I'm curious as to how the group perceives your homeschool. Do they think you're pushing too hard? Do they know your kids are accelerated learners and chalk it up to that? Do they give you any grief or support, or do they keep quiet?

I think she meant it and that the assassination of Coin was the Hunger Game Katniss was thinking of when she agreed "for Prim."

:grouphug:

Raise your hands if you've heard of Dale Carnegie's book How to Win Friends and Influence People. Lately (even before this thread) I've been thinking that he would have been lambasted had he tried to publish that book in today's environment. "I never did any of those things and I still have friends." "I know lots of influential people who do the exact opposite so the book is useless and insulting." "I did those things and have more friends but it didn't make me more influential." "I gained more influence at work but I got in a fight with my best friend. This book sucks." "This book is only for people who have regular access to people they don't know. I don't, so the book is BS." "I have these personal obstacles to meeting new people, so the book itself is nonsense. It needs to address X problem because that's what I have." "This book is for people who are involved in lots of negotiations. I'm not, and that's the problem with this book." I'm pretty sure the target audience for Carnegie's book was people who are regularly in contact with other people, people involved in negotiations, people who don't have crippling social anxiety, etc. Maybe poor people are not the target audience for DR's blog post. He talks about what wealthy people do. He doesn't say anything about the poor, nor does he assert whether the wealthy have these habits as a result of wealth or vice versa. He doesn't say that if you do these things you'll be wealthy, nor does he say you cannot be wealthy without doing these things. In the olden days people used to buy/borrow books or subscribe to paper newsletters or buy magazines. They had more limited access and invested more time/effort before getting the content. Now so much information/opinion is free and easily accessed it's as if people think everything was directed at them personally when it's not. Spend $6 for a copy of GQ or Robb Report and you'll wonder why you bought this content that obviously doesn't apply to you. But if it's on the Internet, it's all directed at everyone! I am currently out of shape and have medical problems. I can read an article about the "Top 5 Habits of Fit People" and not feel like it's directed at me personally. Because I have two non-functioning endocrine glands I've already excluded myself from the target audience. That doesn't mean it's not useful information, and perhaps it's even true that these are the top 5 habits of fit people, rather than just a pithy headline. Great! Why am I going to run around complaining that this article doesn't take medical, financial, family, or neighborhood situations into account? Don't they know some people have non-functioning glands? That some neighborhoods are dangerous for getting fresh air? That some areas are un-walkable due to lack of sidewalks? How could they not take everyone's needs into account when dispensing information?

I would be annoyed but probably not say anything unless I was pain. It also depends on the duration of the flight. I usually fly Southwest so there's an semi-open boarding policy. I'm a short and baby-tolerant person so I usually "take one for the team" and sit next to a large person or babies. I especially like to sit next to mothers flying alone with babies and young children so I can put them at ease and lend a hand. They are usually very grateful. One time an exhausted mother fell asleep on a trans-Atlantic flight and I entertained her 4 kids for hours, even taking them to the bathroom (didn't go in) and holding the baby while he slept for a couple of hours. This was before I had my own children, back when I had energy. :lol: I can deal better with women pressing against me and with apologetic, nice people. I have a harder time with men pressing against me and rude, entitled people.

:grouphug:

I'm hoping I won't derail the thread by asking this, but it seems like I have a chance! I'm Muslim and so have only met a few pastors in my life, mostly at big events like weddings. I'm not sure I've met any wives before DH's grandfather passed away. The funeral service was at the church (UCC, don't know if they tend to be casual?) and the burial was 2 hours away in a different state. I didn't see the pastor's wife at the service but it's possible I missed her. Because the grave site was so far away nobody came except family, the pastor, and his wife. We were all wearing dark slacks or suits, covered by dark winter coats. (not necessarily black, but charcoal or navy as well.) The pastor's wife showed up in a brightly colored ski jacket, black stirrup leggings, white scrunchy socks, and white Reebok hightop sneakers. That was 11 years ago and I'm still somewhat offended. Maybe puzzled is a better word. But I feel bad for feeling this way because she didn't have to make the 4-hour roundtrip and she did. It just seemed like a pastor's wife should have appropriate clothes for a graveside service. I dunno. Thoughts?

I started using my kids' stroller for this purpose after they outgrew it. Works great, has handles and a rain cover. It is funny how many people think I've just tossed bags of veggies from the farmers' market onto an infant. Watermelon season was fun!

Wow, crazy lady. She didn't just cross the line, she obliterated it as she flew over. Our local church has an annual carnival and the pastor goes door-to-door to invite everyone in the neighborhood. The first time he came I told him we are Muslim and he said the carnival was for the neighborhood, not just for Christians. We went and had a fabulous time and everyone was very welcoming. It was nice to meet some neighbors.

I feel better! :D

Thanks for all the info!

Is there a final time for them to make a go/no go decision? Or can they decide up until the end of the 2-hour launch window? I should probably just relax and let the school schedule flex this morning. :blushing:

Here's the countdown schedule if you haven't seen it: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/launch/atlas_V_count_101.html

We are watching the NASA launch this morning. The kids are excited! The 2-hour launch window opens at 1:28p EST. There's a 60% chance of launch today. The are currently on schedule and are 50% of the way through loading the liquid oxygen. Main goal of the mission is to research the climate history of Mars. Info about the mission here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/maven/main/ http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/maven/overview/index.html Launch video here: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/ustream.html (sometimes silent) Everything on the web sites is running slowly. I think there's a lot of traffic so don't wait until a minute before launch to try and watch. Try to get in early and then you should hopefully maintain your connection. I think NASA TV is also a channel on regular TV but I don't own one so I can't be more helpful there.

Start small. In my kids it always causes bedwetting if they're exposed to gluten. Or sometimes even lost urine even while they are awake. DS gets a rash around his mouth. Put down an extra towel on the bed and take a change of clothes with you if you go out for the next couple of days. Some kids have behavior changes and have stomach problems as well. My son, who sometimes flaps his arms, will flap more. But his general behavior remains the same. HTH.

Yes, that's what I'm saying but you said it better than I did. I highly doubt the school are skipping the topic of adding 3 or more fractions together. I think it's more likely that if the kids use a shortcut for the 2-fraction problem they are less likely to understand the 3-fraction problem. At least I hope that's the case. It's a much bigger problem if the schools are not even teaching it.

I've never seen the butterfly method before. It seemed confusing, not to remember, but to understand why it works. But I guess if the goal isn't to teach why it works, it's okay. I am not having any trouble believing many schools teach the butterfly method. I am having trouble believing schools are not teaching kids how to add 3 fractions. I'm wondering if the kids are taught the "easy" butterfly method for two fractions, resulting in no understanding of the most basic fraction problem. At a later time the are taught by a more legitimate(?) method to add more than two fractions, but because they didn't really understand the two-fraction model, the three-fraction non-butterfly method goes over their heads. In other words, their inability to add three fractions is not because it was completely cancelled as a topic, but because they didn't really understand the simpler problem, they were out of their depth for higher numbers of fractions. Or are schools really not even covering how to add more than two fractions together?

Maybe I'm looking at this wrong. These are percentiles, not percentages on an exam, right? So for the first standardized test your son scored better than ~90ish percent of the kids. For the second test he scored better than ~80ish percent. But they're all schooled in the same system so the kids who ended up higher than him went through the same process. It's not like he got 90% correct on an exam and then 80% correct. If they're all going through the same system, why is he dropping down? I can't tell if you're saying something was wrong with his reading education that year, or that he particularly benefitted from a particular style of reading instruction?

This is horrible. So how does a school become highly ranked yet turn out these kids? Is the ranking based upon state tests, and those tests are disconnected from college entrance exams? Are the schools riding on their reputations from when they were good? I wonder if the college entrance exam results could be tied to school ranking, but then I worry that the school would discourage potentially low performers from taking the exams. Sigh...

I think it's possibly illegal. For example, would the library display religious pamphlets (of any religion) simply because they were donated and people were free to take or leave them, or switch schools if they felt uncomfortable? I'm not sure they are "in the clear" simply because no public funds were spent or because they are part of a lending library rather than classroom materials. Just thinking out loud here.

I agree. It just seems so much worse when it's from your parents, though. Through homeschooling I've become much more aware of the shortcomings of my own education. I don't blame my parents though, despite being annoyed they didn't realize some of the stuff as it was happening. I can't imagine how I would feel if I did consider them to be fully responsible; I think it would impact our relationship in the long term. I guess parents who send their kids to school are afforded a sort of insulation from the outcomes, for better or worse.

I'm curious about how he did them. In his head? Using the commonly taught algorithm for multiple digit multiplication? Through an understanding of place value? A different method?

Completely agree. I had the same point earlier when I said I wasn't sure how much CC complaining was the result of actual CC and how much of it was based on having to learn a new method. For example, I love math and while I have preferred ways of thinking about it, I feel I could teach in any method if I had to. I don't like some methods, but they all make mathematical sense to me, KWIM? I honestly don't know the best approach now that it seems we have a large proportion of teachers who cannot make sense of math. It's one thing to have a teacher who understands mathematical thinking, has been forced to teach it one way, and is now being asked to use multiple ways. It's another thing if the teacher only knows one way herself and doesn't really understand that. How do you recover from that?

I wrote a long response to this about a good friend of mine and the direction her family's homeschool is taking. I know she doesn't read here but I decided not to submit it because someone else might recognize who she is due to the circumstances outlined in my posting. Let's just say I completely get where you're coming from and my friend's daughter is heading toward a date with a brick wall next winter and I can only watch from the outside. It's very upsetting and I'm so worried this girl is going to be very angry with her parents a year from now.

This was the most interesting part for me too. I think I've mostly been doing the more "Japanese-style" teaching, having read Ma's book and using Singapore, plus dealing with my aforementioned difficulties with DS's perfectionism. But still it's good to get a concise way of thinking about this. The questions he posed above are a good shorthand for the more amorphous idea I've been trying to hold in my head while teaching. The other interesting part for me was the fractions and how they are multiplied. First I nearly fell out of my chair because he said only ~20% of US kids could add those 3 fractions on the test. Seriously?!! I then had an epiphany that perhaps my Southern CA late-70s and 80s math education wasn't as bad as I had thought. I never learned any of those answer techniques he discussed and the only arithmetic operation I could thing of where we purely learned an algorithm instead of the reasoning was long division. I'm not saying it was a fabulous math education, but I doubt anyone came out of 5th grade not being able to add 3 fractions. Good grief, what's happened here? :crying: