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Momling

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Everything posted by Momling

  1. I liked Zaccaro's "Become a Problem Solving Genius" book for pre-algebra and algebra 1. I learned some good techniques!
  2. I let kids go into restrooms when they are ready... When they can take care of wiping and remembering to flush and when they are tall enough to reach the faucet to wash hands. That's usually somewhere around 5-6 years old. When we have little boys (we do foster care), I do wait outside the restroom door to make sure they're safe and behaving.
  3. We do foster care and have had kids of all ages so have gotten our bedtimes down -- everyone gets up around 6:30am (7:00 on weekends/summer) and I am flexible about bedtimes on trips and for special occasions. 6-7 yr olds have a 7pm get-ready-for-bed time and a 7:30 lights out. I extend this by a half hour on weekends/summer. 8-9yr olds have a 7:30 get ready and 8:00 lights out. Extended to 8:30 10-11 yr olds have a 8:00 get ready and 8:30 lights out. Extended to 9:00 12-13 yr olds. I have a general expectation that they'll go to bed around 9:00ish (10ish on weekends/summer) and/or when I tell them 14+ don't have a specific bedtime
  4. Also... I've traveled a ton and I don't recall my carry ons ever being checked for exact dimensions. Obviously taking a full sized suitcase would raise flags, but I doubt an inch is going to.
  5. I know you're frustrated by the size requirements, but I kind of like the challenge! I'm on a minimalist packing quest for a 2 week UK trip. We've always been light packers and up until now we always just carry on rolling suitcases, but I hate dragging those around town and hauling them up and down stairs and across cobblestones. Plus, I often find I don't use all of the stuff I bring. So this next trip in a couple weeks, we're going ultra-minimalist with only a purse and daypack each. I'm really excited, though I just bought (for 3.99$) a fabric gym bag from ikea that folds down really small and I'll take that with us so that we have an additional bag should we come back with more than we left with.
  6. My daughter loves ballet and was very serious about it. She was considered very promising by her teachers, en pointe at 10, and trained 12-15 hrs/week. However, by the time she was 12, she had developed into a short curvy young woman and was suddenly ignored in casting decisions and ignored in class and given no corrections. She hung on for a year before leaving at 13. Since then, she has enjoyed feeling successful in rec type ballet classes and has expanded into jazz, contemporary and ballroom. She dances about 5 hrs per week now and is much less stressed. Her ballet training has paid off and transfers beautifully to other dance forms. From a dance perspective, I suppose starting with more serious ballet and shifting to something recreational when appropriate was a good move. From an emotional perspective, it was pretty rough for her to be ignored by teachers who favored a certain body shape that she would never have. These are things that I didn't think would happen in a children's ballet studio in a small town.
  7. With several kids in public school and only one homeschooling, I always followed the district's schedule.
  8. I like having the same doctor (family practice) for everyone in the family. I remember as a young teen how humiliating I felt sitting in a pediatrician's office and I'm happy that our family doctor can take us from cradle to grave (theoretically anyway). I also like that if they need to, my teenaged daughters will be able to get guidance about birth control and other adolescent health issues by a person who has known them since toddlerhood and knows our family. We are all healthy and when necessary have seen specialists... But for everyday stuff, I love our family practice doctor.
  9. My daughter loved the fashion museum in Bath at that age. Obviously all the big museums in London have already been mentioned. The museum of London is also nice. What about Harry Potter Warner Brothers studio? Not educational but it looks like fun.
  10. Starting several years ago when my kids first went to summer camp, I began to write to them a series of absurd letters talking about homelife... For instance, I've written a series of letters that their sims have rebelled and taken on lives of their own, that we rented out their bedroom to a crazy elderly lady who kept doing suspicious things, that we got lost on a rafting trip and mutinied the guide, that we were all put in prison and had to escape... I've written letters in code and written letters like mad libs. I can't think of what else to do. Can any of you clever people think of something funny that I could write about? Thanks!
  11. I'm not sure that your expectations that your Spanish speaking teenaged babysitter can both babysit and teach your kids Spanish are realistic. I think if you want her to babysit, that's one thing, but to actually teach them Spanish, you need to be there supervising and organizing. What she could do... You could provide her with Spanish language picture books and she could read them to your kids. You could provide Spanish kids shows on video and she can watch along with them and help them understand. You could give her a Spanish language game (such as bingo or Kloo or spot it) and then all play it. But I would definitely suggest that you organize and provide and participate in everything and just let her be the language expert/ teacher's aide while you be the teacher. Even the most amazing 15 yr old is not going to know how to manage your kids and reduce her language so that it is accessible to a non-Spanish speaker and come up with age and language level appropriate games and activities for them to do.
  12. I have pcos and my crp is not elevated... Or was not the last time it was checked. I do have high cholesterol and an enzyme called ACE, but I doubt that it means much.
  13. My daughter did one year of Foerster algebra 1 and now one year of Saxon algebra 1 (while doing Jacobs geometry). Foerster was much better at deeper problems and word problems that stretch a student. Saxon was better at details and processes and forcing a student to remember and review. It turns out my daughter needed both approaches.
  14. I think the title of the article is wrong. It's not that San Francisco stopped teaching algebra in 8th grade, it's that San Francisco stopped teaching the course called "Algebra I" in 8th grade. We have something similar going on in our town and I have a feeling that the complaints are from parents who don't understand that the algebra is in fact integrated into the math program. Our district has a middle school program (Core focus in mathematics) that has all kids doing integrated courses called math 6, 7, and 8 . The classes are *Not* called pre-algebra and algebra 1 as they were when I was in jr. high. It sounds to me very similar to what SFUSD is doing. The important thing is that the name of the course is not reflective of anything. I've been quite impressed at the depth of the program that are district uses. The common core standards have brought a lot of algebra and geometry into middle school math. The books that our district use have lots of additional activities that dig deeper into topics and my math-loving 12 yr old is being challenged just fine. The scope and sequence is quite similar to, for instance, Singapore Discovering Math. It's kind of silly to complain that a 7th or 8th grader using Singapore isn't doing Algebra because the book isn't called that. They do plenty of work with linear equations and polynomials and functions and problem solving. College prep math students from our middle school go into 9th grade geometry, average students move into Algebra 1 for more work and remedial students into Algebra 1A (a slower paced algebra program). I don't have that much experience with other countries, but when I taught in Poland in th 1990s, there was no acceleration or differentiation at all in middle school and the math courses were completely integrated with algebra mixed in with other math topics. Obviously Singapore also integrates, as does Galore Park maths in the UK. I suspect most countries don't pull out algebra and geometry as a separate course and students are learning just fine. I don't think a course entitled "Algebra 1" in 8th grade is essential. It's just a name -- math is math and there is plenty to learn regardless of how the course is titled.
  15. A lot!! I love to travel! Not counting out-of-town tennis tournaments which aren't very fun (2 weekends a month), we typically have 2-3 weeks in Europe (to visit my wife's family), a week in Southern California in February to watch the Indian Wells tennis tournament, a week to visit my family at Christmas, a four day rafting trip each May, and usually about two short camping trips of about 4 days. Both my wife and I have always loved to travel, and while her income allows us to do it easily now, even when we were students or just starting out, we were constantly figuring out ways to travel for cheap and traveling whenever possible.
  16. We began doing foster care when I felt my own kids needed me less... Now I feel done with that too. I'm ready for the easy life. I do love having my teenagers though. Every age has been my favorite.
  17. Our local YMCA camps are about $200/week full-time. I've signed our foster daughter up for several sessions. Overnight Y camp is $300 for 5 days. Also, we're going to Portland for a few days and I need her to be in some childcare while I do some stuff with my older girls. I found this day camp that you can pay per day for: http://steveandkatescamp.com. It looks kind of pretentious, but it also looks like a lot of fun and I think she'll love it. And for 10 hours of organized childcare, $90 isn't crazy expensive. I mean, it is... But I feel like I need to pay some special attention to my older girls and the idea of dragging an angry, unhappy child through places like Powell's bookstore is too painful to imagine. So Steve and Kate it is. I may even buy a second day if it goes well.
  18. Gazpacho from our garden veggies, barbecue with chicken and roast peppers and zucchini (from the garden), and for dessert, sponge cakes with berries from our garden (we have chickens who produce a ton of eggs in summer and my sponge cake recipe uses up like 8 eggs at a time).
  19. It's my favorite show! My 14 yr old and I watch it together. I told 12 yr old she had to wait until she was 13 because of the raunchiness. Our lady of perpetual exemption was hilarious.
  20. My homeschooled daughter is off to the public high school in the fall. She desperately wants to do well on the math placement test in August and has taken to studying like a fiend. She also will go to Concordia language village for French camp and wants to keep up with that. I would say for the first time her motivation is very much coming from her. It's amazing to see her focus like this.
  21. My daughter is not gifted in math, but repeating algebra has been great for her. The first year she used Foersters algebra and then this year we started Geometry and found algebra had left her brain. I offered her the option of going back to algebra or continuing with geometry and doing two math classes this year. She wanted to do both. I chose Saxon. The constant recycling and reviewing had been really good for her. I have much more confidence in her ability to do algebra next fall. I feel like she's learned it with both depth and repetition.
  22. I wouldn't be pushing to skip her. She will have plenty to learn in fourth grade. I have a third grade foster daughter and a lot of the math they do with the new common core standards is pretty impressive and certainly not what I did in third grade. It should be a nice complement to Saxon and I bet she'll do great! Just because she was doing fourth grade work this year doesn't mean she'll be repeating the same stuff at all.
  23. I had one baby and my wife had our second but after a while we still felt like we might want another, so we decided to do foster care. Now, after 5 years of that I am definitely clear that I am 100% done with raising small children. In fact, I just yesterday gave away all my baby stuff - the diapers and bottles and clothes and tricycles and highs chairs and potty seats and everything. It felt good! So... Have you considered doing some foster care? It's made me feel productive and useful and like I am helping our community. Even just doing some respite or short term emergency placements for a baby or toddler might help you figure out whether you can still tolerate the lack of sleep and diapers and such...
  24. I had our first daughter and my wife had our second but after a while I still felt kind of like I might like another, so we decided to do foster care. Now, after 5 years of that I am definitely clear that I am 100% done with raising small children. In fact, I just yesterday gave away all my baby stuff - the diapers and bottles and clothes and tricycles and high chairs and potty seats and everything. It felt good! So... Have you considered doing some foster care? It's made me feel productive and useful and like I am helping our community. Even just doing some respite or short term emergency placements for a baby or toddler might help you figure out whether you can still tolerate the lack of sleep and diapers and such...
  25. I had this issue recently with my 9 yr old foster daughter. Conveniently the public school requires shorts that are to the fingertips (mid thigh), 1 inch wide straps on tanks and no flip-flops. It was so refreshing to just explain that she'd be sent home to change or have to wear loaner clothes if she wore that outfit. It wasn't about me - it's just the school rules!
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