Hi Mandabplus3,
“So I just marked the rest of her lessons, she has completed 13 lessons this week.”
Outstanding. You can do that math. You’ll complete a Saxon book in 11 weeks at that pace, and that’s if you do every section. You may remember that I skipped between 20 and 40 sections in the earlier books as they were simply review from the prior book (to make up for summer break), but towards the end of the series, I had David do all problems. Do the math again and you can easily see how David got through 4 Saxon Books in one year. He did that only once, as the work does get harder as you progress, but 2 books a year is doable…maybe to the very end. Remember, that 11 weeks is a full grade level. I don’t make this stuff up, it’s doable for virtually any kid that has normal intelligence and a good home.
“She made a couple of mistakes. Three stupid ones so I made her redo them.”
LOL. It was very rare when David got through a single section without a mistake. Sometimes he did so bad in a section that I made him do every problem over, from scratch. I also made him check each problem after he finished a set in nearly all cases. Remember, he hated doing them, and the quality of the work showed. But our house was not a democracy, so David had to do what he was told.
“She was skipping the date questions because we don’t write dates the American way. So I made her do those questions writing them the Aussie way ( day month year).”
Nice…not too many differences between us, and certainly not enough to back away from Saxon.
“To my surprise she learnt negative numbers this week. I didn’t know she didn’t know them until she told me she learnt all about those in the “number line thing” I made her read it was in the book so she had to read it!
So she has independently learnt a new math skill and got all the associated questions about it right.”
Jeeze, I don’t remember David ever doing that. Awesome.
“I am very happy about this! Also annoyed she hasn’t already learnt this stuff at school but hey we arnt relying on them to teach her for a reason!”
You waste you energy being annoyed. Remember what I said earlier, when things are done by otherwise intelligent people, that make no sense, then there is a political agenda. So don’t get angry, you are simply on the other side of that agenda and you must accept it. We’ve had almost 4 years of a president 100% opposite from me - but he got power (fairly) and therefore I accept it. I don’t get mad at what he does, simply because I know and understand who he is and I expect it. But I do chuckle at others that are shocked and mad at what he’s doing - what’s there to be shocked and mad at - he’s just doing what his past has shown him to do and what he promised when he campaigned. So I accept it and do my best to adapt. He doesn’t get to make me angry. Likewise in your case (and just about everyone else’s), the teachers are either too dumb to know what works so they do what they’re told, or, if they are smart enough, they have their political agenda which is also used to control the dumber teachers. So just look at school as day care now, at least for math.
“One thing I noticed is that it takes me a good chunck of time to mark all her work if she continues at this pace, I reckon i will be working the old grey matter to get my calculation speeds up so I can keep up with her! I don’t want her to get too far ahead of my marking.”
That’s why I recommend having the Home School kits, if you can get them down there. They have the solutions manuals. Even at 76, I was needed the manuals - and I am pretty decent at math, still.
“Finally her self confidence is improving. I suggested that perhaps she needed some harder work at school. ( her national testing scores came back suggesting just this big grin ) and she said " yeah especially in math” music to my ears!"
I like that part. I didn’t get that pleasure with David, but all is fine now. For school, do your best, and take what you get. It’s not going to affect her either way. As to self-confidence, that improves as they get the basics figured out. I figure 80% of the trouble that kids have with new material is that they have to use skills from the past that they either never learned or had forgotten. One the huge benefits of Saxon is that their problems are designed to keep those skills intact, until they’re needed again.
“Thanks for the list in order Robert, now I know what to shop for. This is going to be quite a challenge for me being in Australia! confused”
Best of luck there. I guard my set with my life. They never leave my home - except when we hurricane evacuate - then they are always with me.