I just bought the wrong kumon book for my toddler. I meant to get the book called "tracing" which looks like mazes, but I bought the kumon mazes book instead. It's too far to take it back and exchange it so I gave it to my son. Of course I knew it wouldn't last with him, it lasted less than 2 hrs. I went through and looked at all the pages. He got 90% right, scribbled a few pages that the answers weren't obvious, but what I noticed that several times if the answer was obvious he'd cut corners but you could tell he saw the answer...like he'd draw a line through the walls of a swirl but go the right way his eyes got too far ahead of the pencil. Translations: careless errors. And the skipping the ones that weren't obvious immediately. It amused me more than it worried me. It's nice to think I know much of what my child's thinking and how it all works. I'll just keep teaching him skills and he'll have the tools.
Many of your posts about providing for your daughters and preparing her to be open to many opportunities has really inspired me over the last couple of years. We're not using it yet but I have bought dvd's to teach my children Mandrin. We have a third grade Spanish Grammer program. I'm saving it for a couple of years because he's not completely solid on his readin', ritin', & rithmatic just yet. Darn close and making progress. Thanks to your comments about your PTA grant writing your school into many perks I signed up for the PTA last week and have scheduled a meeting with the principal on Tuesday to discuss how I can help the school that way. I have my eye on a traveling museum that brings dinosaur bones to elementary schools and gives them a lecture.
There seems to be a few threads lately about how to teach internal motivation to be engaged and diligent when working. I only know what I've seen. With kids don't you teach a new skill by first going easy on 'em and explaining and coaxing until you get speed and fluency, then once they can do it quickly you start checking their work and asking them to re-do the wrong ones? After a while it's done quicker if you just get it right the first time. After a while they can check their own work and redo the wrong ones. From what you're saying if I were you right now I would ask her to redo everything she gets wrong on her homework, even if the teacher doesn't want it back and it's not any extra credit. My son just got his fraction and decimals beginner book and he did the whole page wrong. I put x's by them all, explained how to add them again, he got them all right but one. I read that some kids don't like checks and x's.
