Thursday, March 17, 2011

Still Chugging With Workbooks


My son just finished - Kumon Reading - Grade 6.

While many homeschoolers parents who educate their own deprecate stale workbooks, and I sympathize with them, we've used them from day 1 and continue to do so.  Personally I like the fact that I have *standby work* for deploying at any time - in the car, at the library, for right when they wake up, for when I need to do something, for the doctor's office, etc.

This one was pretty good. As one might expect, it's simply short reading passages and follow-up questions. There's a whole lot of good, challenging vocab in there as well.

Luckily, my son doesn't complain about doing these, ever. I try to make him do 2 pages a day,  sometimes 4. A 74 page book, these Reading books are good for a month or so. In fact when he got near the end yesterday, he asserted that I had promised him a *prize* when he finished it. I probably did but couldn't remember. Egged on by material greed, he took the book outside and finished off the last 10 pages on the deck all on his own. It's amazing what kids/people will do when sufficiently and basely self-motivated!

The Prince is also chugging along with his algebra. Check out his latest blog post - Imaginary Numbers.

And to see the mountain of workbooks he did before he was even 5 - click here.

2 comments:

kevin said...

you might enjoy this article ... you could say Lincoln was home schooled

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/03/20/does_formal_education_matter_109283.html

CaptiousNut said...

kevin,

Thanks.

An *okay* article. Wasn't Wilson a pinhead? I confess I don't know much about him.

This seems to be the *trendy* realization - that formal education is not education at all but rather a *credentialing system*.

Trendy, but true nonetheless.

The gig is up. Deep down everyone KNOWS that school is a joke and a self-imposed handicap on so many levels. Mark my words, within 20 years homeschooling, or *education outside the system*, will be rampant. Everyone is just waiting for their neighbor to do it first to show them the way and to take the edge off the social stigma.

Lincoln also, I believe, read the Bible a whole lot - a point that went the author flagrantly omitted.