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waa510

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Everything posted by waa510

  1. It's nothing earth-shattering, I'm afraid. It's really just things that she hasn't read yet, that I can get on Overdrive and that she'll listen to eagerly. She has a unique taste in books too that I'm still trying to pinpoint. Anyway, Trumpet of the Swan The Secret Garden Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe The One and Only Ivan The Terrible Two Wonder The Phantom Tollbooth The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler The Mighty Miss Malone The Fourteenth Goldfish D’Aulaire’s Greek Myths A Sprinkle of Magic Five children and It The Mouse and the Motorcycle Beezus and Ramona The Curious World of Calpurnia Tate Socks Mary Poppins Peter Pan Fortunately, the Milk A Bear Called Paddington Tom’s Midnight Garden The Indian in The Cupboard The Patchwork Girl of Oz Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Odd and the Frost Giants Flora and ulysses Young Fredle The Underneath Lost and Found Figured I could add more if we work through them all but this is what we have been planning on working through so far. :)
  2. I wouldn't worry about tutoring in OG at school. Homeschooling is like tutoring..so she's really going to get *more* OG tutoring from your homeschooling than at school. ;) I agree with the concerns about Math-U-See. For me, I'd see which Math curriculum resonates with *you* as teacher. If it makes sense to you as a non-math person it'll be easier for you to teach. I agree that Singapore is a great choice but I've been told it's not the best for non-mathy moms as it assumes a certain math proficiency and comfort. Math Mammoth gets that great conceptual math in without a ton of manipulatives to keep track of. Rightstart Math is great for hands-on, though. You can also just add pieces of RS like the Card Games kit or Abacus to use while working through problems. Math Mammoth would probably be the easiest to jump into as it follows fairly closely to a traditional school sequence. Story of the World is great for grammar stage. I'd make sure to get the Activity book if she likes coloring and crafty projects. That science looks good. I haven't used it but have heard the chapters can jump and be a bit scattered. Not a huge deal for grammar stage though. I'd add in some copywork/dictation. Maybe Writing with Ease, but start at level 1 to get her used to narrating? I also agree about getting reading more solid before moving into formal spelling. AAS is fantastic, though! Getting a smaller magnetic white board helps with the tiles and teaching the concepts. My biggest piece of advice is to start small and build up from there. Tweak and add/remove things as needed. The curriculum is ultimately a *tool* to help you out...you aren't married to it! But overall it sounds like you're track, with a little bit of writing added in. Welcome to the forums :)
  3. I choose a spine or at least a table of contents from a book on whatever thing we'll be working on that year. I follow the WTM cycle. I really need an outlined framework to operate within before I can start filling it in with videos, crafts, experiments, coloring pages, pinterest projects. That's just me though and how I think. I align the topics at the various levels of my kids while creating a notebook for science for the year for each of my kids by chapter. I make fold-ables a la interactive notebook style, illustrate concepts and write silly notes, draw comics, fun facts, print out pictures or coloring pages, crosswords ,activity sheets, essay questions, and align any review sheets that might go along with the topic. I usually pick the topic order for older Dd and align little Dd to that list. My kids also loved when we did Ellen J. McHenry's stuff and she had youtube videos aligned to the chapter topics. So now I go through each subtopic and make a humongous playlist of Youtube videos for the year. I do this for History too. It takes forever but my kids enjoy it.
  4. Spring plans: Wrap up with FLL2 (working on that darn preposition list!) Adding a couple more words-per-sentence in copywork Progress through our science and history texts (HO 2 and RSO E & S) Go on all our field trips for Science once it's warm (tide pools study, earthquake center visit nearby) Field trips for history before they leave Japan! (Botticelli exhibit at Tokyo Metropolitan and Caravaggio in Ueno) Tortoise moving through quicksand pace WWE3 Get into a groove with MM Finish VFCR 4 (bought for sister but she stole it) Finish AAS4 audiobook list for 1st finish EM Daily Geo 4 get her Japanese tutor to come consistently get myself to start teaching Japanese to her consistently Summer plans: Finish Holt E & S science with her/sister (about 10 chapters by then?) Get through the Renaissance/16th century in HO2 Neater and teeny bit longer copywork/dictation; WWE3 Work through MM3 Work through AAS5 Work through things I forgot we were supposed to be working through :p 2016-2017: AAS5 MM3 WWE3 The Elements, Carbon Chem and Holt Physical with older sister Human Odyssey volume 2 with grammar stage books FLL3 some vocab workbook..whatever she wants to do SCM Geo? (she wants to do what sister is doing..sigh) Harmony Art Renaissance (Grade 6?) with sister ?? This might be it. :/ She wants to do as much as "Sissy" as possible. She seems to be unaware that she's younger. Sigh. We'll see how it goes!
  5. ISTJ and it fit me to a T. You also caught my struggles perfectly! Perfectionism, being rigid, losing sight of big picture ...yup, yup, and yup. Now I'm inspired to find my kids' personality types! Thanks for giving clarity to how we roll. :)
  6. K12 Human Odyssey. The book is a great and easy step up from SoTW. My kids love the series. You can get copies very cheaply used on Amazon. Right now, the first volume is $14.00. I'd wait on SWB's History of the Ancient World as I think it's more intended as a high school history course. It's very dense and detailed.
  7. For 5th grade next year, I've probably spent (or will spend when adding on consumable workbooks throughout the year) about $650 with Girl Scouts expenses in there. I rounded up to account for extra expenses like science kits, field trips or something we may find fun in the middle of the year. I'll re-use a lot of it with little Dd though. For younger dd, I'll spend only max. $100 on her b/c I'm reusing a ton of things. Most of her expenses are consumable workbooks that she LOVES. I could probably budget her for < $50 without the workbooks added in there. I added in a bit for Girl Scouts expenses. My kids don't do a ton of extras here as the quality isn't there, it's a pain to deal with driving, and they love the free time to hang with neighbor kids or work on their own projects. If we were in the States, I could see spending about $1,000 total for both kids with added extracurriculars or clubs/groups they'd join. I expect this cost to go up a lot when older Dd hits 6th and adds on a couple online classes.
  8. 1. live somewhere for more than a year without feeling twitchy to move on 2. exercise consistently :( 3. drive on a massive bridge over water (*ahem* Tampa, FL...looking at you) without lots of deep breathing
  9. herbed potatoes and arugula salad with tomato and white bean soup. Kids wanted rice as well but that was a last minute addition.
  10. The American Red Cross has all of their digital course materials online for people to view or print off for free.
  11. The Activity Book for each volume has comprehension questions already done for you. Just to maybe save you some work for the next three!! I'd recommend the History of...series as the books really helped fill in my own holes in historical knowledge. The chronological sequence is so beneficial for understanding history. It boggles the mind as to why it's not a universal 'thing' in schools.
  12. :iagree: I found Spelling Workout to be redundant for my strong speller and dry as dust. It also focused more on vocab development (and not defining any of the new words..sigh) than spelling in the upper levels (F? I think).
  13. Thank you for the reminder! I need to track down my paperwork!
  14. Yes, the fun theme hotels are usually love hotels. I'll let youtube explain....nsfw or kids...
  15. Hmm..OK, let's see. Mt. Mitake is beautiful with waterfalls and tori and unique bird statues (it probably has something to do with all the birds in the area). We (hubby and I) enjoyed this one but the kids got very tired. Also, the cable car might still be out so that adds some time to your climb. I can have Dh check with his Japanese secretary if Mitake's construction is finished or not and let you know. Again, Mt. Takao is a great experience with lots of different trail options depending on climbing ability and what you'd like to see along the way. My kids are young, so feeding the monkeys was a highlight for them. The path we took also had a few shrines along the way to the top so that if our kids crapped out, we'd still have been able to see some fun things. I believe there is a path with waterfalls. I'll check on that. The main shrine at the top is amazing though. The statues surrounding the shrine are interesting. They remind me of head statues from the Olmecs. Also, it's very interesting to see the Shinto vs. Buddhist shrines so I'd make it a point to see both while here. Yoyogi Park is a fairly famous park in Tokyo that always has some kind of cultural festival or musical performance going on. The Meiji Shrine is right by it as well..a really nice one. You get there from Harajuku Station on the JR Yamanote Line. The Meiji Shrine can get crowded on the weekends. A friend of mine has seen a wedding procession there once in traditional dress. Apparently they happen frequently on the weekends but we've never caught one. For a beautiful garden, we really like Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden a little walk away from Shinjuku-gyoenmae Station. It's gorgeous that time of year. You can also ask for an English map so you can get some good descriptions of the different plants and structures built there, but there is English signage too. There's a traditional tea house there (you can pay to be served a little tea cake and tea..I don't remember it being expensive) and a tiny fee (I think 200 yen?) to get into the garden itself. There's also a greenhouse. If you go to Ueno, there is a great park, zoo, shrine and a huge clump of museums over there. Near the shrine, there are often older Japanese men feeding the birds on suet sticks or with Japanese sweet rolls. My girls have loved doing that with the guys for quite a while. They think American kids are the most adorable humans alive so they often fall over themselves to share their stuff with us. However, we've only been to the Science Museum in that area, and the zoo. Japanese zoos can be very depressing as the cages can be very small and the animals can sometimes look ragged. Their museums are usually really cheap per person. The Science Museum reminded me of the Natural History museum in DC..it was really fun. Your boys might like the Japanese Sword Museum, actually.. We've never been but friends of ours have and their boys enjoyed it. I believe it's in Shinjuku area?? OK. That's enough to throw at you for now. ;) I'll keep pondering on what we've done and enjoyed and add stuff later. I should really have kept/keep a blog so I can remember all the places we've gone! ;)
  16. Coffee, nice teas, going on a trip with Dh and the kids over President's Day. I also try to listen to any podcasts, WTM summer conference or SWB talks that I have archived. They help a lot with re-focusing! We're also usually sick this time of year anyway, so we're forced to have some easier days. Lately, I love bringing the girls to the library and just sitting there and reading for an hour or two. Reading the college acceptance thread on the High School Board also helps me when I'm in a "the sky is falling" downhill spiral. :blush:
  17. What kind of things does your clan like to do? Where are you staying? That would help me out with recommendations. The incredibly oppressive heat will be starting around then so please plan clothes-wise accordingly. Wear very light clothes and really good walking shoes. The is unlike anything I've ever experienced, even having lived in TX and VA! You will also walk at least 13,000 steps a day while sight-seeing. Relatives who are usually sedentary lost 7 pounds in less than week visiting us. ;) Day trips from Tokyo that we've enjoyed: Going to Kamakura to see the great Buddha. Hakone is closed right now (sulfur eggs) b/c of increased risk of volcanic activity so if you see that listed on-line, you'll have to nix it. Some of the shops are open (like 4-5 of them) but the pirate ship and cable car are a no-go. It's been closed since about May of last year so not sure if it's opening up anytime soon. If you all enjoy hiking whilst seeing shrines, feeding monkeys and eating at delicious restaurants along the climb, Mt. Takao is also fantastic. It's the easiest climb of the mountains nearby. Yokohama is also great, with Chinatown, Cup Noodle Museum and Ramen Museum ( go to the Ramen museum during the week if you go..you can try lots of different kinds of noodles). I would also spend sometime checking out the various shrines and castles. (I'm a fan of the one in Odawara). That area of Japan also has a ton of animal cafes where you can pet and play with animals you may not ordinarily be able to interact with (like owls) The romance car tends to cut off about a 1/2 hour of train time from a trip. You can also make reservations online (I can send you the link) in English which is hugely helpful if your Japanese skills aren't too developed yet. :) You'll need lots of cash (yen) when you go anywhere. Many, many places do not take credit cards. Are you going to have a car or will you just be using the train?? That's going to inform my recs too. :) Feel free to pm me with more specifics of what you'd be looking to do and see and I can come up with more exact stuff.
  18. Cathy Duffy's 101 book (no idea on 102) has a quiz in the beginning of her book as well as some really good questions to chew on. It lists all the different major homeschooling styles like CM, Classical, Unschooling and quizzes you on what you'd like your homeschool to look like. I was just starting to conceptualize what our family's homeschool would lean towards at the time so the quiz and questions were really helpful in getting me to see what I was going for. I think it's always easier when you have a clear goal and philosophy in mind when choosing curriculum.
  19. I enjoy blog posts by people who follow MMM because it's easiest for us to implement (it's a method we mostly understand and have started doing already). YMMV though. These should pull up when googled I like Go Curry Cracker, Making Sense of Cents, Monetary Musings, and Early Retirement Extreme if you want to go...extreme... I also find a lot of inspiration and support from the MMM forums. :)
  20. Yes, you can skip those lessons. My girls learned their letter sounds from the Leapfrog Letter Factory. We just skipped ahead to the short vowel section and went from there, for both kids.
  21. We live well below our means, bike when/if we can, have one car if/when we can, the basic stuff. A lot of frugal living or money-saving blogs focus on the teeny, tiny things you can do to save $20 a year. I love MMM b/c he's focusing on the huge, monstrous money vacuums of daily life that we often discount like 3,500 sq. ft. house for 4 we don't need or gas-guzzling massive truck to drive 2 miles to work. Dh gets paid a lot more than we need, which we are very blessed by. We sack that cash away in Vanguard accounts, stocks, maxing out retirement funds for the year. Also, building back up the Emergency Fund (more like Moving Fund in the past decade) if it's been depleted (like when we moved here and had to pay out of the wazoo for stuff until we got reimbursed) A lot of it is making wise decisions that aren't necessarily just with the here and now in mind. No big purchases made spontaneously. We usually only vacation when tacking it on to Dh's work travel (like to Hawaii). That way his plane ticket (ours with credit card $$ rewards), hotel, rental car and food is paid for. We vacation a lot like this for maybe $100 max. for activities and museums done there. So nothing mind-blowing. There really is no secret to the method by which it's done, IMO.
  22. HWT K OPG Explode the Code workbooks RightStart Math A Read and find out science books, Magic school bus, maybe some nature center classes for fun Sonlight K core books for fun reading time tons of library books and reading to K-er lots of art, playtime and fun :)
  23. You are doing very well. I used to work for RightStart (long story but can't work there while in Japan!) so as such am *very* familiar with it. Your daughter is perfectly fine in Level A. Especially if we're talking the 2nd edition b/c it has a lot of depth to it. The 1st edition is amazing too, don't get me wrong. Anyway, everything academic that you're getting done is perfect for her age! Really. :) I wouldn't worry too much about the library not having the specific books listed. Those are great books, but I just used ones generally on the topic when needed and all was well. You might check out other sources for other titles. Remember, your Dd will see this material again so you're just trying to teach her the fact that there even was an Ancient Egypt, KWIM? If you don't get the book in time, treat it as review. The social stuff was helped with gymnastics classes, homeschool playgroups, meet-ups, nature center classes, girl scouts, church class and playgrounds. Does your church have any family with girls?? I found reaching out to those in my social circle who didn't homeschool was needed for us to find friends for my kids. Homeschoolers local to us were also very religious or very unschooly and didn't take kindly to those who weren't either. Records are helpful in case you want to use the same stuff later with little siblings. I'm having a not-so-fun time now trying to recall the title/provider of a cursive book I used with older Dd that I want to use with little Dd. :glare: I also had to do a tiny bit for my state. Over here, nothing, so I don't do more than type something up for myself in a word document. I wouldn't go nuts with record-keeping at her age. For the little ones: I'd use a baby swing and then at toddler age...little Dd would pretty much be on my lap or climbing me while I taught older Dd. She eventually was old enough to quietly look at books but it took a long time. I also would give her a crayon and paper so she could "do school" like her sister ;) But I'd just accept that it's going to be difficult right now. I know that's hard, truly I do...but entertaining toddlers is rough. Testing using the CAT (one form of showing progress required before we moved) and seeing my older Dd ace it with flying colors helped me chill a ton. If it would help you get a measure of where she is, it's worth the $25 in my opinion. I'm even considering doing some testing on my girls out here even though I don't need to, just so I can breathe easy. But, you're doing great!! Sounds like your Dd is thriving and having fun! Keep up the good work!! :hurray:
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