Homeschool goofyness
After working on the math lesson (which, frankly, isn’t challenging enough for Zane and is causing issues of him trying to make a game of it to make it more interesting for him), Zane grabbed the Cuisianaire rods and played for a bit. I am not terribly impressed with K12 math so far. It takes simple concepts and puts in under layers of manipulatives that actually complicate it IMO. The “ten frames” are annoying and actually cause more issues than it solves. I think the biggest part of the problem is that he is too far past this, he already understands the underlying concepts, so making it a multiple step process to add two numbers together is just annoying.
He wants to make a game with spelling too. Instead of just writing the word, he draws a little picture to illustrate the word in some way. Like the word “dock”: he drew a little dock, put water underneath it, then wrote the word “dock” on the dock. He shows through the drawings that he understands the word meaning, which is very, very important for a language delayed kid, and this is the visual equivalent of “use the word in a sentence”, so I am not going to stop it, but it takes what should be a 5-10 minute subject and turns it into a 30-40 minute subject. lol. I do love seeing the creativity though.
Some other examples: (some of these you had to be there and see how they were drawn to understand what he is saying)
“shop” is in the sign of a shop, “far” is on a hill in the distance
“which” on an intersection (which way do you want to go)
This one he did on his own after we were done. Enough to make a mama’s heart melt, isn’t it.
Here is was instructed to draw a place. He drew a house (and, apparently, we need to add “house” to the spelling list)
And, finally, a self portrait.
Is it bad that I was surprised he included pants and shoes?
Very cool stuff! Way to go Zane!!! I love that he independently shows you that he knows what the words mean – he’s such a smart kid!!!
Fantastic stuff! I’m so glad to get to see Zane and the great work he is doing. Jennifer..you are such a dedicated mom and teacher.
Thanks for this link!