SwoopAndSwoopPart2

This is probably the time to mention that I’m re-teaching myself elementary mathematics, start to finish.

I’m doing all of the lessons in Saxon Math Homeschool Edition, beginning with book 6/5, which Christopher and I finished a few weeks ago.

I’m also (in theory) working my way through the entire Singapore Math series, beginning with 1st grade.

UPDATE 10-8-2006: I am not working my way through the entire Singapore Math series. I am working my way through the entire Saxon oeuvre, which is all I can manage at the moment. I am, however, for reasons unknown to me, creating a hand-drawn solution manual for Singapore Math's Challenging Word Problems Book 4.

I was always pretty good in math, though I stopped taking it after Algebra II, then hit the wall when I tried to take calculus freshman year in college. I flunked the first test and dropped the course.

But up til then I was fine, I liked math, scored well on my SATs, etc. I don't have any math anxiety and I love statistics. I took one statistics course in college. Correlation coefficients, standard deviations, regression analysis: to me, these things sound like the key to palace.

So, given my general level of math-friendliness, I didn’t think it would be too hard to teach Christopher the math he'd missed in 4th grade.

However, I pretty quickly had the same experience the teacher quoted in the American Institutes for Research report did: “I never realized that I do not understand math until I had to teach mathematics from the Singapore textbooks.”

This time around I’m trying to acquire conceptual understanding of elementary mathematics, and hook it up to my procedural understanding.

It’s not easy.

UPDATE 10-8-2006: Twenty-three lessons into Saxon Algebra 2 the mystery of my Wellesley calculus failure has been solved.

Algebra 1 & 2 in my high school in Lincoln, IL correspond to Algebra 1 in Saxon.

I went to college thinking I'd taken two years of algebra.

I hadn't.

I'd only taken one.

Apparently Wellesley College wasn't big on placement exams in those days.

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