merry gardens
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Posts posted by merry gardens
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I have a 8 y.o. dyslexic daughter and am a little overwhelmed by the choices for curricula. We've made some decent progress without any specialized curriculum, but in our struggling I've done a little research and am wondering if I need something better. I've heard good things about PAL from IEW, All About Reading, Spell to Read and Write, and now on this board I keep seeing everyone discussing Barton. It looks excellent, but pricey, and I feel like if I need that much teacher support, I'm willing to get it, but I'm not sure I do. She is reading chapter books, but very slowly and not at all independently. I think we need even more thorough phonics than we've done, and a lot of fluency practice. I had 'moved on' to just reading practice with her without so much phonics, thinking she'd gotten it, and seeing her get confused by all the rules, and thought maybe just the practice reading over and over was the best thing. It actually has been very good for her, but she has never just 'taken off' and become a reader like my other kids did. Would anyone be able to share their experiences with good Dyslexia friendly curricula?
Thanks!
SaraLyn
Mom of 7, #5 is the dyslexic
We struggled with SRW, but some have used it successfully. It goes at a faster pace and threw far more information out all at once than my dyslexic child could handle. I like IEW, but we just used that for writing this school year. I don't know about their PAL program, but it's not very expensive compared to many of the programs I've used. It might be worth checking out just based on the cost, but their website rated if for grades K-2, so I'm not sure how complete it would be as far as reading programs for dyslexics go. (Advanced phonics for teaching dyslexics Orton-Gillingham style eventually works with concepts that seem far beyond 2nd grade.) The writing program that I used from IEW was appropriate for a dyslexic child that's either only mildly dyslexic or whose dyslexia has been largely remediated already.
I'm a dedicated Barton user. We're finally on the final level, level 10, but it took years to get here. The expense of Barton has been spread out over several years, and it's been the backbone of language studies for my dyslexic child's homeschooling. My son couldn't even pass the Barton screen at first. If you haven't done so, check out the student screen. It's free. It helped to identify the severity of my son's phonological awareness problems, (which explained why SRW was such a miserable failure since he couldn't identify sounds within the words.) Because of that, we first used a portion of the LiPS program by Lindamood-Bell.
Lindamood-Bell has some really great materials for people with reading struggles--and they have different programs to address different difficulties. We started with LiPS before Barton, but I liked LiPS so much that I checked out LMB's other materials too and supplemented Barton with some of them. If fluency is an issue for your daughter, you may want to check out LMB'S Seeing Stars program. It works with phonics, teaching letter sounds, syllables, prefixes and suffixes, etc.. A large part of the program focusses on fluency. Reading fluently is one of the program's primary goals rather than just decoding successfully. The program is a lot more than workbooks, but since I was using Barton, I only used portions of that program--and the workbooks with a cartoon cat were something that I really liked for two of mine when they were around your child's age. That program is not cheap, but if you can afford the manual, some of the supplemental materials can be made inexpensively if you create them yourself.
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Batman's Wife---I love that peppermint salt idea!!! The sense of smell seems an oft neglected sense when it comes to multi-sensory learning. And Lizzy Bee--I love the gift box idea--so simple and inexpensive.
My 5 year old doesn't show any signs of dyslexia or learning disorders, but I might create some peppermint salt in a gift box for her anyway just because they seem fun!
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You might check out Winston Grammar. We used it when my boys were around that age. The cards for various parts of speech helped. It isn't the only grammar program we've used, but it did seem to put some of the pieces together.
Another approach is to address grammar through writing. The Landmark School has a teacher manual the explains how to create lesson plans to do that. (Lots of work! But the scaffolded approach to writing can blend with grammar. ) Excellence in Writing touches on grammar a bit through writing, but it moves faster than some with dyslexia or dysgraphia can move.Edit to add, what to use also depends on how far along the child is with having remediated his dyslexia and what program is being used for that. The O-G program we use is Barton. It increasingly touches on grammar as the program progresses, reinforcing capitalization at the start of sentences and ending punctuation, and teaching various types of phrases that make up sentences. After a certain level, Barton recommends Andrew Pudua's IEW that I mentioned above.
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At least concrete poo has virtually no smell. :)
Even if it did, her nostril are frozen shut.
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We took time off for the holidays. It was an enjoyable and much needed. Now it draws to end. While my college son is still at home on his winter break, we start back to homeschooling on Monday morning.
Who else is resuming their normal homeschool schedule this week?
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The post about living in an angry society hits home. As I walked around the lake this morning, no one actually smiled when I said "hello." They all looked like they were slightly irritated at having to greet someone. I wasn't pushy about it either, just a friendly smile and polite greeting.
Your username and this post :lol: Incongruent.
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I very strongly believe that suicide should be decriminalized completely.. that people who do commit suicide should not be revived and allowed to chose to not live....
I very strongly believe differently. When something is made legal, many people conclude it is therefore okay. Sometimes, the only thing that prevents a person from committing suicide is that they were taught it is not an acceptable choice. Some of us may get through difficult situations and go on to enjoy life again because we were taught that suicide is not okay. If suicide is legalized, there will be more suicides. Some people undergoing difficult times may even experience pressure to end their suffering through suicide from loved ones who don't want to watch them suffer.
I'm sorry that you have lost family members to suicide.
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I wanted to thank you guys, because this conversation has helped my come a long way in understanding the perspective & thought processes of transgendered people, their loved ones and their allies. I really empathize with the pain and frustration being felt when they come up against a larger society that is so hostile and inhumane. I still don't understand what exactly is the essence of gender dysphoria.
Lets suppose I am a biological male Robin, who experiences gender dysphoria. What is it about being female that Robin wants to experience that he can't experience as a male? And what is it about being male that Robin doesn't want to experience?
From my perspective I see two differences between the sexes: societal & biological. Society seems to be quickly moving away from gender differences. Fashion is becoming more unisex, professions & leisure activities are open to both genders, men are becoming more comfortable being sensitive & nurturing, women are becoming more comfortable with being competitive & assertive. It doesn't seem that these societal differences are what is troubling transgendered persons. A lot of people are choosing not to fulfill the gender stereotype, while still being very happy as their gender. Transgender is clearly something else. In the theoretical world where males & females could engage in society without prejudice, would Robin still be unhappy as a male?
Does it boil down to the biological differences between the sexes: chromosomes, the physical body, the reproductive system and secondary sex characteristics? As science currently stands, chromosomes can't be changed; a MtF transgendered woman can't become pregnant & give birth, a FtM transgendered man will never produce sperm. (I do understand they can become parents.) This leaves the differences between men's & woman's bodies after puberty. Is it that the MtF transgendered person wants a slight, curvaceous physique, soft voice and a lack of body hair? If it were that, then why do prepubescent children, whose bodies are indistinguishable between the sexes apart from their genitals, experience gender dysphoria? That leaves the genitals. . . surely it is more that a woman wanting a penis. . . .
What is this deep, integral essence in the transgendered person that can't be expressed in their biological sex?
I genuinely mean no offense. I feel like I am on the cusp of an epiphany and just need one morsel of knowledge before I understand. I hope my question post is clear enough --- my thinking is muddled.
Thank you so very much Ananda for asking this! And thank you to those who responded to her questions with honesty.
The answers that others gave Ananda show that many, many people struggle to get our heads around this idea that gender and sex are different--and what exactly those differences are, few can really clearly express with clarity, if they even understand them at all. People constantly re-stating that gender and sex are different over and over again doesn't really help those of us who see gender and sex as virtual the same. And it really, really helps to read what Katie (Lucy Stoner)wrote about coming to terms with her own siblings transition, and how it didn't originally match-up with her own feminist viewpoints. She's worked through something I haven't been able to work through--and I don't know if I ever can work through that. It just doesn't make sense to me, and even with people's sincere attempt to answer Ananda's questions, it seems that it doesn't really make sense to many of you either.
Katie (Lucy Stoner), I don't think it's strict gender roles from people of faith that makes it hard to understand. It would be much easier for me to understand gender dysphoria if I really did think that all women danced around wearing pink sparkly dresses and if I thought all men enjoyed wearing flannel shirts while rolling in the mud. Then, anyone wanting to do (dance/ wallow in mud) or wear (pink tutus vs flannel) could be assigned to the proper gender and the only confusion would be from people dancing in flannel or wearing tutus in the mud. (oops, based on that, there appear to be many, many confused five year olds!) I don't really think that way. That's not how I define what makes a person male or female.
Male and female, to my way of thinking, serve a biological function. It's my understanding of science and physiology--not my religion--that gets in the way. Males have the body parts that produce sperm and impregnate females, and females have the body parts that make eggs and get impregnated. It's a simplistic yet scientific way to understand male and female, but it's a scientific understanding of male and female that holds true for most mammals. XX, XY, with an occasional genetic fluke--that's how I learned it in my science classes. Sometimes those reproductive parts get cut off for reasons such as disease. As I see it, a woman who has had a hysterectomy is still a woman, but some of you are saying that a person who has had a hysterectomy might really be a man. That doesn't match my understanding of science. It requires faith to accept that gender and sex aren't the same!
Some of us have a very, very, very, very difficult time taking that step of faith solely based on the word of the current mental health professionals, just as I don't simply accept on faith what every minister says just because that minister holds a theological degree. The mental health industry used to lobotomize people in the name of mental health--and now they want to cut off sexual organs, again in the name of mental health.
The real question that our society no longer knows how to answer is: what is a woman and what is a man? Apart from the roles that male and female bodies play in reproduction, no one seems to have a way of answering that question to my satisfaction. It's not charity that I lack--it's faith. Tell me, how I'm suppose to believe something that I simply don't believe?
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Garden party theme and vintage would fit nicely together with a tea party.Look for real China cups with floral patterns--they can often be found for very little cost at thrift stores--and they could be a take-home gift for guests. Very vintage. Sweets fit well with tea party theme, and some finger sandwiches and salads wouldn't cost much.
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Love the pizza box idea! Maybe add some oregano and garlic salt in with the normal salt. :)
Also, if you live somewhere warm or wait until summer, a sandbox or beach works too.
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I'll be learning to homeschool 3 for high school. This will involve my picking up Shakespeare and Spanish again, plus various translations of ancient Greek and Roman texts, in addition to continuing to knock cobwebs from my brain in the math and science region.
The scariest thing that I'll be learning is how to be a mother-in-law.
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Hey! It worked now!
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Good to know that so many of them "can't believe the earth is 2015 years old". I can't believe it either. And just to clarify, lest there be any misunderstanding-- I don't believe it.
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We used a glass casserole dish (9x13 or something like that) with corn meal instead of salt. If you want an even bigger pan, full sized sheet cake pans are HUGE. If you have the kind of tray for setting winter boots in a closet, that could also work. I have a fantastic oblong pan that I found at the grocery store with a lid--that type of thing would be perfect if you want to keep it stored in the pan.
When you're ready for something other than a salt tray-type thing, we also used a white board with colored markers when doing Barton with my ds. I had the tiles set up on a breakfast-in-bed type tray--and we discovered it could be written on like a white board, so that's what we used for a while. But eventually the number of tiles took over the whole tray, so I went to other trays. And I'm not fun anymore--we use plain old pen or pencil and paper now when doing Barton. I should pull out those colored marker and white board for my dd whose 9--she'd like that.
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I should have opened this thread before responding on the other.
I think it relates to the innate value that one holds (or doesn't hold) on human life. Suicide is often precipitated with mental illness, which clouds rational thinking. When it may appear otherwise rational, (as in perhaps such cases as to avoid suffering), it is because that person does not find innate dignity simply by being a living human being.
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I do understand what you are saying. I guess that to me, it matters because there is a line between looking on and disagreeing and looking on and actively attempting to suppress someone else's attempt to live a life that is meaningful to them. Honestly, I don't care what people really, actually believe about transgender people (I mean, I wish that everyone would make an attempt to understand, but in the end, people have to freedom to believe what they want). I do, however, care whether people go out of their way to express disapproval of something that really, honestly doesn't affect them and in so doing cause real, actual, tangible harm to the people it does affect.
I'm sure your son wouldn't be super happy if you suddenly declared yourself his younger sister. But, as I have had to remind my dd20 over the years, a dd who suffered many unfortunate circumstances and experiences in her young life before joining our family, life is full of hard knocks, for everyone, and we can either dwell on them and bemoan our misfortune or we can, to some degree, buck up and accept that not everything that affects us is about us. If my mother suddenly became my father, I would grieve the loss of my mother and also work to accept and find happiness in the changed circumstances. I'm not saying that families of transgender kids should just suddenly and radically change their entire paradigm (tra-la-la) with nary a feeling of confusion, anger, grief, or what-have-you. What I am saying is that in our love and care for other people, we work to come to acceptance of the fact that our desires and beliefs about the people we love don't take precedence over their own. And that if we are truly outsiders, for whom the entire issue is merely an academic one, we simply do what we can to cause no harm to others.
I understand that people have a right to their own opinions. It just grieves me that the feelings of real, live, vulnerable human beings don't seem to be super important and that insisting that someone else's personal experience of life is flawed, warped, wrong, weird, etc., takes precedence over kindness. This is the climate that contributes to a 40-50% rate of attempted suicide by transgender people, and I really have to ask ... is your need to be right really worth creating such a dangerous and damaging cultural climate for someone else (and when I say "you," I mean the general you, not you specifically)? Is your need to be right worth more than another person's very life?
It's almost as if some people hold their own lives hostage--"Give me what I want or I'm going to kill myself!" When people in a hostage situation, where someone is threatening to kill someone unless they get what they want, the hostages still don't always make it out alive even if the gunman is given what he wants. Negotiations with someone who is willing to kill a human being is very tricky because they don't think that human life has the innate value that we think it has.
I have a dear friend who committed suicide--not over any issues of gender but she had struggled with mental illness. It was not her first attempt, but it was her last. After she succeeding in killing herself, I wondered if I might have been able to have done something different. She was a college friend and former roommate, but we were no longer in college. Her mother struggled terribly with her daughter's death. Suicide is certainly not a problem that is exclusive to those who struggle with gender confusion--it is a problem shared sometimes found in those struggling with mental illness.
You site statistics about the high rate of suicide attempts with transgender people that you cited. How can we be sure that high rate of suicide because they were not accepted--and if so, how do we explain the suicide of people we loved and accepted? Might suicide attempts be related to something else, like it was in my completely hetero-sexual, cis-gendered friend? She was mentally unhealthy. She'd struggled with a distorted body image for years with a disease called Anorexia Nervosa. She thought she was fat, when she was far too thin. When she was struggling with her eating disorder, I don't think it would have been kind of me or any medical professional to conclude with her that she was indeed fat since she thought she was fat. It would have prevented her from getting to a healthier weight--and at one point her low weight posed a serious threat her health. It may be the her self-starvation caused harm to her brain over the years--or it may be that something wasn't quite right in the first place and first expressed itself as anorexia before others. Either way, whatever the underlying cause, she was not mentally healthy and she eventually killed herself through very direct means.
Please do not think that I don't have sympathy for those who might do themselves harm or whose body image does not match up to their mental images. However, it may be a tragic flaw to assume that simply allowing someone whose body image does not match to their mental image to continue to live as if their mind is will correct the underlying problem. My friend killed herself because she was mentally ill. Statistics seem to show that even apart from gender identity, many people who struggle with gender issues also struggle with mental illness. It used to be that psychologist thought that the gender issues were in and of themselves a mental illness. Setting that aside, many still have other mental health issues that can be diagnosed using present day criteria. If they have a higher suicide rate, it may be that they struggle with issues related to what killed my friend. Saying that someone who is mentally unhealthy is mentally unhealthy is not unkind. It may be something that needs to be said (very carefully and with great love) so that the person will get the help that he or she needs.
It's quite normal for people to examine themselves after a friend or loved one commits or attempts suicide to ask what might have been done to prevent it, but that doesn't mean that the conclusions they draw are always correct. Mentally unhealthy people sometimes commit suicide, even after their friends and loves ones have tried everything in their power to prevent it. Giving them what they want may only be a temporary fix, while the underlying problem remains. If they don't not truly believe their lives hold value simply because they are human beings, it may not ultimately make any difference to them if they are a man or a woman because they don't see themselves as a human being of worth.
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I'm not trying to pick on you, specifically, merry gardens, I just want to respond to the idea you brought up. In terms of an objective standard, what I would ask is, does it matter? Does it actually, really matter to anyone else? If someone is 60 but wants to hang out with younger people, go clubbing, wear skinny jeans, or do anything else that outwardly designates them as younger (including using makeup to hide wrinkles), who cares? If a person attempts to disguise their "objective" age, who cares?
Similarly, who does it really affect if someone feels that their "objective" sex doesn't accurately reflect them and chooses to portray themselves as the gender that does reflect them? Who should really care, and why? I understand it being difficult for parents to understand that the person they believe to be their daughter feels like he is their son, but the vitriol directed at gender-variant people is really, hugely out of proportion to how it actually, objectively affects anyone else.
Some of the posts in this thread have honestly reminded me of little who kids who get all bent out of shape and tattle when they think someone else is doing something wrong. "Mrs. Smith, Johnny just acted like a girl, and that's against the rules!"
Thank you for not trying to pick on me. I'm somewhat torn as I reply to you as I don't like bumping up this thread. I'd really like to see other things being discussed, but since it keeps popping up anyway, here it goes....
If some botoxed 60 year old in skinny jeans, hangs out at clubs wearing make-up wants, would you find grave fault with twenty year olds who looked at her and said she's not twenty? If she thinks she's twenty-something, why should it really matter to her what the rest of us think? It's not just that people want to dress up to match their mental picture of themselves--it's that they want the rest of us to agree with their mental image of themselves.
Who does it affect? Well, if I was that 60 year woman--(and I'm not! I'm much, much younger)-it might affect and hurt my oldest if I told him I couldn't possibly be his mother since he's older than I am. If I denied that I was his mother, and claimed I was instead his younger sister, he might certainly be hurt, especially if I continued to do that in earnest, truly believing I wasn't his mother. Just as it may grieve families if what they knew to be their father or mother or son or daughter or sister or brother denies being their father or mother or son or daughter or sister or brother. I know that I am not my oldest child's younger sister--even though it sometimes confuses me as to where the years went.
By the way, I sometimes wear both skinny jeans and make-up. It helps me look closer to my mental age, but it does not actually change the passage of time nor my birthdate. And as to how I really look in these skinny jeans, well, let's just say my feelings get hurt every time I go to the doctors office and hear what they tell me they think I weigh. That doesn't match my mental image either. While my age is something that changes from year to year, just as fashions, styles and my weight may change--some things do not change.
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Yes, feeling trapped in the wrong body is exactly it. Every bit of your identity that you know yourself as - the way you feel about yourself in your head - is one way, but your body doesn't match. And then to make it worse everyone around you goes along with your body. ...
Oddly enough, I can relate. I'm trapped in an aging body! For almost two decades I lived as a girl, then for at least another decade, I lived as a young woman. I identified as a young, slim, attractive woman. I don't feel I'm old, but my driver's license says I am at least a decade older than I feel. Some of people here seem to suggest that my morals and values are old and antiquated, however I feel quite young.
When I see pictures of myself, I'm somewhat shocked to see that my outward body doesn't match how I feel. Does that mean that I'm in reality a different age since my mental age doesn't match my physical age? Is there not some objective standards--such as the year of my birth--that we can use to determine how old I am?
To say that someone is a man because the person was born with XY chromosomes or that someone is a woman because that person was born with XX chromosomes seems like an objective standard, just as determining my age based on my birthday compared to the current date on a calendar seems like an objective standard.
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Ours are still up--and will be until Epiphany. It just doesn't seem right to me to take down our decorations until the Three Kings arrive. :)
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Not my child, but my sister. When on vacations, we'd frequently go to somewhere where she could ride horses for a few hours. It was a special treat. She took lessons once or twice, but probably for less than a year in total. Our parents weren't wealthy and they lived frugally, but they did what they could to support her love of horses. Our bookshelves were filled with horse stories like Black Beauty and Sea Star. She had a couple of plastic model horses, which were expensive from our parents' perspective.
As an adult, she's taken horseback riding lessons. She paid for it herself when she was a working professional, and it became a way for her to get exercise and stay physically fit. She dropped her lessons after having children, but has picked it up again from time to time. She's taken her children riding on vacations where they can rent horses to ride, like our parents did. Her children don't share her love of horses and they've never lived in horse country. She still loves horses.
It's not an inexpensive sport, but supporting a child in her love of horses doesn't have to mean you buy her a pony. Books, plus plastic models as gifts with an occasional splurge on a horseback ride was enough support from my parents to foster my sister's love of horses.
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Lovely thread topic!
I'm thankful for my children, each and every one of them.
I'm thankful for my husband. And as I drink my coffee, I'm especially thankful that he made me a delicious cup of cappuccino this morning, like he often does most every morning.
I'm thankful for our Christmas break, and I'm thankful to be starting back to homeschooling again next week.
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Now the book Till We Have Faces comes to my mind....
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Thanks Elegant Lion!
I didn't think to report it. I attributed it just to my limited computer skills, but after several attempts over a period of a couple weeks, I thought I'd ask if anyone else had the same trouble.
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I can't get any of my photos to upload for a new profile picture. I've gone through all the motions to use a custom photo, but it always ends up saying "Failed to set a new photo".
Has anyone else had this trouble?
Good curricula for dyslexia
in The Learning Challenges Board
Posted
I want to add in a plug for ElizabethB and her http://www.thephonicspage.org/ free phonics pages. She often posts here. She has tutored lots of children with reading difficulties and created materials that might offer just the type your child needs. It's worth checking out.