The trouble with message boards

I used to love message boards, but I promised my hubby I'd go message board free for six months if we bought a certain curriculum. I made the promise for a few reasons. First, the point of a curriculum, for me, is to save time, so if I spend hours figuring out ways to tweak it, I shouldn't be paying lots of money for it. Second, I knew that I'd quickly become dissatisfied with any curriculum if I saw all the opinions people gave about it on a message board.

So, as with some time removed from message boards, I can see how discontent I become when I read them. The board is gossip central, with everyone talking about their new and exciting curriculum. Everyone has a brilliant child (or, at least, the outspoken people are ones with brilliant children, or, minimally, children who happened to have a brilliant five minutes that morning) and is eager to share how this that or the other curriculum was too simple/boring/slow for their child. Well, I want my children to show signs of brilliance and then start looking for that same curriculum to fail for my child, or I may just pine for that new, more perfect curriculum that will effortlessly teach my child how to spell/write/speak Spanish/train elephants/etc.

Our math curriculum is a victim of the message boards. I loved Right Start A. It was perfect. Everyday was exhilarating. Even though we haven't consistently RSed since October, I can see my son's ability to understand the math I teach him stemming directly from the great RS foundation he has.

However, comments on the boards talked about how "slow" RS is (another word for slow could be "thorough" or "careful")  and about how their children were "bored" (it is somewhat scripted, but one doesn't have to spend a lot of time on each section). Then, I, wanting to turn against it, started agreeing.

We're going back to RS tomorrow. It deserves a chance. It is exceptionally thorough and teaches concepts from multiple viewpoints. It will help prevent "holes" - which really can exist! My son is dangerous because he can figure things out, which I could do, too. The danger is that you figure out the motions to go through without actually understanding. I don't think RS will allow that!

Here's my commitment:
- four weeks
- four days per week
- 20-25 minutes per day
- do all sections
- continue to next section without extra review if seems appropriate

I'll update with my new opinion of RS in mid-February.

What is the point of games?

We live on the California coast. We are surrounded by hippies and unschoolers who use games to (essentially) trick their children into learning. Some abhor curricula and believe that games and life experience will provide their children's foundational skills.

I'm not an unschooler. I'm constantly shocked by the things my children learn on their own, but direct instruction is at the heart of our homeschool (and life). From things like, "We say please if we want someone to do something for us," to "You must apologize to your sister if you cause her harm," to "G may say /j/ when followed by E, I, or Y," we utilize direct instruction all the time.

So I find myself asking myself why I play games with my children. Of course we love math games for reinforcing skills, but games are more fundamental to our school than that. We play math games that cover skills we've never learned and we play physics games that demonstrate ideas that I remember from college. Why?

It's fun, of course, but there's more than that. By playing games, my children are gently introduced to concepts before they are taught them. When I teach the concepts, they come much more naturally because they have become intuitive. They will think these subjects are easy and consider themselves good at them, and will be more likely to like them.

Of course, any subject worth studying eventually becomes hard. But hopefully curiosity and adventure will take over by then.