Due to the sparsity of Weekend posts by the blogs we cover, we will begin doing only a Weekend Sweep as of this weekend. That sparsity is both a blessing and a curse. It is a curse because readers get trained not to visit the blogs on the weekends. We would like to see more activity, but we can't twist any arms.
It is a blessing because it relieves the pressure on us to be here at 2 p.m. every day, seven days a week to do the sweep. Spring has sprung, and the wife has honey do's that seem endless. Then there are the family commitments, and we always have a NEXT project.
OK, we admit it. We do have a NEXT project that we are not ready to write about, yet. It won't interfere with the index much, though it did this week. We think it will prove useful to Republicans in ways that most can't imagine.
Actually, there are two NEXT projects, and they are somewhat intertwined. One is an education project that came about totally by accident. We discovered that it is possible, even easy to teach a pre schooler how to do math. Their hand-eye coordination doesn't allow them to do it on paper, but they can do it in their head with no problem.
We know of a four year old (just turned four) who can add and subtract simple two digit numbers (i.e. 22 + 7 and 40 - 1). He can also count into the hundreds (until he gets bored), and count from any negative number to any positive number. Keep in mind that schools would like entering Kindergarteners to be able to count to 20, and this four year old is a year away from kindergarten.
We know of a six year old who is in kindergarten and impresses his sixth grade "buddies" when they visit his class by doing square roots of perfect squares up to 144. He is mentally ready for third grade math (add, subtract, multiply, divide, understands the number line, word problems, and other skills) but still writes his 3's as m's, so he is doing OK in first grade math, where he belongs until his body catches up with his mind.
The two projects intersect also in that we want the older one to start to learn a sophisticated computer animation program, one that requires an understanding of spatial relationships. This week we spent about an hour introducing him angles and the Cartesian coordinate system for that project. He had no problem because he understands how negative numbers work, though he didn't know what they were good for.
Sometime in the next two or three months, we will teach him to graph out in three dimensions a ten second video animation of his name and execute that plan. The letters will jump and spin and shimmer and shake. Projects like that make kids want to learn to do math and provide a very positive feedback mechanism.
We think it is possible to design a curriculum that will teach kids to do what these two are proving capable of doing (and animate it). Right now, that project is in the thought stage.
Anyway, those projects got in the way of our intent to write a Sunday essay every Sunday this week and that might happen again next week. Writing those is very time consuming and we always want to give the subject a chance to answer our questions.
This musings will have to do.
Comments