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My dad, Dr. Edwin C. Myers is a rocket scientist. In the 1970s, he designed the eyes of the Infrared Interferometric Spectrometer for NASA'due south Voyager I and Ii infinite probes and was featured in Who's Who in Technology Today. He has taught at the university level, performed geophysical research in the petroleum industry, and served in public elected role. He also authored the world-famous CalcuLadder® math drill series. My mom, Nellie Myers, holds her B.A. in art and is an accomplished artist.
My parents started homeschooling in 1980 – back before about people had even heard of homeschooling! Homeschooling wasn't piece of cake. There were few educational materials available to homeschoolers at the time, and you lot couldn't practice a quick internet search either!
Cheers to God, Dad and Mom successfully homeschooled all twelve of us children, from G-12th course, with my youngest brothers graduating in 2014. My dad yet likes to joke, "Nellie and I only wanted two kids — we simply never got the ii we wanted!"
Homeschool Help From a Rocket Scientist
Hither is some valuable insight that my dad shares for homeschooling parents today:
"I still call up the evening over 35 years agone when I found out that our oldest son—who was finishing upwardly a second-grade math workbook—couldn't add:
"Say, Matthew, what's 7 + iv?"
"Uh, 7 + 4?" Matthew replied. "Let'southward see . . . 7, (and his fingers went under the tabular array every bit he whispered slowly) 8, 9, ten, eleven . . . 11!"
Nearly every trouble I asked him went that fashion. Matthew understood the concept of addition and he could use a concrete procedure (counting fingers) to get the correct answer—most of the time— but only afterward vii or 8 seconds!
"Ii years with workbooks oasis't given Matthew the level of skill he needs," I thought.
"He'll really go bogged downwardly in multi-digit multiplication and long division, where he'southward got to use add-on and subtraction routinely on his fashion to getting the answer. And if he learns to multiply and divide no better than he adds and subtracts, then fractions will be a disaster!"
Matthew'south experience was a archetype example of the limitations of cognition without know-how.
The Armchair Quarterback
A familiar analogy of noesis without know-how is the armchair quarterback. A head full of football knowledge, the armchair quarterback tin identify all types of football playing formations, quote the rules of the game in detail, recite statistics on dozens of players and teams, and call fantabulous plays from his Television-side seat.
It is quite another thing, however, to walk onto the playing field and actually EXECUTE a vivid play that was developed while sitting in an armchair, and most armchair quarterbacks would fail if they tried. Fortunately, notwithstanding, most of us don't have to earn our livelihood by playing football, then that our playing skills don't make a great bargain of difference in our lives.
There are a number of skills, though, in which nosotros cannot afford to exist mere armchair quarterbacks, simply in which our practical performance level makes a large difference in our adequacy every bit stewards nether God. What are some of these skills? And how tin we tell when a skill is learned "well enough"?
Self-Reinforcing Skills
Nosotros want our children to get to that delightful point where they "take off and run" with the skills they've good in the classroom. This happens when students get "over the hump" of their initial awkwardness and slowness, and proceeds confidence and the realization that their new skills make them more than capable and productive.
Many students never go over the hump in sure skills. Unless one gets over the hump, the new skill tends to fall into disuse. A good example of this tendency is the "might-have-been piano player."
Many of us have perhaps taken lessons on the piano or another musical instrument in the past. We probably recall the unpleasantness of having to practice a skill that just seemed to rob us of time for doing other activities at which we were more proficient. If nosotros never reached the point where pianoforte playing "paid off" in making an attractive audio for ourselves, chances are that we've lost much of whatever playing skills we in one case attained.
Hemmed In past the Hump!
At that place is often an uncomfortable menstruation — a "hump"— in the learning of an unfamiliar skill. During this menstruum, our child is often aware of his own clumsiness in regard to the skill he's learning. He may get irritated that the procedure of learning the new skill leaves him less fourth dimension for other activities he enjoys.
Our child may not capeesh the fact that the new skill, once learned sufficiently, may well open whole new vistas of involvement, usefulness, adequacy, and enjoyment.
How does our child get "over the hump," to where clumsiness is replaced by confidence and vexation by adventure?
The Skills Chain – No Stronger than its Weakest Link
Most tasks in which we would like our children to excel involve the use of a whole suite of skills—a "skills chain."
For instance, we may casually think that solving the math problem "5 + 2 =" calls for the use of the "addition skill." However, even this rather basic problem requires competence in several skills in lodge to be solved successfully.
These skills include visual recognition of the numerals written on the folio, mental connexion with the values to which the numerals correlate, knowledge of the pregnant of the "+" and "=" signs, and sufficient verbal or manual skill to say or write the answer.
At present let's take the long division problem, "628 ÷ 13." To solve this trouble, ane must: recognize the numerals and notational marks on the folio and their mathematical significance, estimate the various digits of the caliber (a multiplication skill), place them over the right digits in the dividend (a identify-value skill), multiply by the divisor (this may include the "carrying" skills of addition), subtract to find remainders, and so on.
All of the skills used in the "5 + 2" problem are notwithstanding very much needed in the "628 ÷ 13" problem! At present here's the rub: a weak link in the skills chain, even a weak "addition" link, will adversely affect our student'due south functioning in long division.
The full general principle is: the quality of our students' performance in any given task is probable to be express past the weakest link in the skills chain required for that task. So, a weak link in the skills chain at any given proficiency level volition adversely bear upon functioning at all higher proficiency levels.
What does all this have to do with the skills "humps" we were talking nearly earlier? Merely this: a weak link in the skills chain is nada other than a skill that has never gotten over the hump!
For instance, a student may habitually resort to mental "finger-counting," like my son Matthew did when solving simple addition bug similar "5 + 2." We may not remember information technology's whatsoever big deal. Later, though, when he encounters problems like "628 ÷ xiii," in which additional skills need to be "second nature," the addition link that one time seemed strong snaps, and our educatee bogs down and becomes discouraged.
Over the Hump!
So, suppose our educatee is having trouble in a particular academic surface area. How do we find the weak links in his or her skills chain?
One good way is to back style upwardly and try some activities which should be quite easy, which require only links which our pupil should take mastered long ago. Lo and behold, we may detect that at that place are some unconquered humps even among those basic skills!
Try activities that require successive links, until we notice that our student begins to have trouble.
At this betoken, we should "drill" our educatee on the weak links, helping him to become over the hump and strengthen the weak links in his skills chain. So, gradually add more "weight" and use further links. (Well-designed drills are not overly long or deadening.)
Don't presume that "knowing almost" is the aforementioned equally doing well. We don't desire mere armchair quarterbacks! In the midst of such questions as "Can my child describe information technology?", "Can my child give an example of it?", "Can my child classify it?", and then on, don't forget the question, "Tin can my child Do it?"
Endeavour to raise the proficiency level of each new skill a bit higher than information technology "needs" to be at that particular time. As soon as the very adjacent skill is introduced, the previously learned skill will need to function at this higher (i.e., confident, natural, over the hump) level.
Try to cultivate a diagnostic frame of heed equally you evaluate your children's performance. When your kids are having difficulties, ask yourself, "What are the skill 'links' that are involved in doing this academic task?", "Which one of these links seems to exist weak?".
Requite your kids a daily dose of "bookish calisthenics." These can take the class of cursory, daily performance drills that focus on factual and procedural, basics-and-bolts DOING. Drills with goals for both time and accurateness brand weak areas stand out like sore thumbs, and provide a smashing way for students and teachers to measure and recognize skills comeback.
Give your kids opportunities to use their skills in the real world. Let them practice penmanship past addressing envelopes for you; practice reading past reading Bible verses or short news manufactures to the family; or practice math by adding up a grocery pecker from the prices in a store flyer. Practice makes permanent.
Finally, give your kids the opportunity to run into a performance standard – advancement to higher-level drills is conditioned on successful mastery of earlier drills. In this fashion, our students can experience the pleasance and gratitude that comes from getting "over the humps" with God's enablement and provision.
When our students get over their learning humps, they forge potent skills chains and begin to sense the opportunities for using their skills with an expectation of success. They begin to use their new skills on their ain, gaining practice and polish every bit they blossom into fuller possession of the abilities that God has given them!"
The episode with my brother, Matthew, that my dad shared higher up is what spurred my dad on to develop the Learning Vitamins drill series: CalcuLadder, ReadyWriter, AlphaBetter, and SanctiFinder—quick, potent drills to bridge the gap between just 'knowing almost' and doing well. In math and other cardinal areas, merely a few minutes a solar day with Learning Vitamins aid build skills to that delightful point where your children have off and run with them!
Today, over a One thousand thousand children worldwide have used the Learning Vitamins!
And then…what happened to my brother, Matthew, who had to count on his fingers to add? Well, today, Matthew is a high-ranking military machine officer who uses mathematics every solar day to design buildings, roads, and bridges. He has won numerous medals and awards throughout many years of armed forces service! None of this would have been possible without my dad's math drills, the CalcuLadders!
This post was written by….
Anna Busenitz from School Made Simple
This commodity is a function of our How Nosotros Homeschool Serial; a drove of content from full-time, veteran homeschoolers sharing their own experiences on the versatility and multifariousness of homeschooling. You lot tin can read more nearly the series, and see all of the content, by clicking the image below.
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