Homeschooling curriculum

[Denise Melchin]

What do you want your children to learn at what age and how do you approach it?

I'm unsure what to prioritize. My child turns 5 in June and recently we've been mostly practicing reading (she can do it, but not very fluently yet), arithmetics (average first grader stuff) and some real math, like showing her what a function is, a visualization of why multiplication is commutative and similar things. We've only done very few science subjects. 

I'm not sure whether this is the best approach, especially doing more arithmetics than real math, but I'm kind of uncomfortable to prioritize subjects where I don't 'see' progress (we have workbooks for arithmetics), and postponing science. I think it's very useful to prioritize reading though, so she can learn material early by herself.

How do you do it? Where are you getting your ideas from and which resources do you use?

[William Eden]

I'd also be fairly curious to hear from the homeschooling types on this list with older kids.

Divia and I intend to be unschooling, and have some theoretical thoughts on this, but Lydia is still only 2.5 years old. :)

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Will Eden
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[Anna Belkine]

My daughter is turning 5 in a couple of weeks, and we're planning for her to start Kindergarten in our local public school -- so the curriculum in my mind is intended to be in addition to the standard school stuff. That said, I think it can easily be adapted to be the sole homeschooling STEM curriculum for a Kindergardener.

Here's a link to my notes. I'd love comments/questions/suggestions! And if you'd like to work on implementing and improving it together with me, I'd be more than happy.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sso1UveRr4OLMw3TgQ7sA64y6OxIEl0-kwvgCo1YTuo/edit?usp=sharing

 

[Divia Eden]

Quick thought on functions. I have other thoughts about curriculum more generally that I hope I get to later. 

My mother used a big box to teach her elementary school students about functions and it seemed to work well. It was big enough that a person could get inside and it had input and output holes. Kids could either be the one inside or practice feeding things in. 

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Divia Eden

(sent from my phone)

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[Anna Belkine]

What did they feed the function? And what did they output?

My concern here is to preserve the consistent property of functions, that is - exact same input should produce exact same output.

But otherwise a box is good. It's certainly fun! Although I think if I were to introduce a Giant Box to my five year old, it would immediately devolve into a game of fort. Not at all a bad thing, and probably in keeping with the whole idea of unschooling, but  I doubt I could maintain the metaphor:)

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[Divia Eden]

Probably true about the fort :-). 

They would change they function around, but per session it was a consistent thing like +1 or x2. Depends on the age of kid I guess. 

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Divia Eden

(sent from my phone)

[Davison]

Even if the metaphor could be maintained for a short period of time, repeated exposure at an early age and planting the seeds of a solid concept seems to be a win all around if said concepts can be incorporated in a play environment. I've had the most success with my son for concepts, words or grammatical corrections when the emotional charge is at a relatively high level, which happens to usually be during play times. Unfortunately, seizing the opportunities to teach are (for me) very limited without negatively impacting the immediate "play" context.

[Anna Belkine]

For us, the most successful method seems to be to introduce the so-called "emotional payload" in the form of a story or a quiet game. If it later gets reinforced during play time, that's an added bonus -- but Eleanor is typically the one in charge of all her games; she does not accept direction or imposition of rules on my part:) That said, games of fort have their own benefits, without the metaphor:P Bring on the games of fort!

Regarding functions, I think there's value in disengaging the concept of function from arithmetics. I specifically don't want sophisticated conceptual exercises on functions to devolve into thinly-veiled arithmetic drills, the way they often do in mainstream school curriculum. This may not be a big problem in high school, for students to whom arithmetic is second nature -- but to little kids arithmetics is still quite new...

[Divia Eden]

Agreed that it's useful to have examples that aren't just arithmetic. Maybe stuff like turning the input upside down. Or giving the person inside a picture and having it emerge with a circle around it. Probably there are lots of more fun ideas than I'm thinking of too. 

--

Divia Eden

(sent from my phone)

[Katie Cohen]

This is from a site I like: http://naturalmath.com/2012/02/fun-wit-functions/

Lots of good ideas there, I think.  

Also...this might be gross to adults, but kids might think it's hilarious--the "tummy" function of processing the input of food outputs....

;-)

[Katie Cohen]

This is from a site I like: http://naturalmath.com/2012/02/fun-wit-functions/

Lots of good ideas there, I think.  

Also...this might be gross to adults, but kids might think it's hilarious--the "tummy" function of processing the input of food outputs....

;-)

On Thursday, August 13, 2015, Divia Eden <divi...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Anna Belkine]

Hehe, toilet humor is awesome at capturing my kid's attention! :D  An added benefit of the tummy function is you can introduce domain and range very naturally. Domain = stuff you can eat. Range = stuff you can poop out. Can't eat a razor blade. Can't poop out a live giraffe.:)

Or maybe -- a zombie function!

[Robin Lee Powell]

Only marginally related, but http://www.dragonboxapp.com/ is pretty
awesome.


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[Anna Belkine]

Oooh, bookmarking the naturalmath site... looks good from the first five seconds I've spent on it. Looks like they have a book, too. Does anyone know if it's worth it?

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[Katie Cohen]

I have just looked at their website and mailing list content, not the book, but I bet it would be good.  

(Also, the ebook is pay what you want, so you could put it a dollar at first and then if you like it go back to buy it again at the rest of the suggested price (of $9) or get the paperback.) 

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[Dave Orr]

On the topic of functions, at some point I taught my kids about trapdoor functions, aka one-way functions, where when you do something you can't undo it.

They had a great time for the next month identifying everything that they could that was a trapdoor function. Basically everything you do in the kitchen is like that, for instance, but some surprising things too. We had a great conversation about whether getting money out of the ATM was a trapdoor function, which depends entirely on your model of what's going on.

- Dave