Book Review: The Successful Homeschool Family Handbook

subtitle- a creative and stress-free approach to homeschooling

I found this book to be a good read. I only read the first half of it and not the testimonials from different homeschool families around the country. I prefer right now to have more a philosophical encouragement than "here's exactly how to do it" type of literature. I found their advice on lesson planning (basically make a journal of the day AFTER the day is done) and on organization - simple is better! - to be helpful. They do seem to lean more toward unschooling than I would prefer. So much "unschool" stuff is stressed that someone might get the wrong idea without keeping in balance their thoughts on "guided" freedom of the student. Once again they stressed studies and personal experience to uphold their motto of "better late than early" although thankfully this book did not go to the nth degree to prove that point (as did Better Late Than Early (as one would expect) and School Can Wait) The testimony of the how the Moore family began homeschooling was helpful as well as the "Moore Formula" that they encourage which is a balance of work, service and academics. That idea is very appealing to me and goes along well with Charlotte Mason's philosophy of "Education is an Atmosphere, a Discipline, a Life" (though it doesn't correspond exactly). Also encouraging was Ms. Moore's advice to take into account "real life" such as house cleaning and cooking meals, etc. Often times I feel bad that I must clean and cook instead of just concentrating on the children's "education". When I really think about those things are part and parcel of their education. Chapter 10 on encouraging family health was also helpful (though not earth-shattering in content). Seems to me we do a great disservice to our children and ourselves when we neglect to think of the "big picture" of life. There is much in Mason's writings about health and even the types of food we feed our children. Good stuff that I'm always thinking about.

book notes: The Glass Wall - Why Mathematics Can Seem Difficult

From time to time I enjoy reading books on how people - especially children - learn. Recently I read The Glass Wall by Frank Smith. Here are a couple of quotes I thought were notable:

One would think that language is something that is discovered by every child (or taught to every child). Yet studies of the rapidly efficient manner in which language skill and knowledge develop in children has led many researchers to assert that language is invented (or reinvented) by children rather than discovered by them or revealed to them. And no less a psychologist that Jean Piaget has asserted that children have to invent or reinvent mathematics in order to learn it. In a sense, the wheel is reinvented every time someone discovers what a wheel can do. p14-15

Memory, like understanding, is unavoidable in mathematics and everything else. Although mathematics might seem to be a constant process of "working things out", the foundation of any kind of mathematical enterprise is memory, and a great deal of learning mathematics involves committing mathematical facts and procedures to memory. Memory eases all of our way through mathematics and we can't get started without it. p113

Many kinds of difficulty confront learners. Locating these difficulties in the learner's brain and giving them pseudo-medical names is not helpful. Usually what is needed is more time, more understanding, more sensitivity, less pressure, a fundamentally different approach to mathematics education, stressing comprehension rather than memorization - and sometimes a period of mental convalescence. p135

He boiled mathematics to a relationship between numbers. In the simplest terms "one and one more". The rest of counting, for instance, is just a repeat of that method.

He gave several good reasons why memorization of facts is greatly aided by comprehension of the facts rather than just by rote.