This having twins thing is proving difficult

Up to this point in our schooling careers I have assigned "X" number of pages to be done for any particular subject. This seemed to work well for us. Unfortunately I am seeing a big difference in my twins' abilities in some subjects. Nathan is a workhorse that understands math concepts the first time he sees them (well so far). He will use his MUS blocks for one or two problems and then just blows through the rest of his assigned pages. They do front and back of 2 pages each day. Nathan accomplishes this and his Explode the Code pages (front and back of 1), and a single sentence journal entry before William is on the back of the first page of math. William on the other hand needs his blocks for a few more problems, doesn't have his basic addition/subtraction facts cold yet but can figure them out and works SO SLOW!! I really think Nathan could blow through a lot of this math book but he sees it as unfair if I try to convince him to do a few more pages while William is still working. I think I am going to start doing assigned time amounts. We will work math for 1 hour. Get whatever you can done in that amount of time. Nathan will finish an entire chapter in that amount of time and will probably have time left over. I am hoping that William will get motivated to not let Nathan get to far ahead of him, but I just don't think he has it in him to speed up. My only concern is what to do if William honestly only gets one side of a page done? Do I mentally have a minimum I expect and make him work after everything else is done as homework? Ugh! Why did one of the twins have to take after DD (attention span of a gnat) and one seem advanced in comparison?!?

 

I have that struggle with Trey and Adam. Except they're not twins. And Trey is 3 grades ahead of Adam, but only about a grade and a half ahead of him in math. Adam whizzes through math, and like William, Trey takes forever. It's partly an attention span thing, but partly that it's not easy for him. A couple of things that helped us were... lower the length of time we did math. An hour of math was torture for Trey. And he would actually not get much more done in that time than he could in 20-30 minutes. Having a short time, and setting a timer helped him not feel the stress quite so much. The other thing that really helped, was switching to Life of Fred. It just doesn't stress him out the same way. And I got him graph paper to write work the problems on. That helps him keep things lined up. It may be the dyslexia, but he had a hard time with that, especially with long division. And knowing that he knew basically how to do the problem but was making mistakes on almost every problem that kept him from getting the right answers just stressed him out more. I heard recently that LoF has just (or is about to) come out with lower elementary levels.

I don't know how it's going to be with my twins, but I imagine it might go somewhat similarly. Sabrina just "gets" more and enjoys school type things more, while Sydney is much more physically adept. It will be interesting to see how it goes.

While I don't let Trey get out of doing math, I do also try to find things that really work for his learning style and strengths. So then he has things he excels at, while it's easy to see that Adam is excelling at math (he's more than a grade ahead of where he should be, and scored 99%ile on the standardized exam). Trey's strengths aren't traditional school subjects, but we can work those in. He's very good at building things, at tactile projects, at figuring out puzzles and intuitively understanding how machines work and that kind of thing. So I work those into our school day. Also, he's loving scouts, and it thrills him to be able to learn knots or lashing, or how to sharpen knives, or whatever and teach it to Adam, and even Sage who's older. Is there something that William likes to do, that you could work into school to help him be excited about?

 

Just thought I would update this little situation. I have started letting/making Nathan work as fast as he wants threw the MUS book with the understanding he has to work for at least 45 minutes, or 1 chapter if he gets there. He is willing to do it as long as I don't make him do the entire chapter's worth of the word problems so I just pick and choose 1 or 2 off each page making sure they are a mixed bag of new and review. He has started on chapter 11. William is plugging away at his slower than a turtle pace and is starting chapter 8, but he gets the concepts so I am happy. I am much happier with their progress now.

I ordered LoF, but for DD instead of them. The fractions book finally called my name. I just got it this week though so she hasn't started it. Tomorrow is her first lesson.

 

I sounds like you got it to a place where you are happy with it.
I don't homeschool, but do teach and have twins who sound a lot like yours in terms of academic differences.

I was going to suggest that you have a require time block or amount of math time that is the same for both, but then have another block of time that is "subject of your choice" time. In which Nathan could return to math if he so choose, and William could choose a different subject or approved activity. This idea is steaming from an article I read that compared "geniouses" from various fields and found that they had a similiar experience growing up in that they were allowed to spend extensive amounts of time doing their favorite thing--be it programming (Bill Gates), or painting, or playing music or sports, or studying science. AND matching what I read in that article with the language learners I've taught, if allowed to spend additional time on the aspect or activity type they personally excelled at, they advanced better overall than if I forced the group to each give the same amount of time to different aspects and stay at the same level as a class.

 

Sounds like it's working out very well. I'm getting ready to order LOF also, Pre-Algebra with Biology and Beginning Algebra. I've heard great things about the series! What does DD think?

 

Well she liked it today. Then again it just cover the less than symbol and asked 8 super simple questions that her 7 yo brothers could have handled. I will come back and let you know when it actually gets to something challenging and see if she still likes it.

 

Glad things seem to be working better for your boys. So nice to be able to lose some of the stress!

 

I'd love an update and review of LOF =)

My kids are all in pairs, although not twins and it has proven difficult to let them each find their own place in academics and 'play fair', but treating them individually with even different curriculum is helping with the eldest 2 anyway--i hope we can forge ahead with our very individual twins when the time comes....

 

DD does not like LoF. This is not a surprise. LoF wants her to remember stuff from like the first chapter way back in chapter 7 or 8. Then the program has the nerve to make a 9 out of 10 on the test before moving on. They give 5 different test for each "bridge" which separates every 5 chapters or so. She managed to pass the first bridge on the fifth try. She can't seem to get past the second bridge.

I think I saw you are using Teaching Textbooks, she hated that for the same reason. She likes her Math U See best, even when she screams and yells about it. At least with MUS she gets to really focus on one topic at a time.

As for the twins. Nathan finished his math book a couple of weeks ago. He was about 5 chapters ahead of William. I was hoping his new book would be here today, but I guess not. Hopefully it will arrive before next week. I foresee a bigger jump ahead coming as the first few chapters of the next book will be really easy. I mean multiplying by 0,1,2 is just sooo hard.

William is driving me nuts with his lack of focus ability right now. As much as I drug my feet with medicating DD, I don't think I can handle him much more. First I am going to get his eyes checked as he is overdue by a few months (ran out of money on the flex card last year) to make sure he isn't having a hard time seeing his book. Then we are gonna have to talk to the doctor. If you sit with him, you distract him. If you don't sit with him, he distracts himself. It is pretty much a no win situation some days.

 

have you tried cutting out red dye or high fructose corn syrup? I know they can be triggers for inability to focus---for my son, his allergies need to be held in check. I know I also do better with a balanced diet as well as a bit of caffeine from a good source [pills, coffee, tea, etc, not soda]. Ginsing is supposed to be good as well.

 

Life of Fred wasn't well liked here either. Although when David finishes Algebra 1 in the next couple of weeks, we are going to give it another try. I don't have quite enough saved to order think well Algebra 2 yet. That's what we will move to doing, Thinkwell. I'll give the prealgebra book with Ben when he finishes Algebra 1 around March. I know it'll just be review, but it couldn't hurt too much.

 

LoF is working better for my math-phobic kids than MUS was. And the review is great because it doesn't allow them to just store the info in short-term memory and dump it. I really like the way bridges work. They frustrate Trey, because he feels like he's failed if he can't pass on the first try. But overall, it's a much better fit for him than MUS was.

And Jenn, I can relate on the focus-thing. Trey really struggles with that. I'm sure he's ADD (thankfully not hyper). Letting him sit on an exercise ball and chew gum while he's doing school work does help him some. I learned that from a therapist friend of mine.