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momto2Cs

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Everything posted by momto2Cs

  1. My son has read/watched: Autoweek magazine Top Gear (see below) Early Days of Automobiles by Elizabeth Janeway (vintage Landmark series book, extremely good. We did it as a read-aloud for everyone) Car: The Definitive Visual History of the Automobile DK Eyewitness: Car Luxury Cars and Classic Cars, coloring books from Dover Publications Classic Cars: A Definitive Collection (series available on Amazon video) My Classic Car (series available on Amazon video) Top Gear is a must-watch around here. Ds LOVES that show! And even I enjoy the challenge episodes!
  2. My ds's passion in life is anything automobile related. Seriously -- he's studied their history, can name most makes/models at a glance, has taught himself to do a basic brake job as well as other maintenance on my little old car... he plans to be a certified mechanic, specializing in custom rebuilds. Anyhow, through family friends, he has the chance to spend one day a week this spring helping a guy rebuild a couple of cars, starting with a 1940 Ford pickup. He'll be doing this with his best buddy, who is just as much as much of a car nut. Ds is over the moon! :hurray: :hurray: :hurray: I guess I could call this an internship, or maybe shop class on his transcript?
  3. My ds's passion in life is anything automobile related. Seriously -- he's studied their history, can name most makes/models at a glance, has taught himself to do a basic brake job as well as other maintenance on my little old car... he plans to be a certified mechanic, specializing in custom rebuilds. Anyhow, through family friends, he has the chance to spend one day a week this spring helping a guy rebuild a couple of cars, starting with a 1940 Ford pickup. He'll be doing this with his best buddy, who is just as much as much of a car nut. Ds is over the moon! :hurray: :hurray: :hurray: I guess I could call this an internship, or shop class on his transcript?
  4. Revisiting this thread as I am now putting together a history course for now through the end of our school year based on Downton Abbey. I found a couple of Downton timelines that are helping me piece it together, and then I'm adding on books, movies, and documentaries that expand on topics mentioned, or show what was happening elsewhere. For example, we already studied the Titanic disaster, and right now we're reading The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia, which I see as complimentary to the time period. We'll watch The Last Emperor, to see what happened in China, and dd and I are reading The Flame Trees of Thika (starts in 1913). Other topics we'll cover are WWI, nursing, women's rights/sufferage, the Spanish flu, British presence in India, and so forth. I'll call it "Overview of Modern History, part 1" or something like that for ds's transcript.
  5. We live in CA too,.. my ds is dual-enrolled, and I'm so glad that our cc (junior college really) allows for free admission, though I do still pay out of pocket for books and class costs. We rented his textbook this semester from Amazon for $25.
  6. We used The Dangerous Book for Boys and The Daring Book for Girls for "lesson plans" for a while. It was fun! We covered bits of history, science, Latin, physical activities, games, Morse code, etc.
  7. Wow, I left the boards for a month, and this is still the most active thread!
  8. Ds14 wants to be an auto mechanic, and restore vintage cars. Artist on the side. Dd12 wants to be a wildlife specialist. She had planned, from ages 2-10, to be a vet, but decided she didn't want to explain to families that she had to put their pets to sleep. So wildlife specialist it is! She figures zoos, and other places of that type, as well as parks, Gifh & Game... need specialists.
  9. Heard back from the author. It IS a website glitch, and he hasn't been able to fix it yet. But, to make up for the $5 shipping, he offered me a free download of another title equal in value to the one I got. And he sent the download, with an apology for all the confusion!
  10. Not yet. Nothing from them. I originally went back to the website through Paypal, and it just said thanks, hope you shop with us again. I am hoping to hear something from the owner SOON!
  11. I just bought a "digital download" of a books from [Mastering] Math Essentials, and paid $5 shipping? They didn't ask for any contact info, just gave me a pay through PayPal option. I've sent to website owner an email both through his website and PayPal, waiting to hear anything. I've never seen a digital download with shipping before. I'm so confused. :confused:
  12. Both dh and I work outside the home. He does variable hours (restaurant work), and I balance two part-time positions, along with a class I am taking (toward my MA). My kids are older (12 and 14), or I would not have taken on the second job, even though it is extremely helpful financially AND is actually working toward my goal of teaching professionally. It can be challenging certainly, but it is doable. It also helps that we primarily school math and language arts, and that much of the rest is unschooled/interest led. And as ds14 is taking two classes at the local junior college, that gives me some time to work one-on-one with dd12.
  13. I love this thread, and am re-reading it while listening to Unschooling undefined (Julie Bogart). A fantastic combo, and just what I need today!
  14. I know, I know... this is going to be a super-vague post. But earlier this year, someone posted a link to a free science resource. It invloved collecting samples of dirt/muck/etc/, adding fluids to some, leaving others as is, and making observations. For the life of me, I can't find anything on it, even though I downloaded the printouts at the time. Any clue? Told you this would be vague. :tongue_smilie: FOUND IT!! http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/winogradsky-columns-microbial-ecology-classroom?utm_source=BioInteractive+News&utm_campaign=2efb0e1e95-BioInteractive_News_Vol_496_9_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_98b2f5c6ba-2efb0e1e95-69240497
  15. We camped at the Pinnacles National Monument a few years ago, and the kids still talk about it. The Northern Segment of the San Andreas faultline has several places that are worth viewing. There's an online Geotour that might spark some interest. And then this site has a plethora of suggestions, sorted by general area: California Rocks!
  16. Exactly. I'm tutoring two 14 year olds with this issue...unschooling math did not work for them. Thankfully they are catching up fairly rapidly, but they're still a fair bit behind, and I'm hoping just to get them up to grade level over the next two years. Their progress is proof of the second line I bolded in the above... that with systematic instruction, they are making decent progress.
  17. I too got to meet Douglas Adams once, and have always been thankful I had that opportunity.
  18. Just for a couple of minutes as Dawkins had to go off to a fundraising dinner event.
  19. On Sunday, Richard Dawkins was in the area, promoting his new autobiography. Ds and I went to hear him speak, and afterwards, we got to meet the man himself, and get books signed. Ds was very excited about this meeting, and now wants to read a lot more of his books. He was particularly thrilled to find that Dawkins was great friends with Douglas Adams, who is ds's all-time favorite author. Just sharing his joy! (Dawkins, ds, and the woman who arranged the talk)
  20. Perhaps you could go through TT1 and give him the quizzes. When he stops scoring well, you know where he is having issues, and you could work from there. I agree with kiana. He doesn't need to re-do Algebra 1 in its entirety, just needs to finish it before moving on to TT2.
  21. I no longer plan because we never end up following anything detailed. We "do the next thing" in math and language arts, and everything else is interest-driven.
  22. I wanted, originally, to be a very classical/scholarly type of homeschool. We stated out, waaaay back, when ds was in kindergarten, with that approach in mind. And for us, it just didn't click. We burnt out by the end of first grade. I know for some people, it works beautifully, and to some degree I've always been envious of that. And we tried full on unschooling. That didn't work for us either. The kids felt they were at too loose of ends. What I am saying is that there is a balancing point for many people. Each family has to find their own, and it will differ slightly (or more than slightly) from child to child. My son is far more of a natural unschooler than my daughter has been. We spent so long struggling with her dyslexia, which I think really held her back in a lot of aspects. Now that she reads, she follows more tangents, sets up more projects for herself, and is much more independent. It has taken us years, and a lot of struggle on my part, to find that balancing point. I still overplan. I keep thinking "wow, they would really enjoy this... and this... and this too!", and frankly it overwhelms them, and me, when we have that much going on. I thought the soup analogy earlier was fantastic, and very appropriate to the situation. I am very good at checking it constantly, giving it a stir, a pinch of this, that, and the other thing, when really what I need to do is let it simmer. This year, with my two+ jobs, ds being a concurrent junior college student, and everything else, I just don't have time to be stirring the pot constantly, and that's a good thing! I am having to step back, let them take the lead more. We cut back to the bare bones basics (at least our version of them), and let them just explore the rest. Yes, there are still days when I think "we should be doing x, and y", but then I step back, and look at what they are doing. Somedays, it looks like nothing but computer games and Minecraft, to tell the truth. Other days, they are writing books, making 3D animal life cycle charts, building with Lego for hours to determine how to build in Minecraft. It ebbs and it flows.
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