nd293
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Posts posted by nd293
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Honestly, if I wanted it done, I would look for accurate information on the CDC website or ask a doctor. In my understanding from what I am reading online, vaccinating your kids for chickenpox is not OK when you are pregnant, but it is not an issue with a small baby.
I was really hoping my dd would simply catch the disease, and although close friends had it, she never has. It's a particularly nasty disease for an adult to have, from the adults I've spoken to who've had it. We'll vaccinate around puberty.
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I did a set before I got bored of the process. Yes, I used Google Image search to find pictures.
I did the same. In retrospect it would have been quicker (and more enjoyable) to simply get a pile of old magazines and cut pictures, pasting them to index cards and writing the words.
Nikki
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My kids do get sick but less often than my friends' kids seem to, and we are out and about all over the place.
Same here. Honestly, I think it's just genetic, although my Inner Mom says that the fact that we have never been concerned about germs or dirt has built strong immune systems from a very early age, and that conversely (and paradoxically) not overloading their systems with playschool germs in the first 2 years also helped. They were breasfed for 2.5 and 4yrs respectively - that's a big one, I think, especially in the first two years. Also no anti-bacterial soaps, wipes etc. We also avoid doctors and antibiotics where-ever possible.
Mine are super picky eaters, at least in the first few years - fruit and veggies were garnish more than nutrients. Vitamins only happen when I remember to buy them.
Nikki
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I don't clean as often as I should.
I don't scrapbook, although I keep the pile of stuff I bought 6 years ago!
I don't read newspapers - only online news.
I don't bath the kids every day.
I don't do Facebook.
I don't shop unless in desperate need of something.
I don't blowdry or style my hair.
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There is laminate floor in some areas of the house we bought. As they are level with the ceramic tiles, I'm assuming they were put down at the same time. The tiles are beyond savings - and I pulled vinyl flooring off the tiles myself, and removed all the glue, so if I could keep the tiles, I would! The laminate floor is damaged - a few cracked boards and some places where the laminate has chipped off on the edges where boards join. Still, they are in better condition than the tiles. So - they're not as long lasting as real timber flooring, but they seem to last better than ceramic tiles.
I believe that a really good underlay is the secret giving them a better "sound".
We'll lay either laminate or floating / engineeered flooring, and will do it ourselves.
Nikki
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I didn't find it at all too wordy. In fact, I think it's great that she is able to get excited enough about a simple one-paragraph writing assignment that *some* would find dull that she puts in the effort to embellish it enough to make it a pleasure to read. I don't think it's full of unnecessary embellishments (fluff and filler) so I wouldn't count off--I would give credit for her going above & beyond.
I agree. I would count this as a very competent book review summary, with the exception of the second sentence, which does sound a little "fluffy" to me in the overall context. I find the tone reminicent of one of the editorial review on Amazon.
Here's the product description from Amazon, just for reference:
The Ninth Legion marched into the mists of Northern Britain—and they were never seen again. Four thousand men disappeared and their eagle standard was lost. It’s a mystery that’s never been solved, until now . . .
Marcus has to find out what happened to his father, who led the legion. So he sets out into the unknown, on a quest so dangerous that nobody expects him to return.
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Ds can rhyme when reciting Mother Goose (which we do a lot here) or when I play fill-the-blank word with him, but otherwise he can't rhyme. :confused:
If I say "peach" for example and ask him to rhyme, even giving examples, he gives me "pot, pan, potato" etc. He definitely gets phonetic sounds and is matching the front sound of the word rather than the back sound.
Dd could rhyme by 3yrs, and was starting to read at 4yrs; ds turns 4yrs in a couple of day and can't recognise the R at the beginning of his name yet. I'm not worrying, but I do realise that we are going to be operating on a very different learning schedule than we did with dd. I don't expect to have done more than letter recognition by the end of this year. I won't start to teach reading until he can "hear" letter sounds in the ways that you mention - rhyming and first letter sounds. I do think that's a very important first step.
Nikki
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As long as we are disclosing, my children make their own breakfast most of the time. We let them stay up late on school nights sometimes and let them sleep in too. :D
In the interests of truth:
- I handed each of my kids a large bag of chips for lunch yesterday
- It is holidays right now, and the TV is on pretty much all day.
- Ds3 hasn't had a bath in several days - he did swim in the sea yesterday though.
And see how neatly I fudged the facts by adding phrases like "it is holidays right now" (implying school time is different) or "he did swim in the sea" (implying that cleanliness was the goal of that swim). Wow - I lie even when I'm trying to tell the truth.
- I handed each of my kids a large bag of chips for lunch yesterday
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UGH! No words of wisdom here. I'm dreading the day. Just lots of hugs. :grouphug: And chocolate.
Chocolate has always been the way I dealt with hormone-induced mood swings, so I'd buy a big slab and share it with her! :)
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Our rented house had an electricity-boosted solar hot water system. In summer the water was always hot. On a sunny winter day in Australia the solar system worked fine, and we managed even on the odd cloudy days. Several cloudy days in a row resulted in only tepid water (we discovered this by accident as the booster had tripped). We will eventually switch to gas-boosted solar hot water in the house we bought. They're very common here, and I've never heard anyone complain.
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My friend diagnosed herself. She was very near the end of her pregnancy, so they delivered as soon as they confirmed the diagnosis. She was fine, baby was fine. As I recall, she thought in retrospect that she had also had it with her first dc, as there was some issue at birth. Everything was fine with that one too, but there had been some sort of complication.
The itching drove her a tiny bit insane, though :-) Sorry you're going through this!
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Which of these partial sentences is correct and why?
1) Years of perfecting our recipes HAS bestowed upon us...blah, blah, blah.
OR
2) Years of perfecting our recipes HAVE bestowed upon us...blah, blah, blah.
Hoping I don't make an idiot of myself and that a year of MCT grammar has paid off ... definitely the second. Your basic sentence is "Years HAVE bestowed." The phrase "of perfecting our recipes" is the prepositional phrase, as is "upon us". You relate the verb to the subject (i.e. "HAVE" to "years") and not to the prepositional phrase.
Am I right? Am I right?
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How depressing. And it's not snobbish to expect people to be able to write correctly in their own language...
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You know, my impression of MCT (I've used parts of the Town level, EV, and have the ML1 level, which I haven't truly "used") is that it's fabulous as a *supplement* -- but it assumes kids that are receiving more traditional grammar instruction as well.
:iagree:Yes yes yes! You seldom hear this in MCT threads, but I have always assumed that gifted ed in PS is in addition to ordinary classes, or at least assumes that children have asbsorbed the basics through brief exposure, outside interest or background. It's supposed to make connections and stimulate thought, not simply cover the basics in a fun way. All kids could do with a fun curriculum - I assume a gifted curriculum is aiming at more than that.
Could be I'm totally wrong, of course :001_smile:
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This is an observation based on the Australian situation, but it might be applicable - it can be difficult to get medical practitioners to work in outlying areas, so qualified immigrants can get in more easily if they are willing to sign contracts to work in these areas. The geographic requirement doesn't last forever, or course, so after a few years the immigrant could move to whichever part of the country they choose. You are left, of course, with an outlying area that might need another immigrant to fill their medical needs. (In Australia this doesn't only apply to the medical field, but to any field where there is a shortage in a regional area).
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Square foot gardening is a winner for yield for the area and ease of use. If water is an issue where you are, look into wicking beds. I set up a raised, square foot, wicking bed which seems to be working, apart from the fact that I set it up just as summer hit, and summer in Perth is not pretty. From my very limited experience I think you might have to look at your first year as an experiment - I planted rocket, spinach, lettuce and chard/silverbeet, for instance, and only the chard has done really well. I like young chard as a salad leaf, so lext year I will plant a lot more of the stuff, and skip the lettuce and spinach altogether as summer salad crops. The rocket is kind of surviving, so worth another try.
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I'm envious that you made the switch. We did try MM, but it wasn't for her, but I'm not sure that it wasn't the format of the text. To much on the page, kwim? How long did it take YOU to learn how to do Singapore math?
Let's preserve my dignity and just say that dd got it before I did!
We really did take it slow - dd10 is generally academically solid, but we went back a Grade for Singapore, doing Gr3 in Gr4. We also did not do the full curriculum - we used one review book and one problem sum book, so we had lots of time for the problem sums.
This year I am throwing caution to the wind, and we are skipping Gr4 altogether and moving onto Gr5 right away (we do a calendar year school year). I am a little anxious, but we will just work at it slowly...
Nikki
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You can just say it. I have two widely spaced children, and the problem for me is when I cannot leave the older one, but the event is not suitable for the younger. We just lost access to classes at the Science museum because of this - I used to stay in the building with ds while dd attended classes - now I am supposed to actually be in the classroom with her. This thanks to badly behaved HS kids giving us all a bad name...
If I was told I could leave the older, but couldn't bring the younger I would do a little happy dance as soon as I was out of sight ;-) If I was then asked to occasionally play the role of the extra chaperone I would make an effort to find somewhere else for ds to be on that day, but would need it to be understood that if I was needed to help, he might have to be with me.
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Does it feel wrong to you to wear layers indoors? I'm usually wearing three layers, so having the house at 60F feels very comfortable.
It doesn't get cold-cold here, but my rule is no heater unless we are wearing two pairs of socks and 2 long top layers.
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At 8yrs my dd was doing much of her work independently, so I don't see a problem with that. And I did give her a sheet to work through each day. I am not sure that at 8yrs she would deal with a week's worth of work in front of her - I think she would have found it overwhelming and demotivating. I'd be more likely to attach the "not nagging" to a single day's work, with the penalties applying on a day-to-day basis, e.g. if the work isn't finished, no playing, TV, electronic media, something like that.
Nikki
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We switched to Singapore halfway through Horizons 3. They are very strong on word problems, and have a system of drawing the problems out that is very helpful. I bought a couple of books that had worked answersin the back so we could work out how they tackled the problems. It was a really, really rough transition, but dd came to love problems sums. I can't talk to the US Singapore books, but if you buy directly from Singapore there are some books with worked answers. I think we used Classroom Maths Workbook and Classroom Maths Problem Sums, both from the SG Box.
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Basically i need to review everything we learnt in the first 3/4 of last year (we work on a calendar year). So K and 1st. My kids simply will not rework what they have already done so that isn't an option. Is there a review book of some kind?
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I do need to at least get DD back on track because we will be moderated for our homeschooling this year. Meaning someone will be out to the house to review our materials and progress. It is a mandatory requirement in our state and you can't just 'opt out'. :glare:
Welcome back, Amber.
Two things here:
First, I am not sure that reviewing is really necessary. In my experience, very little new is added in each year within the primary years, and almost everything is reviewed. So if you learned about nouns or addition in Gr 1, you will most certainly cover both in Gr 2 and Gr 3. In my opinion it would be much easier to add a bit of review to the begininng of a more advanced section than to review separately. And to be honest, unless you are using programmes that incorporate a lot of review, there will be extended periods between covering the same topic in different years, anyway. If they forgot over a break, they will forget from one year to the next! It's still "in there", though, and each review improves recall. That's the nature of learning, as I see it.
Second, unless you have specific information about your moderator to suggest otherwise, I think you are much more concerned than you need to be about that. My moderator was patently disinterested in looking at materials, somewhat interested in seeing what dd was reading & writing, and very interested in chatting to her about a range of topics. Your children won't be tested on what they know, and don't even need to be present. In your shoes, I would simply state how far we got in 2010, say that family circumstances led to a long break, and that we were moving forward to the next level / grade, and reviewing where necessary to make up for the lack of continuity at the end of 2010.
Hope that helps!
Nikki
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Ironically, this warm and wet weather is fabulous for the vege garden.
Conditions are pretty horrible for gardening in WA right now. I have a wicking bed, which seemed the best option for the drought, but only the chard/silverbeet have really coped with the heat. I hadn't thought about shortages, might have to try harder with the garden...
We've been in Australia just short of two years, and this is the second major disaster (Black Saturday fires and now the Queensland floods). I'm wondering if this is some sort of trend relating to extreme weather / long term weather patterns or just a fluke.
The footage showing the scale of the flooding has just been unbelievable.
Nikki
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I understand it's really important to taper off slowly. I was once on Effexor for 6 months, and the Dr tapered off like this:
Wk 1: 2 tablets per day
Wk 2: 1.5 tablets and 2 tablets on alternating days
Wk 3: 1.5 tablets per day
Wk 4: 1 tablet and 1.5 tablets on alternating days
Wk 5: 1 tablet per day
Wk 6: 0.5 tablet and 1 tablet on alternating days
Wk 7: 0.5 tablets per day
Wk 8: 0.5 tablets on alternating days
This worked incredibly well - I never had a single withdrawal symptom. I did have to switch from a slow release capsule type to a different form of the same meds that I could cut in half.
Hang in there...
Nikki
What if your dh REALLY wanted you to homeschool but....
in General Education Discussion Board
Posted · Edited by nd293
The way I see it, if I was prepared to work to cover costs of a carefully chosen school (i.e. not just dump them in any available school) and school was not detrimental to them in any way (and I recognise that it truly is to some kids) and I was available for them in the afternoons, then I could not be expected to do something that was making me genuinely unhappy.
On the other hand, if I wanted to be a SAHM so I could have coffee with the other Moms while the kids were at school? That would be a purely selfish decision, and dh would be reasonable to oppose that, and it would be unreasonable for me to then object to homeschooling.
Edited to add: I should add that I wanted to homeschool, and that dh would be quite happy if the kids were in (any) school and I was bringing in money. That said, homeschooling does not make me happy - it is something I feel I should be doing. Every other option feels wrong, rather than homeschooling feeling right. I am slowly, slowly starting to see a path for the future which might involve a better balance for all of us, but I also see it will be years in the traveling, so for now I will have to work on me.