Well, now that our FIRST Lego League season has come to a close.  I want to share what we have been doing. 

My older son:

My older son has been very busy working in his Primary Mathematics 6B workbook.  He has been doing pages and pages of review.  The area where he gets tripped up is in finding the area of the shaded part in a picture.  He does well with ratio, speed, and time.  He understands the decimals and he loves angles.  He is also doing Challenging Word Problems 5.  He has had some difficulty, but he is doing a great job figuring the problems.  They are challenging.  I am glad that he is doing it.  Here's what he has done

Math: Primary Mathematics 6B- Review 5 and Challenging Word Problems Topical 7 problems 1-5

Reading: He has read Story of the World Volume 2 Chapter 38- 42.  He has completed Volume 2 of Story of the World.  He will start Story of the World Volume 3 in January.  He will start Volume 4 in September 2010.

Writing: He is in week 11 of Classical Writing: Beginning Poetry.  It has been so much easier that Classical Writing: Homer.  I will not say if I am a fan of Classical Writing yet.  I am still not impressed with the tasks in the curriculum.  I feel a lot of this bogs you down.  I want my son to learn how to write.

Logic: Building Thinking Skills Level 3 Verbal  and Mindbenders B2

Latin: Henle I, he is working on 2nd declension masculine.  I am going slowly with him in this program

Spanish: His father is teaching us Silent Night in Spanish

My younger son:

My younger son struggles in math.  However, the multiplication and division are starting to click for him.  The Primary Mathematics word problems are a challenge for him, but he needs to get use to it.  I have him doing Challenging Word Problems 2.  It is easy, but I want him toget use to word problems.  I realize that math word problems also help a child with reading comprehension skills.  A child has to try and figure out what the problem wants.  There is a lot of thought and concentration skills going on.

Math: Primary Mathematic 3A.  He is almost done with the workbook.  He will do the review in the textbook next week and he will complete 3A.  He is in Topical 5 of Challenging Word Problems 2.  He is a little behind, but I am not concerned because he needs to always go over math.  Math is a subject that I cannot afford to stop with him.

Reading: He has read chapter 15 of Story of the World Volume 2.

Writing and Grammar: He has completed Lessons 56-58 in First Language Lessons 3.  He loves this program.  He has learned a new role that adverbs do.  He has learned that adverbs describe other adverbs and adjectives based upon intensity like very small or very quickly.

Latin: Latina Christiana I lesson 8

Spanish: His father is teaching him Silent Night in Spanish.

TOGETHER:

I am reading Viking Tales by Jennie Hall to them aloud.  I am reading Bulfinch's Mythology to them.

The boys take violin lessons.  They have separate individual lessons.  They also are apart of a Junior Ensemble group through the homeschool support group.  The children are also in the choir.  So they get folk music and violin for fine arts.  They also take private piano lessons with a wonderful woman.  She is in her eighties.  The boys love her.  They passed their tests in June and they received their trophies in November.

They had no AWANA this week because the school closed.  So, they did not have the program.  The children still studied their Bible verses.

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Dec. 9, 2009 - Wordless Wednesday

 

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Dec. 7, 2009 - Pictures of the competition

If you would like to see more pictures at the competition please go to www.homeschoolblogger.com/thegenius.

That's my son's blog.

Here are some picture, but please go to my son's to see more of the team:

After two rounds, we were still in second place.

A judge is talking to the children.  They are explaining their research project.

We got the "Against All Odds" award!

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Dec. 6, 2009 - The FLL competition season

Well, we competed in the Montclair Qualifiers this past Friday.  This year the team I took to competition was so much better than the team last year.  Our highest score was 260 and we ended up in 6th place.  The highest score last year was 51 and we ended up third to last.

The difference between the two seasons is this:  my older son was the lead programmer.  He taught the rest of the team how to program, including a 14 year old.  It was good because the team last year elected a boy who claimed he knew how to program, but did not know how to program an NXT.  Last year, the lead programmer got an NXT for his birthday during the season.  He did not want to help the team by allowing us to use it so we could each work on programming.  He would bring his NXT to show his friend the different things he got the NXT to do.  Hardly any of the boys wanted to share or try different things to help the team.  The children just did not know how to work as a team.

This year, one of the boys got an NXT during the competition, but he shared his robot with others.  All the children had an opportunity to work on the robot.  Right away, the season had a better start because the children were willing to share.  However, the season did have its problems too.

I had one child that was very focused on playing the entire season.  He was bossy, demanding, and rude. When he did not get his way, he cried to his mother.  I had another child who was disrespectful in that he threw around my garbage cans, pulled up my mailbox, and pushed my son's soccer net into the middle of the street.  Of all the children, three were really dedicated to programming and some research.  Most of the children goofed around. 

I learned from all of this.  The major thing that I learned is that I should not just take anyone on the team.  This program is for children who have a certain mind set.  I know that a few of the children will not return.  I would not want them back either.  There were about 2 children who really concentrated on programming.  Only 1 or 2 who concentrated on building.  All the other children played around.  I will truly look for good children who are well behaved to join my team.  So, I may just have 4 children next year.  Those children were the workers on the team.  The research workload will be more, but I think that we had a heavy load because not a lot of children did that much research anyway.

The type of child that you want competing in an FLL competition has to have a high achieving personality.  I realize that not just any child can do this.  They have to want to do it no matter what.

This year I had to not only help children learn how to program(my older son did that not me), but also I had to teach them how to do a research paper.  Half the children did not know how to spell or write well.  A few of the children did not know how to behave.  So, it was a huge challenge for me.  I will proceed with caution the next time I try this program with children I hardly know and children that I know are rude (having the rude child was my fault).

Thanks for reading!

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