We Can Do by Moshe Kai with guest Robert Levy discussing Saxon Math.

[Robert Levy]

Thanks people.  PokerDad - yea, I wanted someone else to do the math regarding summer breaks, because it was even too much for me to handle.  You're looking at possibly being able to double the rate of math learning without even increasing the intensity used today (i.e., something under an hour a day), just by eliminating extended breaks.  Then double the hour to two hours per day (maybe up to 2.5 hours), and you get the 4X rate that David was able to move at in the early Saxon books.  And just to reiterate, when you're going at that clip, and using Saxon the way we did, there is no need to be testing the kid, as Saxon does that by default.

Also, I've noted that our pace went down after the first 4 books, to 2 books in the next year.  From there, it didn't make much sense to keep rushing on, and I also promised him a laptop once he finished Algebra 2...so I stalled him as long as possible to wait on prices to go down (LOL).  Anyway, I think the pace does slow down after the 4 books, as the problems get more complex and time consuming and the sections are designed, I suspect, to be used to also assign homework to the kids.  No big deal in the end.  Just racing through the first 4 books means the kid will be at least 3 grade levels ahead and likely more if he starts prior to 4th grade.

Bottom line - this isn't rocket science, it's just the combination of a extra time each day (an hour or two beyond the one hour the kid should be doing anyway), not having extended breaks, and using Saxon properly.

[Korrale4kq]

Does any one else here follow Doman Mom's blog?  Www.domanmom.com.
Her son is 7 doing around 5th grade work. She schools year round. I love her schedule. She does homeschool year round. She cuts the years into terms.

I will just provide the link.
http://domanmom.com/2012/04/year-round-homeschooling-and-how-we-organize-it/

Her blog has some amazing stuff to check out. One thing I really admire is that even though her son is accelerated, he is also learning depth. She covers a lot of encyclopaedia Kowledge with him.
If anyone takes the time to look around her site she has some amazing resources. She makes some grea YouTube videos and has even been working on creating a memory program.

[nee1]

Robert,

1)  Please could you give a timeline of how David was able to complete the 4 Saxon books in a year? He started 54 in second grade (that's at about 7 years of age). In  one year,  he had completed the 4 Saxon books - 54, 65, 78, and 87. Could you give some more details how you did it? Saxon comprises 120 lessons in each book. Did you skip the first 40 lessons (since it was mostly aimed at public school review after summer vacation)? Did you have him do every single problem in the lessons he did? Saxon has ``practice'' questions and about 30 ''problem set’’ questions. The practice questions are based on the particular lesson that had just been taught. The problem set questions are based on lessons that had just been taught plus a review of previous lessons. Did you have him do the practice questions only? Or did he do a combination of both practice lesson and problem set questions? If he did the  problem set  questions,  did you have him do even-numbered problems only? Or odd-numbered problems only? Could you give more details on this?

2) How many hours do you estimate he spent on math each day? The Ahmed brothers (Zoihaib and Wajih) spent approximately 3 hours on math each day after school hours on weekdays and approximately 5 hours on weekends. Did you aim at 3 hours a day too? Or was your aim the completion of 2 lessons per day?

By the way, here are some articles on the Ahmed kids –
1) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/7941327.stm
2) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/4979604/Nine-year-old-becomes-youngest-ever-to-pass-A-level-maths-with-Grade-A.html
3)  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1164614/Britains-cleverest-family-They-got-maths-A-levels-primary-school--thanks-hours-study-night-75p-Dad.html.
4) http://www.channel4.com/programmes/child-genius/articles/video-interview-with-wajih-and-zohaibs-parents.   

3) When did you notice a slow down with David? Was it at algebra 1, algebra 2, or Advanced Math?

4) When did he start algebra 1/2? How long did that take? And how about Algebra 1, 2 and Advanced Math? When did he take the SATs? Was it after he completed Algebra 2? Did he work through the Saxon Advanced Math book too? Or was he in community college by this time?

I'm basically asking for a timeline, and more details and explanations on how one could model your acceleration method. I've got the Saxon books (from 54 to Advanced Math), and I've studied them in depth, so I know how they work. Further, I went through GCSE math papers and realised that a child that has mastered Saxon Algebra 2 would pass GCSE math with very good grades without breaking much sweat. It sort of puts what David and the Ahmed kids did into context. I now see that most children could achieve what the Ahmed kids and David accomplished.  Thank you, Robert.

[Korrale4kq]

I did the math a while back with accelerating a child and came to the Sam conclusion as PokerDad a child can fit in 13 years of schooling in by the time they are 11-14. And that is without early learning.

The US public school year is only 180 days. I know if is more in Australia.

This was taken from my State's Department of Education site.
360 teaching hours a year for Kindergarten
720 teaching hours a year from 1st to 4th grade
1080 teaching hours a year from 5th to 12th grade.

So....

10800 teaching hours from K-12.

Now... Take an accelerated homeschooling schedule.
5 days a week 50 weeks a year is about 250 days of schooling a year.
4-6 hours homeschooling a day would be about 1000-1500 hours a year.

So it would only take about 7-10 years to achieve the same teaching hours.
So if the kids started at 4 they could have completed 13 years of schooling hours equivalent to the public school system between the ages of 11-14.

Now... If you take into account the amount of group, busy work, games, review ans sillyness, that the public school system does. The time could be done even faster. Or with less schooling hours a year.

[Robert Levy]

Korrale4kq,

Don't forget to include the extra time spent reviewing material, due to the slower pace.  I also think the hours you have listed are pushing the definition of "teaching hours" a bit, as 6 hours per day is about the total non-lunch hours in a school day - so study halls and PE are included in those 6 hours.

So the amount of time needed drops significantly even from your numbers.

[Korrale4kq]

Actually I thought those are meant to include lunch time.


1st-5th graders are at school for 1170 hours (6.5 hours a day) at school a year. That makes it about 2.5 hours of free time a day.

5th-12th graders are in school for 1260 hours (7hours a day)  a year. So they get 1hour for free time  a day.

But yes, I do believe that the true instructional hours at school are much less than mandated due to class interruptions, stragglers being late for class and a whole slew of other transition issues. Especially in the early grades.

[Korrale4kq]

Basically my thinking is, if kids were able to spend 4 hours in school doing dedicated class work with good self teaching programs like Saxon. They could cover a lot of school work in 4 hours a day.
An hour dedicated to math, a hour for science/technology an hour for social studies (history, geography, civic et al) and a hour for writing instruction. Reading need never be a separate subject beyond the lowest grades. Reading fluency, reading comprehension can and should be covered within all subjects.

If students are taught early on how to learn independently there would be less need for direct instruction. Students can work at their own pace. And teachers and higher achieving students can assist the lower slower students.

Even allowing a 30 minutes recess every hour, and still offering PE, art, music, library and foreign language  for 1 30 minute session a week each. And 1 30 minute study/homework period for high school students each day.  The students will be in school for the same amount of time a day but will be learning more efficiently. And getting more breaks.

An example of a school schedule. Sure, there is lots of downtime. But my idea is that the engaged 1 hour blocks would be intensive.

8:00- Math
9:00- Free time*
9:30- Extra curricula**
10:00- Science
11:00- Lunch
11:30- Social Studies
12:30- Free Time*
1:00- Writing and Speech instruction
2:00- Study, tutor and homework time. 30 minutes for elementary and an hour for high school.
2:30/3:00- School out.

*Free time could be used to play games, do those infuriating penguin crafts, give the kids a chance to run around, watch an educational program.... Just lighter stuff. Or it could be used for students who wish to extra credit work. Or for students to catch up on work.

**Extra curricula programs like PE/health/nutrition, music/dance/drama, library program and art.

[Robert Levy]

Hi Nee,

Lots of questions.  I'll need to review my records in more detail, which I can do when I get back home in a bit.  For now, based on my notes, I actually show David as completing 5 books (i.e., through Algebra 1/2) in 12 months.  He started right at Age 7.  He did skip the first 40 sections of at least the first 4 books, but then skipped only 20 sections in Algebra 1/2.  Starting at Algebra 1, he didn't skip anything.  I based that on what the material was, and the first 4 books clearly were review for the first 40 sections - maybe with a few new concepts sprinkled in, but not enough to warrant doing the entire sections.  The later books had a lot less review, so he had to do more (or all) of the books.

As far as which problems he did, we would work the practice problems together, and then I would cut him loose on the 30 or so problems in the for that section.  He always, and I mean always, did every problem of each section (other than the sections we skipped at the beginning).  He would give me his work, and I would mark off the ones he got wrong, and he would have to try them again, until he got them right.  I made sure that he was able to do every problem in a section before we started on the section.  Also, because he didn't like doing the work very much, I suspect, I made him check every problem he did, as he had tons of careless errors.  If it was bad enough, I tore up the paper and made him do the section all over again (but that was rare).  Saxon is also very clear on this - the kid must do all of the problems in each section.  In fact, I think the biggest stumbling block to success with Saxon was teachers (mainly) that thought they knew better and would try to cherry-pick problems.  Do not try that.

As to hours, I estimate that we averaged about 3 hours per day, maybe 2 or 2.5 during the week days and 4 to 5 hours on weekends.  I didn't set a goal as to the number of sections per day, but my recollection is that we were doing about 3 sections per day for the early books, 2 sections for the middle books, and 1 section per day for the later books, as those problems got complicated.

As to slowing down, that was more me than him.  My notes say that in addition to the first 5 books in 12 months, he finished the next one, Algebra 1, in 2 months (he can thank having done Math 87 and especially Algebra 1/2 for being able to speed through Algebra 1).  At that point, he slowed a bit, with my notes showing him completing Algebra 2 in 4 months, and I really need to check that, as I was trying to slow him down at that point.  Assuming that timeline holds, it means that David had finished Algebra 2 at 8.5 years old.

Finally, we went through the Advanced Math (pre-Calculus) book.  It is a thick book with a lot of tough problems, but once you finish that you're ready for college-level Calculus.  We really slowed down then, and he took around 1.5 to 2.5 years to finish.  At that point, he was ready to take Calculus in college, and did so, starting a bit after he turned 11.  There were several reasons we slowed down so much - first, we were building a house and running the project, so that took a serious amount of my time and second, he was just too far ahead for his own good.  There comes a point of negative returns, and finishing Algebra 2 (i.e., 10th grade math, if on honors track for Calc in high school) at the age of a second grader is just too young to be useful in the real world, so we actually regressed a bit, purposely, to give him a chance to grow a bit.

[cokers4life]

Those were great questions Nee.  Thanks for answering them, Robert.   That clears up a lot for me.  My 5 year old just finished up 1st grade math (using mammoth math).  I don't think he is ready for Saxon so I am taking him through 2nd grade using Mammoth Math, but the first 40 pages are review, and I had wonder if review is necessary when there is just a week break between workbooks.  Then I had wonder if the same is true for Saxon books. 

You have given me a lot to think about.

Do you have any familiarity or opinion of Harold R. Jacobs Geometry text. http://books.google.com/books/about/Geometry.html?id=XhQRgZRDDq0C

Thx

[Robert Levy]

Hi Nee,

I'm going through your links, and the quote below stood out to me.  It is one of those brilliant insights that you get from immigrants that are not poisoned by the culture they now live in.  I definitely see the same thing in the states, where immigrant families understand that they have to take control of their kids' education (especially early education), because they know no one else will do that.

"‘Most people think that you should let your kids go out and discover the world on their own, and decide for themselves what they want to do, but my answer to that is No,’ says Usman (Ahmed) emphatically...‘If parents don’t influence them, they don’t become independent, they simply become susceptible to other influences instead - their friends, or what they watch on TV, or what they read in magazines."

[Mandabplus3]

Our shorter summer break here in Australia is not without its problems. The kids get between 6-9 weeks off oer Christmas in that time I see almost every child in grades k-4 drop 2 whole reading levels. They forget their math facts and forget h to tell the time too.
When working with Saxon with my daughter I can see if she has one week off she starts finding things harder for a while until she is back in the swing of it ( usually 2-3 sections later) even small breaks count, clearly not as much as losing 2 months of learning but our shorter holidays don't work either.
Throughout the year Aussie kids get 3 other holidays of 2-3 weeks each. I don't notice any loss of ability from these breaks other than in the very early stages of learning to read. What we do see though is it takes the kids a full week to settle back into classroom rhythm and stop disturbing everyone else in the room. So for a 2 week break we loose 3 weeks of effective teaching plus the last day before the break ( when the kids can't focus cause tomorrow is a holiday!) at a minimum Aussie kids loose 12 weeks to holidays private schools loose 15 or more as they have more holidays. Plus the extra 5 weeks of unproductive schooling days.
Yep even we have problems! 
When I calculated out what David did I decided it wasn't for us. I do want to accelerate my kids but I decided I didn't really need a kid doing calculus at age 9. What I needed was a child constantly working above grade level enough that they couldn't be taught wrongly. I also wanted them done with math by about age 14.. I don't really want them in collage by 12 but at 14 I think it would be great. I have a nearly 10 year old now and the idea of her doing university in 2 years is far too scary for me to consider. She isn't ready at all and has some growing to do first. I know its possible but its isn't what I want for my kids. S I calculated out the pace we need to work at to get there and we work at that pace. It's just a book and a half a year. It is so easy to achieve that we will be ahead of schedule by the time the hard books hit and she will have time to slow down for the harder ones.
She is zipping through lessons in 20 minutes at the moment so we arnt so time pressed as before when it was taking her 2 hours, 90% of that time spend staring out the window daydreaming! 

[Kerileanne99]

Robert,
I have been following this thread and pondering heavily...
We also live in Texas, and the more I read and research, are going to have great difficulty in finding a suitable solution for my daughter as far as schooling.  I have already decided that homeschooling is the ONLY option for us.  We do have a few things working in our favor, which I will mention.

Alex is now 3.5, and she lives and breathes math. Part of this is contrived via EL, and part of it seems to be her idea of fun.  We are hitting some stumbling blocks now as her ability to sit still/write are light years behind her knowledge/understanding.  For this reason, we have a wide range of skills to work on...she can find the perimeter and area of many polygons for example, yet is just as thrilled to play math games aimed at speeding up her addition/subtraction fact recall.  We are working on Soroban at home, although she will have a weekly tutor come fall.  She thinks Hands-on-Equations algebra work is a reward for tidying her room in the evening, and literally BEGS for a card game called Multiplication War, where the greater product wins the hand.
So far, this is perfectly acceptable.  We are working our way through Life of Fred math books, have done a unit on fractions, decimals, and percents, and she thinks that the Art of Problem Soving books, Beast Academy (Level 3A-D) are for three-year-olds rather than third-graders.
Great, She is having fun, we are having fun. Most of our work is total play. There is no way she could sit down and do an hour of independent work, so there is very little chance of skipping grades later...Not to mention the fact that her December birthday has her scheduled to start Kindy just prior to her sixth bday...

So.  Is there such a thing as too much?  You intentionally slowed David down, but would you have chosen to do this if your were able to primary homeschool him?  Or would you have simply expanded the scope, as we plan to do/are doing? We include living math books daily in our reading, her favorite of which is the Penrose the Cat series. This introduces much more advanced concepts in a 'survey' fashion...say, binary numbers one day, Mobius strips another, and math with different bases yet another.

To add to the mix, we are based at a private central Texas uni (you can probably guess by my discription of abysmal elementary school options and general location!), and as hubby teaches there will have general access to free uni-level courses as she is ready...even if only on an auditing level.

How would this have altered your plans with David, if at all?  What do you think he would have chosen to do, assuming he was old enough to actually have an opinion in the matter:)?  I cannot imagine slowing down drastically, although her writing skills are seemingly a natural roadblock, but can envision greatly increasing the scope of learing and hopping a bit to things that are less writing intensive:)

What say you and the collective wisdom of the forum?

[Korrale4kq]

Just wanted to let you know those blasted writing skills are James' current roadblock too! So I completely understand that.

[Robert Levy]

Mandabplus3,

"When I calculated out what David did I decided it wasn't for us. I do want to accelerate my kids but I decided I didn't really need a kid doing calculus at age 9."

No argument from me.  Unless you, as a parent, have some need to have a kid being that advanced, there's really no reason for the kid to be there (and if you have that need, I feel sorry for the kid).  In our case, as I mentioned, we backed off a bit, so he was 11 when he started Calculus.  Still, of course, very young, but at that point we were getting nothing out of the Christian school, our attempt to home school had failed, so we figured why not try college full time.  He went to a day school (2-year college) about 10 miles from us, so my wife could drive him to classes and drive him home.  Not much chance to get in trouble.  But a key thing for him was that he absolutely loved being in college, relative to the Christian school, and no one bothered him, ever at the college, whereas he was having some trouble towards the end at the Christian school.  He also loved the idea of not having to deal with a police state (the way our schools are now) - if he didn't feel well, he packed some Advils and took them when he was supposed to - no nurses or shrinks to deal with at the college.  Little stuff like that meant a lot to him, as heard plenty of stories from his church friends who were in the public schools.  He then went to his 4-year school, which was 20 miles away, but again he was driven there every day, until the happiest day of his mom's life, when he got his driver's license.  But still no issues there.

So that's the good side.  The bad side we avoided, which would have been sending him away on his own, in any form, to college.  He simply would not have studied (and proved that, as I mentioned earlier).  So, we played it careful, but it was easy when you had one kid, and one parent available full time for that kid.  I realize that most people have/want more than one kid, and that would have greatly complicated things in our case, possibly making the logistics impossible - so delaying would definitely help there.

Overall, you got my message.  It's not how advanced you can get the kid, it's whether you are the one in charge of how they get their early education, because, in my opinion (and opinion is putting it very gently, I consider it a fact in this country), the education system we have, especially at those ages, is designed to fail, or at least hinder, the kids.  I base that on my understanding of the people that run the system and what their overall goals are for this country (and likely most of the West), and having well-educated kids is simply not in their interest.

[Robert Levy]

Kerileanne99,

Tough questions, but I'll get through them.

"There is no way she could sit down and do an hour of independent work, so there is very little chance of skipping grades later."

I don't agree with the above.  Getting any kid to sit down and work independently at age 3.5 is a losing battle, but she seems already ready for Saxon 54, which is meant for 9 year olds, and which David started right when he turned 7.  So you definitely have time for her to settle down a bit, and still be ahead, and that's only when you start Saxon 54.  From there she'll be able to whip through the books and get further ahead.  You didn't mention reading, but I assume that she also reads well by now too.  If that's the case, she will be bored to death if she stays at her grade level, based on age.

For me and David, the hypotheticals are tough as I have to go back to my mindframe back then.  I do remember vividly thinking: "wow, this kid is so far ahead, what on earth is his future going to be like", rather than planning anything out and knowing what apartment he will be living in when he goes to MIT.  I do remember asking myself what to do next with a kid who has gotten as far as he had gotten.  I didn't actually expect him to end up in college that early, as I didn't think he would be accepted, based on his age.  So I would have basically kept trying to advance him in my area, which is engineering, by having him do higher and higher level math, and then engineering work (from text books) - with the idea being that when he finally did make it to college, it would have been a breeze for him, and with that, he may have been able to really learn the material well.  If I wasn't an engineer, but I wanted him learning engineering, I probably would found an engineer to use as a guide/tutor (and it probably would have been much cheaper than an early-learning tutor, LOL).   But that was how I saw it.  In college, he would have been able to take a large load of classes and maybe finish up to a year earlier than others his age.  He would have had a high GPA, which is critical when getting a first job or going to grad school, and doesn't hurt for later jobs.

Sorry, but I know nothing of the books/texts that you're referring to.  My background is limited to Saxon, and prior to that, looking at other stuff and not being able to see how it would have helped David (I did try some, but don't remember anything about them).  The other stuff looked intended to keep the kid happy and smiling, but not having to learn.  Obviously your child is much different, and those materials seem to work great for you.

I agree with your assessment of your public school options.  The advantage you have is that you already understand your schools are junk, instead of having to learn it the hard way (i.e., after it's too late for the kid to recover), like 90% of the well-intended parents learn.  So you do have the right mindframe going in.  But also keep in mind the spillover effect into private schools - that was something that I wasn't ready for and could have hurt David.  I figured private schools would be fine, but they are not so hot either.  It's great having the hook into college, and if she stays ahead, just slowly wean her into that school when you think she's ready.  We started by keeping David enrolled in his Christian school, but going to the community college for one class (Calculus).  The next semester, he stayed enrolled, but then 2 college classes.  After that we tried at our failed home school attempt and I think he was also taking 2 college classes.  Finally, we just dumped him full-time into the college, and that worked fine.

As to what David would have done if he had been left to his own devices is a great question.  It would have been great if he had a clone, so we could have done a study, but that's life.  Considering that he showed absolutely no motivation to learn prior to me force-feeding him reading starting at 3.5, and then only liking to read after he had learned it, and never showing any motivation to learn math, I would say he would have ended up pretty much like the kids of nearly all of my non-immigrant co-workers (and even some immigrant co-workers).  They're essentially spending most of the 20s now, living at home (mostly), trying to figure out what to do for the rest of their lives.  They generally have basic jobs (service industry type), and they dabble in college, but often find they don't like their path, so they double-back and try again.  David's love for video games would have made even finishing high school difficult, and college impossible - so he would have just been another statistic, maybe finding something that he liked, much later in life than necessary.  I also base it on my past, where I just barely able to get the distractions out of my way long enough to get my college degrees (I essentially moved 2 miles from campus my junior year, and lived in housing that was dominated by senior citizens, with no TV or stereo).  In today's Internet/Gaming world, there would be simply no way I would have gotten to where I am, not even close.

That's why I say it's the job of parents to steer the kids and straighten them out each time they veer off course, even slightly.  Facebook, video games, and other stuff out there is focus-group tested and proven to take kids away from studying.  For most kids (maybe not yours, yet, LOL), studying is about one step up from torture.  In the past, it wasn't as bad, as you had schools that actually wanted the kids to succeed, and you had much fewer distractions.  But today, if the kid is self-motivated to learn, he still does fine.  If not, either parents step in and make the kid learn, or it's game over.

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