Yep, we are a month in and the problems are starting to crop up as things get in place. The biggest problem...Matthew and Saxon math. Christopher did great with it. It comes highly recommended. Matthew did great in pre-algebra with it. We have now been at Algebra 1 for over a year and he's failing miserably. He won't ask for help, he won't check his work, and he leaves it for last every day in the hopes that he won't get to it.
That is what we call classic Matthew avoidance or "I HATE this crap!" in passive aggressive behavior.
After trying a few different tacts, it was decided that it was time to try something new. It's going to be hard because he's in the middle of the curriculum so we will have to try and figure out where he fits into the new curriculum but it should be worth it. We are borrowing the Art of Problem Solving from Ian which is where we get all the good curriculum for Matthew. There learning style is so similar that if it has the Ian stamp of approval, it's almost a guarantee that Matthew will do well with it. There are no tests with it until the end so I'm having him do selected problems from each chapters review section until we find areas where he doesn't understand stuff or just needs more practice. Hoping we can get at least half way in before he has to start doing full lessons. It's a pretty advanced curriculum tho so we'll see. The other nice thing is that there are corresponding online courses for a reasonable price taught by the people who wrote the texts and free online help even without enrolling. Really nice. And it goes through calculus so we have time before we have to use the JC for his math.
While looking through his other problems, its apparent that while he wants to do all of the courses, it's an overload so we looked at some ways to tone things down a touch to make it easier for him to get everything done. *crossing fingers* we've got things set-up better for him now.
In other changes, Jonathan will be starting US History this week. We had to wait for Matthew to get through the first book in the series so Jonathan could start it and that's now done. Jon will be going slower through it so there wont' be any more problems with them sharing. Now I just need to find time to do all the work with him. Always with the needing more time. *sigh*
And the last big change is that I had to pull out the 3rd box in Hooked on Phonics for Nicholas! He has completed the 2nd box and chomping at the bit for the next one. He is doing great with his reading and really enjoying it. He's starting to try and read all over the place and people are amazed when they realize he just read something to them. He was at clay class this week (need to post more pictures of that) and picking out his glaze color. He pointed to one on the top shelf and Margaret picked the one next to it. He told her "Not that one, the Hot one". She looked confused for a moment but then looked and realized that the one next to where she was pointing was Hot Tamale. He couldn't read the second word but he was able to get his point across. Totally amazed her! She just looked at me and said "He read that?!" Um, yep. He's been able to read that for about 6mos now.
So here's hoping things go smoothly for a bit now. I know we'll end up tweaking things further, it always happens but maybe we can get a month out of these current changes before needing the next batch. LOL
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment