Ditto. I have lived in several major tourist cities and have travelled a lot internationally. I have seen many, many non-Americans and Americans (USians?) being loud and under my culturally defined version of "rude". I really struggle with saying "obnoxious", because that word is so loaded with value judgments. After all, the behavior of children, teens, older people, insert group of choice here can be seen as obnoxious depending on who you ask. But the intent is not to be obnoxious. Old people dont walk slowly to be obnoxious. Kids dont have loads of energy to be obnoxious. Teens are not self-absorbed to be obnoxious. The middle-aged are not super busy to be obnoxious. But these "in general" behaviors are much more stage-of-life driven rather than because of some negative intrinsic property. Can the same not be said for different cultures? Or the types of people who have enough money/time/energy to travel abroad?

My language experience was not like this at all. My kids are learning Latin, which I think will be equally "effective" in "teaching empathy and bringing awareness that others live differently." Thank goodness foreign language acquisition is not the only means of doing this. Our family spends a lot of time with the homeless, the elderly, and the very sick/dying (often these categories overlap). Not only do I not need a foreign language for this, I didn't need to spend any money and/or leave my city. If the bolded is the goal, there are far more accessible methods of achieving that with a much more direct impact on all involved.

The WTM forum is killing me with book recommendations. I would have more time to read them if I spent less time here. But if I spent less time here, I wouldnt know about all these great books...

It is a sound that reminds me of the "gb" sound in certain African languages. Not that it sounds like Nguyen, but rather that it is a blending of the letters and mouth position that we dont have in English that I know of. So it mostly sounds like Win, but the initial w has something more in it that is like blending an n and a w together. But I am not Vietnamese, so I could just be talking out my rear.

Another way I differentiate: We are reading aloud The Last of the really Great Whangdoodles. Our writing prompt for Tuesday will be "In the book, The Prock is the protagonist..." My 4th grader will have to turn that into a thesis statement with 3 supporting sentences and a conclusion. My 2nd grader will do a "because, but, so" on it. Actually, I might have my 4th grader do a "bc, but, so" and make the "because" a thesis statement with 3 supporting sentences and a conclusion, and the next day, do the same for the "but" sentence. Oh, I like this idea! I want to get them very flexible at understanding different perspectives in information.

We come up with lots of thesis statements verbally. For instance, if we are watching a Crash Course: World History, at the end of the 10min episode, we will each come up with 2 thesis statements (e.g. "African slaves had slightly better working conditions in North Amercan than on sugar plantations, which led to more slaves being born into slavery vs imported." "While the Columbian Exchange provided some benefits for the Americas, it had an overall negative effect on those civilzations."). We then talk through supporting details. I then have my reluctant writer pick one idea that we talked about and put that thesis statement on a white board, which he copies. He then comes up with supporting sentences on his own, with me available to help. We then work on a concluding sentence, drawing from transition words, etc. The next day we revise it together and he writes out a polished copy.

If anyone has any concrete suggestions for how to guide him to improve this, I am all ears!!!

Obviously, it needs a lot of work. But, it has a thesis sentence and the rest supports that thesis. I told him the reading audience was familiar with the tales so write with that in mind. I did not want a summary of the tale. He read a highly abridged version of about 15 tales. He then wrote an outline of his composition. He then got this on paper. After that (probably should have done before the paper), we read the direct translated pardoner's tale, the part in the prologue about the pardoner, and a shorter poetry version of the pardoner's tale. He will use this info to help flesh it out. I told him that the outline is like a skeleton and a rough draft is the muscles and ligaments. Now we need to get skin and hair on this thing. This week we are working on transition words, orphan quotes, quoting from Canterbury Tales and not just the Bible, stronger word choices, and sentence variety. The following week will be editing, citing sources, polished copy. He has never done anything like this before. We spent about 5 hours walking and talking through different ideas. It might not be the best rough draft, but he has learned so much from this assignment already and gotten a lot more out of the book!

Here is the very rough draft of my son's Canterbury Tales composition: The Pardoner’s tale: Death’s murderers is the tale in Canterbury Tales that has the most Christian ideas. Greed is one of the things Jesus warns against, and the characters Dip, Cut, and Grab get very greedy. In the beginning of the tale when the characters make their plan to kill Death, they are very prideful, and in trying to destroy death they are wanting to be like God. Insert concluding sentence. Dip, Cut and Grab are greedy because they don’t want to share money with each other. Throughout Jesus’s ministry he warned against greed, ‘Then he said “Beware! Guard against every kind of greed. Life is not measured by how much you own.” Luke 12:15’. In the story Cut, Grab and Dip find a motherload of money which causes them to kill each other for it. This is another quote from the bible against greed, ‘Wealth is treacherous, and the arrogant are never at rest. They open their mouths as wide as the grave, and like death, they are never satisfied. In their greed they have gathered up many nations and swallowed many peoples’ Habakkuk 2:5. Dip, Cut and Grab get very greedy over gold when the bible warns against that. In the beginning Dip, Cut and Grab are prideful because they think they can kill death willy-nilly. These are some verses that talk abought pride. ‘Pride goes before destruction and haughtiness before a fall’ Proverβs 16:18. ‘They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God’ 2 Timothy 3:4. Don’t be prideful cause it will lead to bad stuff. When Dip, Cut and Grab try to kill death they are trying to be like god because it will make them immortal. This is antichristian because the bible warns against that. ‘“God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it and you will be like God knowing both good and evil” Genesis 3:5’ ‘“You must not have any other god but me” Exodus 20:3’. Dip, Cut and Grab try to be like God causing them to kill each other. It is very ironic that the tail is against greed yet the pardoner is very greedy himself. This tale shows that greed, pride and trying to be God will lead to death and destruction. Because of this the pardoner’s tale has the most Christian ideas because Jesus warned against it.

Thanks for doing that work for me😁. I am going to be that old lady that never adapts well to new tech or apparently google search!

I would actually recommend buying a cheap CD player (this is what we did). I strongly dislike my kids having access to screens, esp when I am not around. A CD player solves that problem. Plus, if she has access to a good library system, there are so many audiobooks on CD. I dont know if Kathy Troxel's songs are downloadable, but they are on CD. The geography CD is good (the updated one, where it divides Africa into sections). My son was 6 when we got the Story of the World audiobooks on CD for him. He loved them and has listened to them all at least 4x through each. What I love about listening to things is that my kids would always build stuff (blocks, legos, etc) while listening.

This is exactly what we do. Review takes 3 days; we dont do the challenge review. Half of the proof problems my son just tells me the proof. But he is doing a lot of math problems every week. We are 2 weeks ish from finishing geometry and the Counting and Probability book came in the mail and I am so excited for a bit of a break! It looks so much more pleasant!

2nd. This is one of my all-time favorite threads. So much wisdom here.

6 hours ago, Shellydon said: Absolutely they gripe, scoff, complain, throw their hands in the air. I've been chewed out in Chinese a few times. They crowd the sidewalks in such a way that is impossible to move around them causing people to be late to work. But it's perfectly fine. Travel is stressful even if it's fun and it is hard to adjust to a completely different culture. I would never ever call a group of people from another country ugly. Ever. I never fuss and complain of them or go on message boards and be little a group from another country. I never hear anyone doing the same. We have been considering an international trip with another group of homeschoolers but I have now nixed the idea. Quoting @Shellydon (I dont want to go back and find this quote). Darn, now I cannot unbold... I assumed by her statement she meant that she nixed the idea of going as a group, not going entirely. I must say, that groups of tourists from most places are far more noticeable (and often irritating) than just a few people.

Thanks!

Perhaps the earliness is my "Dutch people time". The waiting in the car until 1 minute prior to on time is my "German time" 🤣

I dont have a dog in this fight and I can see how it bugs you, however, to put a different perspective on what she might have meant (and I really apologize if this comes across as #Amerisplaining).... It might be like if someone from outside of my religion was telling me something negative about my religion and I didn't understand what they were saying or what they meant by what they were saying. But then someone from my faith explains it to me. Even if they use the exact same words as the previous person, I can see where I might be able to understand it better. Not because of any negative association with the first person, but because I view the second person as coming from an insider perspective.

I had to laugh at this. My ancestry is German. I am fairly certain that if I said I was on "German time", it would mean that, as usual, I showed up 15 minutes early to something. 🤣

Thank you! My kid is advanced in math, but is not at all a math contest person. The 3D stuff was interesting, but it seemed it got in the weeds pretty fast. Either that or we are just burned out on random shapes. Ch 18 is intro to trig. Ch 19 is problem solving strategies, which we are not doing.

I will also say that I live in a part of the US that I am not particularly fond of (we move a lot) and that many people not from here have a love/hate (mostly hate) relationship with. I have had to be very careful in monitoring how I speak of my feelings about this part of the country to those who are born and raised here. Other transplants can sympathize with me and some of the crazy out here, but a lot of what drives me crazy about here is unnoticed to those who have always swum in these waters (most of whom are lovely people). When I travel to other places and people start bad-mouthing where I live and the people who live there, I am quick to defend the innocent! Not everyone who lives here is a total nutjob!!! Many of us think this place is crazy, too. But please dont disparage me because of a couple high-profile nutters.

I have thought that many a time, when people say a stereotype about a group I am a member of (religious, homeschooling, area of country, etc) and say, "but of course I dont mean you!!!!" Especially if the stereotype is an observation + judgement, or if there is a "two sides to the same coin" faults are similar to our virtues, type of thing. For instance, I am not good at conflict. That is a neutral observation. "Anne is doormat who cannot defend herself and is a terrible mom who would let strangers yell at her kids for no reason" is a judgement on that observation. The positive side of not being good at conflict is that I tend to go out of my way to not give offense and I retreat quickly. The bad side is that I tend not to stick up for myself.

We own a fancy chemistry kit with fun chemicals (Thames and Kosmos Chem3000) and it is one of the best ones for what it includes, and it contains a manual with "over 333 experiments". The experiments are cohesive, thoughtful, and generally good. I also have several years of doing professional chemistry so I know what I am doing. And I STILL find this kit to be somewhat miserable. I wasnt able to get about half the experiments to do what they were supposed to do. Or if they did, it was so underwhelming or completely obvious to not be worth the effort. Perhaps I am very spoiled with having had access to professional labs with all kinds of fun toys and chemicals. 🤣

We just hit analytic geometry (ch17), which is a breath of fresh air, because it is familiar. Chs 13-16 were just unpleasant. I dont think they were necessarily too difficult (although each problem could take a while!), but after a while, finding so many obscure side lengths and figuring out the drawing to begin with was just a pain. Ch 13 is "Power of a Point", and chs 14-16 are 3D geometry, which sounds like fun, but was just a bit much. We are starting Counting and Probability in a few weeks and both of us are so glad that there are videos with the lessons. Thank God.

I say the following as a science person (in my education, work experience, and inclination): none of the bolded is necessary, esp before high school. I love science and value science. My kids know a lot of science. My little home is stuffed with all the science. And yet... Most of those kits? Total junk. Talk about overselling and under-delivering. A select few are worth it (snap circuits comes to mind), but boy is there a lot of crap out there. Esp "chemistry" kits geared towards younger kids. $20 for some random plastic bits and baking soda labeled "sodium bicarbonate". Just add "acetic acid". Many, many kits count on people not knowing that household ingredients have fancy-sounding science names. Dont get me started on "slime kits." Or most chemistry kits geared towards girls. GAH. Most of those experiments/demonstrations? Unnecessary. I think that kids need to be exposed to science. Interesting science books (like living books, not textbooks), being outdoors, museums, documentaries, building "toys", etc. I do not find kits and experiments to be remotely necessary, esp before high school.

The last few chapters of geometry have just been a slog. And it might be because we are just sick of it. I have heard that some people are more algebra people and some are more geometry people. I thing he is the former. When I showed my son the Larson book he flipped through it for 30 seconds, closed it, and said, "I want to do AoPS Alg 2." 😂 I think we might skip the challenge/starred problems. He wants a challenge, just not an excruciatingly unnecessary (for him) amount. Your comment was very helpful, thank you.