ColoradoMom
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Posts posted by ColoradoMom
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The last rooster that did that to me was eaten by the dog the same day. I won't stand for it. I just have two right now and both are pretty docile. If they weren't they'd be someone's dinner immediately.
I don't know why your rooster did that other than natural instincts, but in my experience when they get a taste of it they never stop.
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The 5 paragraph essay has never let me down. I've used in on the GRE, in college, and in grad school and my writing was always considered above average. So - don't be afraid of formulas.
We do use the 5 paragraph essay for 8th grade and my son is not the world's most enthusiastic writer by any means. But this makes his task easy to put together and execute. Which is just about all I can ask for. We also use topics that he's interested in and chuck the history/literature essays for now. This is the first year I could even get him to pay attention to writing so you gotta take what you can get with some kids.
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I have to say I have not found things to be lacking with my choices. You DO have to be conscious of what you haven't taught and then take steps to introduce it. We've always used the eclectic method, which included textbooks but never a complete curriculum, and none of the things mentioned in the first post stick out as having never been covered and I've taught every grade between K and 12.
Now, if you ask me how my oldest was completely lacking in MANY areas when I pulled her from public school in the 7th grade, then I could go on forever. :glare:
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Well, we use the 8th grade history, I'm not even religious and their opinions on religion and God don't bother me in the least. In fact, I chose them this year to inject a little God into our curriculum since religion was never a priority for us.
On occassion my son would make a "God comment" about previous Christian based texts - like Apologia (which as a scientist I liked a lot, but he was VERY annoyed with the God stuff), but I've been looking for that this year with the BJU History so I could tell him to knock it off and he hasn't said a word! :D (Figures.)
So I guess it comes down to how much you don't want to hear the BJU Christian perspective. If that would bother you then this probably isn't the textbook for you. But if you're like me - believe in God and lean Christian, but not particularly religious - then it will probably be fine.
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While I would prefer to buy chickens when they are just beginning to lay it is not smart business to sell them at laying age. You will have a hard time making money that way. Day olds are best for selling.
(I am selling half my flock before winter if anyone in Denver area wants layers! :D )
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I have 6 dogs. :D
Giant schnauzer M
German shepherd F
Great Pyr/Anatolian Shepherd M
Weiner dog 1 M
Weiner dog 2 M
Lowchen M
The first three are farm dogs, the second 3 are house dogs. Which reminds me - I have to paint the dog house today!
They all get along. Sometimes dog 1 and 2 will have a clash of the titans fight over food, but I think that happened due to the dog 3 coming of age and trying to scramble his position in the pack. He's now accepted that the other big dogs are ahead of him. Also, sometimes weiner 1 and weiner 2 will fight - neither are fixed.
When I went from two to three dogs the third dog (Great Pyr/Anatolian Shepherd M) did cause an adjustment period. Partly because he is male and partly because he's big. But as he's grown into maturity he's actually a sweet addition to our pack and they rarely fight. When they do - it is clear that the Giant wins by a smidge every time, so he gave up. They are equal in everyway - height and weight, so it doesn't ever amount to a big win on anyone's part. And the Giant is not dog aggressive and hates to fight, but will if he's challenged. So there you go. He's number 2. The old feeble German shepherd female rules EVERYONE. LOL...and they LOVE her to death.
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I just ordered a novel for my son to read about the Mayans called Middleworld (The Jaguar Stones Series) and it looks pretty fun! I've not read it yet, so can't comment on the content - but if you're loking for a fun addition for reading you should check it out.
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That is good to know. DD is doing SL Core 100 this year. She is tolerating the Hakim series, but thinks the author drags stuff out too much. I have the 2nd edition of BJU's 8th grade (not the new one this year), so I've been thinking of having her switch to that for her spine, but keep doing the literature.
If I could have gotten my kids to do SL I would have been a happy homeschool mom! They just could not do it - too much reading and stuff. But I really do wish we had a different style. And I was so busy most of the time that I had no time to implement it - but I think it is a great program.
I've used different BJU books over the years and I find them to be very complete. I was going to write a history curriculum for this year but I am really happy that I decided on the 8th grade books. He likes them and he even likes the student activities stuff.
We will definitely use the BJU 9th grade Geography next year too.
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My son (13) can do all of it by himself (if he has to) but we've been working on this skill since he was 6 so it does take time. Sometimes I am out of town so I just make a list on the board and he does it on his own schedule.
We do spelling (of course) and science labs together all the time. He likes it when I do math with him because I keep him on track and he gets done faster. But other than that he's all about the independent method.
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We are using BJU this year for 8th grade and I like it a lot. I tried the literature approach with my DD many years ago and she wasn't into it and honestly, neither was I.
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Wow, that stinks! I haven't yet tried the teleclass. I would definitely let Aurora know.
I have mixed feelings about the program. The experiments are very good, but the whole thing feels very disjointed sometimes.
I purchased a kit like a year and a half ago and was so confused as to how to use the program that we just never did it. For more than $100 it was a huge disappointment. I still have the CD and if I ever get some extra time I'm sure I coulod go through it and figure it out - but the book that was sent contained all sorts of experiments that I didn't order so I had no idea where my "real" experiments were. I think there was a problem with my order so she sent extra stuff (which was nice) but I was really confused.
I don't know about the online stuff but I'd we willing to bet there was some sort of emergency and give her the benefit of the doubt.
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I taught all mine to read with the Pathway Readers.
Ditto for us. Pathway readers were awesome. I kept them all because I am hoping grand kids will read them someday! :D
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We used math wrap-ups. My son just found them the other day and still wanted to play with them even though he is 13 now!
We also used lots and lots of drill sheets called Calculadders.
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I guess we could go back to the days where sexual abuse and perversion was never discussed. I know when I was raped by a friends father at the age of 8 I didn't tell anyone because I had never heard that such a thing was possible, and bought hook line and sinker that it was my fault it happened, and that if I ever told anyone that he would kill me and my family. I believed it because I couldn't imagine that his murdering us all could be any worse then what he DID do.
When I was a child we were kept innocent too. Too bad that my innocence was shattered and I didn't even have a name for what had happened to me until I was an adult. Oh as an aside....he was the deacon of our Church and a father of 4 children.
I have grown children now and I am glad that my daughter read about abusive relationships so that she could recognize them before she was in one, and that my sons read about date rape so that they knew that no means no, maybe means no, and yes means are you absolutely sure. Books in their gritty realness can be better conversation starters then TV and much better than waiting until after something horrible happens to become a life lesson.
The sad thing is that the same children she was teaching had probably experienced some of the things that were in those books, and the books allowed them to process it, or question what if, if they themselves had to face something like it.
I also believe that most classics were considered racy in their time and even today To Kill a Mockingbird, and Huck Finn are on the challenged book lists.
But even for an AP class, if it is not a whitebread neighborhood I can see how using an interesting YA book in place of the classics have value. If the kids aren't reading the classic, how do you truly have a discussion about literary themes? I guess they could skim and get the cliff notes like a lot of AP kids do?
Sorry - most teen boys don't need to read a fictional story to understand not to rape their girlfriends. And whitebread neighborhood? This disturbs me. If the children are non-white then it is OK to expose them to these books but it is not OK to exposed them to those who ARE white?
You're telling me that there aren't hundreds of books that could fit the bill (create interest, discuss literary themes, be exciting, explore relationships with language which does not involve sexually explicit verbiage) that would not have been a better choice? I'm sorry - that teacher must be pretty dull if she can't get a kid interested in reading books without using those about sex - abusive or otherwise. I'm mean - that is just laughable.
I never said we should go back to never talking about sexual abuse. My point that you highlighted was meant towards teens, not small children. It is important to talk to kids about what is and isn't appropriate but having your teens read books about oral sex, children abusing children, and other topics is in no way necessary to either prevent or discover abuse.
And just to clarify - when did it become the job of a literature teacher to take on the psychological health of students? Perhaps a student was exposed to sexual abuse as described in the book - perhaps it caused them to fall into a depression or worse? The thought that exposing these evil things is always a "good or productive thing" is naive. Bringing up this type of emotional trauma has serious consequences that she is ill-equipped to handle as a literature teacher and that is why it is not her job.
I think she had good intentions, that she didn't think through her decisions (or perhaps felt it was her place to shape these young adults in the way SHE felt best and not their parents) and then had a hard time dealing with the consequences of her mistake, thus deciding to blame everyone but herself via a very public blog. It's a big character flaw in my opinion, that she took this story to the depths she did, while refusing to admit she brought it on herself.
Her job is to teach LITERATURE. If she wants to psychoanalyze school children and search their psyche for potential abuse (and I don't think she does - that was your take on her situation) she should have become a school psychologist.
Moreover - it is her job to teach literature in a way which is acceptable to the parents of the students so she should suck it up, regroup, perhaps talk to a therapist (because she sounds like she REALLY needs one) and move on with what the parents, school, and principal want her to do.
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I agree with meet me in Paris, Aoife, and in2why. Some of the significant mental and emotional growing up I did in high school was during reading, and not just the classics, but YA novels (granted, in Dutch), that grappled with real life problems and issues such as drug abuse, murder, sexual and emotional abuse, and perversion. In fact, living in another country, my Dutch teacher at the time recommended a book to me that deals with a sexually obsessed man who had sex seven times a day with his girlfriend. In my French literature, I learned about oral sex. This apparently can never happen here lol.
Reading about all that helped me see how sex is about self control and gave me fuel to the resolve of staying a virgin until I married. And I did. I'm glad because of that book and others that I'm not overly naive about things, but know that there's a dark side. Where better way to explore the dark side (safely) than in books? Less likely to fall into it then, if you can recognize it.
In my community, quite a few times I see poignant homeschooled kids who were protected and sheltered, raised on the Bible, who ran into trouble, whether with drugs, sex or alcohol, because they didn't have any frame of reference, no comparison, no ammunition against them. I certainly do not believe hs kids should be only reading YA novels, but I do believe there should be a good balance between classics and contemporary novels - classics 70%, YA 30% IMHO. These books need to be discussed. In my little homeschool, with me.
Another Dutch teacher told me once, that reading is an exercise in knowing yourself. I think he was right.
Well, I am certainly no prude, don't teach Bible, don't attend Church, and don't in any way shelter my kids from sex, violence, or any other "real" world situations.
BUT - there is no way my son is going to read books about the topics you listed above for school. While I realize that one person's trash is another person's treasure, books about sexual perversion are my version of trash. In fact - I think my son would demand an explanation as to why I was asking him to read such a book and then refuse.
I think it's great that the Dutch are so sexually progressive, but me - I'm happy being selective in my children's literature - and compared to many homeschool parents I am not very conservative at all.
What would happen in the Netherlands if a parent objected to those selections at school? Would they have some recourse? Or are the children expected to all read the same books regardless of the parent's ideas about these topics?
I hear this argument about "preparing kids for the real world" with these adult topics but I ask you - wouldn't you rather your child never entered the real world of sexual abuse -thus ensuring that the fictional world the teachers were requiring them to read about are not necessary?
I prefer the line of thought that exposure to fictional heinous acts, sexual abuse, or the like are not in any way required to be a well adjusted adult. In fact, if this exposure is administered too early it can actually hinder their acclimation into a positive adult life.
I would definitely be the mother who objected to this teacher's selections and I'm glad the school district has her in check. She sounds a bit emotionally unstable as well - with her little internet pity party. :glare:
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I agree that there is quite a span from first grade to fifth grade and that would make it very difficult to use the same materials.
I also agree with this. It is a little bit unreasonable to expect the two to do science using the same curriculum. You wouldn't have them do math and reading that way.
When my son was in first we did very hands on life science - MFW to be exact. But in fifth grade, well we skipped 5th grade, but in sixth grade we did apologia physical. I could not imagine trying to make the two levels mesh.
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Metrics in the US is for science so while we do it in math, it is applied only in science. It is hard for me to think of anything in science using the standard English system. But you can't go around using metric in everyday life because it just isn't useful to ask for the price of gas in liters or buy 2 liters of milk.
Although isn't it funny that we have unequivocally adopted the 2 liter soda bottle? :D
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Here's the thing - when you are teaching other people's kids you DO need to be censored because you have a responsibility to the "group". Period. I could think of a hundred other books which would excite a teenager into reading which would not have caused this controversy. She really should have known this when she began the book club. If she didn't - she was very naive.
As homeschool parents we don't have this consideration - if you want your teens to read Lessons from a Dead Girl by Jo Knowles - more power to you. But my son has better things to do than "explore the world of children sexually abusing other children" during our literature time together.
There is nothing wrong with parents wanting their teens to avoid destructiveness and dark truths in life for as long as possible and one way of doing this is to be selective in their reading lists.
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No, I don't think that is the point of differentiating between abiotic and biotic. These terms refer to the ecosystem - specifically the biosphere. The abiotic elements of the bisopshere are mostly climate related - things such as temperature, humidity, sunlight, salinity, water, wind, rocks and soil, and periodic disturbances such as fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, and volcanic eruptions.
It also includes the breakdown of organic matter - which is actually a link between the two terms because decomposers break down organic matter - so that matter is food (biotic) but the end result is that the biotic factors such as amino acids and lipids, are reduced down to their individual abiotic components such as carbon, hydrogen, phosphorus, nitrogen etc.
I agree that there is a gray area, but pencil? No. That is not part of the ecosystem unless it is lying on the ground being decomposed by bacteria, and then it is biotic until it reaches such a stage as to be in its individual components, and then those elements would be abiotic. Perhaps the graphite inside the pencil is purely abiotic, but why use such a convoluted example?
The terms really don't pertain to processing of natural materials into "goods" they are specific for ecology.
I can see your confusion with Mr. Q's curriculum - he does state that all living or deceased organisms are biotic. Which is true. But then he goes on to describe abiotic as all non-living objects in the world - which directly contradicts what he just said because he included deceased in his definition.
I'd chalk it up as a "lost in translation" misunderstanding and just move on.
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Yes, I can see your confusion. Typically abiotic factors are things like sunlight and temperature. I think it is an error.
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This is our 9th year and when we transitioned from elementary to middle school I had to make scheduling adjustments so he would not work all day long.
In 7th grade we did math and Japanese everyday, science, and reading 3 days, language arts and history 2 days a week, and art classes 1 day a week.
This year I cut back on math and Japanese to even things out more - now we do math, science, Japanese, history, reading, and spelling 3 days a week, language arts (writing grammar, and vocabulary) 1 day a week, and art and technology 1 day a week.
This is working great for us so far. If we seem to be getting behind in math after Christmas I may up math to 4 days a week, but otherwise I don't see any need for more work.
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Last year I read the autobiography of Ceasar Chavez and found out just how much Ronald Regan was in the pay of corporate farmers. I now believe that what happened to us was deliberate.
But the fact that Chavez was a communist didn't bother you? Weird. :glare:
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and you have livestock....
Do you ever get to go on vacation?
No. Not without a farm sitter! I am actually sitting here right now procrastinating about going out to feed my animals...it is fun once I get out there to see them all, especially since we have 4 new baby ducks right now but I have to be here every morning and every night to feed and water.
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I worked at a big pediatric dental office in Southern California for several years and pretty much saw and did it all when it comes to baby teeth. If you trust your dentist I'd go with what they say. It is not unreasonable what they are telling you to do and pulling them will lead to more problems. In addition, what's the difference between having a spacer and a crown? They will go through very similar procedures. She will still need an impression, a model, and to have it cemented in place. Two appointments minimum - so you will not really be saving her any time in the chair. Plus, she'll get all kinds of food trapped in that spacer.
Question for horse people
in General Education Discussion Board
Posted
This could be entirely psychological. Horses are known more for their over-reactions than their brilliant deduction skills.