wow wow wow…just followed a link in a comment to the post i linked in my last post (did you get that?)…and WOW.
this is just what i heard on gena’s show recently…about how some kid learned all the 13 years of math in just 8 weeks. i was going to ask where that came from…and here it is!!
wow, just read it. its amazing! it really is true! so what are we all stressing about math with our kids for? maeven’s already ahead of the game, as far as i can tell. 🙂 she is doing math in head just for fun using the grouping technique i showed her from the right start math program. slowly, but the point is she’s doing it. and she’ll get faster the more she does. for her its fun. as it should be!
math IS fun! i’ve always been of the mindset that its fun…despite the schools, i always saw it as a puzzle to solve…fun! but then some of my classes killed it for me. but i still remember how fun it was to sit with my dad (this being a fairly rare occurance with a very busy navy chaplain for a dad) and have him show me in an excited way how cool it was to figure math problems out…he really seemed to enjoy it and hence, so did i! right on, dad!
THAT’s what i need to remember for my own kids. show them when they are ready (as the article shows) and show it with the enthusiasm that is infectious (which shouldn’t be hard for me, since i do like math.)
here’s a great quote from that article:
“the subject matter itself isn’t all that hard. What’s hard, virtually impossible, is beating it into the heads of youngsters who hate every step. The only we way we have a ghost of a chance is to hammer away at the stuff bit by bit everyday for years. Even then it does not work…Most of the sixth graders are mathematical illiterates. Give me a kid who wants to learn the stuff – well, 20 hours or so makes sense.”
wow. read the article…he goes on to calculate why it would take just 8wks to learn all math from k-12. really enlightening. like WOW!
funny cuz i recently was thinking about this (forgive me if i am repeating myself…i may have blogged this already)…and shared with adam that i took a basic math class my freshman year of college…it was a general ed requirement. it basically went through all math that i had learned from K-12!! faster, mind you, but geez…if i hadn’t learned it earlier, i could have just learned it in college! not that i’m saying that i should just let my kids go and not do anything to try to help them learn any math at all during their “school years.” but just that it seems that it is sort of assumed that we hadn’t properly learned it all and had to be retaught it all. it was a breeze for me, but not for everyone in the class. i found the class actually fun! LOL!
makes me feel much better about my stance that she’ll get it when she’s ready. she will. there’s plenty of time. and really, she’s already ahead of the game! 🙂
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