Do you have a feeling that your child is lagging behind in the foundation skills? Is homework overwhelming? Would you like to see more focus and concentration?
These are common concerns of most parents of school children. Even the students may not know why they are not "very good" at what they are trying to learn, or why they aren’t keeping up or getting the grades they want. The rigors of the classroom may be daunting for a child that learns a little differently or maybe has fallen behind at some point and can’t get back on track.
Private tutoring can be very effective with the right tutor – it can also be quite expensive. Learning centers can be helpful as well and much less expensive – but the individual attention that your child needs may be lacking.
Pinecone Active Learning is a unique "hybrid" of private tutoring and a learning center. Vivian Hobbs, the director, developed this program after running a typical center of 200+ students for fifteen years. While the center was successful in helping many students achieve their potential, Ms. Vivian wanted to reach the "harder to teach" kids in a smaller, friendlier and more attentive setting. Pinecone has all the rigors of any mastery programs in math, reading and writing, but it offers one-on-one attention and flexibility for individual learning needs – and at an affordable learning center price.
Please note that the Pinecone programs, described below, are NOT age or grade dependent. We have plenty of middle schoolers begin at early levels to master basics they did not quite catch in school. We see a lot of relieved faces when they realize that they CAN do this and have a second chance to catch up and feel good about their progress.
We start as young as three years old – placing a pillow on a chair for the little ones. They learn their numbers by counting aloud, reading and tracing. Writing numbers repeatedly provides the pathway to the brain that instills memory. Students progress with daily work (twice weekly class and five brief homework assignments) through the basics, to fractions, pre-algebra, algebra and geometry. They master each concept in their own time and develop the confidence and motivation to forge ahead.
Pinecone provides the rigor of requiring correct steps, most efficient solutions, daily corrections and daily word problems to help the math concepts become real and applicable in daily life. "If apples are on sale from $2.29/lb. to $1.49/lb., estimate how much you will save on five pounds." read more
All kids want to read. They have a natural curiosity of the magic in books. If a student misses the early days of phonics, or has any of a number of learning challenges – reading can become a painful chore and quickly affect learning.
The Pinecone reading program again starts as young as three, teaching the letters through the same methods as the math – reading, saying the letters aloud, and of course, tracing – repeatedly! Kids move at their own pace with individual assistance through the phonics, or blending levels, then into simple reading comprehension and sentence writing. At second grade, the English grammar work is added to the comprehension, vocabulary and test-taking aspects of the reading program to provide a complete mastery reading program through middle school. The later levels require reading and re-reading an excerpt to extract not only information for questions, but to interpret meaning and form opinions. The vocabulary is rich and challenging and the grammar is precision-oriented -- don’t forget the commas! read more
Pinecone Writing Program I
The PINECONE WRITING PROGRAM I presents the basic elements and strategies of writing in a step-by-step sequential manner. Like the Pinecone Math and Reading Programs, the material is presented in manageable pieces... read more