It started as spelling lessons and quickly included math. Now we are including science and social studies. Everything as a matter of fact. I must admit that I am enjoying myself tremendously. Not only do I get to review all the stuff I only vaguely remember learning in school, but I get the joy of teaching it to a young lady who goes from being bored to being interested. And seeing her go from a D in math to an A is wonderful.
Then there is the first-hand look into what kids are being taught in our schools...not that I didn't have a clue before. Why take the time and energy to teach kids how to estimate in math when you can teach them how to figure it out for real? It really isn't that much (if any) harder to teach someone that the circumference of a circle is (pie)2r than to teach them to draw a box around the circle and use 2r as both sides. And it would be more accurate.
I hope they (the kids) don't expect to use estimating in business. Sure, estimating is great for getting a rough estimate of your grocery bill as you walk through the store, but you want the "real" number when it comes to paying for it. It seems to me that it would be much easier to teach them to do it right now, and let them figure out how to estimate on their own.
About Me
- Juliana
- Things my friends and co-workers have called me: baby magnet, female "MacGyver," birthday fairy, information goddess, and accounting troll. What people notice about me: I'm female, tall, enthusiastic, and cheerful. I love the Lord my God with all my heart, soul and body.
1 comment:
I haven't studied this out as thoroughly as I would like, but I think estimating is one of those skills which is best learned in the real world, but is necessary to do well in school. Unfortunately, as schools and the unreal world (tv, internet) monopolize kids' time, they no longer acquire these skills naturally. And school books try to make up the lack.
Estimating shows a lot of things--a rudimentary understanding of what's going on (not just applying formulas mindlessly), a check against those simple computational errors that can lead you far afield (e.g. wrongly placing the decimal point). But it's something that needs to be learned playing with blocks and building forts. When it's taught primarily in school, instead of being a check on "school" math it becomes just another formula to learn and just another thing to guess at.
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