Category: Education

  • Base Ten Blocks

    How do you teach arithmetic? One approach is through the rote memorization of algorithms. For adults, that may be the obvious solution since that is how we solve simple addition and subtraction problems. But why do we carry-over in addition or borrow from in subtraction?

    Base Ten Blocks

    To illustrate this concept, I turn to base ten blocks. I had purchased a set of base ten blocks last year for supplemental Singapore Math instruction at home. We’ve used it on-and-off to illustrate math concepts. Lately, when my child has difficulty with a math question, I bring out the box of base ten blocks. With little assistance, my child is able to calculate three digit subtraction using the base ten blocks. And, after she has tackled a few questions, I return to the questions and explain the algorithm for notating the exchange of 1-ten for 10-ones.

    I had also purchased mathlink cubes and ten frame boards. The base ten blocks are the most useful by far. Instead of memorizing algorithms, the base ten blocks let children figure the calculation themselves. Then, the algorithm becomes a short-cut of what they already stand.

  • Where the Mountain Meets the Moon

    I have long been a fan of books by Grace Lin. Her children books feature a Chinese theme and include delightful illustrations. I’ve checked out all her picture books from the library and read them to my children.

    Now that my children are school age, we have moved on to her novel Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. Set in China, the novel tells the story of a young girl named Minli and her adventures as she seeks to change the fortune of her family. The chapters pass by quickly in this page turner. There was a constant element of suspense that compelled us to keep reading even when we already knew it was pass time to go to sleep. But, what is summer for if not to let the schedule slide a bit.

    When the Mountain Meets the Moon is a great summer reading book.

  • Online Pinyin Zhuyin Converter

    I haven’t touched ㄅㄆㄇㄈ since the 70s. While I can recite all the zhuyin phonetics, I can only read them with extreme difficulty. Writing is a lost cause.

    However, I’m great at pinyin.

    Our local Chinese school instructs children in traditional Chinese characters and zhuyin phonetics. I was using BoPoMo Help, an iOS app with Zhuyin/pinyin conversion tables.

    Update: The previous website mentioned no longer works.  Chinese Converter can be used to convert from Chinese or Pinyin to Zhuyin.

    Input:

    我喜歡上中文學校

    Output:
    ㄨㄛˇ ㄒㄧˇ ㄏㄨㄢ ㄕㄤˋ ㄓㄨㄥ ㄨㄣˊ ㄒㄩㄝˊ ㄒㄧㄠˋ

  • What A Monkey Dad Learned From Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother


    The Internet has been abuzz ever since the Wall Street Journal published Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior, an excerpt from Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. If you want a more balanced preview, listen to an interview of the author from KQED’s Forum. Also, both Amazon and Apple offer a free sample from the book, if you want to browse the first few chapters to get a taste of her writing style.

    I purchased the Kindle version of the book this afternoon to read on my iPad and promptly finished it four hours later. It’s an easy and fast read.

    The book is more of a memoir than a how-to manual on raising successful children. At best, it shows one of the many paths that a parent can take when raising their children—not the only way and not necessarily the best way. If you have children, I would highly recommend the book, just so you fully understand who you and your children are competing against. Seriously, I could not imagine that this type of parent even existed beforehand.

    First off, Amy Chua is intense in a way I cannot relate. Three hours of piano practice? On one hand, I understand her determination. There are no short cuts to mastering a musical instrument. You simply have to practice. The more the better. And, if you are practicing three hours a day and someone else (like me) is only practicing 30 minutes a day, that pretty much explains why her daughter performed at Carnegie Hall and I did not. So, the number one lesson I got from her book is that even when you think you are working hard, someone else may be working even harder than you—not just a little harder, but a LOT harder. If nothing else, giving your children an appreciation for hard work will benefit them throughout their lives.

    As for Tiger Mother making her children practice even while on vacation, I could relate to that. When I first read it, it sounded obsessive, if not bizarre. But, her motivation was that her children would not fall behind while on vacation. For me, I can recall the numerous assignments that I got from my dad during what was supposed to be summer vacation. The principle is the same. Work during your break so that you don’t waste all that you’ve learned.

    Secondly, I can understand why Amy Chua’s book evokes such strong emotions. If you look at the customer ratings on Amazon, 43% (76 out of 175) gave her 5 stars and 33% (57 out of 175) gave her 1 star. In other words, 76% of the reviews were at the opposite ends of the spectrum. My explanation is that parenting is a funny thing. We don’t take classes in parenting, like we do for history, math, english and science. You don’t study different approaches to parenting or whether one approach works better than the others. So, all we are left with is how we were raised and how we wished we were raised, and our own experience as children or parents then colors how each of us views her book. People with overzealous parents and bad memories of childhood probably did not appreciate the lessons that her book imparted. On the other hand, people who experienced an academically challenging childhood and have found success because of their upbringing probably have a different outlook.

    The most controversial aspect of her book is her approach to child discipline. And, I think this is an eternal problem that perplexes every new generation of parents. How do you deal with children that will not listen? You can opt for positive reinforcement, negative criticism, threats, bribes, timeouts, corporal punishment and everything else in between. Sometimes you have to combine the incentives and other times nothing works at all. I’m all in favor of hard work, but the question that Ms. Chua needs to ask herself is whether she could have helped her daughters realize the same degree of achievement without all the emotional collateral damage. The over-the-top threats and brinkmanship gets tiresome at some point. And, this approach definitely stops working when the child eventually calls your bluff.

    Overall, I think that Ms. Chua’s approach is valid. Hard work begets talent. Would her daughters have worked as hard without her micromanaging? I don’t know. No one is going to conduct a double-blind experiment on their kids, I hope. Even then, each child is different and what works for one may not be suitable for the other. Regardless, by the end of the book, you can see how her daughters have internalized the intensity and diligence even when their omnipresent mom is not hovering nearby, so her work is done.

    P.S. Many journalists have chimed in with their take on the book. I am troubled a bit by this line from David Brooks’ Amy Chua is a Wimp: “There’s a reason Asian-American women between the ages of 15 and 24 have such high suicide rates.” I have seen this statistic in a number of essays that attack the Tiger Mother approach, and have bookmarked the publication Health, United States, 2008 for further research. I want to fact-check this assertion. Also, note that correlation does not equal causation, which David Brooks’ article implies. If Asian-American women have a high suicide rate, of course there is a reason. There is a reason for everything, but it may not be because Asian-American women had problems dealing with their immigrant parents. Especially, since not all Chinese parents are like Amy Chua.

  • Lunar Eclipse 2010 Photos

    Earlier in the day, I had read that we should be able to view a lunar eclipse tonight. So, just over an hour ago, I decided to head outside to take a peek. Full moon. Thankfully, the great repository of knowledge told me to come back in a few minutes. Sure enough, the moon did its disappearing act.

  • Yamaha Piano Special Event at Costco (2010)

    The Mountain View Costco hosted another Yamaha piano special event last weekend. I’ve been tracking them for a while: March 2008, April 2008, and August 2009.. Prices appear to be up from 2008, but the same as 2009.

    On the floor, I saw a Yamaha Grand Piano GB15 PE 5′ 0″ listed for $8,799.00 with a $225.00 delivery fee. The Yamaha Upright Piano T118 PE (Polish Ebony) 48″ was listed for $3,699.99 with a $150.00 delivery feed. The same piano in mahogany was $3,999.99. Finally, the Yamaha Grand Piano GC1M PE 5′ 3″ was listed at $13,999.99 with a $225.00 delivery fee.

    I’m not as interested in the digital pianos because I suspect that like all electronic goods, they will depreciate as the technology becomes outdated. Kind of like the way Sony LCD TVs plunged 60% in price in the last 18 months.

  • 10 Essential Children’s Books

    Goodnight Moon

    Why are there so many books about going to sleep at night? Because kids do not like going to bed at night. That’s where the timeless classic Goodnight Moon comes in. Goodnight Moon is a quaintly illustrated book about bedtime for a bunny. It offers an introduction to items found around the house, though hopefully you won’t have a young mouse scurrying around in your child’s room. It also sets a routine for your sleep defying child where you can say goodnight to everything in his or her own room and hope the child goes to sleep just like the bunny.


    Brown Bear & Friends

    The Brown Bear & Friends Board Book Gift Set offers children a menagerie of animals to follow around. These books teach children not only about animals, but also about colors and the sounds that animals make. I really like book sets because if your child likes one of the books, they’ll probably like them all. Then, you end up with a couple books to rotate amongst during story time.


    Curious George

    The Complete Adventures of Curious George features all the classic Curious George stories that many parents may have read when they were children, if they grew up in the United States. I really enjoy sharing the Curious George stories that I had once read a long time ago. You should be aware that there are more modern Curious George stories out there that are illustrated in the style of H..A. Rey. These stories are shorter and lack the plot development of the classic ones. The kids will probably not notice, only you as you long for the good old days. Again, book sets are fantastic provided that your child loves Curious George. After you are finished reading the first Curious George story, there’s another one right after that. You don’t have to search for a new book that the kid likes. Just give them more and more Curious George.


    Thomas the Tank Engine

    The Thomas the Tank Engine Story Collection (The Railway Series) features the classic Thomas the Tank Engine a/k/a Thomas the Train stories. If you dare to purchase this book, you will be reading Thomas the Tank Engine stories for weeks on end. For the novice parent, this book offers a semi-complete introduction to all the great engines that call the island of Sodor home. However, this collection is really male-centric, so you won’t see any female engines, like Emily, shunting trucks and hauling freight. The illustrations also come from the classic Thomas books, so the cheeky little engine will not look completely like his modern counterpart. Again, just a thing that only the adults will probably notice.


    Llama Llama Red Pajama

    Llama Llama Red Pajama is yet another book about going to bed. I really enjoy finding new books that are wonderfully illustrated and present an interesting and creative story line. I’ve also read Llama Llama Mad at Mama, which details an epic meltdown while shopping, something all parents eventually go through. That book also introduces children to the concept of a treat, which is essentially a bribe for good behavior.

  • Yamaha Pianos at Costco: 2009 Pricing

    I spotted the Yamaha roadshow at the Mountain View Costco again last weekend. Looks like prices have gone up since 2008.

    yamaha-t118yamaha-mark-iiiyamaha-gb15

    The Yamaha Mark III Grand DGB1CD PE 4′ 11″ was selling for $13,999.99. The Yamaha T118 PE 48″ was selling for $3,699.99, up from $3,499.99. I would note some inconsistency in the specifications in that the 2009 label listed the T118 as a 48″ and the 2008 label listed it as a 46″, but the Yamaha website has the T118 PE as a 47″. Finally, the Yamaha Grand Piano GB15 PE 4′ 11″ was selling for $8,799.99.

  • 当我们都在一起

    In Ratatouille, Remy’s ratatouille dish whisks the critic Anton Ego back to his childhood. I have yet to meet a dish that could summon my memories of childhood, but some children songs come close. For quite some time, I’ve been trying to figure out the lyrics to 当我们都在一起, which I had learned many, many years ago. Only recently did I discover that this is the Chinese version of “The More We Get Together.”

    I saw this version online, but the lyrics were not the ones I committed to partial memory. This version may be someone else’s childhood song, but it was not mine. I did find two other versions – audio and video – that unfortunately provide different lyrics for the one line that I cannot remember. So, it is either 其快乐无比 or 真快乐无比.

    Curiously, if I search in English, I come up with even more results, such as this one with a different title and lyrics and this version on YouTube.

  • English is an International Language

    I found the following news report on Reuters/Yahoo!:

    Khamenei vows no retreat on Iran election result. The unexpected upheaval in Iran has thrown a spanner into Obama’s plans to engage the Islamic Republic in a substantive dialogue over its nuclear program, which Tehran says is peaceful but which the West suspects is for bomb-making.

    Although the article is in English, I am pretty sure that these reporters are not American because we do not use the idiom “throw a spanner.” In America, we call spanners wrenches. So, in American English, we would say that the “upheaval in Iran has thrown a [wrench] into Obama’s plan.”