Archive for February, 2009

Making Memories–Will They Remember?

Saturday, February 14th, 2009
laundry-basket

This Made a Memory?

Do you  wonder if all those memories you make with your children will ever be remembered?

Today my teenage son gave me a lovely surprise. He recalled a fond memory from his younger years that I had forgotten. It was one of those spontaneously made memories–not the preplanned sort.

Our washing machine bit the dust when he was little. He remembered we ran out of clean clothes. The memory that stands out for him was wearing his papa’s t-shirt and listening to his mama’s stories while the new machine washed their clothes. It was a warm fuzzy moment for him and a completely accidental memory maker for me.

Recalling that memory was the best part because it made a new one for both of us. We laughed at a five-year-old boy’s perception of the demise of his mother’s washing machine–the visions of dirty laundry everywhere and the delights of storytelling and gigantic t-shirts. My disaster created his adventure.

Remember some memories with your children today! May you be pleasantly surprised.

Oh, in case they are memories of the unpleasant sort, take this opportunity to see the character building aspects, to walk in forgiveness, and to create new memories of the healthy sort.

Blessings,

Harriet

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Help Your Child Catch Up in Math

Sunday, February 8th, 2009

I'd Rather Be Outside!

How do you help your older student to catch up in math?

First, I suggest that you find out what your student knows and what your student needs to learn.

There are free math placement tests available online.

Saxon Math offers tests to place your student in their program (providing they haven’t used Saxon Math before):

Alpha Omega offers placement tests–for their curriculum . You can purchase them, but some are available for free online if you give them your email information:

Singapore Math has free placement tests and an excellent scope and sequence for their math program:

You can do an online search to find many more possibilities.

Once your student has tested, then you are ready to repair the math foundation. Most of the time, when a student is behind in math, it’s because some of the building blocks of math are missing.  Build a brick wall and leave out a few bricks here and there. The wall may look pretty good at first; however, as the wall grows higher or if someone puts pressure on the wall it will collapse on itself.

It’s the same with math.

Start your student with the most basic concept that he doesn’t understand and work from there. Fill in the gaps and make sure your student practices working math problems every day to build up speed.

If he has mastered addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division but needs fractions, decimals, percents, metric measurement, measurement, etc. then the Key to Math Series would help to fast track him. It is very visual and works on one concept at a time.

After that I would suggest putting him in Saxon 87 to review and practice all the arithmetic concepts. Then he should be ready for Algebra 1.

Whichever curriculum you use, the main focus is to fill in the math gaps and lay a good foundation.

Hope this helps.

Blessings,
Harriet

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