How do you help your child get a new concept? Do you bang your head into the wall until you just think that they understand? (tried it- doesn’t really help) I have two boys with two very different styles of learning. One has a difficult time with new concepts, fractions and spelling. The other is gung-ho about learning anything new, he devours anything that I put in front of him! So my need for extra work for both of them is one that I find myself searching for every morning. My youngest always seems to need help with handwriting, it’s terrible! So for him I have found some nice handwriting worksheets, that he can work on while I am working with his brother. I also have several sites that I go to for any and all the homeschool printables you could ever want or need. I do try and mix things up with my youngest so that he has just the right amount of work and activities to do through out the day.
Now for the oldest, I am always torn between what is age appropriate and what he needs to learn. We have struggled with fractions forever, it seems like, I mean he gets the concept of how to do the different functions involving fractions. And quite honestly does well when working with them right after an example is given. BUT when he goes to actually do word problems for instance, he totally blanks out how to add or multiply to get the answers needed. Finding the right homeschool printable worksheets for him to practice on, is sometimes difficult, he can always find a way around writing out how he got his answers. (and I know I hid the answer key!) This doesn’t present a problem until he gets something wrong, then I have him go to the dry erase board and work it out in front of me (so I can see where he went wrong- or at least I hope that i can figure that point out!)
So tell me what do you use to help with re-enforcing new concepts? Is it a mix of online games and work sheets or do you refer to the second sentence of this post?
Thanks so much for commenting on my Time4Learning post. I am thrilled to hear that you have used it for 3 years. We are really considering it for next year. Do you feel your children are learning enough? Also, do you supplement with other math, LA, etc., curriculum? I would love some insight on this. Thank you so much for any help you can give me.
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Debbi
Hey Debbi~ I thought that I would post to your questions here as well as on your blog site;) I think that T4L is a great supplemental curriculum, what we do is the boys do daily lessons usually 3 of each LA, LA Ext and Math. Then I look at how they did and decide if there is a concept that we need more practice in. Like for example~ my DS had trouble with fractions FOREVER! So I would go over the T4L lessons again with him everyday and then give him more word problems to help him get the idea across. We also did Life of Fred Fractions which he liked as well. And I do that with everything that they do, I use T4L to see which things we need more help in and just add more lessons when needed. After only one year of doing this, my youngest who was considered average in K (in public school)he scored 1-2 grades above his grade level in his end of the year testing. Feel free to email me any questions you might have;) T4L has been wonderful for us, especially my visual learner always happy to spread the word about what worked for us!
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