Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I give my children extra math to make sure they stay at least two levels higher than their FCPS grades. I use Singapore math, various fun math books published in my home country (so they get to learn and remember the language as well), and supplement with a lot of free worksheets generated from softschools.com when I find poor understanding of a concept or weakness in a skill.

Why must they be two levels higher than their grades?

PP here. I was only talking about math. It’s about 2 years behind the rest of the world. It would be a waste of my children’s life to follow the curriculum in schools.

The rest of the world learns calculus in 10th grade? Or 9th? As a math major, that makes me sad to hear.

And because your professional educators are against homework, chances are you don’t have a solid foundation in math. Get a teaching position in a college and be prepared you will be scorned and corrected 20 times per lecture by international students. Or go and teach in public schools and hopefully you will help reverse the dumb down of this country.

Not only DON'T I buy workbooks, but I also don't have my kids do homework until 6th grade. I want my kids to play.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I give my children extra math to make sure they stay at least two levels higher than their FCPS grades. I use Singapore math, various fun math books published in my home country (so they get to learn and remember the language as well), and supplement with a lot of free worksheets generated from softschools.com when I find poor understanding of a concept or weakness in a skill.

Why must they be two levels higher than their grades?

PP here. I was only talking about math. It’s about 2 years behind the rest of the world. It would be a waste of my children’s life to follow the curriculum in schools.

The rest of the world learns calculus in 10th grade? Or 9th? As a math major, that makes me sad to hear.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I give my children extra math to make sure they stay at least two levels higher than their FCPS grades. I use Singapore math, various fun math books published in my home country (so they get to learn and remember the language as well), and supplement with a lot of free worksheets generated from softschools.com when I find poor understanding of a concept or weakness in a skill.

Why must they be two levels higher than their grades?

PP here. I was only talking about math. It’s about 2 years behind the rest of the world. It would be a waste of my children’s life to follow the curriculum in schools.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No way. Professional educator and I will never, ever make my elementary kids do extra homework. It's not even developmentally appropriate for them to be doing the homework the school sends home, but I make them do that. They read every day, which is the only developmentally appropriate, valuable homework anyway.

Same.
Two teachers, lower and upper elementary.

Plus another teacher

Limiting electronics is far more important than forcing extra workbooks imo. When electronics are not available they reach for a crossword, a book, a rubik's cube, a coloring book, a puzzle, a game, a ball...

No. My kids had plenty of library books, legos, puzzles and non-electronic toys. I believed in keeping the TV off, not giving them electronics and having school aged kids entertain themselves with books, toys or outside play during downtime. We also did a lot of educational sightseeing— museums, Wolftrap concerts, and things in my kids areas of interest. And science type camps— space camp and robotic camp and testing water in the stream. By MS, the kids had very little downtime anyway.

Both kids ended up at TJ BTW.

Nope. We encourage reading for pleasure. We do science experiments, visit museums, play games, watch documentaries, etc., but not homework. It's much more fun to do math enrichment by having a kid help you measure things or double a recipe or help with grocery shopping, etc.

ES homework has not been shown to be beneficial, and may be counterproductive. We do extra if a kid is struggling with something, but otherwise we just focus on making sure that they're understanding what's being taught in school. Free time is for exploring things like history, science, different cultures, art, music, etc.

My kids are now grown, but when they were younger we supplemented a lot. We are in MCPS which had a terrible curriculum (they're
finally acknowledging that it was deficient and are replacing it.)

If I felt there was a gap in their education, I would make sure we worked on that area so they had the foundation they needed. I tried to make it as fun as possible.

Additionally, we supplemented a lot according to their interests to enrich their education.

There were very few workbooks involved. Moreover, aside from the two cases of teaching children how to read and assigned reading of specific material, I don't think reading should be mandated. I hate the common practice today of requiring kids to read for a set period of time daily. I can think of no faster way to make somebody hate an intrinsically enjoyable activity than to force them to do it.

Some of the things we did to supplement generally:

Hoagies is a website that has links for enrichment for any subject a child might be interested in https://www.hoagiesgifted.org/links.htm

LANGUAGE ARTS
Frequent trips to the library
Reading together (into high school)
Mad-libs
Word Games (Rhyming, Alphabet)
Schoolhouse Rock (I remembered it fondly from my childhood, but they weren't impressed)
PBS shows (Between the Lions and Ghostwriter - I think these may be off the air now)
Shakespeare's Birthday Celebration at the Folger theater
https://www.folger.edu/events/shakespeares-birthday-2019
Library Programs

MATH
Games of all types (Sleeping Queens is great for simple addition, Set is good for patterns), but just about every game is good in some way for math (keeping score, counting moves, geometrical and logical thinking, etc.)
Playing with coins (in our house once they learned to count money, they got a weekly allowance of $1.00 - in change, which they had to count before they could keep it.)
Cooking
Cyberchase on PBS
Measuring things (tape measure, ruler, balance scale)
Got an analog wall clock and wristwatch that clearly indicated minutes
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=educational+wall+clocks+for+kids&crid=C0A727M1WLH8&sprefix=educational+wall+clock&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_22
Buzz (a word game where you set a math rule and then count buzzing out the appropriate numbers - ex. numbers with 2 and multiples of 3 - 1, buzz, buzz, 4, 5, buzz, 7, . . . , 17, buzz, 19, (20) buzz, buzz, . . . , (29) buzz, (30) buzz, 31, buzz) This game can be adjusted for mathematical ability from very easy to very complex).
Zoombinis computer game (outstanding logic puzzles)
Math enrichment books like the Sir Cumference series, Sideways Math by Louis Sachar, and Theoni Pappas books. These books cover a broad range and some are more advanced than others.)
Computer games to practice math facts (lots of these, don't know that one is intrinsically better than the others)
Origami and crafts in general
National Library of Virtual Manipulatives
http://nlvm.usu.edu
There's a math festival (I never went because I didn't find out about it until my kids were too busy - I think it's every other year, including 2019)
http://www.nationalmathfestival.org

SOCIAL STUDIES
Smithsonian Folklife Festival
Museums
Williamsburg
Mount Vernon
Monticello
Montgomery County Heritage Days
https://www.heritagemontgomery.org/events/heritage-days/
PBS shows like Postcards from Buster and Fetch! With Ruff Ruffman (these may have gone off the air)
Maryland Renaissance Festival (great fun, but be aware that they only have portapotties)
https://www.rennfest.com
Sakura Matsuri cherry blossom festival
http://www.sakuramatsuri.org
Great Falls (Maryland side - canal boats, nice visitor center, beware of Billy Goat Trail)

SCIENCE
Museums/zoo/aquarium
Butterflies at Brookside Gardens
https://www.montgomeryparks.org/parks-and-trails/brookside-gardens/wings-fancy-live-butterfly-caterpillar-exhibit/
Magic School Bus (picture books, chapter books, TV show)
Hands on Science (a school based extracurricular class)
PBS shows (animal shows, Design Squad - off the air, NOVA)
The Incredible Machine computer game
Great Falls (see above)
Nature Centers
There's are annual science festivals (I never made it to these). Here are 2:
https://usasciencefestival.org
http://rockvillesciencecenter.org/rockville-science-day/

COMPUTERS
a typing tutor program (again, I don't know that the specific one matters)
Scratch programming language

MISCELLANEOUS
Brainpop - primarily a paid website, but they have some free topics. We just did the free topics.
https://www.brainpop.com
Free Rice
http://freerice.com/category
Artscape
http://www.artscape.org

PP here - I do supplement and give kids extra work in areas where needed. I find that younger DC does only what’s needed at school but if pushed can do a lot more so needs the extra work.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I give my children extra math to make sure they stay at least two levels higher than their FCPS grades. I use Singapore math, various fun math books published in my home country (so they get to learn and remember the language as well), and supplement with a lot of free worksheets generated from softschools.com when I find poor understanding of a concept or weakness in a skill.

Why must they be two levels higher than their grades?

Dp here

That is what the competition is doing and we plan our kids to go to school at some point back in my spouse's home country.

They will be way behind if we don't. Math here is a joke.

Agree with the comment that education level (at least in elementary school) here is way behind several other countries. I never understand when parents say kindergarten is too academic. My sister and her kids visited us last summer and her 5 & 7 year old were way more advanced and doing much more than the same grade here.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I give my children extra math to make sure they stay at least two levels higher than their FCPS grades. I use Singapore math, various fun math books published in my home country (so they get to learn and remember the language as well), and supplement with a lot of free worksheets generated from softschools.com when I find poor understanding of a concept or weakness in a skill.

Why must they be two levels higher than their grades?

Dp here

That is what the competition is doing and we plan our kids to go to school at some point back in my spouse's home country.

They will be way behind if we don't. Math here is a joke.

Anonymous wrote:No way. Professional educator and I will never, ever make my elementary kids do extra homework. It's not even developmentally appropriate for them to be doing the homework the school sends home, but I make them do that. They read every day, which is the only developmentally appropriate, valuable homework anyway.

This is what I do, We read a lot. I do make DD keep a journal in the summer where she writes a couple of sentences a day about her day ( 1st grade now) but no extra stuff during the school year except reading.

They don’t even have time to finish their required homework, they are getting so much. No time for extra homework.

Anonymous wrote:No way. Professional educator and I will never, ever make my elementary kids do extra homework. It's not even developmentally appropriate for them to be doing the homework the school sends home, but I make them do that. They read every day, which is the only developmentally appropriate, valuable homework anyway.

Same.
Two teachers, lower and upper elementary.