Clarita
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Posts posted by Clarita
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1 hour ago, Not_a_Number said:
My kids also speed through early math in a way that could never be matched by a program. Right now, DD5 is learning to multiply by 10 🤷♀️. I had no particular goals either way: it's just that I have kids both whose parents are mathematicians, and trying to take them through math at the "standard" pace would be very boring for them.
My kids speed through science of all things. Mostly because they just ask for more and more of it. I didn't plan on doing that everyday but we end up doing it everyday.
I actually decided to keep his formal math below his skill because of the fine motor. He'll sometimes make the math in the mathbook we are doing more complicated. (We are working on counting up and down from 10 he'll just do 2's after the official lesson).
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Thank you for all the responses. I think we have to make a bigger effort to get some sort of math, reading and writing in 4 days a week, but dial down on the amount of writing/gluing/cutting by doing some of it for him.
6 hours ago, Clemsondana said:We did have a co-op day where my kids usually took art or some hands-on crafty class, which took some of the 'do projects with supplies' pressure off of me.
Our co-op classes start at the end of the month. I'm really looking forward to that. (The messy projects really stress me out.)
5 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:My kids don’t have trouble with fine motor stuff, so it hasn’t been a problem to have them write both math and printing.
I don't think he has real issues with fine motor aside from lack of practice in his younger days. It probably doesn't help that his gross motor is really good. (He's really into baseball and he can hit pitches and throw hard with good accuracy.) He is probably a perfectionist to so it doesn't help him do the fine motor stuff quickly.
4 hours ago, 8filltheheart said:My kids' progress when they were younger has always been completely erratic and uneven. Writing plans in advance would have meant having to completely alter them repeatedly. Sometimes they would master concepts quickly and would make huge leaps and other times they would struggle and would slow way down.
That's my problem too. I've dwindled it down to a weekly plan and I still feel like the record and the plan is a huge mismatch. Winging it though leaves me scrambling to figure out the lesson with my kids staring at me with anticipation.
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@wendyrooand @Not_a_Number thank you for the responses. We definitely have some work to do to build up to that amount of schoolwork. Re-reading my post, seeing your responses and reflecting on our past week makes me think a big part of our current issue may be his fine motor skills taking up so much energy from him. I may have to add "fine motor" as a subject he needs to complete. I just see the days when math, reading, LA, Science, is all oral or manipulative play then we breeze through the subjects. When his math involves a worksheet where he has to glue and/or cut squares or write a number down then a task that may have taken him 2 min orally takes 20 min.
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Just wondering how people actually approach lesson planning for Kindergarten. We just finished week 3 and I don't feel like I have a good system. I just feel like a lot of stuff out there would work for older kids where you are going to cover more subjects per day.
Currently I made a system where I plan for the next week. I just list out all the topics and potential activities for them for the next week. My issues are I feel like I should have a month or 2 planned out in advance so I can get materials together, but how do I know how quickly we are going to go through math and reading/LA lessons. Or what is a good way to plan but still build in some flexibility if we need to spend more or less time somewhere.
The other issue I have is how often (much) I should do math, and reading/LA. I feel like I could only do one challenging activity a day with my son at this age. Which means each day I feel like I'm choosing between doing math or reading/LA and at the same time I wonder if we should be doing both. How do I do that without burning out my kid?
Leading to the final issue that I have which is how do I fit in the other challenging subjects I'm suppose to fit in. Things like handwriting, cutting/gluing, foreign language, etc. This may also be a my kid specific problem because my son does not arts and crafts for fun so cutting/gluing/folding and handwriting are a lot of times more challenging than his age appropriate math work.
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1 hour ago, PeterPan said:
It's true, some people find it very hard. But really, there's a basic list of text structures we're trying to teach them to notice:
description
compare/contrast
cause/effect
list
sequence
problem/solution
persuasion
argument
This makes more sense.
1 hour ago, PeterPan said:If you let the sample get *too big* it would be hard, sure! But even then you'd probably naturally pick out one of those text structures and use it to drive the conversation.
That is a good idea. I do struggle with this.
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19 hours ago, beffers said:
Right now, as part of her school I'm asking her to do the "pick a science book and read for 15 minutes each day" thing mentioned above. What I'm curious about is the best way to process that with her. Should I just have her narrate it back to me? We've tried that and I feel like she's not quite sure how to narrate something that is so factual and doesn't have a unifying storyline.
Take everything I say with a grain of salt because my oldest is 4.5.
As an adult I wouldn't know how to narrate a science text. If I read a science text and you asked me a question related to the topic I could give you an answer to your question and cite you the books/texts/ etc. that I got the information from. Or I have a problem to solve and read a science text to help me come up with a solution. (I have High Frequency Magnetic Components sitting a my bedside right now because my kid asked about magnets this week. I do science texts as an adult.)
I think for assessment (given how I use science text as an adult) I would give her a set of questions related to what she is about to read and ask her to find the answers. Or just ask for something interesting she found out from the text.
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My oldest is TK. We actually really like it and I use it as a supplemental to their "science curriculum". They repeat the important statement throughout the episodes (like memory statements) so my kids will recite those of their own accord. Their "experiments" for little kids tend to be of the "just for fun" variety vs. something they could actually gain knowledge from.
I'm in a homeschool charter so I get to use Mystery Science too. I prefer to use elemental science and supplement with generation genius. Generation Genius says it's not a full science curriculum, but I like it because I just push play on their videos instead of Mystery Science where I have to keep clicking next. (I get why they do it this way, but I prefer my kids watch a full video and we discuss afterwards.)
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3 hours ago, hjffkj said:
Not including kitchen clean up and dishes how many hours would you estimate you clean a week? What about your kids? Dh? Do you pay for a cleaner to come ever? This doesn't include yard care, laundry, or house projects that need to get done. Just your normal running of the household clean, dust, vacuum, mop, etc.
Almost none to maybe 15-30min a week. I hire a cleaner once a month she can get things much better than I can in 2-3hours (all our clutter goes into a box and cleans all bathrooms, kitchen, and vacuums common areas). Probably no one will say our house is neat it pretty much sits at clean enough.
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With all these comments I hope you know you are in the right. Here are some situations that I have seen work for myself and other people though (in terms of taking care of kids and ourselves.) My MIL lives 5 min away from us and she does not babysit my kids on a regular basis even though she is a perfectly healthy for her age. Every time I ask for help I tell her she can say no; no excuse necessary.
I found two tight knit group of friends through church women's group and a nearby church's playdate group (in the later most people there didn't go to church it was an outreach program). Both these groups serve as my village. We babysit each other's kids, provide meals when necessary, advice etc. So, you could suggest DIL or your son take their kids to some community stuff (library Storytime, community activities) and meet other parents who could be their village.
Neighbors are also great. My neighbors have taken care of our kids in emergencies and/or just give me 15min to put dinner on the table.
If they need this much time away from their kids and can't afford hired help. They have to make a larger village.
As for the meme I get it going grocery shopping, doing laundry isn't really "me time," I honestly just do those with my young kids. Doing those things with young kids is so good for them especially if you are frazzled because it's crazy to bring 2 under 2 grocery shopping. It will teach the kids to be a team with the family because momma isn't perfect and can't handle everything. My kids and I have bonded so much over times when I had to pick our groceries up from the parking lot floor, witnessing mommy get impromptu surgery (the nurse asked for someone to take the kids away when she realized what was happening), and nothing like seeing mommy drop all your things in the middle of a parking lot to tell you "it's a bad idea to run off in a parking lot".
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I pooped while giving birth to my son and my husband was in the room. So, I guess I lived through that embarrassment. Under normal circumstances I do my potty business alone. If there's extenuating circumstances I'm OK with asking my husband for help or helping my husband.
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I've done chuck roast from frozen in my pressure cooker.
I stick onion, potato, whatever root vegetable stuff (carrot, celery, etc) on the bottom of the pot. Use a cleaver to cut up the chuck into pieces I can stick into the pot. Mix flavor mixture in a bowl with 1/2 cup of warm water (beef bouillon, garlic, whatever flavors you like). The warm liquid helps the flavor mixture stick to the frozen meat you can substitute beef bouillon and water with warm beef broth. High pressure for 1.5 hrs. Slowly let pressure out after finished. Shred meat.
For different flavors I also like to make a chili. Only add onion to the bottom of the pot. Add 1 dried pasilla pepper (without stem and seeds) and 1-2 tablespoon ancho peppers and garlic into 1/2 cup of warm beef broth with taco seasoning. Cook meat in the same way as above. When meat is finshed shred, then add beans and tomato. Cook until beans and tomato is warm.
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Well, if it helps your choice in Air Fryers mine is Amazon.com: Air Fryer by Cozyna (3.7QT) with airfryer cookbooks (over 50 recipes) : Home & Kitchen. It's super easy to clean and the parts that need to be cleaned regularly can go right in the dishwasher (I just discovered).
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The preschool seems like the perfect match for you!
17 hours ago, Night Elf said:As for the infants, I don't like babies crying. I want to pick them up and comfort them. However, in an infant room where there are less teachers than babies, there may always be a crying infant. I cannot pick them all up at the same time.
The first daycare my oldest was in (from 3m to 1yr) the babies rarely cried. They just taught the infants to ask for what they wanted via areas of the room and baby sign language. They also had the room set up so by the time the babies could locomote they could be more self sufficient, like they could go and sit at their "food table", go over to the changing table and indicate they needed to be changed, and go and grab toys that they wanted. It was an amazing daycare ( I always say they took care of my son better than I could). So even in an infant room there is not always crying infants all the time.
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Am I missing something my air fryer is super easy to clean? (I have a Cozyna?) There is a basket and a "bucket". The basket has large holes in it both seem to have some sort of non-stick coating and I just dunk them in warm soapy water and use a sponge to wipe clean. Am I missing something?? (I was informed about the cleaning I was suppose to do to my gas cooktop here. So me missing a component I'm suppose to clean is not unheard of.)
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7 minutes ago, Clarita said:
I use mine but fully admit I can achieve the same results in my oven with a jelly roll pan and a cookie rack.
With pure convection set on my oven, maybe not all ovens have that setting, If the oven has that setting then that gets you the same results as an air fryer.
As for using it instead of the oven to avoid heating up the kitchen, our air fryer's exterior is cooler than the toaster oven while in use.
I own way too many kitchen appliances/gadgets. Surprisingly though I don't own an instant pot, just a pressure cooker.
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I use mine but fully admit I can achieve the same results in my oven with a jelly roll pan and a cookie rack. It is only nice in that I can air fry something and have something else in the oven at the same time. Also the air fryer is faster than my oven to heat up and use.
I use the air fryer to make the pre-made frozen chicken nuggets (and the like), and also Kale chips. I haven't yet used it for the pre-made fried potato products. I think if you are short on space I wouldn't get an air fryer. If you make a lot of pre-made fried stuff it's useful because it saves time vs heating up and oven.
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You can hire a college admissions counsellor too. They will help you do college selections, guide you as to what you need to complete to get into a particular college, etc. My parents were immigrants and didn't know the getting into college system from high school very well. They outsourced this for me. They helped me do everything from choosing the college, to studying for the admission tests, to selecting classes in high school, to informing me of summer opportunities and filling out and sending in admissions paperwork. I don't know how much my parents paid for this service, but they did not regret it.
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3 hours ago, Lecka said:
I do not totally understand the house end-game for HCOL, because do they end up that you have to sell the family home to realize the profits?
And do you ever stop paying a mortgage?
You sell or rent out the family home and downsize either by size or move out of the area. So my mom bought her 4bd 2 bath house for $250k sold it for almost $1mil, then she could theoretically take that and buy a 1 or 2 bd condo for a bit less in the same area. What she ended up doing was move out of the country into another HCOL area but into a much smaller place. However she still has 401k , a bit of savings, and I didn't need our family home.
In terms of inheritance your kids inherit your property and sell it. In CA though I think there are ways to also keep the property tax based on what your parents paid for the house as opposed to what it is worth now.
You can stop paying for a mortgage same as any other place by living within your means and not borrowing more money. Not saying living within your means is easy to do or let's you own a house or even stay in the area.
1 hour ago, Lecka said:I think it is an open question whether it’s better to be a small-time landlord or invest in the stock market. Like — which one is *better.*
I think investing wisely in the stock market (as in you would have to be willing to put actual work into it - calculate your investments to try and buy low and sell high, and "leveraging" some of your positions to protect from loses in the stocks or paying someone to do some of that for you). I haven't heard great stories about being a small time landlord even in my HCOL area, unless you inherited the property. I think you can become a big time landlord it is more lucrative and that can be done through REIG (real estate investment group) where several people pool their money together to buy bigger properties (like full apartment buildings or commercial property).
There's a reason for the saying the first million is the hardest. It's a lot easier to make more money if you have more money to start with.
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8 minutes ago, Arcadia said:
Property tax is another issue that we are considering if buying now. Being able to afford the mortgage is different from being able to afford the property tax when retired (or unemployed).
I can't see affording any part of it in its current state. The market is truly ridiculous here right now.
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1 hour ago, GracieJane said:
Do most people still assume they will eventually own a home? Is this still a middle class American Dream?
Amongst my friends they still all want to own a home. Although for a few of them I always found that notion odd because they keep switching homes every few years. It always seems stressful to me to do the buy/sell juggle that often, and I'm not sure if it would beat out renting (they've bought at peaks and valleys). Currently in my area (SF Bay Area) I think it would be extremely hard though to buy a house with the nation's median income or the average person's income in my area.
As for my husband and me, we got pretty lucky we bought this house which was not listed with a realtor and in pretty poor shape at the end of 2012. So, the price for the house was pretty low and the price to fix it up is low compared to today. That timing also coincided with each of our companies essentially raining money on us (IPO and an acquisition). Thus a lot of luck there, sprinkle with a bit of working hard during our college years to get those jobs, instead of getting the "college experience". My house is now easily > 2x what we paid for it, but I think we must be in a bubble (not good school district, though nice house with a view of SF from the front). Our finances would be a lot tighter if we bought our house today, my husband has gotten a big promotion since we bought the house so I think I could still be a SAHM.
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I vaguely remember using a TI-89 in high school for Calculus. I don't know why "they" (I assume the government whoever chooses what needs to be learned in PS). It wasn't that hard to use - there's a shift button and a green diamond button to help you get to multiple functions on the keys. You could do some programming in it, which I found minimally useful in real life. In adulthood, even when I had a STEM job I only used it to do arithmetic. It was nice that it had a big screen that kept track of my answers. The analog buttons were nice because I could use it without looking at it.
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6 hours ago, GoodnightMoogle said:
I've been binging education books lately; every time someone asks me what I've been reading all I can say is "homeschool books!" 😁
Me too. Me too.
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On 7/23/2021 at 6:25 AM, Mrs Twain said:
If you are interested in using effective, evidence-based methods of education, I have found nothing better. You would do well to read and apply the principles in these books.
—The Knowledge Deficit: Closing the Shocking Education Gap for American Children (E.D. Hirsch, Jr.)
-Why Don’t Students Like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom (Daniel T. Willingham)
I just finished Why Don't Students Like School? and just starting The Knowledge Deficit. Thank you so much for the suggestions, exactly what I was looking for.
AOPS Group Theory VS Linear Algebra through Stanford ULO
in Accelerated Learner Board
Posted
I went to UC Santa Barbara for my BS in Electrical Engineering and back then a 3 or higher in Calculus BC would skip 2 quarters of Applied Calculus for science and engineering. There were 6 quarters total of required Applied Calculus. All that to say if your son finds out he enjoys applied math more than theoretical (I don't really know the technical terms but in layman's terms could be math that involve actual numbers and things vs math that isn't). There is probably a little more applied Calculus for him to go through and learn. Then after that it's how to apply the calculus to do what you want to do. (That was most of what I did for my Masters in Electrical Engineering.)
Just a different opinion from someone who liked math in high school, but realized in college I only like math as a tool to make things happen.