"Children do not need to be made to learn about the world, or shown how. They want to, and they know how." -John Holt

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

7th grade math anyone?

Rain for three consecutive days had me digging through the depths of the craft cabinet to pull out anything we hadn't seen in awhile. Enter "Magnetix". Who isn't up for a little geometry when it's pouring buckets outside?!Once the kids got started, they didn't stop. And I was trying to relax and read my book (The Kite Runner- very good) since Caden was sleeping but when Gabriel proclaimed his pentagon a hexagon, I had to step in. However I was unaware my nonchalant correction of the proper term would spark an interest in the boy that various sided figures had different names and so ended my book session.Though it wasn't until he was making 7 (heptagon), 9 (nonagon) and 11 (undecagon) sided figures that I had to jump on Google for some answers. (Who knew the boy identified with odd numbers!?)Simone stuck to making quadrilaterals, specializing in rectangles with trapezoid tendencies.

No comments:

"By nature people are learning animals. Birds fly; fish swim; humans think and learn. Therefore, we do not need to motivate children into learning by wheedling, bribing, or bullying. We do not need to keep picking away at their minds to make sure they are learning. What we need to do - and all we need to do - is to give children as much help and guidance as they need and ask for, listen respectfully when they feel like talking, and then get out of the way. We can trust them to do the rest."
John Holt
"In the end, the secret to learning is so simple: Think only about whatever you love. Follow it, do it, dream about it...and it will hit you: learning was there all the time, happening by itself." -Grace Llewellyn
"What we want to see is the child in pursuit of knowledge, not knowledge in pursuit of the child."
George Bernard Shaw
Real, natural learning is in the living. It's in the observing, the questioning, the examining, the pondering, the analyzing, the watching, the reading, the DO-ing, the living, the breathing, the loving, the JOY. It's in the joy. ~Anne Ohman
"How could youth better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?" -Henry D. Thoreau