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desertmum

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Everything posted by desertmum

  1. I am going to have a good look at it. Thanks! :001_smile:
  2. I don't trust my 4yo ds with markers of any kind unless he is supervised -chalk is less destructive! So I got a small chalkboard for his doodles and then bought a chalkboard sheet (very cheap) which can be "glued" to any flat surface (in my case the wall) and that is what I use as a "formal" teaching chalkboard.
  3. I never thought of using pages. I used a pc at work. Now that I stay at home I have to work with dh's mac and I am a bit lost. I guess I got used to finding loads of free stuff for pc and very little for mac :glare: I think I may do a hybrid and do the planning on planbook or apple works spreadsheet and the recording on paper until the old brain cells come up with something better. :D
  4. We are in the middle of moving house. Or rather, we've spent this week house hunting and will be moving over the next 2 weeks, so I guess we'll start beginning October. Oh dear, I just didn't think it was a good idea to start school and then move -too disruptive. In the meantime we have been doing lost of "readiness" exercises to fill in the gap.
  5. I think it depends on the child as each one is different. Mine is always 4yo but he is spelling out words by himself (I haven't pushed him one tiny bit). Today he brought me the jar of magnetic letters and wanted to do words. What am I supposed to do? Ignore him? Tell him he is too young and to come back in a few years? That would only put him off. I say, go with what you child wants and is ready to do. IMHO
  6. I think the problem with homeschool skedtrack is that is an online utility. But what if I am not online? What if I want to work on the planner where there is no wi-fi? It doesn't say anything on the website...:confused: FileMakerPro??? Never heard of it (proceeds to google it). Again, I am back to the drawing board with this. But I am going to consider all suggestions until I come up with something I can take to the Committee (my husband). :bigear:
  7. Sorry I didn't get back to the discussion sooner. We are house hunting as we have reached the end of our lease. I've had to put back our official first day of school (I don't see me doing lessons while packing and cleaning both the old house and the new one!) so I am doing lots of "readiness" exercises to fill in the gap. I going to have a look at some other planning programs. I also got some forms from donnayoung.org which I think will do fine for now. :blush: I really, really like the idea of having everything on the computer but I don't have a lot of time to invest on learning a complicated program. :tongue_smilie:
  8. I supposed I wanted to be all modern and decided to try doing my lesson planning on the computer. After all you can "bump" lessons and all without having to re-write things, right? Well, I feel like a wimp because after entering all my lessons I realised there is nowhere to jot down if assignments were completed and tracking progress and grades (I use planbook for mac). :001_huh: How many of you have gone the techie route and then switched back to old fashioned paper? Or maybe the other way around, ditched paper record keeping? Can you tell me what you did please and how it worked out for you? :bigear:
  9. Actually DS talks non-stop -just not in Spanish (sometimes he mixes a bit of both). He just doesn't seem to be interested in mummy's language as he knows I speak English to dad and hubby's family and our friends. It is true that his speech (in English) has improved loads -but his Spanish hasn't. Spanish wouldn't be his first language. Both English and Spanish at the same time would be more accurate description. I read in a book about bilingual children that being exposed to two languages from birth is the equivalent of having two trees growing next to each other but with independent root systems. I guess I just assumed he would learn both languages quickly because that is what I heard children do. Not true!!!! We are looking to relocate for a place closer to DH's workplace so he can spend more time with us. When we go out we encounter a mix of people who speak Arabic, Farsi, Filipino and more, so I tend to speak to ds in Spanish and English when actually interacting with people (English is a sort of international language in the Gulf -like the starship Enterprise :D). In the meantime I still have to teach the main lessons in English as most likely he will enter the ps system when we go back to the UK. Maybe I can treat Spanish as a second language that needs re-enforcement? :bigear:
  10. Hello everyone. As I schedule this year's lessons I find myself very frustrated. I am the only one who speaks Spanish in our family. DH doesn't. In the beginning we were using the OPOL approach. Then we noticed DS was way behind in his speech (Having said that I didn't say much until I was 4yo either). The speech therapist indicated that in order to learn a language you need to hear it 30% of the time. As my husband works long hours and didn't see much of our son I started doing 3 days in Spanish and 4 days in English. Why? We lived in the UK and our ds would soon be going to a local school so it made sense that he learned English, right? Also my husband was seriously freaking out about ds not saying much. I couldn't dig up any Spanish speaking friends so ds only gets his Spanish from me and of course he knows I speak English so he doesn't bother trying -although he understands me very well. Especially when I'm cross! :gnorsi: Now that I am scheduling his lessons (we moved abroad so we made the decision to homeschool ds) I realise that if I carry on with the 3 days in Spanish we won't get the math and reading lessons done -let alone science as ds is very much into astronomy. At the same time I don't want to abandon Spanish entirely. In a few years the window of opportunity to learn to speak as a native will close. :crying: Sorry about the ramble. I feel trapped between what I think I should do (imagine we go back to the UK and the poor child can't read his own language) and my family back home complaining that I am not teaching my ds Spanish... I am tired of having arguments with my mother over the telephone twice a week now... :boxing_smiley: Help?
  11. We only use milk in our tea and for ds who is 4 he can have as much as he wants. Between the 3 of us...less than a gallon a week.
  12. Couldn't vote because we don't buy cow's milk. We buy soy milk unsweetened for the adults and for ds we buy goat's milk or camel milk.:)
  13. I've had two miscarriages. The first one they sent me home to see if I could "do it" on my own. I ended up with horrible cramps and heavy bleeding and had to go for a D&C. The second time I didn't want to be sent home and "be brave" and insisted on a D&C. I mention this because the first time I bled so much that I was weak by the time the docs decided on a D&C and took me ages to recover. I guess my advice would be not to wait until you are bleeding all over the place because it makes recovery time longer and more painful.
  14. I have a 4 yo who is very active and although he is not really ready for school he wants to read and write and is big into astronomy so we do lots of reading aloud and worksheets and math games. He gets to play loads but he learns at the same time. No more than 10-15 minutes at a time on any given subject. Lots of drawing and dancing, too!
  15. Mine is a short list: - Asthma - Scoliosis (and chronic back pain as a by-product) - Carpal tunnel syndrome on both wrists. - One leg shorter than the other (maybe the scoliosis came from this?) - Migraines - Uterine fibroid (which at some point will have to have taken out) - Hair loss from stress (working on this) - Bad knees, ankle and tennis elbow from various accidents.
  16. OMG I wish I had red this threat before. I told my ds that "d" is a letter with a belly and a "b" is a letter with a botty (am I allowed to say this word, or this considered rude?). I am feeling rather foolish...
  17. Thank you for the replies and suggestions. DS wasn't hooking his hand in the beginning. He was copying me I think. I may ask DH to show him too so he has another role model to copy as well (although DH doesn't write unless is in print!). I don't think at 4 will understand mummy wasn't taught properly. I'll just say it is because I write with my left and leave further explanations for later! In the meantime I will have a cuppa and a :chillpill: I'm really good at feeling guilty for stuff...
  18. I am teaching handwriting readiness to my 4yo son who insists on wanting to write despite his young age. Taught him how to grip the pencil, check. Taught him posture, check. Left-handed mummy hooks her left hand to write and so my son, who is right-handed, wants to hook his hand too. Disaster. I was taught to write by teachers who did not know how to address the needs of a south-paw so I learned to hook my hand over the lines. I certainly don't want ds picking up this bad habit. If I tell my ds mummy is not doing it "right" he won't listen to the rest of the instructions, right? Is it even possible to "unhook" my hand after so many years? Or is it a case of "do as I tell you, don't do as I do"? Any ideas? :confused: I am :bigear:
  19. Why are you switching your children from italic handwriting? Whatever I teach my ds I know it is "set in stone" (that is just the way he is) so if I start with italic or cursive it better stay that way or risk endless battles later on. My own handwriting suffered from switching handwriting curriculums back and forth. My vote: whatever you choose, stick with it.
  20. I download the font and joiner from briem.net. I have to say that the joiner hasn't worked for me yet -did it work for you? did you really learn using briem.net? wow I'm impressed. I will have to ask a techie for help (my husband) to get the joiner going. Also there is a super mac expert at my hubby's place of work (he runs windows operating system on his mac, can you believe?). But the font itself is fine. Italics is something you can add your personality to it later on. At the end of the day I can print a few things and add the joiners by hand. The Victorian modern cursive worked a treat. Thanks again. You are a gem :001_smile:
  21. I have seen your links to italic fonts before but they always said "pc". I will try the new link and hopefully it will work. I guess I should be doing my own worksheets but my handwriting is too loopy and has suffered too many years of typing to be reliable. Anyway, I will try this site and report back! :D And, of course, many thanks for taking the time to help!!!
  22. I was looking at Penny Gardner's book for teaching italic handwriting and I saw she has some copy work already made. I want to buy the book, but I need to get lots more copy work than the book offers. Does anyone here know where or how I can get hold of a free italic font that I can download to a Mac computer? Pretty please? :D :bigear: I say free or inexpensive as my hs budget is already overstretched!
  23. This description of Edison made me smile. Except for the burning of the barn this is almost exactly what my son is like. He is so strong willed it makes my hair curl but he is also very clever and kind when he sees someone in trouble. I still have to find a way to correct him as I don't believe in smacking and if I give him "time-out" in his room he starts playing! :confused: right now I am reading the tomato-stalking thread.
  24. I am actually thinking of coming up with a dual response. Right now we are stuck in the Gulf where homeschooling is not allowed for nationals. However, expat children are not looked into as they are not the responsibility of the country's ministry of education... So, to another expat I can happily say "We homeschool" and to the locals we'll say "private school xyz" just to be on the safe side. :tongue_smilie:
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