I don't know the word for it, but if someone leaves a helpful post you can do something and then they get some "credit" for it? I asked before, and they told me that there was a special thingie (I know how to use the computer but obviously not how to talk about it :blushing:) and I couldn't find it then but my computer was really old and slow and so I didn't worry about it. Now I have a fast new computer :D but still can't see what I'm looking for. I just feel bad about all the people who have given me good answers... :( Thanks :)

Thanks Tbear, I'm going to look into that calcium issue, and I notice that Vit D came up in your post as well--hmmmm.

Ok, I guess we will be doing this since it has helped so many people :) Oh, you know, my husband (who had asthma as a child) lets them drink coffee through all this. I always heard that caffeine makes it so that children don't grow, but once I had my own children, I thought that maybe it was a ploy of mothers to keep the coffee to themselves so as to out-energize the children. OK, I'll be upping the chicken soup production this year :) How often do you have it, or do you save it for when they are sick? I asked the doctor about that, and she told me that it used to be that asthma was not diagnosed until they had been wheezy several times or had a more serious episode, but that now the "numbers" for wheezing and asthma are the same. My husband said to do this, but I am not really sure how to. In reality, when he is home, my husband is very erratic about what he does with the children when they are sick: half the time they get to watch movies, and the other half they are doing physical work, and at no time are they doing schoolwork! :confused1: So... my problem is that I can't tell how bad they feel (and I suspect they might have figured that out!). I would get them to do more, but they do it soooo sloooowly and complain about feeling bad throughout, and I wish I could tell how bad they feel. Unfortunately I have had several occasions when I thought they were ok and then something dreadful happened (like the time my oldest threw up at church after telling me her tummy was bothering her :blushing:) Any advice on this point by anyone would be greatly appreciated!!!!! My mother just said that if we weren't well enough to go to school, we weren't well enough to go outside and play, but we have no children around to play with so that doesn't work here. This has helped a great deal, thank you very much! Egads!!!!! (I'm really bad with gross stuff, but I guess I'll have to get over it!) Thanks again so much!

I'm with you on that! But I sure do appreciate this info, Bill and Zee, and will definitely ask the doc about it.

Wow, I suspect my life is going to get more complicated with this stuff as we move along, as my children really do have sinus issues and if they need a different med... And we did get a plan for each of them, altho I am not sure it is working out as well as I'd like it to, because they start showing symptoms before their PF readings go down, or else they are too simultaneous to be helpful. They each have their daily meds and when-things-get-worse meds, and a plan for when to take each and when to call the doctor (Green, yellow, and red) And Brenda, thanks for mentioning the Pepcid as my youngest does have a lot of trouble with coughing. I have to call the doctor and ask a bunch more questions now, altho I suddenly remembered that I forgot to close the door the other night when I did the self-cleaning on the oven and we all woke up in the middle of the night to a smoke-filled house. Normally my husband does the oven, which is why I forgot. So that probably explains the current set of symptoms, if one can imagine that they took a couple of days to get going. And I guess that I will have to treat sick days as schooldays and just change things around more. Thanks for the suggestions on that front :) do you end up with two plans: one for when they are sick, and another for when they are well? Thanks so much, everyone, for your help in this!!!! Sometimes I just feel so crazy--I am not good with details and this seems like a very detail-oriented thing. At least we have figured out to take the meds right after dinner so I don't have to get them out of bed when I forget. We're all getting more used to it.

This has all been great! thanks so very much :) I just realized some of them have to be seen again because they took their when-they-get-worse meds and am too mentally discombobulated to write more, but will return... And thanks for the info about Vit D--which I will buy and start giving them tomorrow!!!! Back in a bit as i have some more questions.

My 4 children, ages 7–16, have all been diagnosed with asthma. What seems to happen is that they get sick a lot--none has ever had an emergency which required a trip to the ER or anything like that. It's just that they are frequently wheezy, sinusy, etc. When they are well, they are in great shape: they have energy, they want to go outside and play, etc. When they are sick, they are droopy, they just sit around, but the main problem is that they have so much trouble with their schoolwork. I am going nuts here!!!!! They just had 2 weeks of being well, following 6 weeks of not being well. Now they are all falling apart again. I am at a total loss. I feel like this is making everybody be very behind, because they lose so much time to being sick. I am considering ways to get them educated in a very passive way (tapes, etc), but the stuff they have to do is not getting done as much as I would like it to be. And the stuff I want them to do together (Latin mostly) is hardly getting done at all because they so often are not sick at precisely the same time. How do you all handle this? I am going crazy!!!!!

Oh, the one I have uses the correct terms a lot. That was what I was planning to test via the memorization schedule, which doesn't seem to be included in the books but which others have mentioned here and there: Day One, Day Two, Day Four, and so on. Absolutely. So I don't know how this would work for someone like that. I actually picked the other one, and it is more definite in terms of grammar. I am going to see how this works and see if I will need to supplement for my younger children, but will have to just hope for the best for my oldest... Thanks for your very thoughtful response, you made a lot of good points :)

One is Sentence Composing here. And the other is... Sentence Combining here. I am just about to start my children on this, so I have not got information on how it works, but I think it will be perfect for my oldest, whom I was completely unable to teach grammar to with any traditional method.

I have some of the new type of grammar books, in which the grammar is taught via sentences, writing sentences, and changing sentences. But they really have very little in the way of exercises, and they say that the amount is sufficient! As shown by research! But I am still nervous... will this really work? Please re-assure me, I have been through so many grammar programs with my oldest... Or tell me what you did that helped, please! I am planning to review very heavily, on that recommended memorizaiton schedule. Thanks very much for any help!

Matroyshka, Those books look great for what I need :) Amy, They have some other books out which use their sentence combing method to teach grammar. It just didn't seem like there was a lot of grammar in the samples that I looked at. I just need a lot of grammar! (Well, not me, but my children). Thanks very much, both of you!

I thought the idea of the sentence composing was very interesting, but when I heard they taught grammar with this method, I began to drool.... However, now that I have looked at the sample chapter, it doesn't really seem like they are teaching very much grammar in those books. Am I missing something, or would I need to use something else for "real" grammar? Thanks very much :)

Thanks Gwen :) esp for thw good wishes which I will pass along to my daughter :)

Thanks everyone, we're onboard to take it next Saturday. I swear, life is just too complicated. Is this the main route to scholarships? Thanks for all the advice :)

Unfortunately, she's junior this year, so it's her only shot at it. I must say that where we live, there are not many students taking the SATs, much less the PSAT, so it could be that she would hit the semi-finalist status. Thanks so very much! I'm off to find out the advantages of being a commended or semi-finalist.

My daughter is taking two college courses, which she's in a bit of a tizzy about as she has been sick, and next Monday she has to have a procedure which we want to to have now while we are still on the insurance we know will pay for it and they said she needed three days definitely to recover. And the PSAT is noxt week. So... her practice test scores totalled 240: Reading: 60; Writing: 78; and 66 in Math. Would she gain anything by taking the PSAT now? I don't really know what her scores indicate. Thanks very much :)

Thanks everybody. I have each of my children write 3 questions and answers and then ask the questions of the others, so... hopefully that would cover what would otherwise be covered by the Exercita, but I will take a better look at them now that I know what they have in there :) Also, thanks Lisa for your recommendation of Colloquia Personarum. Did Drew write it? I don't remember seeing it as part of LL? Thanks again everyone!!!!

Since I have 4 children and not so much money, I got the CD of Lingua Latina, expecting to be able to print out everything, but the exercises are computer-based, so... I ignored them. The children have just been doing the Pensums at the end of the chapters. Is that enough? They are also supposed to make up questions and answers and ask each other the questions. Thanks very much :)

I went through something similar; we moved to another country when I was 4 without my father (complicated but not divorce!) and learned that language, since my mother and everyone else was using it. When we returned to the States and my father, I refused to speak in that language even tho my mother was continuing to use it with me, and I re-learned English. I put that together with a family I knew: the parents had a very strong regional accent but had moved elsewhere. Their daughter was an exact, but tiny!, version of her mother, but she totally had the accent of where they had moved to!!!! It was funny. So it is my theory that there is something in our language acquisition that gives priority to the language spoken not by our parents but by those around outside the home. I would suggest that you continue using Papiamento with him, and as much as possible expose him to books in that language as he grows older. My "second" language is still somewhat at a 4-year-old's level (and I have seen this in the children of immigrants educated in English), so try to get him used to more advanced levels of the language as he grows older, maybe teaching him a course in the language each year or requiring some school writing. Also math! get him to use both languages. Even tho it will be tough, keep it up. One day he will thank you!

Hi Kendall, I don't know, but you might try writing your question separately so that others will see it. Good luck!

Oh, good, thank you all so very much!!!! I was thinking along the same lines, that I should base her grades on her tests, which she takes every year. Wow, I wish they would have let me submit her tests instead! Anyway, just to let you all know, I looked over her tests, and she scored well above average in almost every area except spelling and lanugage mechanics. She is not really visual, so she's bad at those, but she's so good with language and reads so much that her compositions are really terrific in terms of the way she puts ideas and words together. Thanks so very much again :)

They are using maps like the first one to show the poll results over at RealClear politics.

Robinson curriculum has a system like what you seem to be describing, with the vocabulary emphasis being on the SAT words. They have a huge number of books and vocabulary lists for each one, iirc. What my father used to do was to read a bit from the middle of the book and I would tell him what was happening around that part. That was extremely good for me—really sharpened up my memory and awareness of what I was reading. You might try something similar focusing on the harder-looking words.

I need to put grades on the transcript for our mastery-learning school. I figure her grades in school would probably be straight As because she is a very conscientious student and also her test scores reflect a high level of achievement (except in spelling). And I keep hearing about grade inflation so to me I feel like I would be sort of pulling her back if I gave her any lower grades. The same problem I used to see occurring in group academic events which caused me to wonder how much help I should give her, KWIM? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!!!!

Thank you both very, very much! I have to send it in tomorrow, and I would have done the wrong thing! Thanks again :) And my daughter also is very grateful :D