[gumby]

> My dad literally sits with me for extra Math and English materials…that's probably I'm going to do to my son

Yep, that’s the way to do it, and it can be fun, especially since it’s just helping rather than full on home schooling.

Most school curricula have different and concrete objectives (basically meeting aggregated KPIs) rather than “is the student actually learning?” Also teachers have a lot to deal with, and always have, tangential to actual teaching, like disruptive students.

I think the best part of the supplement is that most school work has no context (“will this be on the test?”). Especially in math, where you spend 12 years “learning the alphabet” and only after high school do you get to the fun parts, if ever. So at home you can actually see how the stuff you’re getting in school actually relates to the realm world, and can pursue interesting paths.

[hnthrowaway0328]

Yeah I agree. I'm probably going to do it differently as I hated that experience and TBH it doesn't benefit my study as he so wished.

I found the biggest problem of his approach is that he didn't care about figuring out my interest (TBF I didn't know either). The extra-curriculum study is mostly aimed for getting into a better school later so he first taught me Math in advance and then some extra for competitions. And even for programming he extremely hates gaming (to this day he thinks game developers are bad people, like people who do narcotics) and ONLY wants me to do competitive programming. Anyway I did not have any interest for anything he taught so it has been a painful drag for both of us until he kinda gave up when I reached grade 10.

Now that my kid is 3.25, I want to try something different. But I do find myself lacking the time or knowledge to prepare material for such activities. I want to expose him to a variety of activities after he reaches 4, say arithmetic and simple reading (so he can then spend more time reading books by himself), but I do not know how to approach teaching the topics. He is as impatient as a child can be and of course he is not interested in learning stuffs, which is definitely less interesting than, say, watching tanks crashing cars.

All in all, I know nothing about pediatrics education and need to know more before damaging our relationship as my father did back in the day. Neither do I have the mental energy reserve to burn candles to research on such topics. But I'll try.

[gumby]

Read the text books, or when little the handouts, to see what they are being taught. When they are big enough for textbooks it will probably shock you, especially history and the like. Anyway, just play with stuff related to what they are learning, and play is the key word.

Most math education is syntactic transforms, not understanding. There are lots of skill-appropriate puzzles in books and online you can do together so your kid can see that math can be fun. Same applies to other subjects — learning about US history? Make a trip to some local historical thing and when kiddo is bored just run around or whatever.

[orangepurple]

Quick way to get started: find numbers and letters in anything they are interested in. Kids love helping their parents and cooking with them using recipes and measuring stuff uses letters and numbers.

[hnthrowaway0328]

Thanks! We do do this like counting cars or clothes. He is good at counting from 1-20 so I think we are going to move to the concept of adding/subtractions. Probably going to use fruits.

[gumby]

I personally think focusing on discrete math is a mistake, though everybody does it. Kids know the world is continuous* — just consider Piagetian experimentation in the bath — so opportunities to think that way are just as important, and I suspect more intuitive. The downside is my kid wanted to major in pure math.

* well, down to the Planck length I suppose :-)