AndyJoy
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Posts posted by AndyJoy
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When my best friend and her 3 siblings moved away, their family rented the local youth center for 2 hours. It had foosball, ping-pong, broom hockey equipment, etc. If you have something similar in your area, we loved this! We got lots of great pictures to remember them by.
Something special you could have each guest do is make a scrapbooking page of themself for your teen with things they want them to remember. You could either take a photo of the guest with your teen there and print it out, or have them bring their own photo. You could have stickers, stencils, pens, etc. for them to decorate it and add quotes, funny stories, great memories, etc.
Also, you could provide blank pillowcases and fabric markers for each of your teens for their friends to sign.
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Dh and I don't have children yet, but we think 18 will be the age for dating/courting in our home.
Both of us were allowed to date at 16, but both chose to wait until college. We both believe that casual teen dating is at best silly and at worst dangerous. There is no need to have your heart broken numerous times to find "the right one." We think dating should only be done by people who are in a position to be married, support a family, have kids, etc. We do allow for the possibility that we may have a child who is in this position earlier than 18 (has a job/trade and isn't going to college, for example) and are willing to consider each child separately.
Anecdotally, both his older brother and my younger sister have dated numerous times since age 15/16 (including 2 s*xual relationships each), and neither has found "the right one." At 29 and 25 they are still just "dating." Dh and I met our freshman year of college (he was barely 17, I almost 19). We hung out in groups until Christmas, then had our first solo date in January. After 2.5 years of dating (no s*x), we married. Though he was not quite 20, he had a degree and a job, and thus was ready for a family. We have been married 5.5 years, and are immeasurably blessed to have no dating baggage. We were each other's first date, first kiss, first love! We don't feel like we missed anything by not dating around, because we were old enough and wise enough to know what we were looking for in a future mate, and didn't have to "kiss a lot of frogs" to figure it out.
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I face paint frequently and just use regular acrylic paints. I do not use this for all-over face designs--just smaller art on the cheek, arm, forehead, etc. If you use it all over it is stiff and cracks. It stays on well and cleans up with water and soap.
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I don't think it is weird at all. It just means that your kids love you and feel bonded to you. I used to give my parents back massages & rub their feet when I was a kid. I saw it as a little thing that I could do to make them feel better just as they always found ways to make me feel better.
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I live in CA, and I did not have to show ID because I showed them the postcard I received in the mail telling me that I was registered and where to vote. Those who didn't have this card had to show ID.
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Our polling place is the community center, so the schools are open. However, it was cool to see 6 juniors and seniors I know from the local Christian school working as volunteers! I saw 3 elementary-school-aged children with their parents who I would guess are home schooled. They didn't seem to mind the long wait as each of them was very absorbed in his own book!
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My sister and I always painted ours rather than carving them so that they would last longer.
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Well, I don't have kids yet, but my dh often asks me what's for dinner, and I've been trying to not get annoyed with him! I often whip something new up or make dishes I haven't named, so it frustrates me to have to try to articulate exactly what it is. I figured out that dh looks forward all day to sitting down to dinner with me, so he wants to know what we're eating to help him have something to look forward to when he leaves the stress of work behind!
My new standard response when he wants to know what we're having and the dish doesn't have a name is to smile sweetly and say coyly "noodly stuff", "ricey stuff", "potatoey stuff", etc. This usually satisfies him!
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I definitely agree that these tendencies may exist without the label (and I'm not saying all gifted kids are prideful), but I think the label can exacerbate these tendencies. If one thinks of himself/herself as smart and weird, he/she may be less confident and prideful. If one gets hung up on being "gifted", however, one may equate this with "deserving of special treatment" or "better than others."
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Well, I was a snarky know-it-all for quite a while (usually to adults other than my parents, however), but I did break out of it around 17. This is better than 25, right? :D One thing that helped me was my mom would ask me (and I began asking myself before talking), "Is is more important for me to be right, or respectful?" This helped a lot, but I guess it wouldn't if the kid decided being right was more important!
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I'm sorry, it looks like you were asking more about how being labeled gifted for school purposes was helpful (or not), and I kind of went on a tangent!
I will quickly say that it was beneficial for me. For one thing, it broadened my horizons to show me that there was more out there to learn than the repetative stuff in the regular classroom. Being in an accelerated, more creative/free-form setting gave me tools for outside self-study. I was inspired to seek knowlege for myself outside the classroom and dig deeper. I also found great joy in being taught by a teacher who understood the particular challenges of giftedness and was willing and able to have sustained conversations with me on a myriad of topics. I was relieved to have peers who were similarly motivated and passionate about learning and didn't find me the least bit odd. My gifted classes were a "safe haven" where I felt like I could be myself without fear of being ostracized or harassed.
It sounds like your daughter's options would be academic challenge in the same classroom, however, so this would probably be different for her. I did have a few "regular" classes where the teacher gave me a separate assignment that was deeper or more involved than the rest of the class'. When these assigments were constructed well, I didn't feel like it was just extra work. Because I was naturally curious anyway, I was inspired by the opportunity to delve deeper into topics that the class usually just quickly addressed and then moved past.
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Well, I'm not a parent yet, so I'm giving you my opinion as a 27-year-old "gifted kid." You can decide for yourself whether I'm old enough for that to be the "long run" yet. :D
From a very young age, I always knew I didn't fit in the typical mold. The teasing started young. "Oh, Andrea's just strange--she LIKES math." "Everything is easy for Andrea." "What do you do--read the dictionary for fun?" "You just say you like school because you want to suck up to the teacher." etc. It wasn't until 6th grade that I was officially labeled "gifted." My mother knew I was bright, but seriously didn't know how outside the norm I was for a kid my age, as she didn't have a frame of reference to which she could compare me. It wasn't until I was able to better articulate the alienation I felt from my peers and my frustrations at the lack of challenge in the classroom that she realized I was languishing. I was very eager to please my teachers, so I never would have dreamed of telling them I was bored out of my mind, because that was what the "whiney bad kids" did all the time. I wanted them to like me, so I didn't complain to them, I just kept jumping through the hoops.
There were good and bad things about not being labeled gifted until 6th grade, but I believe the bad outweighed the good. Like many gifted kids, I was very introspective from a young age. I didn't just blow off teasing--I analyzed it, trying to discern the truth. Not knowing that I was "gifted", or even that such a label existed, I was apt to believe my peers who assured me I was just weird. As a result, I had the "typical teen" identity crisis at a younger age then many kids, and kept it more bottled inside.
I remember feeling a huge weight lifted from me when I was labeled "gifted", and my parents and I talked about what that meant. It was like all the pieces came together, and I finally had a "diagnosis" to explain my "ailment." It gave me a truthful counter to the harassment--both comebacks to kids, and more importantly, sound reasoning to counter my person feelings of self doubt.
The joy of the fact that I got to attend a gifted pullout program was very much secondary to the confidence it gave me to know that I was not weird or strange, just differently gifted than other kids. Knowing I was gifted actually made me more willing to open up to my parents with my problems. This may sound strange, but when I was little, some part of me was afraid that if I told my parents I was called weird and strange, and admitted that I thought the kids were right, that maybe my parents would have that idea planted in their minds and decide I reallly was weird too! It didn't occur to me at age 7-10 that there could be a reasonable counter to my peers' opinion of me!
I'm obviously not saying that it's all good to be labeled gifted--you definitely have to work at countering a gifted kid's tendencies to pride, a superior attitude, challenging of authority, etc. but I think this is much better than the alternative. I think that if a child is gifted, he should be told this from a young age, just like you would tell a child about a physical problem that will affect his life. If you grow up knowing you are gifted, your parents can help you view the world and yourself properly. I think this is much more valuable than springing it on him later in life, or letting him figure it out for himself as an adult. Though my aha! moment was life-changing for the better, I think I would have preferred bypassing the isolation and self-doubt of my early years before I knew what was "wrong" with me.
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From what I can find on the internet, it appears that both the Sony Reader and the Kindle can read plain text files (.txt), so you should be able to read Gutenberg books
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By Robin McKinley: The Hero and the Crown (prequel), The Blue Sword (written first)
These are fantasy/epic/action/dragon books with a female protagonist and a very enjoyable read. Also, McKinley's Beauty and Spindle's End are wonderful retellings of Beauty and the Beast and Sleeping Beauty.
By Cynthia Voigt: Jackaroo, On Fortune's Wheel, The Wings of a Falcon, Elske
These are set in a fictional medieval kingdom. They also have female protagonists and are some of my favorites. Though they are a series, each one really stands alone. Just a caution about Elske--I believe there is a short scene involving a rape. I don't recall anything objectionable about the others.
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With the exception of problem 2, all of those concepts were in the Glencoe Pre-Algebra book I taught from last year.
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Here is the copyright information from Microsoft's clipart website. It looks like you can even sell the flashcards w/out problems.
Media Elements and Templates.You may have access to media images, clip art, animations, sounds, music, shapes, video clips, templates and other forms of downloadable content (“media elementsâ€) associated with the service. If so, you may copy and use the media elements, and license, display and distribute them, along with your modifications as part of your software products, including your web sites, but you may not (i) sell, license or distribute copies of the media elements by themselves or as part of any collection, or product if the primary value of the product is in the media elements; (ii) grant customers of your product any rights to license or distribute the media elements; (iii) license or distribute any of the media elements that include representations of identifiable individuals, governments, logos, initials, emblems, trademarks, or entities for any commercial purposes or to express or imply any endorsement or association with any product, entity, or activity; or (iv) create obscene or scandalous works, as defined by law at the time the work is created, using the media elements.
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We love our Wii. Our favorite 4-player games are Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, and Wii Play.
The Wii Fit is also great fun/exercise.
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While it's a "pre-algebra" skill, I would say 6th grade. I taught 6th grade math this last year at a school using Glencoe Middle School Math and there were problems like this in that book.
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Pam, dh says while he thinks he could do a better job as president than many, he unfortunately is only 25 and thus 10 years too young for the position. He got a good laugh at the suggestion, however.
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So a few days ago, my husband was at the grocery store. A woman in her 80s was slowly pushing her cart around the corner of an aisle that is fairly narrow, making it hard for anyone to go around her. My husband just patiently followed her, but then a store bag boy (about 20) came quickly down the aisle, sighed loudly and rolled his eyes at how long she was taking, and shoved past her, causing her to have to stop abruptly. So what did my husband do? He "accidentally" tripped him! I was very surprised to hear it, but I do find it amusing now--are we sick?
I asked dh "Why?" and he said, "I thought he would learn a lesson better that way than if I just told him he was rude. He could have easily knocked the lady down that way." And by the way, the woman saw what he did and grinned at him gratefully.:)
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Hubby and I are too cheap to mess with it too much! In the desert where we live now, we keep it around 80 in the summer (hard to keep up with 113 degree weather!) and don't heat in the winter. I've only spent one winter here, so I don't remember how cold it gets, but when we lived in Idaho it was sometimes as cold as 55 degrees in our bathroom in the morning! Once we have kids however, we'll keep the temperature more "normal" for them, since a baby can't sleep with an electric blanket or go take a cold shower to adjust!
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- Buy an MRE at an Army/Navy surplus store and let the kids taste what soldiers eat in combat!
- you can usually get uniforms at thrifts stores (for the dressing relay)
- play "Drill Sergeant Says" instead of "Simon Says" (if you have a family friend who is in the army, it might be fun to invite him to come in uniform and lead this, talk to the kids, and maybe even sign autographs!)
- Buy an MRE at an Army/Navy surplus store and let the kids taste what soldiers eat in combat!
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I love coming up with birthday theme stuff! Here are my ideas.
- Take a photo of each child in a uniform jacket/hat standing next to an American flag like soldiers do when they enlist
- have an "army crawl" relay
- Divide into two teams. Put 2 sets of jackets, boots, hats, dog-tags, pants, etc. at one end of the yard and have a relay. The first child must put on the pants, then run back, and take them off. Then second child must put on the pants, run down and put on the boots, and run back. He then takes off the boots and pants, which the third child puts on and then runs down and adds the jacket, etc. until the final child is fully dressed.
- Serve food on cafeteria-style trays. Check Wal-mart or your dollar store for these. Label the serving table as "Mess Hall" in stencil font
- use stencil font to label other areas of the house such as the restroom (Latrine), bedrooms (barracks), etc.
- my Dollar Tree has army themed pencils, noisemakers, cups, banners, etc. right now
- make or buy camoflauge bandanas as party favors
- play capture the flag
- have each child clip a clothespin to their clothes. If they forget to say "Yes ma'am/sir" or "no ma'am/sir" to any superior officer (adult), the child who catches them gets to take a clothespin from them. The child with the most clothespins at the end gets a prize.
- have them draw and/or write pictures/cards and save them to mail to soldiers in combat or wounded (lots of links online for where to send)
- play musical chairs with military/Americana songs
- Play "salute tag" (like freeze tag). Anyone who is caught must stand at attention saluting until someone tags them while saying "at ease"
- address everyone as "private LastName"
- visit your local Army recruiter and see what he might give you in terms of posters, pencils, stickers, lanyards, etc.
These are off the top of my head--I may add more ideas later!
- Take a photo of each child in a uniform jacket/hat standing next to an American flag like soldiers do when they enlist
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We didn't dance at our wedding when we were married in 2003 because of the church's denomination, but "our song" is "I Love You, Always Forever" by Donna Lewis.
Teacher vs. educator
in General Education Discussion Board
Posted
Awesome! I'm laughing audibly while imagining piercing screams!