msk
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Posts posted by msk
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I think some people avoid giving toddlers that age pillows because they're afraid they'll step on them and use them to climb out of the crib. At that age I imagine you'll be moving him out of the crib as soon as he shows any interest in climbing out anyway, so I would go ahead and use a pillow if you want. I've never heard of suffocation from an ordinary pillow being a concern for kids over a year old unless there were other medical issues, if that's what you're asking, but you could always check with your pediatrician first.
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My mom donated, for her brother. It took her a few days to recover from the procedure, but it was definitely worth it to save his life!
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I miss the French Market wine from 15 years ago (it's what we drank at our wedding!), and the old Korean bulgogi (back when it was actually spicy instead of the mild recipe they use now), and the spicy green beans. I live in fear of them running out of dried strawberries, which they occasionally do where I live-- my kids LOVE those and really miss them when they're gone.
On the other hand, it's better than clothing and shoe stores. I hate changing styles-- when I find something I like, I want to keep wearing it FOREVER, darn it!!! I hate having to go into mourning every times something wears out. If I had more closet space I'd be tempted to buy 5 of everything I like... So TJ's is doing okay in comparison.
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I think majors have a good deal to do with noise factors and lifestyle. STEM majors do have it tougher than many Lib Arts majors, and there's no way a STEM major can B.S. the professor on a physics exam, the same way a Sociology major might be able to fudge an essay or multiple choice. So a good night's sleep--or a rested mind--is imperative for success in certain majors.
College is also a time to become more open-minded about different subject areas. Learning to think logically, to critically evaluate an argument in a densely written professional journal article, and to write really clearly and well is just as challenging as learning to answer questions on problem sets correctly! In fact, it can be much MORE challenging to some people to tackle subjects with no "right answer." In these courses you have to really understand the material well in order to support your answer, you can't just check an answer key and move on. It may be easier not to completely fail a liberal arts essay, but it should be just as difficult to excel! Taking a variety of classes and really learning about different subject areas can be a good antidote to preconceived ideas about STEM majors being "harder" or STEM students being smarter or more serious. In every subject area and every course, you get out what you put in.
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I always thought grades were based on cumulative point totals for the semester or quarter-- are your son's? In that case, the semester grade is a summary of a bunch of smaller tests or assignments-- it's telling you how well your son did overall on a bunch of separate assessments.
I agree that looking at the final semester grade as a single letter or number won't tell you much in terms of how to help him improve, but going back to the individual assessments should! Are there things he's consistently missed on tests or assignments, topics that gave particular trouble when others went well, etc? The final report card grade should be a reflection of more general patterns emerging from all the separate assessments he's had.
Teaching him to keep track of his individual assignments now and work on improving things as he goes along will be a really useful skill in high school and college-- his final grade for a semester should never be a surprise to him, just a reflection of the improvements (and skills that need improvement) he and his teacher have been keeping track of (via individual assignment grades) all through the semester. You'd be amazed at the number of students in college courses who don't seem to do this!
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Ha! A friend of mine ran out of candy-- she was just telling me yesterday about how she frantically combed the pantry for anything individually wrapped. It sounded like she gave people some pretty weird stuff-- pop tarts were in the mix, but no mayo packets. She said kids kept excitedly grabbing granola bars thinking they were the full-sized candy bars of lore, then trying to give them back when they realized what they'd taken. She kept telling them, "But they're chocolate chip flavor!" Her husband was so mortified he hid in a back bedroom after a while, but I think she had fun watching people's reactions.
The weirdest thing that happened to us was leaving a big bowl of mini chocolate bars unattended by the front door while we went off to trick-or-treat with family in another neighborhood, and returning three hours later to find candy still left in it! What a well behaved crowd we must have had this year!
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I had plenty of intellectual discussions with friends in college, but as I recall all the best ones took place very late at night!
I have never heard of a college where the majority of students seek the kind of lifestyle your daughter does. There were many very serious students at my university, including what seemed like a zillion stressed-out perfectionist premeds, but even they were all up late and noisy any time they weren't studying, and no one ever slept enough. It sounds like she really needs to find a dedicated quiet dorm (an honors dorm most likely will not work-- see the premeds above) or live off campus. I was able to train myself to sleep though loud noises in college and adjusted my schedule to stay up late and sleep late to make up for it, but I imagine your daughter would have done that by now if it were physically possible for her.
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I use a Kapoosh universal knife block too, but a more "traditional looking" model: http://www.target.com/p/Kapoosh-Universal-Knife-Block-Woodgrain/-/A-10537205. I LOVE it-- the rod insert can be washed, and it holds more knives than a traditional block, including knives of unusual sizes, shears, etc. I like the magnetic strips, but we don't have the right kind of wall space (nor do we have drawer space for a drawer block insert). Our knife block is jammed into a leftover corner behind the microwave. Can you tell we have a space problem???
One thing you might find useful is Cook's Illustrated's online knife ratings. You need an online account to access most of their info, but you can create a free 14-day "trial" one that would let you look at them.
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The Desert Botanical Garden is interesting and fun for people of any age. They have free afternoon admission the second Tuesday of every month, if your trip happens to be then. (It's next to the zoo in a large desert park.) The Heard Museum is also excellent if you're interested in past and present Southwestern Native American cultures. I enjoy Pueblo Grande, but although the things that went on at that site prehistorically are amazing, not everyone finds what's visible there now all that exciting. If you're interested in archaeology PG is great, but for the average family with "big kids" the Heard might be better.
A lot of companies do horseback tours of the prettier desert areas north of Scottsdale, which would be a great trip for kids the ages of yours! They are pretty expensive, though, and the only one I have experience with (Windwalker) no longer has an active website. The jeep tours are more affordable. If you ask your hotel and describe the kind of thing you're looking for, they could probably help you.
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Well, at my house, it would have been because she wanted to boil it and remove the bones so we could reconstruct the skeleton...
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It's surprising the number of hidden things that have magnetic properties, hopefully moving it will work. I work with sensitive compasses fairly often and regular-looking rocks on the ground are always messing them up-- we usually have to take multiple readings in slightly different locations.
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The bad news is, this often doesn't end in college. Right now I'm teaching college classes with students who can barely write on one end, and well-educated, academically-inclined ones on the other end, all in the same class. In a small class, my comments on their papers can include suggestions on how to get words down on paper for students on the bottom end, and suggestions for structuring a more convincing argument or how subtle word choices change a paper's tone to students on the top end. In a class of more than 40 or so, I lose my ability to do that (unless I have a good TA to help). So what do I do in a larger class-- give detailed comments to the bottom students, or the top ones? How do I tell which students WANT those comments and will use them to improve their future work, and which will say "Oh whew, a C" or "Oh good, another A-" and toss the graded paper into a pile in a corner?
In a perfect world, the top-end students would all be able to attend highly selective universities where they'd be appropriately challenged. In the real world, they often end up in the same classes as the bottom-end students. I am very grateful for the honors programs where I teach that give the top students at least *some* courses geared specifically to their level and a place to meet and spend time with intellectual peers, but I know not all places have programs like that. It makes me sad (and makes me sweat over my own kids' college funds).
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I agree. When I read the OP, the first thing I thought is that I never lead with putting down the schools and claiming to like my dc more. Those are the reasons I think in my head, but don't say to anyone but other homeschoolers. ;)
Thank you for not leading with those things-- I wish more people thought that way! I often wonder if people realize how easily the "I do it because I LOVE my kids" line that seems to be tossed around so readily can come across as "Well, I obviously love my kids way more than you love yours" if it's said in the wrong way or at the wrong time. It's one thing to say this in an open fight with someone who's not a "friend" and obviously set out to provoke and attack you (like the person who Facebook-bullied OP), but in any other context it's the verbal equivalent of spitting in someone's face.
I can't imagine a way in which a conversation (or a relationship) could go well after that. "You obviously don't love your kids much" is the worst thing I can imagine saying to a parent, no matter how it's dressed up.
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For information on human evolution, this website is good (from the Institute of Human Origins and Don Johanson, discoverer of Lucy):
http://becominghuman.org/node/interactive-documentary
There's good information there for both adults and kids about 12 and up (I use parts of it for my community college intro course). There are also links for games and "classroom materials" on the site. They seem a little complex for elementary ages, but probably good for middle school and up (my oldest is 5 so it's hard for me to guess that part).
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I'm probably going to regret posting this, but you did ask...
It's POSSIBLE (and I really don't know) that she felt hurt if you worded your response in the conversation the way it's typed here: the "I LIKE being with my children" part. As a working mom myself, I am sometimes sensitive when I feel as though stay-at-home parents are implying that my working means I must not love my kids as much as they love theirs. I am sure that is not at all what you meant, but I've talked with some people (both here and IRL) who really do feel that way. If you put the emphasis on "LIKE" in that particular way and she was feeling a little sensitive already, she may have misunderstood you and thought you were implying that parents who LIKE their kids ought to stay home with them and/or home school them. That misunderstanding may have bugged her until it spilled over into her rude post on Facebook.
I could be totally wrong about this, it's just a guess from someone who obviously knows nothing about your situation.
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My daughter and I really like The Butterfly Dance by Gerald Dawavendewa. It's a pretty short, simple story, but I love the way rituals and beliefs are incorporated as a natural part of the storyline, and my daughter enjoys the story and the art style.
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I agree with others' concerns about accidentally sending your daughter a message about "dumbing herself down." However, if she's ALWAYS first/best at everything, some other kids ARE going to continue to resent it. It might be worth having a conversation about distinguishing between times when being first really matters (because sometimes it does!) and times when the downsides outweigh the benefits (for stupid but real reasons). Yes, it's frustrating and wrong to have to "hide" finishing early from jealous classmates, but unfortunately this probably isn't going to go away any time soon. I don't know if there's a good answer to this, but it's worth weighing the pros and cons of spending an entire childhood taking a principled stand on this particular issue.
One thing I learned early on was that being first/best is more socially acceptable if you emphasize how much work it is (even if it isn't really all that much work for her at the moment). "Yes, I finished early today, I practiced at home a lot over the weekend." "It was a really hard test, but I studied a lot." "Yes, I got 100%-- I spent SO much time working on it after school this week." People are less apt to be jealous if success looks like hard work paying off rather than everything magically coming easily to someone.
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I love the name Harriet. Unfortunately, paired with our last name it sounds like an old lady with seventeen cats.
Out of curiosity, how do people find the meanings of names? I've seen a bunch of websites with "meanings" listed, but have always assumed most of them are just made up since there are never any real references listed and they seldom seem to agree with one another. Are many common English names words in other languages?
(Speaking of name "meanings," I knew a guy in college who tried to pick up girls by telling them their name meant "evening star" in Hindi. He tried this with four of us, good friends, at the same party, which we found hilarious when we got home and figured it out.)
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In partial defense of group work: I teach college classes (and took a zillion in my time), and have found SOME group work to be helpful. Sometimes discussions in which we share ideas and solve problems really do help us understand and remember things better.
The trouble is, a class of 30 or more is a tough place to have a discussion; many students have great ideas but are way too shy to speak in front of 29 other people. I often have my students collaborate in small groups of 5 or so to solve a short problem or answer a question in about 10 minutes in the middle of class. Then the groups each share their answers, and I guide those answers into the form of whatever it was I wanted them to figure out from the exercise. During the small group discussions, I wander around and see certain students really shine, leading their groups to interesting ideas. Other people who normally look sleepy during lectures are suddenly animated, arguing and listening. The students who seem to be the real leaders of the small-group discussions are often NOT the ones who contribute to the full-group discussion afterward, however. I think the small group discussions give those smart, introverted people a chance to speak they wouldn't otherwise have. I suspect this is why many classroom teachers do group work; since we're dealing with a large, unwieldy group in an institutional setting, this is the only way to get introverted students involved in discussing ideas, and discussing ideas IS an important skill to have. Public schooled kids may not have many other opportunities to do that, depending on what their "outside lives" are like.
On the other hand, the only credit my students get for those short discussion exercises is for participation (although the ideas that come from our discussion of them are often part of later assignments). The take-home written assignments the vast majority of their grades are based on are always individual, because I used to be one of those kids who did all the work for my "group," too.
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I'd take her in for a checkup even if you're choosing to delay some of the vaccinations. Part of the reason for those appointments is to check various things, not just give shots. For example, my daughter's pediatrician caught an incipient lazy eye VERY early at a routine well visit. We'd never noticed anything wrong, but it turns out that quick "inspection" I thought was just a cursory part of well visits was much more thorough than I'd realized. We were able to start seeing an eye doctor and correct the problem pretty easily and quickly because she managed to catch it so early (the eye doctor was really impressed she noticed it too). Since then I've been a big believer in well visits for healthy kids, as long as families can afford it.
You could ask the appointments person to help you pick a highly unpopular time, so you can avoid sharing the waiting room with sick kids. They may fuss a little about the vaccination delay, but I imagine any reasonable doctor would prefer to give you a checkup, the vaccinations you do want, and have a chance to talk with you about when to do the delayed ones rather than not see you at all.
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For a quick "this is what evolution is about" type book for that age, I like "Our Family Tree: an Evolution Story" by Lisa Peters. Daniel Loxton's "Evolution: How We and All Living Things Came to Be" won a recent science writing award in Canada and looks good from the samples I've seen; its Q&A format is more advanced and would be a nice complement to the "story" in the Peters book (I'm waiting for a copy from Amazon now).
I teach prehistory to college students, but my 5yo has little interest in abstract things for the most part, and that includes the history of scientific thought! I've been happy to just get the general idea of evolution across and spend more time on concrete things she enjoys like dinosaurs, Lucy the Australopithecine, and the Ice Age.
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:smilielol5::smilielol5::smilielol5:
This is the funniest thing I've read in a long time.
Please do post the name of the song if you find it. This would totally make my holiday season.
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With no family history of adverse reactions, we vaccinate fully. We did delay the Hep B series until preschool age, but only because I've been vaccinated and we weren't using group daycare, so the kids had essentially no risk of exposure.
We plan on getting the HPV vaccinations when the kids reach that age. People don't always make the choices we want/expect them to, and I feel like this is a "better safe than sorry" measure.
We also get flu vaccinations in years when they're recommended. Our family is able to get them without significant risk, so I'd prefer to extend some "herd immunity" to those who cannot receive them. After being pregnant during the big swine flu hoopla of 2009 and actually being in an at-risk group for once, the herd immunity idea means more to me than it used to.
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For long-term storage, we got an end-of-the-bed storage bench (the kind meant to hold blankets) and put frames for hanging files inside. It works like a file cabinet but doesn't look like one. It works great as long as we put stuff in it when we're supposed to. (Which reminds me, I'd better clean up this weekend!)
Laptop Lunches
in General Education Discussion Board
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Ziploc makes a cheapo version of these, too. They're not nearly as appealing and have only three compartments, but they seal up tightly (tight enough for non-liquids, anyway) and I can run them through the dishwasher. I've been using them for my 5yo's packed school lunches since August and have been very happy with them. I suspect if I'd invested in one of the nicer brands she'd have lost some pieces immediately, but since these are cheap and easy to replace, of course they never get lost!