Teaching your child beyond the textbook
The other day I was at my sister's house. While I was there I noticed by niece doing her math homework and as I sat next to her my sister asked me to help her because she was having a hard time with it. As I reviewed the material and looked at the problem it became clear that my niece's struggle with her homework was not because she couldn't do it or because it was too hard. The struggle was that context of the problem was completely irrelevant to her and as such, didn't offer much in the way of motivating her.
So I decided to do to her what I do to my kids: teach her outside the textbook in a real life context that would make sense to her. This isn't a cutting-edge principle by any stretch of the imagination, but it is one in which many parents fail to provide adequately for their children's learning. And please don't take that to mean that parents are failures at teaching. To the contrary, parents that invest time into their children are smashing successes. It's just that often children need more out of their young education than their school or teacher can give them (hence my love for homeschooling).
The problem that my niece was working was pretty simple as it was stated: "A basketball team has won 15 out of 21 games. What percentage of games did they win?" Simple enough, right? But beyond setting up a percentage division equation, where is the thought supposed to come from in this problem? When is the last time you had a problem to solve that was written down on a piece of paper for you?
So after I explained how to set up the necessary equations to determine a percentage from a total and a quantity and I threw a few problems at her. The first was a handful of crayons. There were broken crayons and complete crayons. I asked her to first tell me what the total was. Then I asked her to count how many of the crayons were complete. Then I asked her to tell what percentage of crayons were complete.
We moved on from there to looking at the complete crayons and I asked her to tell me how many of the complete crayons had yellow wrappers and then tell me the percentage of complete crayons that had yellow wrappers. Each time I asked her to set the problem up on paper only after she was able to look at the situation and determine the variables and values for herself.
Then I gave her another problem, a little more relevant to what she does for fun. She is one a swim team. So I told her that there is a swim team that just competed at the championships. The team had 150 swimmers on the team. Of those 150 swimmers 20% were girls under the age of 12. I then asked her how many of the girls on the team were under 12. After that I told her that the coach wanted to surprise the girls under 12 on the team by taking them to a water park to celebrate their season. But the coach found out at the last minute that only kids 8 and over were allowed in the park. I told her that there were 9 girls on the team that under 8 years old that wouldn't be allowed to go. I then asked her to calculate the percentage of girls under 12 that would not be allowed to go to the water park. Then, as a recap, I asked he to tell me the percentage of the swim team those 9 girls represented.
I set up problems like this for my kids all the time. I can, because I am one of their teachers. Very seldom do I take a problem as it was written in a book and hand it to them to solve. I am actually looking for a few things from my kids when I teach them, none of which is available from them calculating numbers on a page.
The first thing I want them to do is understand the nature of the problem they are solving. Setting up a solution to a problem has to start with understanding the problem at hand. If not, well your foundation will suck and will ultimately lead to potentially questionable results.
The next thing I want them to do is think about the simplest way to solve the problem. Complex problems can sometimes be solved by simple means. But looking at something and thinking right away that it is a huge problem and then getting worked up over it can and usually does lead to something going haywire. Thinking about the nature of the problem often presents potential paths to a solution, and sometimes even offers a simple solution.
After figuring the best way to solve the problem I like my kids to setup the way in which they will solve it. This can be the part where they write and equation, or using block put some on one side of a table and some on the other, or using army men or ... you get the point. Whatever path they have chosen to solve the problem needs to then be converted to a solvable schematic.
From there it is just a matter of arithmetic or simple logic. When it comes to math I am really not at all concerned with the correct answer being returned so much as I am with the correct means to a solution being used. Arithmetic is the easier of the things to teach when it comes to math. Logic, not so much.
And such is the case with almost all disciplines of education. Language, history, science... all disciplines have challenges that need to be solved, solutions to those challenges and basics that are used in those solutions. unfortunately schools, textbooks and teachers often have to rely on making things as simple as they can for the bulk of the students being taught and this often results in many students that could learn more or learn faster being restrained and often retarded in their learning.
But if you are a parent you have opportunities every day to test your children, teach your children and train your children. In fact, it isn't so much an opportunity as it is a responsibility. And it is a responsibility that parents must necessarily take seriously given the condition of our public education system.
Wrapping it up
Just for grins I gave this problem to my three older daughters yesterday after watching a cake competition on Food Network. Sarah gave me the answer before I finished telling her the problem. Lets see how well you do:
Say you are making a stacked cake. The bottom layer of the cake is a perfect square in shape with a known side length of L. Now say we are going to put a round cake on top of this layer and we want the round cake to be exactly in the middle of the square cake below it. The round cake will have a diameter, D, that is smaller than the length L of the square cake. How would you determine where on the square cake to place the round cake so that the round cake was exactly in the middle of the square cake?
Ready? Go!
Between a father and his son
Last night, when I got home, I was tired. And hungry. And ready to rest. I wanted some quiet time and some relaxation time. Did I get that? No. Am I complaining? No, though it sounds that way. What I got was something better.
As the night wore on I noticed my son was just all over the place. He was loud, getting into stuff, moving things, climbing things, just doing things. He apparently had a bunch of pent up energy that needed exhausting in some capacity. So as he was doing something he probably should not have been doing down the hallway I went to him and asked him "Dude, you want daddy to go thrash you in the bedroom?". You should have seen those three year old eyes light up.
"Yes!" he said as he dropped everything in his arms and ran to my room. I unlocked the door (it is locked specifically because of him) and he ran to my bed laughing his head off. As he was about to make it on to the bed I tackled him, and the fun began. We wrestled, tickled, punched, swung, and punched each other for a food fifteen minutes before he said "Dad, lets play boxing.". How could I resist that?
So we started wailing on each other. Not hard of course, but with enough force to know that we were hitting each other. He was loving every minute of it. Then we started wrestling again. And tickling. And thrashing. And then it happened... he ran into me trying to tackle me and I didn't really notice until he bounced off of my shoulder. Looking down at him I noticed his lip was bleeding so I told him to hang on while I got some tissue for his mouth. His reply? "No dad, I want to keep playing boxing."
I cleaned up his mouth anyway. Then we got to boxing again. And it was just after this that Sandi walked in with cookies and the fund and games stopped right then. It was a blast, but it got better this morning.
AJ decided he wanted to come into my bed this morning as I was waking up. I let him and went to take my shower. As I left the bathroom after finishing my shower I noticed he was under the covers. Then suddenly he threw open the covers trying to scare me. He wanted more.
Now this is where husbanding comes in to play. Men, if you have a wife and she is in bed sleeping when you come out of the shower and your son is in that bed wanting to fight with you while your wife sleeps right next to him, you need to make a decision. The wise decision in this case is to tell your son that you need to wait.
My son didn't understand that. But we squared it up pretty quick and, to make the situation more top his liking, I laid down next to him and we talked. We talked about boxing the night before, about him waking his sisters up, about him wanting breakfast, about his dreams from the previous night, about his toy cars. I then told him how grown up he seemed, having this wonderful conversation with me at just three and a half years old. I also mentioned to him that in a few months, when he turns four, he will be able to start going to the church class room that Alaynah gets to go to, but how that since she will be turning six she will only be with him for about two weeks.
He then told me that he wants to go to her class so he can spin the wheel and play in the bounce house and all of the fun stuff in that room. But immediately after this he told me that he would go back to his three year old class since he would be embarrassed to go to Alaynah's class. It was as we were talking about this that Alaynah came in and our conversation was totally dashed. But it's all good. I had an amazing talk with my son.
And therein lies the moral of this post. Men, if you have a son, or more than one son, take amoment every now and again to have some aggressive, man time with him. He wants that, no matter his age, and he will love it. He will also love that you want to spend any time with him at all and he will totally cherish that moment and remember it. Even if he doesn't let on to it. Let him hold your tools, or wear your safety goggles, or put shaving cream on his face while he watches you shave. Let him be a boy trying to become a man.
My son loves that time. And I, as a recovering young boy myself, really look forward to those moments, too.
Kid funnies for the week
Part 0
The other day we were driving home and my three and a half year old son asks his mother "Mom, did we run over a dead skunk? Something's stinky.". Alaynah, my five year old daughter, without skipping a beat, replied "No Aaron, I think it's just daddy makin' fart'n's.". I love my kids.
The funnier part came immediately afterward though, when Alaynah told AJ "Or it could be my feet. I just took my shoes off.". Indeed it was her feet. Holy cow pie Batman, we need to get that girl some socks.
Part 1
Before we left for home that night (we were at the in-laws) my father-in-law asked my daughter Sarah if she could see Venus. After a little banter about the bright star in the sky being Venus and not an airplane, we left.
After the fart'n's incident we were still on our way home and Alaynah asked Aaron if he could see Venus. He replied "I can see Penis. Penis. Penis. Penis."
Note to those trying to understand boys... yes, we can derive all sorts of entertainment from our penis. And no, we don't need to be taught that.
Going on a date
Today I was able to go out on a date. And it was not with my wife either. Scandalous you say? Hardly. My date was with my daughter Rebekah.
I try, as often as I can, to take time to spend with my kids individually to sort of gauge how they are doing in our family. I like to get their point of view to see how they are seeing what is happening in our household and in the affairs of the Gonzalez family. There is so much insight to be gained from the experiences of a child if you take the time to dig deep enough to find it. I love taking some time every now and again to get back in touch with my kids.
That said, this is something that I have been planning for a while now. I already had a date with Sarah a while ago and it was my intent to have one with all of my kids shortly after that. For some reason that never happened. Until today.
So we had made small plans to go out to get something to eat and maybe grab a coffee or something. We ended up going to this great little burrito place in Newark and eating these freaking hugemongous burritos that I could barely finish (but Bekah kept up pretty well). Then we headed to the mall to try to find a card for my brother for his birthday party tomorrow. After a few laps around the place and a quick browse of the Hallmark store we found a card and headed to the Starbucks for fraps. Then we walked more.
All in all we spent about three hours out and about having fun, eating, getting coffee and talking. Yes, talking. The entire point of the date was so that I could reconnect with her, get a feel for what was going on with her as of late and see if things are manageable in her life. And it sounded like they were.
Altogether it was an awesome day and an awesome date. We had a good time, were able to talk, were able to laugh and were able to just spend some time with each other. Which was desperately needed for the two of us.
Just your typical Manday, erm, Sunday
I'm not sure if I was lucky or unlucky today, but I can say that I had fun regardless of my fortune. A few weeks ago my wife had me pickup a work table for her. Well, it was really a solid core that had four 4 X 4 posts attached to it as legs. She really wants to add counter space to our kitchen and felt this was a good way to do it. The only thing was the table was about nine inches too wide.
A wide table is a useless table. It had to be shortened and the only way to do that was to run it through the table saw. Which is not really a difficult thing to do. When your saw is set up. But mine was still in the box it came in. Which meant I got to become Bob the Builder for a time.
The nice thing is that the assembly of this saw was not rocket science. It did take some time, but it wasn't hard to do. In fact it was easy enough that I was able to set it up almost completely before we had to take a small break and head out for a little while.
See, three of my daughters were performing in a recital. So we had to head to Hayward in the middle of the day so they could awe the throngs of parents (all 10 of us) with their magical fingers and playing prowess. A nice little surprise in the midst of all this was that my daughter Alaynah was on the performance list. I had no idea she would be singing. And it was awesome.
The kids did great, the parents had fun, and after a little bit of snacking and mingling it was time to head home so I could get back to work on the saw. It didn't take long to get the saw completed. I wish I could say that for cutting the door.
The door, as I said, was a solid core door. It was heavy. And it didn't want to be cut. At least not by some small little table like the one I have. Don't get me wrong. My saw is fine for cutting smaller pieces of wood. But for solid core inch and half think doors, making a seven foot long cut is probably too much to ask it to do.
In the end though the saw won. It did what saws do and it cut that door. And I was able to assemble it and give my wife the counter space she has wanted for a long time now. Plus I was able to to play with power tools. Heck, I was able to even build the power tool I used. Throw in the fact that I was able to watch about three minutes of football and I'd say today was a pretty cool day.
And if nothing else I now have even more surface in my kitchen to stack crap that never gets cleaned.
