nd293
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Posts posted by nd293
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Congratulations! I am so happy for you all. She is beautiful.
Nikki
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Dd9 is reviewing Grade 3 Singapore Maths after shifting from Horizons and we are already running into this "show your working" issue. I am insisting. It is a necessary skill to cope with advanced maths, even at high school level, and like so many things, best learned early.
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This sounds good and all, but everytime I look at a book used in CM studies, my dd would die of boredom. Lack of pictures, the entire different wording due to eras. It seems that they're dry, while great literature, I agree, it doesn't always get dd interested. It's like they do away with pictures too early. While I love the concept, it seems, well, boring. Where's the kid's stuff? KWIM?
I think early exposure to "older style" literature is key. If she hasn't had that, back up, and start from the beginning, as another poster mentioned. Dramatised audio books can be a good introduction to this style of language. Try the BBC's "The Children's Treasury" with dramatisations of Treasure Island, The Railway Children, The Secret Garden, Tom's Midnight Garden, Swallows and Amazons & Heidi. Unabridged audio books can also be easier than reading an older book - I sometimes can't find the "rhythm" when reading older books.
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All the best with resolving your daughter's problems. I am sure you have looked at all the obvious causes, but I was just wondering about thyroid problems? My aunt suffered and she was a ghost of her normal self - lifeless with exhaustion. Sorry - you must get sick of people bringing up "ideas", but you never know where a breakthrough will come from.
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We didn't circ ds, although dh is. But I witnessed a circ when I was working on a kibbutz many years ago. I guess it's interesting to compare all the controversy and medical aspects to a "natural" approach to circ - in the Jewish culture it is simply done on day 8, and that's that. Everyone met in the dining room, family and baby were at the front, rabbi did something to baby, baby yelled, everyone cheered. All over apart from the celebration. Don't know the baby's view of things, though!
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Not exactly what you're asking about, but the Ikea chairs we have (white wooden chairs we use at our desks) are holding up very well structurally, but the paint work chips and wears off easily. We've had them two years, and they've moved country. They get used as climbing equipment and get dragged around and used to make forts etc so I think it's fair going! I will have to repaint them at some time, though.
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I'm with Anne in Australia - "oh-she-ah-nee-uh".
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A Trip Around the World is aimed at classroom use. Here's a typical lesson:
List of basic facts - population, language, government, currency etc
Small map of region / continent showing country
Black and white picture of flag with description
Two or three paragraphs for the teacher
9 "Facinating facts" - a couple of sentences each
A page of language activites -everyday expressions, numbers, colours, days of the week.
Two recipes
2-3 actitivities (for Kenya - make clay animals, discuss animals you might see on safari, go to the zoo, make a motto for your classroom, learn about the largest tribe and compare to city-life.
A large flag to colour
A large map to colour (and i suppose label although capital, rivers, mountains etc not marked)
A page of animal pictures - select safari animals, cut and use in a craft
A list of picture books
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A predominantly Muslim country is not a healthy place for an American these days. Either case, in your situation I'd pack up my family and leave.
Home is where the heart is :). We would not have packed up and left our home under in the Middle East under similar circumstances. We would have been cautious. We could have kept abreast of developments. We would have considered embassy advise (while recognising that they are going to tend to excessive caution). But we chose to consider where we lived our home. We wouldn't leave home at the first sign of trouble.
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Heather,
Are there links between your school and the local Muslim community? A way of getting accurate information on local sentiments on the issues? We were in a small Muslim country, which might have made things different, but the school was in constant contact with the Ministry of Education on any issues affecting the school, from outbreaks of illness to inclement weather (if you live in a desert, rain can close schools!) or political concerns. Does your school have those sorts of link to government? Or links to a local Muslim school?
I am sure that your senses will be heightened at this time - if anything, you are likely to over-read danger, so if you are feeling safe, I imagine things are not too tense. Sadly, though, it only takes one extremist (of any flavour, religious or secular) to make things go tragically wrong for others.
I agree with other posters who emphasise personal links and goodwill between you/your school/family and the local community at this time, and indeed all times.
Take care and we are thinking of you!
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Throughout the Arab speaking world the word Allah is used to refer to God, not a the "personal name of God" but just as we use the term God. Allah is used by Arabic-speaking Christians and Muslims alike. The breath of ignorance is staggerin
And even if we were talking the "personal name of God", from a religious point of view, it is the same God. Clearly a political, not religious issue.
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There is a lot of negativity about American healthcare, but when the wealthy of the world gets sick, they don't go to Malaysia (just pickin' on you since that's where you are, but insert any other place in the world if you'd rather....)
Is this true? Heather disagreed in her response - saying she does use Malaysian hospitals. When we were in Oman, the US embassy sent their staff home to give birth. There was no basis for this. Hospitals in Oman were excellent (complete placenta previa, emergency C-section birth here, so I have had experience). And the US was the only country I knew of who did this.
Wealthy Omanis who needed specialised care often went to Malaysia or Thailand (due to cost and treatment options). These countries have excellent reputations for medical care (as does Singapore).
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How old is dd? A lot of young girls don't have much in the way of hips, and it can be really difficult to get the pants to stay up. Dd9 also hates the feel of anything around her waist. Elasticated waists are better, as are the ones with adjustable elastic waistbands.
Otherwise, I tend to buy longer T-shirts / tunic top style tops for her.
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I think you really need to make sure your husband has a realistic idea of what children achieve in K first!
I "schooled" very haphazardly with dd (although following WTM principles), and she was still well ahead of her peers when she went to school at 5 years, and stayed that way until she left school again at 7 years.
I think the big things to focus on if you want a child that "shines" at that age is to read, read, read to them, and stick to classics (The Secret Garden, Heidi etc) in the unabridged versions. Lots of audio books too. Limit TV. That will ensure a fabulous vocabulary, which always impresses. (It can amuse too: Dd was 4yrs old and ill with a fever in the middle of the night when she sat bolt upright in bed and said "I'm an invalid" before collapsing back to the pillows.)
I think another thing to focus on is mythology. It will definitely impress your husband if they make casual references to the Greek gods.
You could also have fun with SongSchool Latin.
If my suggestions seem a little shallow, it's because I don't think there's any trick to surpassing academic requirements for K. Just read and follow the recommendations of The Well-Trained Mind. But making your husband realise this might need a more "blunt force", approach.
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I don't think it would hurt after she mixed the alcohol and pain meds!
Poor you! Do we get a link to the video on YouTube?
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I think that when people are generalising, they tend to remember negative experiences, rather than positive. When we were expats, I met some wonderful Americans. But, what comes to mind when you say "American expats" to me would be the woman who said, when we were discussing the wearing of appropriate attire in a Muslim country "Well, I know it's their country. But I'm an American."
Why is that? I'm a dyed in the wool pessimist. But even so, perhaps, on the deepest level, I know that most people are good. Or at least not bad. Most of my interations with people are "average". Most people I meet are "nice". So the ones that stand out, the ones that are remembered, are the "not nice" ones.
Then again... there are countries and peoples which tend to be positively stereotyped, so how does that fit into my theory?
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We're in the process of putting dd's name down, so will see what happens. There are actually 2 Montessori schools here offering IB diplomas for school-leavers, plus at least 3 others offering IB. Only one is within our travelling distance / price range / (non)religious parameters. The prices of some private schools...!
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I've also been there, done that, read the books etc etc.
I think it's genetic, personally. I don't sleep well (I mean, even apart from the fact that someone's waking me up 5 times a night) and neither of the kids do. I thought it couldn't possibly happen to me again after dd9, but it did... Dd also started to sleep through around 5yrs. Of course, no-one "sleeps through", really, it's what you do when you wake that counts. We drew the line on getting out of bed and coming through to find us while were watching TV with dd when she was 6yrs, which was a little late. I took her back to bed one night, she jerked away from me in a rage, flung herself onto her bed, hit the headboard and cut her face above the eyebrow. It had a cautionary effect: "Go straight back to bed. Remember what happened last time???"
Ds is nearly 3 and no end in sight, although I am much tougher with him (I'm older, need my sleep more!) and I can see that it helps. He sleeps with me, but I just ignore him when he wakes, except to say "I'm sleeping!" when he asks for milk. He cries, but settles himself now. That happens 2 or 3 times a night, I guess.
Sorry if this is incoherent, but, you guessed it, I had a bad night with the kids (both were in bed with me, so they woke to fight about whose feet are where).
It will pass. Hang in there. Be tough. Look for a middle road between Cry-it-Out and No-Cry, is my advise. I'm trying to...
Oh, and nap during the day!
Nikki
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Dd spent 2 years at an IB school - she was in the Primary Years programme. I was extremely impressed, and will do everything in my power to have dd graduate with an IB diploma. Although they take a slower start to formal academics than I like, they start building on academic skills like research and reporting / presenting very early. Even something like the "parent-teacher conference" - at dd's school the child met with parent and teacher, showed off a portfolio, and outlined their goals for the next year. That was when dd was in Grade 1. They expect children to be responsible, proactive learners. The Montessori school Amber mentions states that the IB fits very well with the Montessori approach.
The international outlook and strong focus on community service are the features I like best (aside from the educational aspects). Students require at least 100 hours to graduate - might be more, it was a while ago that I looked at it, and I forget exactly. For younger students (not primary) it is 20 hours per year.
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We are in the same position - I plan to do 2.5 SOTW books this year then fall in line with the 4-year cycle next year, for logic stage.
My plan is to select specific themes from each book and concentrate on those. Maybe 4 themes per book. At the same time we will listen to the CDs, hopefully in the evening as family listening, or in the car, etc. So she will have a good overview of some important periods or peoples (e.g. Vikings, Medieval Life in Europe, etc) but also have heard all of the SOTW books in chronological order.
Nikki
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But I will say that the examples you have pulled out for comparing the 2 are some of the easier things students are asked to do in Horizons 3.
Oh, absolutely. This is also in the first lesson in the Singapore review workbook we're using, so it's presumably amongst the easiest things in that book too. What I was trying to do was compare like-with-like. We've finished the first book for Horizons 3, and not found any questions about place value asked with any sort of complexity. I think it might best be described like this: we found that Horizons was focused on maths facts, and Singapore on maths problems. In Singapore, even the simplest facts seem to be asked as part of a more complex problem which requires analysis. Bottom line is, after a year of Horizons, dd could not past a placement test for the same level of Singapore. In fact, she flat out failed.
Sonlight has placement tests for both Singapore and Horizons available for free, so if you are weighing up those two programmes, it is worth looking at the tests in order to gain some understanding of what the programmes expect of the students.
I don't dislike Horizons. We changed to Horizons for specific reasons. But I am definitely not happy with dd's performance after using Horizons, so I guess, for us, it turns out that other factors are more important than the ones that had us select Horizons in the first place. Maths programmes are tricky...
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I have no doubt that Horizons is less challenging that Singapore.
I was just having an email discussion about this with a friend, so I will quote my e-mail to her. It compares Horizons 3 with Singapore 3. The Singapore examples are from the Classroom maths Workbook, once of their review books. The Horizons examples are typical of what we have seen in 6 months of the programme.
For instance. Horizons 3 has been asking her "Form the greatest 4 digit number with 8, 7, 1, 5". Singapore asks: "Add 20 tens to the second smallest 4-digit even number". Horizons asks "What is the value of 8 in 1178". But Singapore asks "Find the sum of the values which all the digits "8" represents in (178+711)." Or "A number is greater than 38 tens by 20 hundreds. What is this number". She just doesn't / can't process so many bits of info at once. She's having to learn to analyse the questions and work out its parts before finding the solution, which is a very "mathsy" skill.
I gave dd a Singapore placement tests, and she had absolutely no clue how to approach the problems. She coped OK if we went down a level, but still not great.
I am using a Singapore book with worked solutions, which is very useful.
I should say that we went to Horizons after trying Singapore because I wanted the spiral approach. I really liked the way Horizons gently built up skills. But having compared to Singapore 3, I would have to say that Horizons is not for the "mathy type". We're sticking with Singapore!
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House has already slipped back into chaos after the pre-New Year clean, and dd has school holiday swimming lessons daily this week (a brilliant Australian govt initiative where swimming lessons cost just $1 per day for 10 days of 45 min lessons) but we start nonetheless...
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I wonder the exact same things, Jenny! At times I spend longer setting up an activity than ds-almost-3 spends doing it. Then there's the clean-up time... Dd is 9, Gr 4, and we are really ramping up the homeschooling, which has led to a lot more teacher-intensive resources - things that need discussion and reading. I'm in a state of panic - when am I supposed to do this all with her? A discussion in 10 minute bites is not particularly coherent or enlightening, I find. I mean, if you're the Mom of a toddler, when did you last have a coherent conversation :-)
I am *so* glad I finally read Liping Ma's book.
in General Education Discussion Board
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Biggest mistake I ever made - switching from Singapore when dd was bored with the number of problems. Should just have worked quickly through what she could do, and moved on. We are back on Singapore, and trying to make up for lost time. You have me thinking I should take some time off the books we're using to focus on mental maths...