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Dolphin

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Posts posted by Dolphin

  1. Okay, I did a search, but I can not find exactly what the whole shopping cart thing is, please explain. Have I mentioned that I am technologically challenged?

     

    It would be another situation if I were not morally superior as I would allow my dc to do the searching for me, but I do not allow any type of computer activity unless they are working on computer programing as they are just child geniuses. Especially the 3 year old. She started algebra as a fetus, none of that silly listening to music stuff:lol::lol::lol::lol:

  2. What our "plan" is. We just started this year in third grade. We like the Story of the world and want to keep that as our guide with US history. Time line wise so that the kids understand just how young our country is (if that makes sense)

     

    SOTW 3 along with The story of the USA. We have started on volume 1 chapter 8, and will move on to volume 2

     

    SOTW 4 continue through The Story of the USA

     

    SOTW 1 State history year

     

    SOTW 2 History project and in depth on a part of history that they are interested in (ie the titanic, French revolution etc... ) First 7 chapters of The story of the USA

  3. Bribery. We count it as school, but he only gets to read them if he finishes his other work in a timely manner. He loves them. We are doing Horrible USA right now, but I think the bloody Romans was his favorite so far.

     

    If you ever have a friend traveling through Heathrow, ask them to go to the magazine shop at the airport. They have Horrible history magazines.

  4. Wow, I never knew there were trolls out there, let alone so many. Thanks for filling me in on Trolls and IRL.

     

    Also, about the posting to older threads. It kinda goes with the whole searching thing before posting a question again. Is it better to post and bring up an old thread if you have read it and still have a question, or to start a new thread? Just to stir a little:lol:

     

    Oh, am I being a troll if I stir a little, or just letting you all get to know me better. I can be a bit of a brat (in a very nice way I hope):bigear:

     

    ETA Sorry lion we posted at the same time. Great minds think alike?

  5. We first came across this at my son's private school. There was a girl in his class that was 2 grade levels ahead i Math and she did really bad on the Math portion. Then the mom realized that they were testing her on information she had learnt 2 years ago and she was rusty on it.

     

    What I am doing. Evan Moor daily Math, Geography and Science. We are doing these at his grade level and he does them as his independent work. It takes maybe a half an hour. It just keeps the skills that he will be tested on up to date. They are pretty easy and all correlated to State standards. I buy them from Evan Moor as PDF, so I print as I need, and will do so again with my DD. I am only planning on doing this during testing years, of which 3rd grade is one for us.

     

    Hope that helps (also really good for vacations or days where you have appointments and need to take something with you)

  6. We just started Home School this year. My son is in 3rd grade. After the first 3 weeks I was really frustrated. I was lucky that 2 veteran Home School moms sat down and talked with me while I was waiting for my son to get out of Drama class. They told me that not only is my son learning how to be Home Schooled, I am learning how to Home school. To just relax and keep plugging away at it. However they also reminded me about one of the joys of homeschooling. Just because something is laid out to be finished in 36 weeks, does not mean that I can't take 45 weeks to finish. Also incentives. I had never thought of this, but Mad libs is great Grammar practice, and my ds loves them. So, if he does his best focused work for 20 min, we do a mad lib. Seems to be working. We also have a sticker chart. Everyday he does the work we need to do with a positive attitude he gets a sticker. When he gets 30 he gets a prize, and a sticker on the "big treat" sheet. Same thing with books. Every time he reads a mom approved book he gets a sticker. 30 and a treat and a big prize sticker. He knows that he is working toward an overnight mystery trip. But at the rate I set out he should only get to that once a year, twice some years.

     

    Hope some of that helps. Also what the other mom said, AS long as he is on track by 5th grade I am relaxing about how we get there.

  7. Yes AAS is rule intensive, but it has review built in which we find really helpful. I have an 8 year old son, we started AAS 4 weeks ago. We are flying through it, but we have already found gaps that are being filled in. We love it. The other nice thing about starting at the beginning is that DS finds it easy. Spelling has gone from his least favorite subject to one of his favorite. He starts spelling class now with the mindset that he will succeed and that has made a lot of difference.

  8. There is a biography channel bio of Christopher Columbus available through netflix (streaming through the Wi if you have one) I thought it was age appropriate for third grade. I did learn things about Columbus from it. The one thing I was worried about was if there were mentions of rape of the native people, but they phrased it as the natives gave the explorers gold and women. So not too detailed. There were painting of nudity, but we just talked about that and how that was part of what was so different. I would watch it first as it is borderline, but my son and I found it very interesting. I got a new repect for Columbus from is which was nice.

  9. I don't have a lot of advice, as this is only our 4th week home schooling. I understand, I want to make sure that I am doing everything right. I talked to a couple of veteran home schoolers on Friday at an activity. They made me feel better. The said take a deep breath and don't worry about this year. One of the mom's is also following the classical curriculum. She told me that I am making a good decision for my kids, but that it requires a lot from mom. Give it time, chill out and know that by the end of your first year going into your second it will be easier. Good luck.

  10. I can just say that we are using FLL 3 and we like it. If he has something memorized we don't repeat three times, just 1 as the review is good. It has a work book, but one thing I like is the different strategies. We just did common and proper nouns. The book gives a list of nouns and you tell your child to stand during the proper nouns and sit for the common nouns. My son loves this, and I like that not everything is taught the same way, there is variety. Hope that helps some.

  11. We are loving AAS here. My son is 8 and an average speller. I was skeptical about starting at level 1, but we have found some things that he did not know. It is a new way of looking at spelling. We are flying through book 1 and will probably start level 2 by the end of October. There is the expense of starting at the beginning, but I am finding that it is worth it. The good thing about it being easy, is that spelling is now one of my son's favorite subjects. He looks forward to it and goes into each lesson with the confidence that he will learn it.

  12. We go to NYC each year to visit my sister who lives there. She took us to the Shake Shack

     

    http://www.shakeshacknyc.com/

     

    It is where New Yorkers go for a burger, and it is a good burger. They have just opened one in the Times Square are at 44th and 8th. Really simple food. Burgers, fires and shakes. We love it, and it is not too spendy. About $10-$15 and person for all three. At least at the neighborhood one. They might put the prices up a little in Times Square.

     

    Also a silly thing, but at certain times they open up the Charmin bathroom in Times square. Look for it. I still can't believe that it exists. It is funny, it is clean and it is free.

  13. I jumped into Singapore this year with my 8 year old and so far it is going well. I understand that Math Mammoth is also a good program, and we are going to use those as individual units when we come to something my son has not yet covered, like division. There are 3 reasons I picked Singapore over the other Math programs.

    1. When I studied what people said about Math, Saxon and Singapore seemed to have the most positive reviews over a good stretch of time. I asked the teachers at a local private school 1 said they would like to switch to Saxon and 5 said they wanted to switch to Singapore (they were doing a curriculum review, very handy when you are try to choose curriculum, they had 15 programs that they went through).

    2. I am bad a Math and both had instructor manuals. I liked Singapore's better. IT is not as scripted, but it starts each unit explaining what the concept is, and how it relates to what they have previously done. It is more of a Math lesson for me before we start.

    3. As I am not good at Math, I like the CD rom games that my son can play. Rainbow Rock for 1 and 2, vroot and Voom for 3 and 4. He spent the summer on Rainbow Rock to make sure he was all caught up for starting 3 in the fall.

     

    I don't know if that will help, that is just the process we went through.

  14. I got our base 10 set at Lakeshore as it also came with a place value chart

     

    http://www.lakeshorelearning.com/seo/ca|searchResults~~p|2534374302101183~~.jsp

     

    We play with that a lot. Even at third grade it really helps.

     

    The other thing we have are the teddy bear counters and we sorted them by color and made patterns when ds was younger. I would try doing some games. One thing I read somewhere is that it is easier to remember when doing an activity. Get a bean bag say 1+1 and throw it to your daughter, she will say 2 and throw it back. I also read that you can do a cake walk. put math problems on index cards and put them in a circle. Turn on music and have her walk. When she stops she answers the question and then picks up the card if it is right. If she gets it wrong you tell her the answer. When she has all the cards she can get a reward.

     

    I hope that helps. Good luck. She will get it. Oh, and with the money. Just start telling her what you are doing when you are buying things, try to use cash a little more. Then start letting her buy her own thing. We used to go to Starbucks once a week and my son could get a kids steamer or hot chocolate. I would give him the $2bucks. He would buy it himself. If he could tell me the value of every coin returned to him, and answer 1 amount I would make the coins into, he got to keep the change. He learnt the values pretty quick

  15. Are you also doing First Language Lessons? This is our first year, I got the text first (which covers all 4 years) We decided to start with Level 3 as that is what he is doing in FLL and they compliment each other well. However, I have read through 1 and 2 and I am holding his hand with the narration and just taking extra time over the writing lessons. It seems to be going well. We tried level 1 and he was just bored. The challenge of 3 keeps him interested as long as I remain patient.

  16. I started by going through the cursive alphabet and making some flashcards for my son. lower case mostly. b, f, k, r, s, z off the top of my head. And then I write in cursive sometimes. He is not having any problems, and his handwriting is improving so much with the italic. He was taught manuscript at school and would have been learning cursive this year, but I pulled him out of school and we switched. I noticed a difference with his handwriting in a week.

  17. Once you get in the habit of soaking overnight, it is not an issue. We eat a lot of beans and lentils. I have a bowl that lives on top of the microwave and every other day I have something soaking in it.

     

    Simple recipe is just rice and beans in a saute pan squirt some ketchup and taco seasoning and stir. If you are really exotic you can add some ground beef and cheese. One of the things I get when we are tight are those big 10ilbs tubes of ground beef (bulk is cheaper) I cook it all up with onion and then freeze it in half pound bags. It is amazing how much more it seems when you add it to your food.

     

    If you have an Indian store near you, check that out. They have so many different types of lentils (dal) Tor Dal is the lentil with the highest protein content. Also, their spices are so much cheaper. I always look there for spice first. Especially Bay leaves.

     

    Navy bean soup

    Multi bean chili ( a whole variety of beans rather than just kidney)

    bean salad

    bean stew

     

    All really good

  18. I don't know about the Christian perspective, but for 3rd grade this is what I am planning on.

    Story of the World 3 as my spine.

     

    Part 2 of the first volume of The story of the USA vol. 1

    All but the last Chapter of The story of the USA volume 2 (We will finish and do volume 3 for 4th.) I like this as it is workbook style and can be done independently.

     

    I am reading The Landmark History of the American People out loud to DS and he is reading the Horrible Histories: The USA

     

    We will do 2 Evan Moor pockets. Life in Plymouth Colony and The American Revolution.

     

    I have a big project that I am planning on the Oregon Trail

     

    We also have a lot of reading books

    The courage of Sarah Noble

    The Witch of Blackbird Pond

    Landmark's

    childhood of famous Americans

    if you...

    Johhny Tremain

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