Well no, it's not all academic really round here, but we do certainly put some in every now and again, more so lately as I want the twins to be prepared for taking exams when they are coming up to secondary school age.
The initial plan was to home educate until secondary school, if they pass the exam to gain entry into the local Grammar they will begin their school life, if they do not then we will have to work towards GCSE and A Levels by ourselves.
Financially it will be a killer for me to get exams paid for, so Grammar is my best hope, failing that I will have to be scraping the barrel for exam money and working very long hours to afford them, but I do know there are other roads in so I wont worry just yet, what is important is that the twins are able to positively prepare themselves for exams.
We talk a lot about jobs and what they want to do, we go from Paramedics to Vets to Nurses to doctors to police Men to Secret Agents, so there are a lot of options right now but each one has the same thing in common and that is further education and exams.
We have always done some sit down formal learning amongst their autonomous child led learning but we are now starting to ramp things up.
They read everyday and maths has always been a part of life, we do times tables as a game and work on money facts and lengths and measurements, weights etc all throughout the day, everyday things essential to life are taught as we go along about our day and they use Khan Academy regularly, but now we are learning concepts decoding and really understanding those numbers.
To do this we have gone back to the beginning, well not quite the beginning but the level of complex beginnings, that which is beyond the everyday use.
We are starting to revise what we already know but in a sit down academic fashion, we have been using workbooks for this, which they are not too keen on when they start the books but within 10 minutes there is no stopping them.
They find that once they start, what they have already learnt outside academic books is built upon, instead of verbally demonstrating their knowledge they are having to write it down, this has been far more pleasant than I expected.
Olivia is very keen, she speeds along with the maths, Oliver is less keen, not that he struggles but he sweats about the small stuff, Oliver is very pedantic in his manner anyway and due to this I have decided to throw in some various maths techniques.
Oliver is impatient yet very meticulous, he gets bored very easily particularly when he cannot do something as fast as he wants to, so I think trying a few different techniques to see which one suits him better will get us better results.
We are starting with throwing in some Vedic Maths. Vedic maths has application in Finance and Information Technology, Vedic mathematics brings quick solutions to tricky calculations
has application in finance and information technology.
has application in finance and information technology.
Vedic maths is the world’s easiest way to solve maths problems — and a great way of getting over the maths phobia that several children, and even adults, suffer from.
I think Oliver will enjoy maths much better once we get stuck in with some Vedic maths as it will suit his impatience.
You can find our more about Vedic Mathematics from Wikibooks here and you can pick up some Vedic mathematics books from ebay here
Vedic Mathematics" refers to a technique of calculation based on a set of 16 Sutras, or aphorisms, as algorithms and their upa-sutras or corollaries derived from these Sutras. Its enthusiasts advance the claim that any mathematical problem can be solved mentally with these sutras.
We have been mixing this up a little and we have started by going back to basics and re-learning place value, partitioning and rounding in an academic way, as although they can do it verbally in conversation they have never really experienced doing it on an academic level, working in tens is giving them a good starting confidence as they are very confident in working with 10's, so that is a great start.
So far we are enjoying what we are doing, lets see how long the enthusiasm lasts!...
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