Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Upcoming Review: Accelerated Education Curriculum


"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."
Albert Einstein 

One problem I have had in homeschooling is that so far in my five or so year journey, I always seem to have to reinvent the wheel.

On one hand it has been because I have always had very little money to work with and therefore instead of buying a curriculum, I would just make my own.

On the other hand, and the far more prominent reason I always found myself "reinventing the wheel" and making my own curriculum, was because I could never find anything that was suited to my and Hunter's wants / needs. Usually just because I thought all the stuff that was intended for the "early years" was too boring / slow so I would have to [want to] take more advanced things and simplify them for Hunter's comprehension level.

But the longer I have homeschooled, the more I have felt the pull of the simplicity of a pre-bought curriculum. Not for every subject level necessarily, but at least for some things, to have it all already planned out for you would be really nice.

Math was one of those things. I knew how horribly the traditional American education model generally fails in math education. And I also knew that even most of the best private curriculums were still based off of that failing system, at least in essence if not always in exact content.

They were too slow. Does it really take six or seven years (pre-k through grade 5 or more) to just teach basic arithmetic? (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) And what was more, you would think that after spending so much time on a subject, it would be thoroughly mastered, right? But we all know that that is not the story here.

Is math really that hard? Is it really that complicated?

I knew it wasn't, but designing my own accelerated curriculum baffled me. I have tried, and Hunter has learnt a great deal of mathematics using Doman as a jump start, but I created every schedule and sequence basically on my own and in so many areas have been lost with what do next. The thought of attempting this until high school overwhelmed me, to say the least.

That is until I found Jones Geniuses.

Jones Geniuses Accelerated Education is an accelerated curriculum developed by Dr. Miles Jones based on years of research and implementation first in the classroom and more recently in the home. The math program aims to help children learn mathematics four times faster than the traditional model and with greater accuracy and speed than most college-educated adults.

His main focus is math, but he also offers courses in speed reading, Spanish language learning, and memory training.

Dr. Jones has kindly offered to send me his first year early learning program, to try it out with both Hunter and my daycare kids. I'm very excited about what looks like an amazing program and an amazing company and look forward to sharing my experiences with you all very soon!

Update: read the full review of Math One here

Jones Geniuses Accelerated Education
"...Hear, O Israel, the statutes and judgments which I speak in your ears this day, that ye may learn them, and keep, and do them." 
Deuteronomy 5:1

2 comments:

  1. Wow that's interesting. We are already over half way done kindergarten math u see and scheduled to complete it this December and then start math u see grade 1. But he's only suppose "start" kindergarten" this September. I'd look at an option to learn math faster. I mean he's obviously ready for it.
    Please keep us posted
    Monique

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow Liz that's great! So proud of you. I hope it's a good program and works for you guys.

    p.s. I miss you like WOAH. Call me!

    ReplyDelete

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