Posted in Curriculum

Some day I am going to figure out how to add our curriculum to my side bar - I am getting the hang of adding things after all.  But for now, I will just write about our curriculum here.

I already mentioned TOG - that covers History, Geography, Writing, Arts (mainly) and Literature.  So there isn't a huge amount to add to it.  Mainly just Math, Science, Grammar and Spelling - and then of course the Jewish subjects.  TOG does have religion in it as well, but obviously I skip that part :)

So what about Math?  Math is one of the subjects that homeschoolers are notoriously bad at.  Usually because their parents hated it, and pass that on to their kids.  I however wanted to break that stereotype.  I actually liked math - I wasn't a math/science geek or anything - but I actually liked how logical and clear cut it was for the most part.  I wanted my children to grow up to not be afraid of it either.  They didn't have to be math geniuses (unless they actually were), but I wanted them to feel comfortable with numbers.

I wasn't extremely successful with Dante in this regard - but I can't take full blame for that.  I pulled him out of school in 4th grade and the damage was already greatly done.  It took a LOT of deschooling and battles and everything else you can imagine to even get him able to give me the basic math facts - and he had been an "A" math student in school.  But I will discuss that another time.  Dante has actually come a long way.  He is competent  and did well with his college math class (with no desire to go beyond that). So I am considering that successful.

I used Math-U-See with Dante for about 1.5 years when I pulled him out of school - so approximately Grade 4/5.  This was 9 years ago, before they overhauled it.  At the time I was looking for a "fun" math program that would help us get over the hump that was caused by public school.  MUS did that admirably.  At that time the program was not yearly like it is now, but was made to be used for multiple years.  We got the "intermediate" level which was meant for grades 4-6, and we did the whole thing in about 18 months.  And then my son chose not to continue on with MUS, and that he wanted something a bit more meaty.  I bought the first MUS level for Little Miss when she was around 3, thinking it would be a good fun introduction to Math (Shiller was not yet available - it came out the following year and we were one of the first people to buy it.)

Unfortunately, I forgot the cardinal rule of homeschooling - what works for one child, might not work for another. From the first she just didn't like it.  She would sit in her room and count her toys well past 10, but asking her to count 5 unit cubes was like asking her to explain Einstein's Theory of Relativity.  By Chapter 10, she would get upset whenever she saw the MUS book.  By Chapter 15, she would tantrum whenever she saw it - and she was never a tantrumer, not even at age 2 when all kids do.  I noticed that she stopped counting just for fun.  She had always enjoyed playing with the MUS manipulatives for fun, and now wouldn't get near them.  If I asked her to set the table, she wouldn't count how many forks she needed, telling me she didn't know how.  I decided that she just wasn't ready for formal schooling yet, and decided to just put MUS away for a while.  I got it out again about 6 months later, and the results were pretty much the same, so I put it away again quickly.  6 months after that, I heard about this new Shiller program and checked it out.  I had LM check it out as well, and she said she liked it.  We got it and never looked back.  Now Math is one of her favorite subjects.  One day about a month or so after we got Shiller, I did try and do some MUS with her without her knowing (I drew what I wanted from the MUS book myself so that she didn't have to see the book, and used Shiller unit cubes) and still it just didn't click with her.  She couldn't understand what I was asking her to do, even though she could do it quite easily the Shiller way.  For whatever reason MUS was not a good fit for her.

So, that is my personal history with MUS. As I said it is not a bad program.  It works well for many people, but my daughter just wasn't one of them.

As for a comparison of MUS and Shiller - the only thing they have in common is that they are both Math programs. After that they are really not similar at all.  At the basic fundamental level, MUS is a Mastery program - you don't move on to the next lesson until your child has completely mastered the lesson you are on.  Shiller is a Spiral program that absolutely does not require mastery.  You do an activity until your child understands how to do it, then you move to the next one.  Lessons spiral around so you may be working on things at the same time, but before you know it your child has a much higher grasp of a topic than you would have thought. I think this was probably the biggest problem with my daughter - the requirement for mastery. And yes, you can skip that in the younger ages if you really want to, but within a year or 2 it will be required.  Topics are taught once and then really not ever again - or if they are covered again, the assumption is that you already know how to do it - that you have mastered the skill.  Shiller has constant review and building on of skills that MUS is just lacking IMO.  I know they have added "practice sheets" but those are made to be used with a particular lesson, not provide review of lessons you have already had.

Shiller is a complete multi-sensory program.  All subjects are taught in ways to appeal to ALL learning styles.  So you learn by listening, music, playing with manipulative, coloring, being physically active, and playing games.  This is a much deeper way of learning.  Learning styles don't really fully develop until around age 8, so before then it really is best to try to teach as many different ways as possible.  MUS is really just kinesthetic - they call it multi-sensory, but only if you consider 2 senses multi-sensory.  They do have a skip counting tape - I am not sure if you have heard it or not, but it is pretty awful.  The Shiller CD has songs on a much more wider variety of topics, and is a much more professional recording - my kids listen to it for fun.  Shiller has a much wider variety of manipulatives.  All you really get with MUS are unit cubes and blocks for each number, nothing else.  There are no shapes, no money, no dominoes, no scale, no ball to play games with - all the things that make Shiller fun are missing in MUS.

I used to be worried about what some call the "vagueness" as it does sometime seem that Shiller has ADHD or something LOL.  But I think that is what my girls likes about it.  Everyday they learn something new and different.  They know we are not going to be spending the next 2 weeks just doing addition facts every day.  Yesterday we did money and today we made shapes out of unit cubes and then used them to re-inforce columns/rows.  She thinks we just play math games every day and doesn't really realize that she is learning at the same time.  I will say that last year LM went through about a 3 month period where she didn't want to do Shiller.  She complained that it wasn't a "real" math program.  She wanted a workbook like all her friends had. LOL  I ended up getting her a Singapore workbook and let her do it for a while, but then one day she asked to do Shiller since the workbook was boring.  We did both for a while, but then about 2 months ago she told me that she just wanted to do Shiller now again.  She was doing Singapore Primary 2A (a 2nd grade book) but really she knew pretty much everything in it so it was boring. 

LM is now about 1/4 of the way through Book 3 and cruising right along.  She has good addition and subtraction skills, geometry and beginning multiplication and division.  CPG is about 3/4 of the way through Book 2 and is working on the higher addition facts right now.  Both love Math and think of Shiller as one of their favorite subjects.

I have come to think of Shiller as very gentle learning - it seems scattered and "vague" - but then one day you realize that they can do some really advanced things, and it just sort of happened without you really realizing it.  By letting go of my own preconceived notions about what a math program should be, I have been able to just go along with the ride and that has been good for both of us.