The boy's learning a lesson about homonyms on the computer (because I'm impatient and quit he just controls his own education with software). I'm getting a refresher. I'm ignoring him and telling him, "I don't know, it's you're game. How do I know how to play it.". All the while I'm googling synonym and homonym and subject predicate quietly in the background so I can be any use to him later. I think by now I'm learning more as a housewife about early childhood education than my sister who has a degree and runs a daycare.
FWIW piano lessons are less related to music talent and more related to abstract mathematical thinking. And Chinese mother's educational method is in line with Singapore math cirriculum's educational design. We here in the US spiral up the lessons. We learn in first grade, review, learn, review in second, review, learn, review in third... The Singapore math is exhaustive. You master it and move on. Like my boy is in there playing with grammer, he's not ready for synonyms and homonyms. Well, I guess he is. He's doing it. He just showed me where he changed a silver star level to a gold star (better score). I don't care if he masters any of those lessons. They'll come up again and again over time. I was raised on Abeka cirriculum. It spirals. Houghton mifflin spirals. I'm teaching him fractions and multiplication. Those are linear, definate, and rote memory. I'll trust the computer games with the grammar and let the spiral pick up the slack.
Singapore math is chinese mother, it's spoiled rich American.
Flexibility, people. Eat the meat and spit out the rest.
I've read the more better American private schools are picking up stuff like the Singapore math at the same time china's trying to be more like us. And we tend to use the Singapore books in a way they weren't intended by picking and choosing lessons. But they weren't made for American kid's anyway and the spiral will pick up the slack.
