When Joey first started the violin, I had my doubts about the Suzuki method. But now I admit that I am completely sold on it. Joey has made so much progress in the six months since he started with a real violin (this is my opinion, and I am not a musician myself, but his music teacher seems to be pleased). But of course, I think this is more than the method because Joey took to reading music like a fish to water, so technically, I am not sure we are still doing 'pure Suzuki', except for using the books and the amount of caretaker involvement. He is completely ahead of us in his ability to read, absorb, and apply the material, although we try to keep up so we can provide direction.
Joey is even starting to write his own music for fun (nothing extraordinary, but the interest is definitely there). He also started playing the same tunes on his little piano (with one finger). But the most amazing aspect of this for me is that he is developing a real ear for music, i.e. he knows when the violin has to be tuned before we do, and I have come to really trust his judgement.
His progress has been constant, up the point when he had to prepare for his first 'public performance' (to play in front of a few friends and also at his birthday party which coincided with Chanukah). We worked him really hard so he would master "I have a Little Dreidel" well enough to produce a relatively flawless recording of the song in its entirety. He did not perform flawlessly in front of the real audiences, but he really found that zone of concentration where nothing could distract him from getting through the tune as best as he could, and he concentrated very hard.. well beyond his years. This was a real lesson in grit.... the satisfaction that comes from success and recognition after a lot of hard work. After that experience, he now knows the amount of effort involved with preparing for a live performance and he knows he can succeed. I think that in the two videos I have recorded after 'I have a Little Dreidel' (see below), one can see his boost in confidence and improvement in technique. For up to date information and videos on Joey's violin progress, please consider checking out (and perhaps subscribing) to my Youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/user/Carolerivi .
Assuming advanced math skills are a pre-requisite to becoming an engineer and a fascination with biology necessary to becoming a physician, then Joey has a better chance of becoming an engineer at this point than anything else. But is it sufficient? Probably not. So far, our educational efforts have been pretty didactic, so focused on basic memorization, understanding, and applying. But now we would like to start encouraging the development of critical thinking and creative skills. What is interesting about it is that regular pre-schools start with those (especially creative skills), but there is no foundational knowledge children can base their creations on, so they can only go so far. Along with the limitations of normal development, this is in part why, in my opinion, there is not much sense in the many crafts and drawings produced in this environment.
Joey is definitely interested in building and designing things, and his focus is good enough to get him to actually produce things that have a story behind them and that 'work' in one respect or another. For a while, he was obsessed with marble runs, such as the Marbulous. At school, he kept making or improving those for other children. We tried several other things to grow from there (I didn't think that regular Legos engaged the creative process that much, so we actually stayed away from those), but Joey's building skills remained dormant until he started playing with the wonderful Elenco Snap Circuits. We had gotten these since he was two years old, and we used that for the purpose of teaching him to follow more complex directions and some simple electricity concepts. Then, we he was about three and a half, he started using them on his own and following the directions, in addition to trying out some of his own modifications. Now I do think that the educational value of Snap Circuits is limited because there is very little trouble-shooting involved or options for permutations in the manual (for example, to determine the effect of different capacitors, etc). Fortunately, Snap Circuits are pretty heavily reviewed by parents who have engineering backgrounds, so it helped us decide that a similar toy that required higher thinking skills was the Elenco 130-in-1 Electronic Playground and Learning Center (we started with the one offering 130 projects). Basically, all the components are on a board, but they get connected differently through wires (springs that you can bend hold the wires in place) and it encourages experimentations with the different components in a way that Snap Circuits do not. Joey can do the basic projects on his own, but he needs help with the permutations (variations on the basic project) and any trouble shooting at this point (this is a toy normally designed for 12 and older). He does not love it as much as the Snap Circuits, but I expect this will change.
Another building toy that Joey loves is the Straws Builders 720 pcs set. This is a wonderful toy in terms of promoting creativity and I love its simplicity.
Legos and Jr FIRST Lego League: a natural way to encourage the development of engineering skills is participation in the Jr FIRST Lego League, normally tailored for 6 to 8 year olds (K-3). The next program is the FIRST Lego League (Grades 4-8), and finally the FIRST Tech Challenge (Grades 7-12) and FIRST Robotics (Grades 9-12). I am still wrapping my mind around these programs and how one goes from just participating to being invited to actual competitions, but I assume that this will become clearer as time goes on.
This program is not just about engineering, but also general creativity, teamwork, presentation skills, and organization. It is so highly regarded that a slew of scholarships (some full rides) are available for kids who have a history of participation and participation is also a real plus for admission to some of the most prestigious schools, particularly (not surprisingly) engineering programs.
The pickle is that it takes time to coach and be in a team (about 4 hours a week plus individual prep work during the season which roughly runs from November through April). This is not a playgroup but a real commitment, like a sports team. My plan at this juncture is to have a 'pre-team' (no competition yet) next academic year (so starting in fall 2014) that would basically prepare for the challenge as if they were going to participate, and then start competing the following year, once we have ironed out the kinks in the team and our process. There is also a list of past challenges that I can use for additional ideas. The challenges have an engineering component (design a machine that would help solve the problem) which requires research, a preliminary design, improvements, and a presentation. So it is important to understand that a lot of the work actually involves no handling of Legos (although every meeting can have some Lego time, but they are not necessarily the focus). Like in any team, the kids don't have to have the same strengths, so maybe there is the engineering geek, but there is the kid who is good at researching and presenting, although all should participate in all the activities because the point is for everyone to learn. The daily guidance is provided by the coach (that would be me), but every team also needs a mentor (someone who is an engineer), so this is a person I would have to identify sometime in summer 2014.
I sort of have a preliminary plan for a mock challenge season. I can put a timeline together based on this:
1. Study topic and come up with ideas
2. Draw ideas
3. Come up with preliminary designs (with actual Legos)
4. Run designs by engineer
5. Execute a prototype
6. Refine design with CAD program (Lego has a CAD program), comparing different options for mechanical components
7. Execute design
8. Prepare presentation and practice answering questions about the design
9. Study more background information to be prepared to answer more advanced questions
For the purpose of preparing for this mock season, we have started getting the Educational Legos that are required (or suggested) for the Jr Lego Leagues. These can be purchased directly from the Educational Lego site prior to registering a team. They have kits for homeschools (so 'single' kits but with teachers' guides) and we have found that it has been really helpful to learn the simple machines (like levers) and other components that will go into more complex designs to solve the challenges presented. Joey absolutely loves doing this.
The challenge of finding a team-mate: I think that we will stick to a two person team at first, but finding a child whose parents are ok working with a younger but highly gifted kid may not be so easy. Right now, I am making inquiries in our circle of friends who have proven non-threatened by the gifted label and whose children may have skills that complement Joey's.
If any one reading this blog has any advice to offer regarding participating in Lego competitions, I would love to hear from them!
It has been a while since I updated this blog, and Joey turned four recently in December 2013, so I think it is time to take stock of where we are at, academically.
Math: the last update I provided was in October 2013. At the time, Joey was taking Grade 3 Accelerated Math with the John Hopkins Center For Talented Youth, which we love. Even though he completed 3rd grade in a little over a month (with an A+), we thought that he wasn't as solid on these skills as he would have been in a real classroom, so we decided to wait until next fall (fall 2014) to continue with 4th grade math with this program. In the meantime, we are still doing Grade 2 Singapore Math (we are about half-way) and will probably start 3rd Grade next fall, right about the time Joey will tackle Grade 4 Math with JHU-CTY. Another area we thought we should focus on before moving on to 4th Grade math were word problems, the kind where you have to generate an equation and then solve it. Solving simple algebra equations (up to two unknowns, depending on the problem) is not an issue for Joey, but generating them from a word problem is still a struggle. JHU-CTY provided a lot of help in generating equations, and I think this is a limitation of this program. So we decided to have Joey participate in the Continental Math League (CML) meets for 2nd and 3rd Graders, and we registered as a homeschool for this purpose. Honestly, these problems are hard for Joey because they are meant to challenge gifted 7 and 8 year olds and as all word problems do, they require the integration of math skills with language art skills, as well as some real world knowledge. But we are not giving up, and one strategy that has been helping significantly has been to group the problems by type because, at least until much higher thinking skills are involved, this is a lot about pattern recognition. After we finish CML for this year, we will wrap up all 2nd grade math by reviewing any material that Joey masters less than perfectly, and we will be off to 3rd grade math for good by the time he is 4 years and a half.
Language Arts: this is a difficult one because I have been struggling trying to figure out where Joey is with reading comprehension (his reading fluency is probably 3-4th grade now). He understands most of the material presented in the Lakeshore Learning Read & Comprehend Science Activity Folders (Grade 2), so I know he is about four grades ahead in reading comprehension. However, I wanted to get some practice with grammar and writing, so on the advice of a wonderful lady whose child is also highly gifted, we have been doing the Kumon workbooks (Reading, writing, simple sentences, etc) and to be safe, we started at 1st grade. Joey is zooming through the material, and I think that once he gets through 2nd grade, we will switch to an actual language arts curriculum, and I believe we will choose the Michael Clay Thompson curriculum, which came highly recommended and starts at about the 3rd grade level.
Languages: we have just started a more structured program in French (all the details are here) and Hebrew with Shalom alef bet!: A pre-primer for Shalom Uvrachah. I think we will stay with this series until Joey can read Hebrew fluently, then we will devise a program similar to what we are doing in French. I will have a separate post to teach Judaics for those who might be interested.
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