steal back your time – Page 3

Math Logbook Includes Notes About Application to His Talent

math log notebook — Your child should log how his traditional course connects and applies to his developing talent.

My son Nicholas, who is 11 years old, has started a new online math course that he is enjoying very much. One of the course goals is for him to keep an personal log of what he is learning in his own words. In this picture you can see him writing in a Moleskin notebook about that day’s lesson and you can also see in the background the whiteboard (propped up on our baby’s high-chair) he uses to teach back to his younger brother what he learned. What you can’t see though is that he is also logging extra notes and thoughts about how the different type of numbers are handled in the coding languages he is learning as part of his on-going coding talent. This is one of the ways he is able to use a traditional content course like the one from Grade 8 Math by Benjamin Richards (available at RonPaulCurriculum.com) to support and develop a stronger control of his core talent.

Weigh Each Course for Talent Building

Scales of Justice Brisbane Courts-1= — Weigh in the balance as to whether that course will help your child’s talent more or less than the other course your child could take (Photo credit: Sheba_Also)

When I look at the 10,000 hour talents I am encouraging my children to develop, I don’t think in terms of the name of a career I am trying to get them into. Rather I think in terms of gradually adding skill after skill onto maybe a traditionally labeled career, yes, but I keep going until the end result is something very unique. So when I am getting my children started on some new courses, as for example from the RonPaulCurriculum website, I don’t just grab whatever is available to fill up my sons daily schedule. I weigh the time commitment of an otherwise well-taught course in the light of whether or not it can help my child build his talent faster or better. This includes supporting skills – so for my son Nicholas, even though he has a plate full of talent building hours right now, I did sign him up for one of the online math classes by Benjamin Richards as I see it as a supporting skill for his programming talent.

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How to Make Your Professor Build Your Son’s Talent

Tom Woods — We are making Tom Woods’ history expertise serve the needs of my son’s 10,000 hours of talent building. (Photo credit: Gage Skidmore)

This week has been an exciting launch for three of my sons into the online world of RonPaulCurriculum.com

My boys are motivated by the no-nonsense content-rich curriculum with a modern format that suits them well: YouTube style talking head, with a strong male expert or full-time professional in the subject matter, with screen shots of key points, replay-able as often as you want.

Yes, but how I am using these courses to push my sons talents forward? For example, on the Western Civilization history course by Tom Woods, one of the first topics was on the history of the Hebrews. So in counter point, my oldest son did his own simple research on the type of Jewish coins used during that time period because his talent interest includes the study and use of money and coins. As he progress through that history course he will continue to intertwine the historical knowledge of that course with the specific historical knowledge of the skills that build his talent.

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Grow Your Child’s Talent Like You Hike a Forest Trail

English: Hikers walking along the in the Larim... — Growing your child’s talent means getting him smart about taking advantage of his unique opportunities (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Growing your child’s talent to 10,000 hours of world-class talent is akin to hiking forest trails. At many bifurcation points along the trail you will have to make decisions as to whether to continue to the left or to the right. Some side-paths will only be visible and available to your child because of his unique position in time, place, and in his network of relationships with others. Some clearly marked trails will be overcrowded with lots of other traditional students: noisy and impossible to get around to the front of the crowds blocking your child’s way. In the same way, you should encourage your child to keep moving forward, but to jump onto different side-paths as he sees opportunities that will take him around obstacles and onto unique and less crowded learning paths.

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One Year’s Worth of Talent Essays

Caleb (13) blogging his 181st post related to ... — Caleb (13) blogging his 191st post related to his talent #unstoppable #10ktotalent #homeschool via Instagram 10ktotalent

Do you have a goal for how often you want your child to practice writing about his talent? It’s not good if your child is currently writing ten little essays or articles on any number of random topics for every one article on his chosen long-term talent. Instead of writing about such things as his latest vacation or a description of his team’s last winning baseball game, what if every one of those essays were replaced by an article describing an activity or principle of his talent? You can continue having your child practice all sorts of writing methods to satisfy outside requirements, but you can apply those methods in the context of your child’s talent. If you re-orient his writing focus, now how many essays do you think he could write up on his talent in one year’s time?

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What to Do with Already Bought Curriculum

What to do with already bought curriculum? Make it serve the talent your child is building in his life (or better yet, start a blog). Here’s an example of what this means in the context of a popular homeschooling resource published by Excellence in Writing. When you look at the table of contents, it lists the essays and articles it uses in order to demonstrate the course’s writing techniques and asks your student to use the same content for practice – it does not care what the content is about, only that you have something to demonstrate its method. If your child has a music focused talent, only one in all that entire list of articles pertains to music, with a largely useless one from the perspective of a talented musician, about Thomas Jefferson playing the violin to relax. This course represents about 300 hours of solid work with only 20 hours related to music. Instead of losing 300 hours, your child can gain an extra 300 hours of talent building by substituting each article in that curriculum with a serious one related to music.

Twaddle Me Some Useless Facts

Agree for your children to learn useless facts, but only those that have strategic value that will help keep the social peace within your immediate environment. Do you really need to memorize all the county seat names of your State or country? Probably not, but maybe your old great-grandpa Herman who lives with you is insistent that your children will grow up to be barbarians without a chance to make it in life unless they do. He’s not on the Internet, but he still remembers WWII and that back then they had to memorize that list in boot camp and that proves that it was that kind of toughness that saved civilization. You can waste time on that list, but only because it has strategic value to keep a critical peace – the rest of the stuff is SPAM and you must ruthlessly spend time cutting out the twaddle if your children are going to become great in their talent.

No Talent Allowed

Is it always no-room and no-time allowed for your child’s talent to be developed when you are using your homeschool curriculum? It’s time to high-jack textbooks to make them serve your child.

How much of your curriculum is directly supporting some kind of progress of your child’s talent? Is it 80%, 50%, 20%? If you are using an off-the-shelf standard curriculum, then thousands of hours are draining away into maintaining your child into an “average” child with no room for his talent. But there is good news, you can high-jack your curriculum without having to get permission from anyone. Do you know how to do it?

Avalanche of Education Accelerates The Need for Talent Focus

Do you use Khan Academy for your children like I do? The age of the Internet Super-Tutor is descending upon us and is poised to even take university level education by storm. In the near future this will mean for your children amazingly good, incredibly cheap, always-on, always re-playable educational content, delivered by the most personable teachers that the Internet can find. However, this avalanche of world-class education into your home will not help you if you have no method for building long-term talent focus in your child’s life. Instead, this abundance accelerates the need to have a strategy for picking and choosing which of the tens of thousands of learning modules to take.

Twaddle is Result of Lack of Talent Focus

Twaddle Face When There is No Talent Focus — Twaddle Face is what your child will get if you let your curriculum drive all your memory lists. Take control and make memory work serve your child’s talent instead.

Busy, busy, busy, but do you care whether your child is memorizing the list of names of the California Missions or memorizing the list of Vice-Presidents of United States? If it is all the same indifference to you and your child, then your homeschool curriculum is turning into dreaded twaddle. STOP! Your child is probably mentally purging that information as fast he is finishing his history quizzes. Focus on the purpose of your curriculum and make memory lists count toward your child’s 10,000 hours of talent development. Your child with science talent can memorize the names of the most influential inventors of the 1800s and your child with art talent can memorize the names of the top art pieces of the 18th century.

Establish Deep Understanding of History through Child’s Talent

A small dance company rehearses for a performa... — Understand history through the changes in dance – or through the changes of your own talent. Stuyvesant Cove Park, Manhattan, New York City (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

How can you encourage your daughter’s passion for dance using your homeschool history curriculum? Do this by having her consistently study each time period through the focal of dance. Changes in technology, philosophy, beliefs, and culture will be reflected in human activity and dance will be no exception. But by sticking with the single topic of dance, your daughter will not only establish deep pillars of understanding under her own developing talent, she will also be creating powerful mental pegs into each historical era. She will be able to narrate her way through history at a very deep level that is bound to astound.

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Hi-Jack Your Homeschool Curriculum

Be the captain of your homeschool curriculum — Be the captain of your homeschool curriculum – make it serve your child’s talent building.

In order to develop and focus on your child’s talent, you do not need to give up your current homeschool curriculum. Stay with the strengths of your homeschooling method, but modify slightly the individual tasks and goals toward supporting an on-going talent. For example, if your child’s talent focus is related to music and your worksheet tells your child to “Discuss the theme of grief in this English literature book”, you can modify it to your purpose. Modify it to say instead “Discuss the theme of grief in the music composed during the era of this English literature book.” Boldly hi-jack your curriculum to make it the servant to your child’s talent.

Use History Study Time for Building Talent

Waterloo Poem — Historical Poem Example for History Study of Napoleonic era if Poetry is the chosen talent to develop

Make your standard history study time serve hours of building up your child’s chosen talent focus:

If music is talent focus, then study composers of the Napoleonic era
If chemistry is talent focus, then study scientific theories of the Napoleonic era
If poetry is talent focus, then study children songs and poems of the Napoleonic era

Do NOT just go through the motions memorizing the standard historical timeline without connecting it to the historical roots of your child’s talent.

Education Consumes But Talent Creates

Guitar Lesson — Find a Talent to Develop

Education consumes, but talent creates.

If you can find a talent to develop, then your education will have a worthy master to serve. If the pursuit of education is your only goal, then all hope of talent will be lost. Start today by building your first 100 hours of deliberate talent practice. There will be 9,900 hours more to master.

Three Classic Failures To Guard Against

Broken Outcomes — Three Parent Failures

These are the three classic failures that parents need to guard against for their child’s success in adulthood:

Failure to prepare for a Christian marriage (typical consequences are: marrying an unbelieving spouse, not wanting children, problems with child rearing)
Failure to prepare for productive work (typical consequences are: work skills that have low $ value or low charity help to others, struggling with basic household skills, discouraging & grinding daily work)
Failure to prepare for higher education with a purpose (typical consequences are: high college debt, corrupted by immorality on campus, useless degree)

The 10ktoTalent.com website is about protecting you from failure #2.

History Builds Understanding of How Talent Changed

Your child can leverage his study of history toward building those 10,000 hours of world class talent. History can help your child build a deep understanding as to how human knowledge and skill changed in order to get to where it is today. For example, my twelve year old son Caleb has had an abiding interest in all things mineral and metal. I am encouraging that interest by insisting that he writes on mining or the use of metals as it is in done in the time period that we are cycling through. Just recently we were working through some history of the Middle-Ages and this allowed him to write this post about mining iron on the island of Elba.

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