sister in the hall closet while he stands guard in full military gear until I say "Hey! Get over here and get started on your math!" Not many kids can make such bold claims about their school day.

Having said all of this about math... I intend to keep a deep dark secret from my children that the day I fear most is the day my battery dies on my trusty calculator and I have to add and subtract my checkbook using long division and so on (yes, I am aware that I would not use long division to add and subtract my checkbook totals... please don't email me and tell me this).

As the teacher to my children for their math, all I can say is "Thank God for the solutions manual!"

7 comments:

Suzanne said...

ROFL! I don't believe a word of it! I bet you're one smart cookie!
I just NOW stepped away from the Algebra 1/2 Solutions Manual...yes, thank the Dear Lord for those and yes, you can be flexible with a bit of the earlier math before Algebra, BUT, I am scared to death after helping three girls before this son go through terrible times with Algebra. I am not very flexible because I got so lost in this subject in high school, I would not wish that on my worst enemy, which would be like a snake.
Anyway, I absolutely loved this post...you and are are real tight in our thinking here! Ha!
By the way, thanks for the post about the birthday boy...actually,
his birthday was the 17th. Happy belated birthday! Glad you were able to get away! You lucky girl!

Anonymous said...

Hey. I LOVED Algebra and math - but I STILL count on my FINGERS! All eleven of them!

Hey, you. Cris. I moved my blog. Check it out, okay?

http://countingmyblessings.stblogs.com

Be there or be square.

Alexa

Kasia said...

I have a question for all you homeschooling moms...can you team teach your kids? That is, if you were all neighbors and Cris was great at English and Suzanne was great at geography, but Alexa was great at math, could you joint-teach both sets? Or does that start to get ito murky legal waters, in defining a "school" and needing special certifications?

Just wondered. :-)

june cleaver said...

Kasia, Sure--a lot of homeschoolers do that for some subjects. If I know of a homeschool mom who can teach Spanish and I don't know a lick about Spanish... then I may try and work something out like her teaching my kids Spanish and me teaching her kids how to play piano. Although, I don't know how to play piano so it would be a bad trade~

Renee said...

Are you really going to jump from 7/6 to Algebra I? Wow. I have heard of skipping 8/7 or Algebra 1/2, but not both. In our case, we skipped Algebra 1/2, but even then Algebra I is a little bit of struggle around lesson 70.

My friend and I team teach. I teach all her older kids math, and one of her kids science, and she teaches my little two reading and math, and one of my kids history. It works quite well, and plays to our respective strengths.

I agree with you on the advantages of homeschooling, particularly in math. It makes a world of difference to understand stuff before moving on.

Blessings!

june cleaver said...

Mary-you are correct, we are skipping math 8/7 and going to algebra 1/2. I was trying to make my daughter sound so very smart, but you have squashed all of that now. Thanks--haha!

~Cris

Laura The Crazy Mama said...

I had the worst math day ever with 9 year old son today. I finally just told him to go to his room and not come out until the page was FINISHED and done correctly. I don't understand why he won't do it. It's like his brain sees all the problems he has to do and he freezes and doodles and ugh. I can't talk about it anymore. He finally finished it and "missed" two word problems. After I pointed that out, he did them in about two seconds. Hmmm. If I was standing over him, he would have taken two hours...soooo...I'm going to send him to his room tomorrow to do his math. We'll see if it's a groundbreaking technique for him. I hated math and now I know why. It stinks just as much the second and third time around.