Today I think I finally took the needed step away from seeing curriculum as something that needs to be marched through and completed in it's entirety. I know I should know better. I've probably bogged about this before and I know I've given advice to others about not becoming a slave to curriculum and yet in practice I still felt it had to be finished.
However, in grammar today Easy Grammar simply wasn't even close to addressing some question Catherine needed answers to regardng suffixes so I put it aside and printed off these worksheets from ABC Teach and we worked on -er and -est. Much better. In math we used Singapore Math to conquer some division questions and then I realized I now had three math curriculums (Singapore, Key to..., and JUMP) and wasn't bound to any. Rather I could use them as Catherine and I saw fit.
There's a difference between knowing something, like that you shouldn't be a slave to curriculum, and truly feeling the truth of it so that you can finally make a change. Now hopefully this lesson will stick with me and I won't be writing a similar post in 6 months.
back to those ABC Teach worksheets though. One rule in adding er/est was, "For one-syllable words (fat), the ending consonant should be doubled before adding
er or est." Catherine and I both found that lacking. After all, "thick" is a one-syllable word but you don't double the K before adding -est. So we figuered a better rule was that when dealing with words with short vowel sounds hiding behind the thin wall of only one consonant and facing the dire fate of being turned into a long vowel sound by the advancing suffix then it was imperitive that the consonent wall be fortified by doubling it up. Ah ha! Convert a rule to the imagery of ancient siege and we get it, long and convoluted though it is.
What a couple of geeks.
As Catherine was finishing up her math I added to our collection of latin and greek root flash cards. She finished her math and joined me and we spent another 30-45 minutes reading the roots and their meanings on The Exploring Science Site. For the rest of the day she was making up words from the roots. She eventually got around to asking when her cousin would learn about this subject in school. My answer of, "he won't," completely shocked her.
3 comments:
If this is a duplicate comment, I apologize. It seems to not be working properly.
Do you have a TV? I'm seriously considering ditching ours. We started limiting internet game time, but not TV game time or show watching. I have a hard time competing with that.
BTW, love the revised doubling rule!
Ditto!
We have TV and supersized cable. :) I wouldn't mind getting rid of it but my husband doesn't think he'd survive without the hockey games and Star Trek reruns. I'm working at making it something we watch with intent rather then have on in the background all the time (yes, we're one of those families) and that's going well so far.
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