A Apple a Day - Enhance your child's mind with puzzles

      Optimize your children's brains and enhance their intelligence with puzzles!

Did you know that puzzles strengthen your brain? 

Puzzles create new neuron pathways and keep the mind sharp. They improve reasoning ability and help children optimize their math and reading skills. They keep adults sharp and fend off senility. They help develop the ever-so-important spatial and timing abilities that are important precursors to math understanding. They help children (and adults) see patterns in language and numbers, which skill spills over into other areas of their lives.

Puzzles help children learn to think abstractly, which gives them the ability to be better problem-solvers in life as well as in school. It has been proven that the maths and sciences help people learn to think and see alternate possibilities.

Children should start doing simple jigsaw puzzles as young as 18 months, if not younger. Start with wooden cut-out puzzles then graduate to cardboard jigsaws with increasing difficulty as the child ages.

The next step in the puzzle progression would be simple pencil word puzzles. For elementary school ages, the Highlights magazine is a good start, but there are also many other makers of children’s word puzzles.

In teenage and adult years, there are all kinds of pencil puzzle books from makers like Dell and Penny Press. My favorite word puzzles are Cryptograms, Flower Power, Cryptic Crosswords (British version), Math Story Problems, and anything that requires some sort of deductive reasoning. 

My all-time favorite number puzzles are “Math and Logic” puzzles, including Word Math (long division in letters), Kakuro (a.k.a. Cross Sums or Sum Totals), Sudoku (a.k.a. Number Place), Sumdoku (marriage of Kakuro and Sudoku), Crossmath, and Figure Logics, to name a few.

So the next time your teenager says, “Why do I have to take algebra?! I’ll never use it,” tell her that she needs algebra in order to think better in general. Tell her to look at algebra as a fun puzzle, too.

Just as a side note, you can use algebra on your shopping list to make your total come out exactly, so you DO use algebra later it life! I use algebra every day.

For instance, if you only have $100.00 to spend and tax is 6.25%, how much can you spend so that the amount plus the tax on that amount add up to exactly $100.00?

It is algebra – say that one “y” is the amount to spend before taxes, and that the tax (6.25%) would be “0.0625 times y” then your equation would be:

y + 0.0625y = 100.00.

Add the y's together (or distribute out the y). Do the puzzle: y(1 + 0.0625) = 100.00, or

(1.0625)y = 100.00.

Remember that algebra solves like fractions, so

y = 100.00/1.0625 (The slash line means divide).

Then y = 94.12 and the tax (94.12 x 0.0625) on that amount = 5.88, so

$94.12 + $5.88 = $100.00. 

The maximum you can spend before taxes is $94.12. When you add the tax on that amount, you spend your $100.00 exactly. What a fun (and helpful) puzzle!

You can do this with any dollar amount and any tax rate. It’s a great way to keep a tight allowance within budget!

http://thegodfreymethod.com

An Apple a Day - Using homeschool with public school

               There comes a point in your child’s life where a “best practice” may be to take advantage of what the public domain has to offer education. My niece, Olivia, was homeschooled her whole life, but as a teenager, she decided to attend Davis Technical College as part of her homeschool “high school” experience. She thoroughly enjoyed taking classes and learned how to navigate multiple classes, her peers, and is prepared for college now.

               Some homeschoolers I know let their children take a few classes a day at the public high school. For others, they try a charter school approach or a work-study approach. As children grow up, sometimes they desire to stretch their wings and be more independent. Mixing outside classes in with homeschool can facilitate this need.

               Do not feel guilty to use public school as needed. I have gone through times in my life when, as a single parent, I was the bread-winner and couldn’t continue to homeschool. However, I kept supplementing my children’s education at home in the evenings. I also returned to homeschooling when my situation improved. Most of my children have done both homeschool and public school, depending on our situation.

               We do the best we can with what we have. Supplementing your child’s learning at home – whether public, private, or home school – is one of the very best practices needed to help your child succeed. It can make the difference to overcoming the obstacles in education that hold so many children back.

                However, I caution you. Common Core is a horrid curriculum, and I completely disagree with open bathrooms. Our children are no longer safe in the federal public school system, so proceed with caution and keep both eyes wide open! Plus, if Christianity and Judaism have no place in our public schools, than neither should Islamic studies. You have the right to refuse any course of study that goes against your conscience.

http://thegodfreymethod.com