MoyaPechal
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Posts posted by MoyaPechal
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My daughter (kindergarten) has been consistently asking to learn Greek. She wants to learn "church Greek" (Koine, we're Orthodox and visit a Greek-speaking parish sometimes) but we know people who speak modern Greek and it would be nice for her to be able to speak with them. Can someone who studies Koine Greek understand modern Greek and vice versa? What are the benefits of learning Koine over modern when we are in a community with lots of Greek speakers? It seems harder to find modern Greek curriculums and the Greek school at the parish I mentioned is really expensive, but I'd like us to be able to speak Greek with people.
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14 minutes ago, RootAnn said:
So, if you have a gentle slope of grass, you can try just letting her learn balance riding down it. No help except to hold her on the bike at the top. When she feels herself falling, she catches herself with a foot on that side (the bike has to fall quite a ways) or she falls/lands on the grass. Then she gets up and tries again.
Eventually, she gets the balance thing. Or, you put away the bike for a season and try again when she is taller. Or you try one of these other options.
We're in the city and all the fields are completely flat, unfortunately! We've been going up and down the driveway for the public pool that's a few blocks away. We found a cheaper 18" bike at Walmart so we're going to give that a try.
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17 minutes ago, Kebo said:
I think you need a new bike for her. Learning is hard enough without the extra anxiety about not feeling safe. You might find someone willing to loan you one for a short time (or even give you one) if you ask around or post on local groups.
I found a cheaper one on walmart so we're going to try that.
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Even if you do something that leaves you vulnerable, the person who takes advantage of that and hurts you is 100% at fault.
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17 minutes ago, mommyoffive said:
We haven't taught any of our kids to ride a bike. I was kind of sad that I never was the parent running after holding onto the seat. Lots of people have luck with the balance bikes. We always had them get good on it on a small bike on their own. Maybe look on CL, Facebook Market place, or garage sales. We just give away our old bikes and they always go fast.
Yeah, I should have done a balance bike but by the time we thought she was old enough to handle the hills around here, she was too tall for all but the really expensive bigger balance bikes so we decided to wait and just get her a bike when she turned 5.
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5 minutes ago, Kebo said:
Can you lower the seat so she can reach the ground more easily?
Once the bike is sized correctly, it really helped my daughter when we found a gentle hill she could glide down. That way she didn't have to focus on both learning to pedal and learning to steer and balance. Once she was comfortable gliding down the hill, we added in the pedaling.
Even with it all the way down, she can barely reach.
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6 minutes ago, busymama7 said:
Take off the pedals and use it as a balance bike. There is ZERO need to use training wheels because the whole point is the gain balance. Not learn to pedal. My last two have completely taught themselves after using an actual balance bike from 2-4 or so. My youngest picked up her cousins bike and took off down the street.
My neighbor, after seeing my success, took off the pedals of an older (8 years old?) Girl whom she was helping. She rode it around a few times balance bike style and that was the end.
Of all the things I wish I have known about with my older ones this is it. We taught 7 kids the traditional way and it was SO much harder than the balance bike way.
She's too short to do that with this bike so we'd need to spend money on a smaller one. It's why I tried to emphasize to her Godmother that it needed to not be too big.
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My daughter's godmother offered to get her a bike for her 5th birthday. I told her my daughter probably needed an 18 inch bike but she just gave us her niece's old 20 inch bike. I figured with training wheels, it would be fine. But it turns out my daughter, who is as tall as a 7yo, is too heavy for training wheels so they keep bending and she just rides tilted to one side. I tried taking them off but she can't reach the ground beyond her tiptoes and I can't run with the bike holding her up because I have bad knees and she just puts all her weight on me. We both ended up losing our tempers.
We spent the full birthday budget on other stuff because we thought the bike would be fine and there are no used bikes available within reasonable driving distance. At target, the 18 inch bikes are $90+. I know the right answer is to buy a smaller bike but I've been trying so hard to be frugal. 😭
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Oh don't get me started on what Ma and Pa say about the Indians. My daughter gets really sad because we've read a lot of nice books about Native Americans.
She loves these books but I'm not sure I'll buy the rest. We're definitely having a lot of discussions about how people treated the Natives and about how some of the parenting decisions are unfair.
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2 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:
I grew up reading these books and loved them. I read the first one to my DD and was shocked. I know they are considered almost Scriptural in the homeschool world but I never forced them on my DD because of the issues you raised.
LIW and her daughter were both very critical of the New Deal and those books were written with the goal of promoting individualism. Some might say that they are propaganda. LIW's daughter was a strong libertarian. I don't think I'd go far enough to claim they are propaganda but they are definitely a romanticized telling of LIW's traumatic childhood. Charles Ingalls had many issues. He dragged his family from place to place because he couldn't settle down. His children all suffered long term health consequences because of childhood malnutrition caused by his irresponsibility.
Ohhhh I never knew about that agenda. That makes a lot of sense! And yeah I can't believe that every time they start to settle into a place, he forces them to move again. At least in the big woods, they were near family.
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22 minutes ago, maize said:
I agree with you about a lot of this.
You can either not read them to your kids/not give them to your kids to read or go ahead and read them and discuss the things that need discussion.
I did rather like Farmer Boy.
My daughter really likes the books, so we're just discussing things as they come up. I know people really were expected to act like this back then, but it's infuriating haha. My daughter was genuinely horrified by the description of what people used to do on Sundays. No coloring books in the pews back then!
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We're reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books and I forgot how much they made me want to scream sometimes as a child. I thought maybe I was just remembering them that way because I was a child when I read them, but no. Blonde hair is better than brown hair! Even thinking about disobeying due to unforeseen extreme circumstances means you get yelled at! You have to give all of your new special beads to your baby sister who can't even wear them or else you're selfish! Everything is so over-the-top authoritarian and if Laura doesn't act like a perfect saint with no material attachments, she gets called naughty and bad. It's honestly kind of dreadful. I want my daughter to share things and be kind and I set that example. But the message that if you don't willingly and cheerfully give up everything you want/have, then you're a bad person is really bothering me.
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11 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:
How far are you in? I found that the early lessons were ridiculously boring. And DD8 also HATED the rhyming exercises with all her heart. She didn't have trouble with the rest of the book, though. But we had to split up the early lessons into two pieces, since they were SO tedious.
They were really useful for teaching both my kids how to sound out, though. So they worked well for that.
Yay! That sounds great.
They'll do letter pairs later 🙂 . This is just their hack to get the kids reading as early as possible.
I have two kids, one of whom is really gifted with symbol recognition and one of whom isn't. Neither had trouble moving to normal books after the book. They do move closer and closer to normal fonts as they move on... they do the normal ea later, for example. They don't do ALL the letter combinations, but they do enough to get a kid started with easy readers.
With DD8, that meant that I taught her a few more combos within the space of a month after being done the book and left her to it. With DD4, it means we're still learning letter combos a year later -- it takes her a LONG time to pick them up, so we spend a few weeks on each one. (We had to slow the 100EZ Lessons book down to twice a week to accommodate that.) But either way, the early hacks weren't a problem.
The thing I really like with the book is that they add one letter at a time but the kid still gets to read! It feels like real success for them, I think.
Thank you so much for explaining that they do introduce the pairs later on! I tried to Google info about it and didn't find anything useful, just generic reviews, and didn't see that when I searched through the book.
We're halfway through lesson 8. At best we can get through half a lesson a day. The rhyming exercises are I think the only part she really struggles with, even though she's figured out how to do them. She sounded out a CVC word the other day without stopping between the sounds and I almost cried.
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So I got the 100 EZ Lessons book and it's going better but still like pulling teeth. She hates the rhyming exercises so much that she almost cries, but she gets everything quickly once she actually puts in a solid effort. (I'm genuinely wondering if she has my ADHD at this point because we did 3 of the little exercises in 10 minutes today before needing to stop and getting her to focus for that long was a Herculean effort).
She did ask to start learning math so I got the Singapore Essentials book and she LOVES it. Still hard for her to focus, but she asks to do it every day (I make sure we do reading first) and she doesn't want to stop even when it's clear she's reached her limit for focusing.
I do have a question about the 100 EZ Lessons book, though. I noticed that in later lessons, it doesn't teach letter pairs and the sounds they make, but rather will show ĒaT and say, "This word has a little sound in it. We don't say that sound. Just say the big sounds." Same with words like ROCk and NŌSe. And it says "you" is a " silly word" that we don't say the way we sound it out instead of explaining that "ou" makes the ū sound sometimes. Will this make it harder for her to sound out words when she sees them for the first time in a book? This book is working out better than the Ordinary Parent's Guide for teaching blending but I'm concerned about how it's teaching the actual phonics. Does this end up being an issue?
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45 minutes ago, Amy Gen said:
I also don’t feel like I have missed out on anything staying home with my children. I did teach in PS for 5 years before my oldest was born. I don’t think there is anything wrong with couples who both work and share household and childcare duties. I just knew this wasn’t for me.
I told Dh when we were 19 that if he wanted to marry me, he needed to make enough money for me to stay home with our children. That was a good motivator for him. LOL. I don’t think he would have progressed as far in his career if he hadn’t had the benefit of a stay at home spouse supporting him in all areas other than financial.
I haven’t been lonely or isolated staying home because I have always volunteered and had hobbies. I much prefer those to a real job. About 10 years ago, Dh asked if I planned to go back to work if I became a widow. I told him, I planned to downsize, start with subbing then go back to teaching. Not long ago, he told me that we had reached the point where I would likely not need to work again unless I wanted to.
My 14 year old is sometimes jealous of her friends who are only children with 2 working parents because they get weekends at Tahoe and new Hummers on their 16th birthdays. I tell her to think about what it would feel like to not have siblings. Also, she is number 4 so if I only had one or two children, she wouldn’t exist.
For myself, I knew what kind of family life I wanted. That is the life we have and I’m very happy that I never settled for less.
I'm sure you weren't intending to be hurtful, but that was incredibly insensitive when I expressed in this thread that I have an only child and it says in my signature that both her siblings are dead.
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51 minutes ago, Arcadia said:
When my teens were 2 under 2, we bought a $400k condo for $20k down payment in 2006 because that was what we could afford comfortably while staying less than 10miles from work. We paid off that mortgage.
I grew up in a 818sqft apartment and my husband also grew up in a slightly bigger apartment. So we didn’t mind a smaller home which is nearer to office.
My husband’s job is also very niche.
Yeah, we can afford a condo but they all allow smoking and I have severe asthma. I'm not willing to take the risk that we end up next to a smoker.
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21 hours ago, barnwife said:
I've lived most of my life in the Midwest (WI, specifically). Merry/marry/Mary are all said the same. They rhyme with carry.
Same here. Grew up in Connecticut.
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On 12/18/2020 at 9:48 PM, Lecka said:
I personally don’t know how I could feel financially secure living in a high cost of living area and possibly priced out of the housing market.
I am sure there is a path for this — but I don’t know what it is.
One of my sisters left the San Francisco area after she realized she would never be able to buy a house there, and that she would also not be able to keep from having her rent keep going up, or keep having to move farther away or into a smaller room etc.
All her friends either have got houses in San Francisco now (a handful), or have left the area (30+ people she still meets for vacations and things).
So — I don’t know if that is relevant, but I think of it. It’s something we thought of when we made a choice between two towns recently, and went with the one with the lower cost of living.
My husband works in a very specific part of the intelligence community. There aren't any jobs for him anywhere else. And we did try to move for years with no success at finding jobs. It's just not happening. We're definitely priced out of the housing market here unless we move 2 hours from the city or inherit money.
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On 12/19/2020 at 7:49 AM, Lecka said:
I think it's worth considering, too -- could you move to a better school district, that might have lower housing prices? Sometimes that is the case with suburbs?
It's fine to say you really love the city lifestyle and love to homeschool, and it's what you want to do.
If you are saying "well I'm afraid of the schools here, but feel like I should increase my earnings potential" then it's something to consider? Would that be worth a commute for your husband, or whatever?
Overall -- I think there are a lot of overall lifestyle questions to look at, I don't think it's just one decision.
Because -- a lot depends on how much money your husband makes, how much money he is likely to make in the future, what his opportunities are to work in other locations, how you feel about commutes, how you feel about where you would like to live, etc.
I think all of those come together in various ways.
Yeah, that's definitely fair. For things to be "affordable," his commute would be two hours. And the school districts out there aren't any better. And I have a lot of issues with the way things are run even in the good schools here (and those districts are super expensive). No textbooks, Flocabulary videos, not informing parents when very controversial subjects will be brought up, etc. Transit is so ridiculous around here that moving even just a little further out doubles the commute time without decreasing the cost of living enough to be worth it. I really wish we could move further out but I want my husband to actually see our child (and me!) every day more than I want that.
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27 minutes ago, happysmileylady said:
You seem rather determined to simply be worried, as you seem to have all the reasons why whatever ideas are mentioned simply won't work.
And if the purpose of this thread simply is to vent a worry, that's totally ok. We all have those things that strike us as something worry about, even if we are taking the steps we are comfortable with in order to try to manage that worry.
So, I will simply say, I am living what you are worried about. There are lots of steps that can be taken to make the financial concerns work out should you end up in the situation.
I'm not sure where you're getting that because I've responded to several suggestions by saying they sound like good ideas and I'll look into them. Tutoring, co-op classes, etc. If it becomes obviously worth it, I'm willing to invest in a laptop. The fact is that without owning a house here, I can't provide childcare without violating my lease, which I'm not willing to do. That's not me refusing to listen to ideas.
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13 minutes ago, happysmileylady said:
If you end up in a situation where your spouse is no longer able to provide your income, you might end up moving anyway. You might not be able to watch another kid *right now* but should you find yourself in my situation, you might be able to then.
(also, babysitting a single child for a few hours a day is rarely considered "running an in person business." I suppose it could be considered such if a landlord wanted to be a butt nugget, but such a rule is generally made to cut down on car and people traffic and one person with one kid is unlikely to create the kind of traffic issue that causes concern.)
True, but we'd likely move to a studio if we stayed in the area and I think all the apartment complexes here forbid childcare. Of course, DH is 33 now so it's not like he's going to drop dead tomorrow, God willing. If he follows the same track as those relatives (they did smoke and he doesn't so hopefully that is a big factor in his favor), DD would be almost out of school. This isn't something I normally worry a ton about but we all had covid and I know it can cause heart damage so it's on my mind, especially since I might have it again. I'm getting tested today.
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28 minutes ago, lmrich said:
At the very least you could keep another kid. Open your home to a mom in need of some daycare. Maybe you could find a playmate for your daughter and earn a little income along the way. You will eventually need the funds to purchase a computer and internet to get any job online.
Start looking at homeschool hybrids in your area. You can offer an economics and foreign language courses. Depending where you live, you can charge $40 - $75 a month per student - 10 students per class, 2 classes it is possible to earn a $1,000 a month. This will also lead to building your confidence and you can add another class the next year or teach at another location, etc.. It will also lead to tutoring jobs. It also allows you time to homeschool your dd, especially if the hybrid offers classes for your dd. You will need a computer and internet for that type of job so you are available to answer questions, email homework etc..
Make a plan to slowly increase your income and it will happen.
I can't watch another kid, unfortunately. Our lease forbids running an in-person business out of the apartment and specifically mentions childcare.
Edit: The hybrids are a good idea. My friend teaches art at one. I'll have to start practicing the language somehow.
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6 hours ago, happysmileylady said:
I am 43. Dh had just turned 50 in June.
Of all the things to be concerned about, being able to pay the bills is not one of them.
I have done this before. Been a single mom I mean. The situation is of course different on a number of levels but having done it before, I have no doubt about my ability to do it again
SAHM is a description of what my situation is, not a title set in stone never to be changed. I haven’t ever had a career, but I have worked before and can do so again. I don’t need to have a career to pay the bills.
When DH was laid off in 2013, I went out at got a job. Two actually. They weren’t great jobs and had he remained laid off much longer I would have had to start working smarter rather than harder. But...they paid the bills.
Life insurance. We had what we could get. It wasn’t enough to set us up for life...he wasn’t easily or affordably insureable before his ILD diagnosis. But it’s enough.
Cash is king. Save an emergency fund, and make sure it’s set up in such a way that you don’t have to use it to pay off debts. Better yet, pay off debt as quickly as possible so that there aren’t creditors to eat up funds in the first place. Best yet, do both.
Social Security Survivors benefits are a thing. In my case they almost totally replace his income.
Paying the bills is the easy part. It’s everything else that’s awful.
We have an emergency fund but it's slow going with rent being so high here and we had over $2k of emergency expenses this year. There's always something. Every single year.
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9 hours ago, Frances said:
Do you have any programming experience, even just through coursework? Any experience with large data sets, again even just from coursework? If you are at all interested in using your economics degree, these two things would be very beneficial, especially the programming. If you don’t have programming ability, some free or inexpensive online self paced classes might be worthwhile. There are all different kinds of analyst positions that would be suitable for someone with an economics degree, especially if you can program and have some experience with data.
Is there no internet service where you live or do you just choose not to purchase it? I ask only because these types of jobs can often be done remotely, at least part of the time.
I have experience in a specific data analysis program and that's it. We're on a tight budget and using the mobile hotspot works out to be much cheaper than paying for separate internet service. The only laptop we have is my husband's work laptop and he barely ever uses it at home.
Modern vs Koine Greek
in K-8 Curriculum Board
Posted
I think the issue is that we have different goals. She wants to understand the church stuff and I want to talk to people. I told her we would wait until her reading is stronger. We're partway through 100 EZ lessons but took a break for a month due to illnesses and me fracturing my rib.