Two things happened on Friday to stir up my homeschool planning yet again.

1. I realized that my 6.5 year old son who is now reading his second Harry Potter book is probably done with phonics (!) and we could switch to making spelling lists of words that he needs to practice.

2. The same son tried to do some addition problems in the math workbook of my 10.5 year old son, and got them pretty much right. Ulp. This was in the car during errands on a busy day, and in the back seat Son1 was giving Son2 appropriate helpful tips (as in, "A thousand tens makes 10,000."

I told my older son that I guess it made sense that Son2 could do this, because math is about learning concepts and then learning how to apply them in lots of different ways (addition: single digits up to 10, to 20, to 100; double digits; skip counting; multiplication; addition of fractions; in decimal notation; etc.).

Then I joked with Son1 that we ought to get the next book for him so he could do the same thing.

But in all seriousness, I think my kids are moving a lot faster than I was prepared for, and we've only been doing math for 20 minutes a day! I would like to gradually increase it to at least 45 minutes, but then we'd be on to new books every three weeks, eeek. Time to add this info to my homeschool plans, fold gently, and see what we end up with.

I read Ruth Beechick's contribution to the Suarez's book Homeschooling Methods, and what I got out of it was validation for my recent suspicion that it's time to drop phonics instruction for Son2 and, instead, focus on reading together, reading aloud to him, letting him read a wide variety of good books -- though we're not going further in the Harry Potter series; he's only 6! -- and creating a running list of words from his reading to work on. We'll finish Explode the Code 3 and be done with phonics workbooks, oh my.

As for math, I'm not sure what to do. Son2 (the 6.5 year old) seemed to be working at the right level in his Singapore 1A book, though in truth he finished it in five weeks, hmm. We are poised to start 1B, but the car scene mentioned above was preceded by his adamant refusal to read his new text because "I already know all of this stuff" (for the record, I am dubious).

If I can convince Son2 to go over his new math text with me as we've been doing, I'd like to keep moving forward yet cover each topic and have him do an appropriate number of problems. Maybe he needs more enrichment -- fun with math and further exploration of the concepts he's learning. We could read math stories as suggested at LivingMath.net and do math play, starting with some great Web site games and ideas from my Family Math books. We could do the Singapore math on alternate days from math play. Hmmm.

On to Son1. We have not yet reached a point in Son1's Singapore math work where he is learning something new. I'm not sure what to do. This week we decided he would do only the odd "regular" problems and all of the word problems in the Extra Practice Problems book that is his 4B workbook. Maybe we should just go over the review sections in the text, have him do some demonstration problems in the workbook, and move on. In that case, I should buy the 5A and 5B texts now and figure out what to buy for problems to work. Maybe Challenging Word Problems rather than Extra Practice Problems? I don't know.

So far, at a set of books (text and workbook) every 3-5 weeks for both boys, it seems like there must be a better way to expose at least Son1 (for whom it's all still review) to the Singapore mental math approach that I think is a great fit for him. Good thing this series is inexpensive, but still.

I'm off to do some research on options. I want some sort of text and problems to work, but I don't want to move too fast; I'd rather find his learning point and go deeper, not faster. And yet, maybe I should expect to move somewhat quickly through the Singapore 5A, 5B, 6A, and 6B texts and move on to algebra and geometry. I'm starting to wonder. Ulp again.

Good thing I like math, discussing the actual math is enjoyable for me, and I have no problem checking his work by doing it myself (so far!).

Bright idea: I think I'll sit down with both boys and find out what they think and what they'd like to do.

Posted by mamma1420

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Jessica