John, age 8.5, just hit his one year mark/anniversary since he started Khan Academy’s math section.
As you can see, he’s completed 382 of the 432 skills on the website. There used to be about 300 skills, but Khan keeps adding more and more! In fact, John was most displeased the other day when he discovered that Khan recently added 20 skills because he was getting very close to finishing and getting his promised prize (some over-priced 800 piece LEGO set).
And it’s getting harder for him too. Obviously he’s long since exhausted all the *easier* skills and now he has to tackle more abstruse stuff like Z-scores and partial fractions. But I expect him to be done with the last 50 skills – at least by the end of July.
Last night he was doing some of the never-ending *review* that Khan assigns (on previously mastered sections) and I must say I was pretty amazed at the facility with which he handled it. 3.5 years after starting algebra and despite not really doing much math the past two years, he’s really starting to OWN the material and, much to my satisfaction, he’s learned how to resourcefully figure stuff out when he’s stuck, i.e. use Google!!!
I mean you wouldn’t believe how many of my students totally quit when they come up against something unknown. Recently I went nuts on students who told me they couldn’t do a question I assigned because they didn’t know what “consecutive” meant. Obviously the idea of looking it up on a smartphone or, God forbid, ASKING SOMEONE was beyond their capacities. Allegedly smart (albeit school) kids too…
So I will beat this dead horse again. Get your older kids on Khan Academy, now. The younger ones can start too although I think some of them might be better off on IXL.com.
45 minutes to an hour each day, EVERY SINGLE DAY, and you’ll be amazed at how fast they fly through everything from counting through calculus. I strongly recommend doing it right after breakfast, too.
Going slower….makes it a whole lot harder and a lot less enjoyable for everyone.
Here’s one of my tutorials, again:
If you want your kid to crush math….check out my online math academy here.
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