Well that all sounds pretty interesting to me. Putting it on my reading list 😊
Aha,thank you for the good informations,i think it is really useful 
:clown:
Amazing thread.
Robert, if you’re still checking in from time to time, I have a small question for you (and others may chime in as well). But first, since you’ve shared so much, thought I would share a little about myself.
My boy is now 9months old. When he was around 4months I realized that he was getting BORED, so I started surfing around for games to play with him. I ended up on a lot of occupational therapy sights and reading about “sensory activities”, lots of busy work crafts. Nothing too exciting until I stumbled on DadDude’s teach your baby to read paper. Came away from that totally excited about teaching my son to read, then ended up here (the article references Brill Kids). I noticed there was a math section on this forum and thought “hmmm, never considered a baby could learn math too”. :laugh:
So then I sorted the posts by number of responses, and of course this one jumps to the top. Needless to say, I read the whole thread (about a month or so ago now), and have since gone on a mission to research in depth how to teach my baby math. There is going to be lots of basics, right start math, soroban in his is future to get him ready for Saxon. Now my biggest problem is explaining to my husband that we need to invest $$$ in out of print math books and store them for about five/six years. lol lol lol
Thank you so much for all your insights, and to PokerDad and others who have kept the dialogue going and shared their insights. I’m from Canada and had no idea of the education politics here. A few of the books you mentioned are now on my reading list. I checked with my Canadian friend who teaches grade 1, they are still teaching phonics “phewf”. My husband is from Switzerland and needless to say when I shared some of the insights, he was appalled. He attended Swiss schools until 10th grade, at which point he went to an international baccalaureate school, and from there a Canadian University for business degree. He says he learned nothing new past 10th grade. :ohmy: Makes me want to send my boy to Swiss schools!!!
One more thing before my question - the requisite adulation. You took a huge leap of faith teaching your son math, a true pioneer. We have a whole community to rely on and share ideas with. You trusted your guts and trailblazed, that takes major guts. Awesome.
Ok, on to my question. You mentioned your boy would do approx. 2 hours of math a day at home and that you treated his school more or less like a daycare. Did he ever take his Saxon math book to school and work on it there? Or was he just keeping his head down in math class working through the regular material? It seems crazy to think he would do the regular exercises and tests. I would love for my boy to be able to do one hour of Saxon at his school, then the other hour at home. It would make it so much easier to get the two hours in. I also recall that you said you always taught your boy to be very humble, not to shout out answers, only respond if he is asked directly by the teacher, etc… Did you not want him to do the Saxon at school because you were afraid he would be ostracized? Or was the school just not supportive?
One final thanks. DadDude changed my sons life, thanks to him I was convinced to teach my son to read. You have now changed my sons life, thanks to you my eyes are now open to possibilities of what children can do with math given the proper environment. Looking forward to seeing what the years ahead will bring for my family!
Evelyn
[Hi Evelyn. Yep, I’m still checking in, it’s just that I’m reverting somewhat to my more stable, lazy, state. But it’s time to start replying again!]
My boy is now 9months old. When he was around 4months I realized that he was getting BORED, so I started surfing around for games to play with him. I ended up on a lot of occupational therapy sights and reading about “sensory activities”, lots of busy work crafts. Nothing too exciting until I stumbled on DadDude’s teach your baby to read paper. Came away from that totally excited about teaching my son to read, then ended up here (the article references Brill Kids). I noticed there was a math section on this forum and thought “hmmm, never considered a baby could learn math too”.
[I can’t say much for kids that young. In our case we didn’t do or try to do anything special, other than what I mentioned earlier, which talking to him in the same voice I’d use with an adult. I actually did that with my dog when I growing up, decades ago, and was amazed that he did actually learn an incredible amount of stuff (such as identifying 15 different people by name call-outs). There was no way to predict what my dog would learn, so I said everything to him, just as if I were explaining something to a co-worker…and he (the dog) really surprised me with what he did wind up learning. So I figured no down-side doing that with my kid. Same results. One thing I’ll never forget was when he was about 5 years old he was talking to my mom in New Jersey and then he hands me the phone. My mom says (to me): “I feel I’m talking to an adult”. But other than that, nothing - no attempts to imprint anything at such a young age. Having said that, David’s two weaknesses are geography and foreign languages…he’s terrible at both, in my opinion, although I happen to be quite good at geography, so my standard is probably unreasonable. For language, nope, he simply knows next to nothing…so exposing him to that would have been good when he was young, but it didn’t happen.]
So then I sorted the posts by number of responses, and of course this one jumps to the top. Needless to say, I read the whole thread (about a month or so ago now), and have since gone on a mission to research in depth how to teach my baby math. There is going to be lots of basics, right start math, soroban in his is future to get him ready for Saxon. Now my biggest problem is explaining to my husband that we need to invest $$$ in out of print math books and store them for about five/six years.
[Maybe I can help here. Barring a life-changing event, David will have earned about $400,000 in wages by the time he would have otherwise graduated from college with a 4-year degree (i.e., age 22). While the large majority of these wages are for his work in New York City (where things are expensive, and he’s paid in kind), he still would have earned at least half that amount had he stayed in Houston. Now most parents of college-bound kids of that age would instead be seeing their kids taking out loans, and possibly, also, getting second mortgages on their homes. We, instead, are just trying to figure out the best early retirement date for me, since I was able to pay off my house a couple of years ago. Total investment to create that flip in economic forture: about $500 of Saxon Math books. There is simply no way that I could have taught him what he needed to zip ahead of everyone else without those books - they literally blew my mind as to how thoroughly they covered everything he needed. Obviously I cannot promise you the same results, but there is a darn good chance you’ll get those results, as long as you follow the Saxon rules (i.e., do every problem, in every section - with the possible exceptions that I call out). As to the books themselves, like me, they are not getting any younger…so the sooner you get them, the better condition they’ll be in, and also you have a better chance of getting the exact editions of the books (i.e., before Big Textbook bought them out). So move out on it!!! I’ve gotten clobbered on virtually every investment that I’ve made - except for this one, huge, investment.]
Thank you so much for all your insights, and to PokerDad and others who have kept the dialogue going and shared their insights. I’m from Canada and had no idea of the education politics here. A few of the books you mentioned are now on my reading list. I checked with my Canadian friend who teaches grade 1, they are still teaching phonics “phewf”. My husband is from Switzerland and needless to say when I shared some of the insights, he was appalled. He attended Swiss schools until 10th grade, at which point he went to an international baccalaureate school, and from there a Canadian University for business degree. He says he learned nothing new past 10th grade. Makes me want to send my boy to Swiss schools!!!
[I try not to get too political on this forum, as that is now why we’re here (although if Tiger Dad wants to start a thread dedicated to just that, I wouldn’t mind…to say the least), but I think it’s worth noting something that I read about 2 weeks ago. It was basically a quote that went something like this: “I think we all agree that the primary goal of education is equity.” This was directed at a “friendly” education audience, but it was posted. Again, without getting too political, I’m not sure if most parents here would agree with that - I suspect that most parents reading this would substitute the word “excellence” for “equity”, as they would prefer that all kids be given a chance to reach their inherent capabilities. But once you consider the implications of the term “equity”, you then can see why phonics and the times-tables are no longer taught (or, at a minimum, are given a much lower emphasis) - because not everyone learns at the same pace with phonics, or can master their times-tables fast enough. So we move down, and down, until pretty much everyone can pick up what’s going on. As I’ve mentioned before, the only person that took Saxon Math to heart (in my personal life) is a Russian immigrant (big surprise there). Last autumn, she sent her 4th grade daughter to her family back in Russia, to spend 2 months in school there. She had learned Saxon Math through 6th grade and was actually ahead of her classmates there (not by much, but still ahead). Had she been taught math by US standards she would not have lasted a week, as they still take math very seriously in that part of the world, regardless of what people may otherwise think of them.]
One more thing before my question - the requisite adulation. You took a huge leap of faith teaching your son math, a true pioneer. We have a whole community to rely on and share ideas with. You trusted your guts and trailblazed, that takes major guts. Awesome.
[Yep, it’s great have such a community around. As to being a pioneer, yes and no. In my own little world, definitely yes. The Internet was still in its early stages and there was no one guiding me. I only knew of Saxon because my kid’s 2nd grade teacher had given David a few photo-copied pages from Saxon 54 (which her daugher was using in 4th grade). The moment that I saw the quality of the execises I flipped out because that was exactly what I had spent years searching for. Not too long after that I realized that Saxon Math existed and the rest was history. But the REAL TRAILBLAZER was John Saxon. He was the one that put out the books, went to the conventions, was laughed at, and had results that blew away the competition. Had he not done that, no one would have ever heard of him. He will always be my lifelong hero, and David’s lifelong hero.
But yes, it was tough…as I mentioned, the progress is not constant, so it’s easy to question whether you’re doing it right. But my political instincts literally made the difference for me - again without getting too political here, the people that said that education should phonics and no calculators were the ones that I generally agree with on other issues, so I trusted them here, and they were right.]
Ok, on to my question. You mentioned your boy would do approx. 2 hours of math a day at home and that you treated his school more or less like a daycare. Did he ever take his Saxon math book to school and work on it there? Or was he just keeping his head down in math class working through the regular material? It seems crazy to think he would do the regular exercises and tests. I would love for my boy to be able to do one hour of Saxon at his school, then the other hour at home. It would make it so much easier to get the two hours in. I also recall that you said you always taught your boy to be very humble, not to shout out answers, only respond if he is asked directly by the teacher, etc… Did you not want him to do the Saxon at school because you were afraid he would be ostracized? Or was the school just not supportive?
[First question is easy. I treat my set of Saxon Books the same way I treat my passport, it is never far away from me. When hurricanes threaten my house (as happens once in a while here in Houston), they are among my top priorities for loading up the van. There was simply no way that I was about to let my books ever leave my house (except under my possession). It even drove my Russian friend nuts, as she had to do some serious eyelash batting for me to lend her books, just for her review. So, no, David wasn’t about to bring Saxon Math books to school - way too risky, and had it been a public school I suspect that they would have treated the material as they treat pornography, so no thanks. I simply taught him to do his best to both keep quiet, and keep his hand down (obviously he could immediately answer any math question that the teach threw out). A big part of that was so that people would treat him nicely, rather than as a conceited jerk - and that is what happened, they liked him. Everything, until now, was based on your first question - so it looks like I answered much of the rest already. As to the school supporting him…no need, he was doing fine at home. The question of finding the time comes down to priorities. Two hours per day is not that much, if it is the priority - but if it’s put up equally against t-ball, karate, Boy Scouts, Gymnastics, etc., then yes, finding 2 hours can be tough. We had David do some stuff (Karate and a bit of Boy Scouts), but in the end Saxon Math was the top priority. I am totally convinced that math and reading need to be done early, or kids simply will never catch up, as their brains can only be wired properly when they are young (just like learning a foreign language) - so for that matter, if you allocate 2 hours to Saxon Math everyday (average) as the highest-priority activity after coming home from school, your kid wins. After those 2 hours, if there’s still time for other stuff, have at it…if not, your kid will be fine too. Other stuff can wait - your kid will never make a living in gymnastics or karate, so why push it so hard when they are little - there’s time later]
One final thanks. DadDude changed my sons life, thanks to him I was convinced to teach my son to read. You have now changed my sons life, thanks to you my eyes are now open to possibilities of what children can do with math given the proper environment. Looking forward to seeing what the years ahead will bring for my family!
[Thank you, that was very sweet. There is a lot of pressure to “conform”…hopefully I can push back on some of that. Best of luck, Bob]
“Robert, What can you tell us about Thaddeus Lott? The reason I’m asking is because he’s a local educational legend there in Houston, and Saxon math played a role in his success. I went looking online to learn what I could about him, but found the resources were scant. I did come across a comment on a blog that said he had been exposed as a fraud and discredited, but other than some anonymous comment on a blog, I found nothing to suggest the veracity of the accusation. I also know he was really big into Phonics (as was John Saxon). Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all ITT and especially to the all of those in the Levy household!”
Sorry PD, this one dropped off my radar. Thanks for the kind words - we had a great Christmas - David was out here, as were a lot of his friends.
As to Mr. Lott, I can’t say that I’ve heard of him, but a few thoughts here. I’m sure you remember the movie “Stand and Deliver”, where Mr. Escalante kids were tearing up the Calculus AP exam in a school that was supposed to have dumb, minority, kids in it. So the College Board nullified the exam results due to suspected cheating (i.e., Escalante kids “getting help”), and made the kids re-take the exam, this time in much more controlled conditions. Needless to say, the kids did great again - because they were taught right. Likewise with the Imani School in Houston, and that was something that I witnessed first hand - again, a school filled with kids that are supposed to be dumb (since they’re also minority), but instead running circles around virtually every white kid (and even giving David a run for his money). So when Mr. Lott is called a fraud, my inclination is that he’s doing things right, and therefore making a lot of “experts” look really bad. The fact that he supports phonics is reason-enough to trust him. I truly think that people at the upper levels know the real answers when it comes to educating kids - and they simply don’t want it to be done.
Thank you so much for the response Robert! I’ll be using your financial justification with my husband. Frankly we’re both pretty concerned with the cost of post secondary education, and this is a great point. That along with some good old fashioned eyelash batting should get my way. 
On your comment “David wasn’t about to bring Saxon Math to school - Way too risky, and had it been a public school I suspect that they would have treated the material as they treat pornography, so no thanks.” Oh my goodness this made me LAUGH!!! On your other point about prioritizing reading and math, you are right. I’d love to do a million different things for my son, but if I can get him ahead in those two areas he’ll always have a strong foundation to stand on in life, come what may.
You’re certainly welcome, it’s still a lot of fun to write up this stuff.
Some other considerations on the financial end. As we zipped through Saxon Math, I had no clue (and certainly no plan) as to how that would affect David as he got older. But I did know one thing (early college or not), we would not be spending a penny on tutors, after-school instruction, or anything else regarding math, at least through Calculus (nor would we he have to spend much time on it for homework, since it would all be review). I also didn’t know if he even would go to college early as the inclination of most colleges is to not do special favors for people (i.e., it’s more work and more risk for them). So, had he not entered junior college to take Calculus, I was prepared to take him all the through the same math that I took to get my degrees in engineering (I still had my books and these days there are a lot of other places for him to get help). In other words, by the time he entered college (at age 18 or so), all the math he needed for at least a BS in engineering would be simple review for him - thereby assuring that he wouldn’t get tripped up and weeded out in math, and also making some of the other classes (particularly Physics) that much easier (and yes, I would have also taught him Physics early). In other words, with math already under his belt, the probably of graduating goes up significantly, the probability of graduating with a high grade point average goes up significantly, and the probability of requiring no more than 4 years to complete a BS in a useful field (maybe even 3 years, or less) increases significantly. All of the above is also a return on investment.
One other factor that may help (if your kid goes to college early), depending on the college and where you’re located is that your kid may get some kind of discount for tuition if he’s under 18, since the state is supposed to pay his way if he was in public school. In our case, for a couple of years, we only paid half-price for his tuition at our community college. We probably could have done the same at his 4-year school, but it was priced low enough for us without the discount, and they were doing us enough of a favor just by enrolling him, so why bother asking about it (the community college did it without us asking). Related to that, if you had planned to send him to private K-12 schools from the outset, as we were going to do with David anyway, then the tuition we would have paid for high school ended up instead paying for college, so the net effect was that we paid roughly the same amount in tuition for his first 17 years of life, but he had a marketable college degree, rather than a high school diploma and years of college expenses staring us in the face.
Yep, I’m quite cynical regarding public schools, and I have yet to be convinced that I’m wrong. I probably mentioned this earlier, but my mother (now retired) was a math professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology (basically an engineering/architecture school in New Jersey). NJIT is a state school. Obviously New Jersey has public K-12 schools from which NJIT gets most of their students. One day my mom tells me that virtually everyone is flunking out of her Calculus class. I ask her why and she tells me it’s because they stopped letting kids use calculators on exams - and that was because the kids were graduating with engineering degrees, but couldn’t do arithmetic without a calculator. So that makes sense…but why couldn’t they do arithmetic? Well that was because the K-12 schools gave out calculators in Kindergarten and never looked back - they had completely given up on teaching math without calculators, and these poor kids were entering engineering school without ever having to do a math problem by hand. Now if those kids were trying to go to Harvard, and Harvard had a no-calculator rule for math tests (which is likely the case), that would be bad enough for those kids, but I certainly wouldn’t blame Harvard. But NJIT is a state school - in the same state as the K-12 schools, yet it didn’t seem to occur to anyone that maybe they should coordinate their policies a bit, and either be all-in for calculators, or not permit them in math class - but either way, do it throughout all of the state schools (K-12 and colleges), rather than allowing different policies for different levels of education. My God, a lot of those kids flunking out probably would have done just fine and gotten their engineering degrees if a coordinated policy had existed…but lives got ruined instead.
This thread is amazing and I have learned so much. Here’s the thing. My 3 year olds are cheeky, cheeky, cheeky. When they were 2.5 and already reading to some extent, both of them would pick out numbers instead of letters and vice versa and laugh at their Montessori teacher when having a session with her. Before they were two, they have been purposely confusing their dad with their identities. I had no sympathy as I could tell them apart from birth.
But now that I am the one being tricked…Recently they have been all over the place with the six times table and simple addition when I know they know some of the answers. I think that they are facing boredom with repetition and here is what I did. I let them come up with the problem eg. One would say he has two cement mixers, then one more joined them and now he has 3. In desperation I made a bribe of handing out roasted chickpeas if I get the correct answer (won’t do this again). Lastly, I will introduce short worksheets (online ones and standard sheets are still too much at the moment) so they start getting used to the idea of a more formal math session. I do know that they can learn skip counting quite quickly like within a few days if there is an emotional attachment to the number so I will try to make this association for them for upcoming numbers (7 to 12).
Here are my questions. Mastery of math has been emphasised on this thread. How do I know if they have mastered the basics when I can’t get a straight answer? :noo: Or can I simply expect that this will be achieved if we do enough math? My experience seems to be the opposite from what is expected. Eg. I seem to hold their interest more when introducing new concepts eg negative numbers and they do get the math. They are however resistant to repetition and testing so I don’t think I can get them to memorise all the addends, for example. It also makes it difficult for me to know how to move forward if I am unsure of what they already know. Robert, did you have to deal with similar problems when David was little? I can imagine you being a strong figure of authority.
I sometimes feel outsmarted and outnumbered. How is this possible? I have three degrees and supervised 4 PhD students to completion. I can tell you now, working with graduate students is 100 times easier…but I wouldn’t miss the experiences with my toddlers for the world. I think I might be even a little bit sharper for all the stories and games I had to invent to engage them in math and music. I digress.
I really admire the mums and dads on this forum for what they have been able to achieve and I may have even left it a bit late for memorising facts with my little monkeys. But I am learning and learning from all of you. Here is what we have been doing and what I hope to achieve moving forward.
I the last 6 months,
Mastered the teens
Appreciate place value and count to 1000
Able to perform addition and subtraction up to 10
Introduced addition and subtraction up to 20
Understand negative numbers
Able to solve simple algebraic equations and know the concept of x
Know all square numbers up to 10
Introduced the square root
Able to skip count to 6
Memorised times table up to 6
Practised writing all 10 numbers electronically.
2. I the next 3-6 months
1. Master addends up to 10 (maybe)
2. Introduce percentages
3. Make teens addends and beyond
4. Solve quadratic equations
5. Know times table up to 12
6. Introduce decimals
7. Practise writing numbers on paper
Saxon math and abacus in the future?
Hi again people, for those that know me at least. Greetings to others here.
It’s been while since I gave an update on David, but he’s now 21 years old and doesn’t mind me getting more specific about his education and career. So I’ll give a quick run-down (some of it may have been posted before).
David graduated from the University of Houston just prior to turning 17. He received a Bachelor’s Degree in math, and a second Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering. He then went to Texas A&M for a Master’s in Mechanical Engineering (that dragged on a bit due to his thesis, and he didn’t get that degree until he was 19) - they gave him a teaching assistantship, which covered the cost (that was nice). During a job fair at A&M he went past a Bloomberg LLC booth and they asked him if he knew programming. He said he knew some programming (I had him take an on-line class in “C” when he was young, and then it became his big hobby). They hired him and he worked for 2 years in New York City. Between business trips and vacations, I must have made it there every 2 months (I love visiting that city). He lived in a dump, but it was in a great area (Upper East Side of Manhattan) and was within walking distance to work for all but they last few months there (when they relocated his team). But he had his own place and even managed to save up some money there.
During the time at Bloomberg he came across a Google “challenge” where they would give him an assignment to write a program to perform to meet whatever requirements they gave him. When he was successful, he’d get a harder problem. He managed to advance pretty far doing that (with some serious prodding from Mom when she visited) and got to the level where Google asked to contact him. So now he works for Google in Venice Beach, California. He’s paid well too, very possibly exceeding my income next year (and I do well, as a senior engineer).
So that’s his status. Probably the only thing he knows that I didn’t teach him is Programming, and that’s his career - pretty funny, but who cares.
By the way, this is a very good column regarding Phonics versus Sight Words, at least for kids K to 3rd Grade. The links he includes are also very good. Needless to say, David was taught exclusively phonics and the speed at which he learned to read still astounds me (along with his outstanding spelling capability…much better than mine ever was…which I attribute to phonics).
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/11/why_kids_cant_read.html
Wow, Robert, thank you so much for sharing that update!. David is doing so phenomenally well! It most certainly was the work ethic you developed with him that gave him the tenacity to take on the extra Google challenge. And look where he is now, awesome! 
At 21 years old he has achieved Academic and career goals that mamy have only dreamed of, and that others may achieve but will take as long as another decade to get to. So cool.
Plus, he got a free ride for his master’s, wow. Well, not free, he was a ta, but still, no debt there!
The article you shared on phonics was interesting, the author even went so far as to say that if you teach sight words, it is detrimental because then phonics is not automatic. I used both sight word and phonics programs with my now 20month old. He can read pretty well, he just doesn’t have much stamina. Of course, I have no idea which parts of the teaching program were the most effective…
I will say though, it’s impossible not to teach sight words at some level… The child always sees the whole word (like it or not), so they are bound to memorize the whole word for common words even if you use pure phonics. So in that sense I’d say the author is incorrect, some whole word teaching won’t hurt.
So now proud mama moment, here is video of the little guy. Not the greatest one (he’s hard to catch on camera), but super hat with his progress!
I have some other videos where he is identifying numerals, he can also count to twenty. Can wait to get the math ball really rolling!
Thanks for the update Robert, very inspirational!
Thanks Evelyn for the kind words (from both of us…plus mom).
We talked Sight Words a bit before, so I’m probably covering prior material. And, once again, I only have a sample size of one, so there’s always risk if I try to make a general rule out of it, but I’ll talk it again a bit.
First, never once did we try to get David to memorize any words by sight. I’m not even sure they pushing Sight Words 18 years ago (when I taught David reading). As far as I knew back then, it was either Whole Language or Phonics, and I knew enough to understand the unmitigated disaster that Whole Language is.
So, without ever being told to recognize a word by sight, David quickly developed that capability by being able to read phonetically (i.e., after seeing the word enough times you no longer have to sound it out). And that’s where I think the problem is with Sight Words…all adults that can read, read by sight. And all adults that can read know phonics. It’s just a matter of timing - when do the kids learn each, and in what order? To me the main question is when are they taught phonics. Again, to me, Sight Words, at least as implemented in our public schools, seem like a stalling tactic designed to slow kids down (sounds mean, but I really have trouble coming up with another reason to delay phonics until 4th grade). I also agree with the author that being taught two ways can be confusing, because I can see the kids trying to figure out whether a particular word is one that they were supposed to remember, or one they are to sound out.
Anyway, just my take.
Bob
Hello Robert,
I am pleased to hear you live in Houston. We live in Houston too and are on the Saxon path. My 8 yr is currently on 8/7 and my 6yr old twins are on 6/5. I started my kids on soroban abacus mental math with Abacus Brain Gym and thanks to that training they learned to love math. I know you mentioned math isn’t fun, but my kids love doing Saxon and math. I credit that to Abacus Brain Gym though, because their mental math speed and competence set them on a solid path.
It would be wonderful to get the opportunity to meet with you and learn from you. Please let me know if you would be interested in meeting.
Pearl