Celebrating the Underdogs

While everyone seems to be listing their top ten posts for 2013, I thought I might start the year off by being a contrarian: I'll make a list of the Top 10 Least Read Posts of 2013.

Putting together this list makes me feel like a mother of multiple children (in real life I only have one child, in case anyone is wondering) who is keen to understand why a certain child is being overlooked by the general public.

Here goes, in descending order of readership:
10.  He's Not Very Exciting

Well, the title says it all, doesn't it?  I can't imagine many people will be interested to read a post that is brutally honest about its content.


9.  Our Island Adventures: Needles

Now, this one mystifies me.  Then again, I can't claim to be completely unbiased about my own views, since this one is about a very English summer holiday, at a very English place of interest.  Maybe that's why not many people can relate to it.


8.  Be Sociable!

In this post I wrote about making Christmas gifts, cards, and generally hanging out with others.  My guess at its unpopularity is that the title probably suggests that it is another "socialisation" post discussing the overly-debated, yawn-inducing non-issue.


7.  The Backstage Pass

This is the I-can't-take-a-compliment post.  I'm working on getting over the tendency to be overly self-effacing.  If I work really hard at it, I might be able to start shouting from the rooftop by this time next year.


6.  Summer Plans: 2013

Planning posts are usually very exciting, especially if they were done at the start of an academic year.  Most homeschoolers have worked very hard through the year so by the time summer arrives, most people just want to relax and chill.  I don't suppose the work "plans" in a title about summer would interest anyone for whom studies and plans are at the very bottom of their concerns.  Maybe I'll adding the word "fun" in my summer titles this year, just to see whether that'll attract more eyeballs.


5.  Out of Love

Here I moan (only ever so slightly) about why a certain highly popular maths series is not working for us.  In the face of this series being quite the darling for most homeschoolers, being oppositional (as I have been) didn't do me any favours in the popularity department.


4.  An Evolving Story

Even though I'm a home educator, I'm also interested in a wide variety of topics that has to do with children, childhood, education, and schools.  From time to time, I like to share the information that I find to be useful and interesting, although not strictly related to homeschooling.  Then again, I've always held the view that the quality of education is determined by the attitudes and motivation of the people who are delivering it, rather than by artificial delineation of the presence of specific "qualifications" or equipments or physical structures.


3.  Some things to think about...

This is a short post with links to some philosophy about relationships and childhood.  It was useful at a time when our homeschool was transiting from being highly structured to more interest-led.


2.  Solutions to Maths Challenge

This post is only relevant to those who have read the related challenge.  It's no biggie, just a little fun towards the end of the year.


1.  On the Last Day of 2013

This post is only four days old, therefore very few people have actually seen it.  As such, it's not really fair to compare it with the other posts that have had months to build up their statistics, is it?  To label this post as 'The Least Read Post of 2013' would be as unfair as comparing the reading ability of a two-year-old to that of a twelve-year-old.  (I am aware of reports of some two-year-olds who read at high school level. I'm not talking about those two-year-olds).  That aside, if you were not one of 250,000 spectators along the Thames watching the fireworks on New Year's eve, you can still catch the spectacle in this post.


Hope everyone is having a good start to 2014, and you are all roaring to go.  We are still taking it easy, but we'll get there by next week.

This post is linked up to:

1. Entertaining and Educational - Best Posts of 2013
2. Collage Friday: Crying, Cooking, and More
3. Weekly Wrap-Up: The First One of 2014
4. The Homeschool Mother's Journal {January 4, 2014}
5. Hip Homeschool Hop - 1/7/14

On the Last Day of 2013

I had an errand to run in town today so Tiger and I went out bright and early in the morning. 

By noon time, London began to get really busy.

Our stomachs were rumbling by the time we arrived at Chinatown for lunch.

 

The weather was not very good today.  In fact, it was mostly wet, windy, and cold. 

 

It was pouring down when we got to Trafalgar Square, so we spent a good few hours at the National Gallery admiring and learning about Viennese portraits at The Portrait in Vienna 1900 Exhibition.

 

After indulging our visual senses at the gallery, with the sky still not brightening up at all, we decided to pop into another one of our favourite haunts:

Another few happy hours spent in the bookshop made me realised how very easy-to-please Tiger and I are: just leave us in a bookshop and we can entertain ourselves very happily for a long time.

While Tiger was deeply engrossed in his reading, I was happily sipping latte (we were sitting near the cafe inside the bookshop) and reading my own choice of book which I think is quite appropriate for new year's eve.  This book has given me much food for thought and I couldn't have read it at a better time.

When Tiger next looked at his watch, it was time to come home.  We just felt that it was getting darker, and many people were starting to arrive in London for the New Year's Eve countdown.  We didn't want to get stuck in London for the night, so we headed home before the big party started.

Now, in the warm comfort of my own home, I am waiting for the new year to arrive in a few minutes.  Here's wishing everyone a very happy 2014!

This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop - 12/31/2013
2. Entertaining and Educational - Christmas Crafts for Kids
3. The Homeschool Mother's Journal {December 28, 2013}

Solutions to Maths Challenge

Did you have a chance to try out the maths problem posted about two weeks ago?  We have three different solutions for you.

I found one solution:  2 + 566 + 190 = 758.

The next two are Tiger's solutions:
1) 789 + 266 = 1055

2) 965 + 725 = 1680

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I hope all of you have a restful time with your friends and family, and we shall see you back here in the new year refreshed and ready to go!

Be Sociable!

With the exam out of the way, Tiger and I started to look for recipes to make foodie gifts for people.  We haven't set out to do it this way, but this year our Christmas theme seems to be "simple", especially if we were to compare it with our efforts last year.

This year we made Coconut and White Chocolate Snowballs.

It is so easy to make that we made two batches of them to give to everyone.

Next, Tiger made cards to accompany the foodie gifts.  Again, this year's cards are very straightforward to make.

The material list:

• foam Christmas tree template
• green and red ink pads
• alphabet stamps
• strong craft cards
• Christmas-theme craft papers
• sequins
• glue and scissors

To make the card:

1. Choose a Christmas-theme craft paper and trace the tree template.
2. Cut of the tree shape.
3. Paste it on the front of the card.  Decorate the card with sequins.
4. Stamp the words "Merry Christmas" inside the card using the alphabet stamps.  Tiger alternated the red and green inks for his words.

Once we've made our gifts, it was time to socialise with friends again.

I spent a day at a drawing workshop with my artist friends.  Tiger tagged along and did a few drawings as well, but mostly he was enjoying himself by being a social butterfly during break times.

Tiger knew about half the people there, but by the end of the class he has made friends with everyone in the workshop, engaging each person or a small group in turn with various topics.  I sat in a corner of the studio and talked with my own friends but all the while keeping half an eye on Tiger as he exercised his socialising prowess around the room.  Some of the topics that I managed to overhear him talk to the adults about were:

• the two world wars
• making paper aeroplanes
• military blunders
• drawing, art, collage, Matisse
• homeschooling, what he is learning at home

At the end of the workshop, a few people whom we met for the first time there came up to me to tell me how delighted they were to meet Tiger and how impressed they have been by his overall demeanour.  I thanked them for their kind words, and was pleased that Tiger has contributed to some positive P.R. towards the overall impression people have of home-educated children.  A few people there had never met a homeschooled child before.  Now that they have met and talked with one in real life, I hope they will be able to rely on this experience and apply their critical thinking ability (assuming it is still intact) to avoid being duped into believing the ridiculous myths about homeschooling children.

There is certainly no shortage of opportunities to socialise this week!

We topped our reading of A Christmas Carol by spending a day at a homeschool creative writing/book club.  The book club is led by a homeschooling mum-of-six who used to be an English teacher.  The format of the club is such that the children spend the morning discussing the book as a group, noting several points of interests, such as the author's writing style, or use of descriptive techniques.  This is followed by a short creative writing exercise where the children will work in groups of two to five to get their drafts in before lunch.

Lunch there is a highly sociable, community event.  Each mum brings a dish to share at lunch so food is always plentiful and delicious.  This week being our last meeting before Christmas, lunch is especially scrumptious and in abundance, which is a truly wonderful way to enjoy the festivity.  The children usually wolf down their lunch and run outside to play for an hour or so while the adults stay indoors to tidy up and chat.

In the afternoon, the children present their work to the group.  Previous presentations include an adaptation of a novel into a play, a short paragraph written in the style of an author, and descriptive writing.  On this occasion, the children were tasked with writing their own Christmas carol based on the structure and storyline of Dicken's story.  I have been constantly impressed by the children's creativity and by the quality of their work, individual ones as well as group projects.  Above all, I am grateful for the opportunity to be in the company of these parents who are contributing so much to creating the most suitable educational environment for their children.



This post is linked up to:

1. Entertaining and Educational - Christmas
2. Collage Friday - Remembering Ecuador
3. Weekly Wrap Up: The One that will be Hard to Top for a While
4. The Homeschool Mother's Journal {December 21, 2013}
5. Hip Homeschool Hop - 12/24/2013

Finding the Balance

Algebra.  Sounds like a really sophisticated maths idea, doesn't it?  The truth is, most children already intuitively know the basics of algebra without calling it that.  The concept of single-variable algebra can be very simply introduced using the following tools:

1. a balancing scale
2. several one-pence coins (or the equivalent of the smallest monetary denomination in any currency)
3. modeling clay of different colours

To prepare the materias, I first made a clay ball with the equivalent weight of a 1p coin.

I often like to get Tiger involved in making his own learning tools, so I got him to help me make the equivalent-weight clay balls.

That is, until it occured to me that I had to make the clay balls myself to make the game work, so I diverted his attention to a few slices of cake while I carried on with making the following clay balls:

• orange clay balls ("O") - each is equivalent to the weight of one 1p coin
• purple clay balls ("PB") - each is equivalent to the weight of two 1p coins
• green clay balls ("GB") - each is equivalent to the weight of three 1p coins

Now we're ready to play.

The first step is to give the child an idea of balance, i.e. the one side should be the same as the other.  Without Tiger seeing, I placed five 1p coins in the right-side tray and covered it with a tissue paper.  Then I asked him to find the equivalent number of coins to balance the scale.  When he found the scale to balance with five 1p coins, I lifted the tissue paper to reveal the answer.

Next, I repeated the step above, but this time I used two orange clay balls and four 1p coins on the covered, right-side tray.  I then asked Tiger to find the number of 1p coins it would take to balance ths scale.  He found that it took seven 1p coins to balance the scale.

Tiger immediately knew then that each orange clay ball represents one 1p coin.  I asked him how he would represent the information on the scale as an equation.  This is his equation:

         7 "1p" = 5 "1p" + 2 "O"
==>    1 "O" = 1p

I did another exercise with him to make sure that he understood the concept.  This time I used three orange clay balls and three 1p coins, asking him to find the equivalent number of 1p coins to balance the scale.

After he has found it to be six 1p coins, I asked him to write the equation down again:

         6 "1p" = 3 "1p" + 3 "O"
==>    1 "O" = 1p

Just as Tiger was starting to think the game was too easy, I changed it slightly.  For the next go I used one purple clay ball and five 1p coins (covered up using tissue paper) in one tray, and asked Tiger to find the number of 1p coins to balance the scale.  He found it took seven 1p coins.

When I removed the tissue paper, Tiger was briefly stumped by the number of items on the right-side tray.  He quickly figured out that the purple ball must weight more than the orange balls that were used earlier.  He then went to to figure out that the purple ball must be equivalent to two 1p coins.  When asked for the equation for this, he said:

              7p = 5p + 1 "PB"
==>   1 "PB" = 2p

More variations on the same theme followed.  Next up, I used two green clay balls and five 1p coins.  It took eleven 1p coins to balance that. Using the same reasoning as the example above, Tiger worked out that each green ball is equivalent to 3p.  Obviously there have been some mental calculations that involved addition, subtraction, and division to arrive at the answer but Tiger doesn't like to write out all the intermediate steps.  Therefore the equation for this is shown as:

             11p = 5p + 2 "GB"
==>   1 "GB" = 3p

For the last exercise, I used two purple clay balls and three 1p coins, which Tiger found to need seven 1p coins to balance.

 

Once again, he worked out that each purple ball is equivalent to two 1p coins, equation as below: 

              7p = 3p + 2 "PB"
==>   1 "PB" = 2p

This time, Tiger wanted to show his 'proof' of how he arrived at his answer, so he demonstrated by removing three 1p coins from both trays, leaving four 1p coins in the left-side tray and the two purple balls on the right-side tray.  He did not write out the equation for this, so every step was done visually and orally.  For those who would like to see his demonstration in mathematical form, this is how it would look:

                  7p = 3p + 2 "PB"
==>     7p - 3p = 3p + 2 "PB" - 3p
==>             4p = 2 "PB"

From here, it is then a matter of applying simple division to find what each purple ball is.

                4p = 2 "PB"
==>     4p / 2 = 2 "PB" / 2
==>      1 "PB" = 2p


This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop - 12/17/2013
2. Entertaining and Educational - Christmas
3. Collage Friday - Remembering Ecuador
4. Weekly Wrap Up: The One that will be Hard to Top for a While
5. The Homeschool Mother's Journal {December 21, 2013}
6. Math Teachers at Play #70 

A Week of Preps

Christmas is off to a very slow start for us this year.

This is because we have been spending most of our time preparing for Tiger's Chinese exam.  Tiger has been attending a weekly beginner's Chinese class (Level 1) since September.  The place where the class is held is run in a very schooly way, with traditional classroom settings, bells for break times, as well as a lot of homework and two exams each year.  As far as Tiger is concerned, all such schooly phenomena are still new and amusing to him.  As he has never been to school, he has not picked up the bad habit of coasting or doing the minimal amount of work to get by.  As a result, he kept finishing his work in class so quickly and asking his teacher for extra work that she recommended that he be "promoted" to the Level 2 class.  Acceleration is very rare in a traditional Chinese class setting, so I believe the Level 1 teacher has done it out of genuinely good intentions for Tiger.

However, since he was accelerated to Level 2 half way through the term, Tiger is to sit the Level 2 mid-year exam having missed the first half of the Level 2 lessons.  In order to make sure that he doesn't get completely slammed at the exam, he and I have been playing "rapid catch up" by studying those lessons he has missed.

I have to admit that it is a very difficult process.  I am very surprised by the speed at which the lessons progressed and the rigour of the curriculum.  Each lesson has 12-15 pages of written homework.  As a result of the numerous homework from the Chinese school, Tiger is now spending more time writing Chinese characters than he is writing in English.  His recognition and writing of Chinese words have improved dramatically, but these are achieved through repetitive drills which he hates.  I totally understand his dislike for repetitions and drills, and I generally avoid putting him through those in our homeschool.  However, as Chinese characters are formed pictorially, there is, unfortunately for Tiger, no short-cut to learning to write each character apart from the drills.

Do I sympathise with Tiger for having to go through so much hard work?  Yes and no.

Yes, because learning the language outside of its natural environment is indeed very difficult and  mastering the language (both written and spoken) under such circumstances require extraordinary determination and hard work.  While the curriculum attempts to give flexibility and variety in terms of the types of exercises, both Tiger and I are under no illusion that he has to work extra hard to master the basics of the language.

On the other hand, I look at the amount of work Tiger is given by his Chinese teacher and compare that to the amount of work given to children who are growing up in the language's natural environment (China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore).

The amount of Chinese homework Tiger has is about half of what those children are given.  Knowing this, I don't feel that we can moan about the amount of work he has to get through in order to be at a comparable level in the Chinese language as the children in East Asia.  To put things in perspective, what we are doing is really no more effort than it would take for a Chinese child residing in those countries who wishes to master the English language.

So, this week has been a week of much hard work.  It is not a lot of fun, but it is necessary (for us).  Next week we will be able to relax and be more in the festive mood.


This post is linked up to:

1. Entertaining and Educational: Travel is One of the Best Ways to Learn
2. Collage Friday - A New Camera and Birthday Happenings
3. Weekly Wrap Up: The One Where I'm Still Not an Aunt
4. The Homeschool Mother's Journal {December 14, 2013}
5. Hip Homeschool Hop - 12/17/2013 
6. Chinese Activities Link Up

Simple Elegance

I love maths that challenge us to think, but are deceptively easy at first glance so that they don't put children off.  This week, I gave Tiger one of these simple and elegant maths riddles that require a good understanding of:

• mental calculation
• addition
• place value
• numbers

The idea is to use the ten digit cards, as set out above, to lay out an addition equation visually in the vertical format.  A few rules to bear in mind:

1. The digit zero (0) cannot be used on its own.
2. The digit zero (0) cannot be placed in front of any number, i.e. it can't be used as "081" and such like.
3. The addition sign (+) is assumed.
4. The final number on the last line is the sum.
5. No carry-overs are to be shown.

Easy, no?  For example, 76 + 80 = 156.  Each digit in the equation is selected from the set above.  The solution would be shown as follows on the table:

               76
            80
           156

Or, if the equation is 25 + 66 = 91, the solution would be presented as:

             25
             66
             91

All clear?  Ready to go?

The idea is to start with any combination using the set of ten cards as shown in the photo above, then slowly build up to using all ten cards.

Tiger quickly found numerous solutions using three to nine cards, but he struggles to use all ten cards in a single solution.  The game is too much fun to just sit and watch so I used a second set to play alongside Tiger, at which point it turned into a competition between us to see who could find the solution to the ten-cards problem first.  I am pleased to report that I have uncovered one solution to the ten-cards problem, although it did take me quite a few attempts.  I'm sure there is more than one answer to this problem.  Tiger hasn't found his solution yet.  His challenge is to find the solution by Christmas eve, while mine is to find at least one more solution by then.

Join in the fun if you feel inclined!  I'll post our solution(s) on Christmas eve.


This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop - 12/10/2013
2. Math Activity Thursday
3. Entertaining and Educational: Travel is One of the Best Ways to Learn
4. Collage Friday - A New Camera and Birthday Happenings
5. Weekly Wrap Up: The One Where I'm Still Not an Aunt
6. The Homeschool Mother's Journal {December 14, 2013}