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GMB

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  • Website URL
    http://www.ginabinder.com
  • Biography
    Mother of 1 homeschooler and 1 public schooler.
  • Location
    Northern VA
  • Interests
    Reading, Cooking, Swimming
  • Occupation
    Resident in Counseling
  1. I agree. I experienced the same dynamic when I was in grad school at UVA: people who lived or went to school on grounds tended to look down on "townies" and vice versa. My dh noticed the same thing in law school 9 years earlier.
  2. Jann: Your story gives me hope. What Algebra II curriculum would you recommend for my DD, given that we will take a plodding approach? So far we've used Jacobs for Algebra I and Geometry. Thanks, Gina
  3. I hope DD will finish Geometry (Jacobs) in 10th grade this year, but she is progressing slowly while complaining greatly. She is extremely creative and eschews the idea of math. What are some Math options for 11th grade next year, given that Algebra II is NOT viable?
  4. I've been studying investments, reading many authors over the past few months. It's become a passion and I've become our family's financial advisor. In November, I will start to study Latin with my daughter.
  5. I agree with the poster who observed that prosperity is relative. While we fit your criteria, we made financial hits and misses throughout our 24 year year union. Here are some hits: DH has a JD, was an established lawyer when we married, and had no student loans. I had just completed my MA. I lucked into becoming an actuary in year one of marriage, participated in employer match, and rolled over a nice 401k when I quit after 11 years to stay home with kids. The year I quit was the year DH started his own practice. He has never updated his office decor, and replaces equipment and furniture due to need rather than trend. He finds quality suits at places like Marshall's, and converts suit jackets to sport coats when suit pants wear out, and always looks great. We buy used cars and drive them until repair costs exceed their value. We live in the same house we bought in 1990. We pay ourselves first - contribute to IRAs and savings and live off the rest. Here are some misses: I spent too years trying to "keep up with the Joneses" before I embraced DH's value approach to life. I lobbied to use student loans to finance my second MA, thinking it would "help" us by not reducing disposable income. We only started our kid's college plans when they were in elementary school. What is uncontrollable: We have been healthy, not been sued, not been in terrible accidents...
  6. You have almost described my dd14 to a tee (minus video games). She asks, "what's wrong with being anti-social"? DD14 has only 3 identified friends, 1 of whom she sees at most once a year, one she sees twice per month at Girl Scouts, and one with whom she communicates via email multiple times a week. The latter friend is the one with whom DD14 has most in common. The second friend is her earliest remaining friend, but their interests have diverged greatly over the years. She has fun with all three girls at birthday parties, but sees none of them often. She interacts with other people in an online model horse forum and participates in a weekly high school Sunday Class. Yet she resists all efforts to connect with other homeschoolers - except for her biology lab co-op. DD14 is intelligent, articulate, and comfortable interacting with adults. She takes weekly riding lessons and guitar lessons (individual, not group at her choice). Because she likes to go to church and on outings with DH and I, I do not consider her preference to be pathological. She just marches to the beat of a different drum. Actually, DD14 is a lot like DH!
  7. ... TWTM paradigm has been a saving grace for us. I had big hopes for History Odyssey Ancients level III (Hist/Lit/Geo) this year, but the packaged formula did not work for my out-of-the-box 9th grade thinker. Midway through last fall, I tossed it and pulled out TWTM and developed a 4 year plan for history and literature in one weekend: I divided the chapters of our history spine to correspond to the year breakouts in TWTM. I gave DD an assignment sheet for outlining the spine text for this year, indicating an average number of pages to be read and outlined daily. For each high school grade, I selected a challenging number of books for DD to read. I gave her a list of books to be read for the rest of this year. I used guidelines in TWTM to write up descriptions of assignments she can choose to do before and after she reads each great book. I also followed TWTM recommendations to create a plan to complete the study of rhetoric. I completed the history spine reading for this year weeks ago. I look over DD's outlines each weekend, and I read the great books ahead of her. (I'm getting the classical education I've missed). DH grades her compositions and will grade future research papers. Maybe this works for us because we love to read, and we have only one child in homeschool. We are also Christians who think differently about some key points. I think TWTM paradigm offers flexibility to all types of families. I don't think any curriculum developer can plan anything better for my child. My biggest time commitment is to reading. Basically, I've given my pleasure reading a huge upgrade in quality and my TV viewing time a lovely and long overdue downgrade.:001_smile:
  8. We have decided to use Conceptual Chemistry next year because DD hates math. I received an email response from the author, and read another one posted somewhere on this forum, which convince me that CC will prepare her for the future. At 14, DD seems like a budding artist. If she needs a more rigorous chemistry class to realize her evolving dream, she can take it in the future. Meanwhile, she can have a happier learning experience in the present. She's also going to read The Skeptical Chemist, and we have Chemistry: A Self-Teaching Guide to use as need or interest indicates.
  9. I've used Dr. Bronner's Liquid Soap (Lavender) as as shower gel, shampoo (in a pinch), floor cleaner, and most often to hand wash delicate clothing (instead of Woolite). I even use it in the machine for items I machine wash on the gentle cycle.
  10. I was really put off by Ken Ham's personal attack on Christians who accept the theory of evolution. As a result, I checked out http://biologos.org/resources/books and decided to read Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution. It gave me a great perspective on intelligent design, creationism, and evolution, and the interesting history of each. The author especially draws a distinction between biological Darwinism and social Darwinism. Darwin's pure data support the descriptive nature of the former, but indicate nothing about the prescriptive nature of the latter. I enjoyed the book because I accept its premise.
  11. Aubrey, I share a desire to participate in a community in which homeschool parents accept and learn from differences of faith, educational goals, and politics. We homeschool one child because she asked for it two years ago. Although we are a Christian family, we do not include religious instruction as part of academics. When I showed my proposed curriculum plan for this year to an experienced member of my local homeschool support group, she admonished me to add Bible and to make that class my DD's top priority. This academic emphasis was presented to me in a way that made it seem like an inoculation against bad moral choices in DD's future. I have observed too many counter-examples to accept this reasoning. Anyway, I'm surprised to discover how hard it is to locate homeschool curricula choices that are not explicitly Christian - especially if one desires a package plan. It seems even more difficult to locate support groups and conventions which appeal to non-fundamentalist Christians like my family - or which welcome the differences we bring to the table.
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