Cabertmom
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Everything posted by Cabertmom
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Thanks, everyone. These are good comments. Here's our situation. With a few short-lived forays into other math curricula, we used Horizons through elementary to fairly good effect--better with my more mathy kids, but they all get it. It's spiral, but they do have a pretty big amount of practice with new concepts combined with smaller reviews of old concepts. However, the more I see about mastery, the more I wonder if Math Mammoth (MM) might be a good option for my upcoming 1st grader. My 11-year-old just does mental math intuitively even though he's never learned it formally but none of the other kids can just run large numbers in their heads. I am wondering if the benefit of an easy-to-use Asian style program might be good, but I also have been there, done that with switching programs around, so I don't want to switch from Horizons unless I'm pretty confident we'll stick with it. I'd consider it for my 3rd grader too, but the sequence is considerably different than Horizon, so she'd have to go further back to be sure she didn't miss anything. I keep looking at Singapore, but with 5 children and a part-time job, I just don't think I have time to figure it out. Right Start looks neat too, but we just can't afford it, and it looks complicated to implement as well. We do complicated writing (IEW) and lots of other neat stuff. I want math to be simple and effective. All that said, we just started using Life of Fred, and we're all delighted with it.
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Math Vocabulary, how do you make it stick?
Cabertmom replied to Azalea's topic in K-8 Curriculum Board
I'm with 5 Little Monkeys. We just recently started adding math vocabulary cards to the children's All about Spelling card file. We also added Latin roots, for what it's worth. It's working very well. If you don't use All about Spelling, the thing that makes it work well is that there is a place for current review, mastered (to be gone through occasionally), and future cards that you haven't gotten to yet. As the kids come across new concepts and formulae in their math books, they make index cards with the question on one side and the answer on the other. -
I always thought that spiral was better (because the publishers said it was, LOL) until I started seeing what those who use mastery programs have to say on this forum as well as the recent reports about how few topics students in Asia learn in elementary math. I would love to hear from people on both sides of this debate. If you think spiral is better, why? If you think mastery is better, why? For those of you who use a mastery program, do you find that your children forget how to subtract when they have been working on multiplication for awhile? For those of you who use spiral programs, do you find that your children are really getting the concepts? How much of success in math has to do with spiral versus mastery, and how much of it just has to do with innate ability of the child and the parent/teacher? For those of you who switched from a mastery program to spiral or vice-versa, are you happy with the change? What weakness in the other type of program made you decide to change? I can't wait to hear what you all have to say.
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Wow, I'm glad we don't have the pressure of state tests where we live, and you're right that AG may possibly overwhelm him with no previous explicit grammar, but he has had "implicit" grammar. We're using IEW, and since I absolutely love grammar, we talk about it a lot. Also, the older two had had no real grammar programs until they started AG in 7th and 8th grade respectively, and it has worked very well for them. We're finishing up the 3rd season now, as I mentioned. For those of you who have used the high school reinforcements, what do you think of them? Are they effective? Necessary?
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You know, the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that the grammar of a language is really a logic-stage subject and not a grammar-stage subject. That sounds sort of crazy since it is, after all, grammar, but if you think of the grammar stage as the content of stuff and logic stage as analyzing and figuring out why things are as they are, I think it makes sense. Grammar really is an analytical process. Anybody agree or disagree? We started JAG with my 5th grader, and I sort of let it fade away because it was frustrating and he wasn't really getting it. He's a bright kid, but I decided to just wait until 7th grade and start AG instead. As you probably all know, the first season of AG covers the same stuff as all of JAG, so why duplicate the effort?
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How to get back on track for High School
Cabertmom replied to KungFuPanda's topic in High School and Self-Education Board
I love what you said about "eating your way across Italy!" :001_smile: -
weight loss . . . dr's advice
Cabertmom replied to Rose in BC's topic in General Education Discussion Board
That's very interesting, Jeanne. I'd like to hear more about it. Glad to hear that increasing your carbs helped avoid feeling tired while dieting. I've been just focusing on calories with moderate success, but I do feel pretty tired and fuzzy brained. I'm dealing with some other health issues though, so it's hard to say what the cause is. -
For what it's worth, I think of artisan bread as something more than just homemade bread. I wouldn't consider it artisan bread if it's made in a loaf shape. I wouldn't consider it artisan bread if it's "just" a baguette. It's something more--hand shaped, allowed to rise a long time, crisp on the outside, good "dent" on the inside. If you happen to have a Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook hanging about, take a look at their artisan bread recipes compared with their other homemade bread recipes.
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weight loss . . . dr's advice
Cabertmom replied to Rose in BC's topic in General Education Discussion Board
Over the years, I've joked that I gained 10 pounds with each of my 5 children that I never really lost. It's not funny anymore. I have tried a variety of things over the years but rarely stuck to anything very long. I lost about 10 pounds by just coming up with my own low-calorie diet, but it was taking so very long that I wanted something that was faster, so I went on the Atkins diet (again). I stuck with it for about a year, and I lost about 18 more pounds, but I felt sort of headachy a lot of the time. On any day when I "cheated" by having some ice cream or a hamburger and friea, I would regain 3 to 4 pounds. Water weight I guess. Eventually, I just got really sick of low-carb eating and the fact that it was so slow-going with that too. I mean, what is 18 pounds over a year? It sure beats gaining weight, but that's only about 1/3rd of a pound per week. I have come to the conclusion, like many others, that the first 5 to 10 pounds on Atkins or other low-carb diets is losing water weight. I wonder how much of that is decreased sodium. If you're not eating chips or potatoes or corn, there's just not much to put salt on. Also, it's just harder to overeat when you are limited to meat, fish, and veggies, so I think I was eating fewer calories overall. Now, I'm not absolutely positive, but I think that Atkins (and presumably Taubes) works because you feel fuller on fewer calories, but I'm not convinced that it's a healthful way to eat overall. However, if it does work for someone, that's great, because being seriously overweight is certainly not healthful either, so it may be worth the trade off at least for a while. Unfortunately, as soon as I faded off Atkins and went back to "normal" eating, I regained pretty much everything I had lost over just a couple months. A move and lots of fast food while moving later, I started using Diet Power, which is a program where you enter everything you eat, how much exercise you get, set a goal, and it slowly adjusts daily net calories (food - exercise) according to how much you lose or gain based on what you're eating and exercise. Well, it was a real wake-up call for me. I thought I was eating about 1500 calories a day. In actuality, I was sometimes hitting 3000 calories a day. The program has helped me gain a much more realistic sense of how much food = how many calories. Apparently, that's a pretty common problem. I read a study wherein they took a group of obese individuals who claimed to be eating 1000 or 1200 calories per day, had them continue to eat as they normally did, and measured their caloric intake. On average, they were underestimating their calories by 1000 calories per day! Another study took people who thought they had a hormonal problem impeding their weight loss. They put them on a supervised low-calorie diet, and they all lost weight. I'm not saying that thyroid problems and adrenal problems and insulin sensitivity can't be part of the problem, but I sort of doubt they are the entire thing (and I do have thyroid problems). Anyway, since Christmas, I've lost 10 pounds. I know I should be exercising, but finding the time (and motivation) is difficult. I am, however, finding it easier to decide not to stick something yummy in my mouth because it just isn't worth it in the long run. I'm also finding it helpful to set mini goals, because my goal of losing 50 pounds in a year sometimes seems just way too far away. I guess all in all, I have come to believe that it is mostly just the calories, but I also think it's important to nourish our bodies with good food--just not too much of it. :001_smile: -
Does Anybody Use Life of Fred All By Itself?
Cabertmom replied to Cabertmom's topic in High School and Self-Education Board
Well, after deciding to stick with Jacobs, we actually changed our minds and we're giving Life of Fred Algebra a try. We also got Life of Fred Fractions for my ds 11, who will keep going on Horizons at the same time for now, and my dd 8 is asking me when Dr. Schmidt will be done with the books for younger kids. I can barely get my ds 13 to do anything else. He's enjoying it immensely and did 4 lessons the first day. I hope it continues thusly. Unfortunately, it seems that there is just no way to do anything other than start at the beginning, which might mean lots of time "lost" in one sense. My dd 15 is not quite so enthusiastic. I think her problem so far is just learning to think outside the box and realize that just because her answer doesn't match his exactly (I rather doubt that it will very often), that's okay. He uses the answers for teaching as well. For example, in one problem, her answer was -20. So was his, but he also included a number line along with it, so she was concerned that she may not have gotten it right because she didn't have the number line as part of her answer. Sigh. You know, I care very little about grades and really don't assign numerical grades for much at all until high school, so it really bugs me that this daughter of mine seems more concerned about grades than about actually learning. How did this happen???!! -
We are confirmed Analytical Grammar users. My oldest 2 children are finishing up season 3, and they know grammar, though we didn't do any formal grammar studies before starting AG. My 6th grade ds will start AG next year. We tried JAG last year, but I decided to just wait and do AG when he was old enough. In other words, I'm completely confident that AG works and works well, but.... It's February, and there is snow on the ground. That means it's the time of year when I start wondering if what we're doing is enough or too much and figuring out how (hopefully) to make it better without throwing out the baby with the bathwater. We've been homeschooling now for about 10 years, and I go through this every year. That leads to my question. For those of you who have used Analytical Grammar, what if anything do you think one should do prior to AG? I'm thinking most especially of my 8-year-old daughter. I find myself pondering First Language Lessons. She did English for the Thoughtful Child last year and enjoyed it. She's now using IEW SWI-A, which has implicit but not explicit grammar. I don't like Easy Grammar, and I'm not convinced she really needs anything other than the occasional Mad Lib just for fun, especially since she will be doing AG in a few more years, she's reading good literature, and we use and talk about grammar a lot at home. Is anything more really needed?
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How to get back on track for High School
Cabertmom replied to KungFuPanda's topic in High School and Self-Education Board
Italian would be a great followup to Latin. It really is closer to Latin than any of the other Romance languages (the 5 languages that are directly derived from Latin, which include Spanish, Portuguese, French, Romanian, and Italian). I would go with what she is enthusiastic about. There are so many things that high school students must learn. Why not give her the leeway to learn what she wants to learn in an area where that is possible? That's my thinking. Anyway, a very good textbook is Ciao! by Carla Federici. If you combined that with something audio, I think it would stand her in good stead, especially if you are willing to learn it with her so you can converse together. We're in the same position right now. I used to live in Italy and love the language and culture, but learning Spanish would of course be far more practical. I've wanted to learn Spanish for years and think I could learn with the kids, but I would be in a much better position to actually teach Italian. -
Thanks, boscopup.
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Has anyone had experience using both Horizons Math and Math Mammoth? We used Horizons with my oldest 3 children, but my 3rd grader is really resisting it at this point. She can do it just fine and usually gets everything right, but she seems to find it a bit of a torment. On the other hand, she is really enjoying most other parts of her homeschooling. For my kindergartener, I think it introduces a few concepts too early. I'm wondering if Math Mammoth might be a good thing to switch to. Then again, I don't want to lose time switching if it won't be of real benefit. Also, can someone tell me how many lessons are in each 1-year book for the light blue series? Last of all, I just ordered Life of Fred for the older kids. Do you think that Math Mammoth would make a good foundation for Life of Fred?
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Suggestions for Humanities Course
Cabertmom replied to Cabertmom's topic in High School and Self-Education Board
Violet, I just found a Teaching Company course on the Iliad and the Odyssey by Dr. Elizabeth Vandiver on Amazon for $40. You might see if you can find the U.S. History course used there as well. I will say that for U.S., we used From Sea to Shining Sea, and I really liked it. -
Does Anybody Use Life of Fred All By Itself?
Cabertmom replied to Cabertmom's topic in High School and Self-Education Board
Well, I just talked to my kids and I think we have a tentative plan. The oldest two are going to finish Jacobs' Algebra. Even though I said I was open to the idea of switching to LOF Algebra, they said they'd like to finish what they started, which just impresses me no end. After that, we're going to switch to LOF Geometry. For my 11-year-old, he's going to finish Horizons 5 (yes, he's a year behind on Horizons, but since Horizons is about a year ahead, I'm not concerned) and then switch to LOF Fractions. He actually wants to hurry up and finish so he can start LOF, and I think he is quite capable of doing that without losing anything in the process. For my 8-year-old, I think I'll keep her with Horizons until whatever year they get through long division. Does anyone recall when that is? Seems to me they actually finish it up in the first part of grade 5, but I'm not sure. Of course, once Dr. Schmidt publishes his elementary curriculum, that decision may change. Looking at the samples, it appears to me that the few little questions may appear easy on the surface, but there's just no way to get them right unless the student truly understood the concepts. Do those of you who use LOF agree? We are all excited about Life of Fred, but if somehow it doesn't agree with them, I think I'll consider TT as a backup for high school and just return to Horizons for grade school. I would just get TT if and when it is needed. Hopefully, LOF will truly be enough for our family. FYI, if anyone has questions about placement in LOF, send me an e-mail, and I'll send you what Dr. Schmidt sent me. Can anyone compare what Jacobs Algebra covers and what LOF Algebra I covers? It may be that some of the topics are named differently, but based on what I saw, each one had some material that the other did not. I would really like to know if Jacobs Elementary Algebra is sufficient preparation for LOF Advanced Algebra or if we should consider getting LOF Beginning Algebra for a review after they are done. I fear that could take away some of the new-found enthusiasm--to have to do Algebra I all over again after spending nearly two years doing it the first time. I really want to go with Geometry next year regardless, so we could potentially do a review with LOF Beginning Algebra after geometry and before starting Advanced Algebra. I would love to hear opinions for those who have BTDT. -
You can find quite a bit of analysis on both him and Tolkien by Peter Kreeft at www.peterkreeft.com. We were listening to one of his talks on The Lord of the Rings this morning. Peter Kreeft is a rather amazing Catholic philosopher.
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First prize goes to Lizzie Bennett. She seems so very real. She admires the virtues of sweetness and detachment she sees in her sister Jane and that she lacks. At the same time, she speaks the truth with passion, but her best characteristic is that she is willing to change her opinion of Darcy as he changes and as she sees his good qualities. Second prize goes to Eowyn, the "shield maiden" from Lord of the Rings for her courage and leadership. Third prize goes to Anne in Persuasion for being such a tremendous listener, very selfless, completely competent, and steadfast in love. Fourth prize goes to Sonya in Crime and Punishment for merciful steadfastness.
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Does Anybody Use Life of Fred All By Itself?
Cabertmom replied to Cabertmom's topic in High School and Self-Education Board
I completely agree about being flexible, but I would also like to avoid the experience we have had in the past of losing a lot of time on a particular curriculum material that just didn't work out. I really, really like Life of Fred based on the samples I see, and I could see it breathing fresh life into our math. The younger 3 kids are using Horizons, which is working well overall, and the oldest 2 are struggling their way through Jacobs' Algebra after having used Horizons all the way through. I think one mistake was having them go straight from Horizons 6 to Jacobs' Algebra. Perhaps a year of pre-algebra in between would have made Jacobs a lot easier. I find myself pondering the possibility of somehow combining Life of Fred with Teaching Textbooks, but I can't think of a way that they could really be done concurrently. Overall though, I'd much rather use 1 math program instead of multiple programs for 1 child. I'm willing to use a different program for a different child if it is what that child needs, but I must say that explaining the concepts in Horizons is a lot easier now that I'm using it with the 3rd, 4th, and 5th children than it was with the 1st. I just know what has worked in the past and how to adjust the explanation for this child almost instinctively. So, while flexibility is good, I guess I think it needs to be balanced with stability. I have come to believe that the material being used needs to be a good fit for the child and, to a lesser degree as they become more independent, for the parent as well. Make sense? Anyway, I'd love to hear about more people's experience with Life of Fred as well as whether anyone has found a good way to combine it with Teaching Textbooks. They seem like polar opposites in some ways, I guess, but based on no real experience with either one other than scouring their respective websites and reading a lot of posts on this forum, it seems as though they might make up for each others' weaknesses. ??? -
Does Anybody Use Life of Fred All By Itself?
Cabertmom replied to Cabertmom's topic in High School and Self-Education Board
:bigear: -
We're in season 3 of AG with my 8th and 9th graders. We all like it. I love the fact that it makes grammar every year completely unnecessary. It is clear and thorough. That said, I started using JAG with my then 5th grader and sort of decided to just put it off entirely until he was old enough for AG--probably next year in 7th grade. It's fine, but I kind of think is was created so parents would feel better about the fact that they were doing grammar. It's really just a simpler version of season 1 of AG according to the publishers. There's nothing wrong with it--I just felt comfortable enough putting it off.
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High school in 5 years?
Cabertmom replied to Sue G in PA's topic in High School and Self-Education Board
I think having an extra year to be a direct influence to your daughter would be great. It would also give her a time to ponder where her interests and abilities truly lie. What about having her focus it on a few academic specialties, like studying one country's history in depth and/or one author or one country's literary giants? You know, so many young adults go off to college with no idea what they want to do. This could be a year to dig deeply into things that interest her and figure that out ahead of college if she doesn't already know. Another idea is an apprenticeship situation of some sort, depending on where her interests lie. -
Our "tweaked" 9th grade plans...
Cabertmom replied to MamaAkins's topic in High School and Self-Education Board
Have you considered using Mapping the World by Heart for physical geography? My husband used that to teach the children the countries of Europe and the American states so far, and I love that I can now say "Albania" for example, and they know right where it is and what's around it. -
Crossposting: Please! Help with ADD/ADHD child
Cabertmom replied to snipsnsnailsx5's topic in The Learning Challenges Board
My heart goes out to you. I can't answer the medication question because we decided not to go that route--I'm not saying that you shouldn't--just that we didn't. I have a now 13-year-old son whose behavior was very similar to yours when he was 8 and 9. It actually started much earlier. Right at about 16 months, he started hitting, biting, kicking, and throwing huge tantrums. He would have 45-minute-long temper tantrums if I forgot to let him buckle himself in the carseat. Then he would be fine, and I'd be a wreck for the rest of the day. This lasted far longer than the typical "terrible twos." He was in a Montessori preschool for one year, and that went okay. He spent all morning every day building the pink tower, but he was happy with that. He had no social interaction with the other kids though. When he was 8, we put him in school. He had the most fantastic teacher you could imagine, but whenever he couldn't do something or got stressed out, he would totally lose it. His behavior made the other kids avoid him, though he was not fully aware of it, thankfully. One time, he actually threw a desk. That was the proverbial straw, and after that, we went back to homeschooling him. Based on the teacher's own experience with her daughter, she suggested that he may well have Asperger's, and I think it's very possible, but we have never sought the formal diagnosis after coming to the conclusion that, for him now, it wouldn't do any good to have a label. It does help immensely though to know that he isn't doing it on purpose. The thing that helped more than anything was a book called The Explosive Child. The author, whose name I can't recall at the moment, stated that he went on the assumption that all children are truly doing the best they can. He recommended minimizing the amount of stress to the extent that it was possible, and he focused more on behavior than on disease names. He wasn't against medication, but he thought there were other things to be considered and tried as well. There's a lot more in the book that I wish could recall, but I can definitely say that it changed the way I approached my relationship with my son (also one of 5, by the way). I went from seeing his bad behavior as an adversarial thing to be punished (by sending him to his room mostly) to something to help him with, just like any academic difficulty. We would talk about and prepare for what I knew would be stressful situations ahead of time. I learned to see the mostly interior ramp-up before he had a total meltdown and, at least sometimes, change the course before it was too late. Slowly his behavior began to change. It wasn't overnight, but by the time he was about 11, things were much better. Now, they are better still. Here's the really good news: Somewhere along the way, he went from being this incredibly difficult and somewhat hard-to-like child to being helpful, kind, generous, truly caring, and someone who so very much wants to do what is virtuous. Most of the reason must be God's grace, but I think that part of His grace was giving my husband and me the ability to help him. I'm pretty sure that we would have truly lost him if he had had to stay in school. It's not all smooth waters all the time, but when he does lose it, it is never as bad as it used to be, and he makes great efforts not to. He still has really poor spelling (AAS is helping with that) and is a rather slow reader, but he remembers everything he reads, is interested in many things, and best of, he went from being incredibly self-centered to being anything but.