Sunday, October 29, 2017

November Thankful for my Readers Give-Away



Fall seems like it is finally here in Southern Ohio.  The leaves are falling and my children thankfully want to still make big piles and jump into them.  I am so thankful for all the readers and friends I have met through Ohio Homeschool Assessments over the last 8 years.  


We have almost gotten to 200,000 hits.  Which is rather amazing to me.  



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Wednesday, October 04, 2017

Guest Post: Living Math Books

Over the next year. . I have many friends to help me with keeping up the blog. So there will be a variety of guest posts by different authors. I will try to post as well. This week is from a dear friend of mine who wishes to be anonymous. So without further ado . . . Living Math Books


Math.. some love it.. Some hate it.  You would think as an engineer by training I would be in the love it category, but alas, not so much.  Teaching it to a challenging learner was not really a bag of fun either!  But, since my son is a reader, he gravitated toward “living math books.”  There is a website that details many living math books but here are some of our favorites.


We love the Dave Ramsey kids’ books.  The current ones on his website look different than the ones we purchased many years ago but I am guessing the idea is the same.  The child in the book had a ‘money challenge’ to save, or earn or give and it played itself out.  My son really enjoyed these.  


Many people in the homeschooling community are familiar with Life of Fred  Since we started homeschooling, they have increased their line of books.  But just recently I was even able to find one at the library.  I nabbed it up, took it home and just set it on the kitchen table.  Low and behold, he picked it up and read it.  The subject is algebra.  Funny story; he is in public school right now and did not do too well in algebra (although he excelled at geometry.)  If they taught it this way in school he might have done better.  (Alas.. there are always trade-offs.).


When my son was younger he loved the books by Cindy Neuschwander including the Sir Cumference series which uses Medieval times to introduce geometry (and other)  concepts at an early age. Another series along this same line are the books by Greg Tang including The Grapes of Math and Math for all Seasons.

Finally, we love the Basher Books and they have one on Math called, Math: a Book You Can Count On.   If you purchase scholastic books at all you can sometimes find these for a real deal especially as a group of books, but they are really inexpensive.  I really like to just strew books like this about and see what sticks.  Often concepts I never seemed able to “teach” were grasped when received in their own time