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skueppers

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Everything posted by skueppers

  1. It depends on your state. Where I live, children with November birthdays may not, under any circumstances, enroll in Kindergarten until they are almost six. So the public schools are full of third graders who are almost 9 1/2 at this time of year.
  2. This is off-topic from the original question (what to order from Amazon.de), but there are a bunch of interesting shows now available as podcasts. The informational segment from Die Sendung mit der Maus is available every week as a podcast (though not any of the cartoon parts). There's also a really nice news show for kids, Logo!, that's available every day as a podcast. We watch it after dinner. My kids also love the "Wissen macht Ah!" podcast. They have recently discovered "Kopfball" and "neuneinhalb."
  3. I have placed quite a few Amazon.de orders over the last six years. Here are some things that have been big hits here: * Anything from the Lesemaus series. Of particular interest may be the Christa Holtei historical ones, like "Ein Tag im alten Rom." We have at least 30 Lesemaus books, and I can't think of one we don't like. * Wieso? Weshalb? Warum? books * "Eine Woche voller Samstage" and sequels -- these are chapter book read-alouds that would be best for ages 5 and up; I don't think they would hold the attention of a younger child. Magic is involved, in case that bothers you. * Kleiner Eisbär books -- there are several, all very sweet. * Der Kleine Drache Kokosnuss -- there are many volumes I've recently ordered a bunch of stuff that's primarily for next year, including: * Duden Grundschullexikon -- I've been reading a couple of articles aloud every night over dinner. I bought it thinking that it would be nice to be able to read brief information out loud about a range of topics as they came up. * A number of WAS IST WAS books, mainly on historical topics we'll be covering next year. They seem like they will work out well for us, but I haven't yet actually used them so I can't provide a real review. Every page is well-illustrated, but they have more continuous text than something like a DK Eyewitness book.
  4. Just to offer you some encouragement: my daughter spoke only English to me, even though I never spoke a word of it to her until she was four. She was exposed to German songs, books, and television. She went to a German preschool from the time she turned three. She didn't start speaking German regularly until she was almost five. It's been about the same with my son. She learned to read English first, and has been working through a German first grade program this year as well as attending a Saturday school program. She reads English better than German at this point, but I think that's mainly because she's had more practice in English. She certainly reads German at an adequate level compared with German children her age. As others have mentioned, reading skills do transfer. I've had her working through a formal German program mainly so she will get a strong foundation in writing. I remember that when I was in mid-late elementary school, I could read in German better than one of my slightly older German cousins, although I'd never received a moment's reading instruction in German.
  5. crstarlette, I see your point. For my family, giving adequate attention to our second language is one of the reasons to homeschool. I stand behind the idea that learning a living language is very worthwhile for elementary-age children, but I am sure the benefits differ depending on the level of instruction and exposure offered. Acquiring near-native competence takes a lot of effort and is a big commitment.
  6. In my opinion, the only things more important than a second language in elementary school are reading, writing, and math. In my view, a living language is the best choice. The reason for this is because children of elementary school age are able to acquire a second spoken language much more effectively than most people are able to later on. To put it in a WTM context, teaching a second language in the grammar stage takes advantage of the natural abilities and strengths of that stage. So no, I don't think Latin is the optimal choice for a second language in elementary school.
  7. I agree with what others have said about self-evaluation and about sitting right there. You don't need a copy of the page to do some handwriting practice with her. Just use regular paper and practice yourself at the same time. I spent much of the year learning the style of cursive my daughter will be learning soon. She would practice her manuscript writing, and I would write the same sentences (many times over) in cursive. As a bonus, she has learned to read cursive. I also hand-write my daughter's copywork. I think it inspires her more if she knows it's my own writing she is copying.
  8. The only things elementary school kids really need to be on target with kids in public school are skills in reading, writing, and math. Schools are used to having kids who don't know this that or the other thing in social studies, science, etc. when they transfer into the school. As long as the child's basic skills are up to par, everything else can be picked up quickly.
  9. This thread is making me grateful that I live within two miles of three different libraries. One is an independent town library, and the other two are part of (different) large systems. There's actually a branch of a third large system five miles from my house. I don't think I've paid more than $1 in fines since I moved to this house 13 years ago.
  10. Here's my plan for next year, such as it is: English: Keep reading lots of books. Copywork/Dictation. Light grammar. Math: Math Mammoth Blue series, equivalent to Light Blue 2A/2B. History: Ancients, using some combination of SOTW, Gombrich in the original German, and additional books in both German and English. Science: Mostly interest-led, but I plan to make sure we study plants in depth. German: Saturday school. Also working at home in an appropriate workbook (Duden Einfach Klasse in Deutsch, 2. Klasse), dictation, Lük, daily kids' German news show, other German TV, dinnertime in German, German read-alouds. Music: Continue piano studies. Incorporate recorder if we can make time. Classics for Kids podcast, Do Re Mikro podcast (German equivalent of Classics for Kids). Art: Drawing, art museum visits, whatever else comes up. Physical Education: Weekly swimming, Karate lessons, Soccer, general running around. Health: Nothing formal, but as this subject is required by law here, I will end the year with a list of health topics we covered. :)
  11. I've had a Replogle globe for many years, and would definitely recommend the brand. You might consider their Atlantis model. I recommend a globe with a full meridian, instead of a half meridian. Globes with a full meridian can be rotated up so you can see the southern hemisphere more easily.
  12. Ours is up. We spent the week doing standardized testing, though there wound up being a fair amount of other stuff, too.
  13. Thanks, this is very helpful info about the upcoming ITBS levels. I won't know for a while what her percentile scores are, but my general sense is that she missed about 10% of the questions due to attention/focus problems on the auditory sections, and 3-5% on all sections due to not knowing the answer.
  14. Thanks for sharing your experience! I had been wondering whether having someone else administer the test would be helpful.
  15. Thanks for your input about the question of which test to use. I do realize that most homeschoolers choose not to expose children this age to standardized tests if they can avoid it, but my family has made a different decision. My husband and I both enjoyed standardized tests throughout our academic careers and feel that regular and early exposure are valuable. My daughter thought it was fun, and I even learned something about her that I didn't know.
  16. What she said. I have extensive experience in academia, and this just doesn't ring true to me. If the Robinson children are indeed being forced out of the Nuclear Engineering program, I'd be more inclined to believe it was due to a disagreement about science rather than a disagreement about politics. But of course, we have no way to verify the validity of the most basic facts here, such as whether the children are in fact being forced out, let alone why.
  17. I agree that he may just not be ready. I remember it took my daughter what seemed like an enormously long time to get to the point where she was reading more fluently. The OPGTR helped enormously with that, as did BOB books. I think it probably took nine months from the time she was able to sound out CVC words until she stopped needing to sound out every word. It's now about two years since she started sounding out CVC words, and she reads very well.
  18. I've been administering the ITBS (level 6) to my daughter and her friend this week. I had been prepared to finish out the testing cycle thinking it was a waste of time, but actually, I have learned a lot about my kid during the testing. I have learned that she is much worse at listening than I thought she was, which is a significant problem on a test that is administered almost entirely orally. Most of the questions she has gotten wrong were ones where she just didn't remember the details when it came time to put an answer on the paper. Watching her with her friend has been illuminating - the other girl listens to the question and marks the answer. My kid fiddles with her pencil, pulls up her pant leg to poke at her band-aid, stands up, etc. Then she realizes it's time to answer the question, and racks her brain trying to remember what I just said. She usually figures it out, but she definitely got some questions wrong because she just couldn't remember the whole question. I don't think she got a single question wrong on the reading section. I'm not actually concerned about this, as she's only six. It seems like a combination of a problem paying attention, and a problem with auditory input specifically. If you do think I ought to be concerned, let me know. :) My main question has to do with testing next year. I want to use either the ITBS or the Stanford next year, and am wondering if they are both this same format, where nearly the entire test depends on listening skills, or whether either one of them duplicates the questions in written form on the student response sheets. Thanks for any insight you can provide about the ITBS level 7 or the SAT Primary 1!
  19. I know I'm all about his lately, but you might take a look at using Khan Academy (free) over the summer as part of your strategy to help her be more precise with computation. It is unforgiving - if you don't get 10 questions in a row completely right, you have to start over. Until you get 10 in a row right, you are not "proficient" in the topic. It also handles review. (Thus speaks the dork who has been staying up late this week solving systems of algebraic equations on Khan Academy. I keep thinking, "oh, I can do one more...")
  20. When you upload the files to Google docs, you need to make sure the option is chosen not to convert them to Google docs format. Then you will be able to upload all of the files. I agree with everyone else - store them on Google docs (oh so convenient!), burn a CD, put it on an external drive, use a flash drive, dropbox, multiple computers - there are so many ways to make sure you don't lose it. I have mine on three computers, on a backup hard drive, in Google docs, and on Dropbox.
  21. You are clearly one of those people who likes to plan. The very idea of doing this makes me :blink:. I will be interested to see whether I start feeling more of a need for exact planning as my kids get older.
  22. I find it interesting that so many object to the term "research paper" for this type of assignment. No, it's not the same thing as a high level academic research paper. I would call it a report. But I don't think calling it a research paper is particularly harmful. It's just a "research paper" using a set of expectations meant for second graders. We don't expect undergraduates to write research papers to the same standard we would expect from faculty members, either. I see no harm in viewing the expectations for "research papers" as a continuum, just as the expectations for many other kinds of academic work vary depending on the level of the student. I suspect that the people who came up with the phrase "research paper" for this type of assignment were trying to emphasize the importance of doing research by reading relevant books, rather than just writing whatever you think you know about the topic. Since the term "research" in English doesn't strictly mean "original research," it isn't unreasonable.
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