Clear Creek
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Posts posted by Clear Creek
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My son and I both suffer from eczema, and I am treating both of us the same. First, we both take Zyrtec daily. Second, we both use this lotion (this one exactly, not the one for eczema or any of the adult ones), which is available at Walmart, Target, and most grocery stores. We use the lotion twice daily for flare-ups, once daily when there is nothing. Third, we only use fragrance-free products - shampoo, conditioner, soap, body wash, hair products, lotion...everything that touches our skin is fragrance-free.
This is the result of five years of trial-and-error. The biggest factor for me was the fragrance in products...I had been using a fragrance-free body wash for years, but I still had eczema all over my upper body...as soon as I switched to fragrance-free shampoo and conditioner it went away and has not been back. Apparently just rinsing regular fragranced products out of my hair in the shower was spreading irritants all over my skin!
Hope this helps!
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I think the page you posted looks great. I, personally, would not reinvent the wheel and I would use Daily Math Practice and/or Daily Mental Math. It all depends on how valuable your time is. :001_smile:
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LOL, someone else just posted about this on another thread (one about online Spanish resources) and I gave it a good review there. The only difference is that we use the "Again" video the same week as the first one...for example, this week we will watch the week six video twice and then we will watch the "Again" video twice since it is meant to be a direct follow-up to that lesson (we watch them all on separate days to give us four days of instruction per week).
This is such an awesome resource! I didn't think about posting it outside of the Spanish resource thread, so I am glad you gave it its own thread so that people teaching languages other than just Spanish can learn about it! :D
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I'm curious about what Daily Mental Math 5 is.
Thanks!
Lisa
Here it is. We have been using the series since third grade. It covers all sorts of mental math topics...for example, the fourth grade one includes the four basic operations, imagining a 3D shape (like a triangular prism) and counting the faces, basic geometry (perimeter, symmetry, tessellation, etc.), measurement conversion, word problems, calculating totals or change with money, the next item in a sequence, prime and composite numbers, squaring numbers, rotate a patterned shape mentally and draw it, decimals, fractions, and a whole lot more. There is no explicit teaching, but the lessons slowly build on each other to teach concepts.
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Grammar: R&S 5
Spelling: R&S 5
Writing: I haven't decided...Killgallon with either WWS or Wordsmith Apprentice
Vocabulary: VFCR 5
Reading/Lit: CLE Reading 5/RFWP Time Trilogy Lit. series
Latin: First Form
Logic: Orbiting with Logic/Red Herring Mysteries
Math: Daily Mental Math 5 with LOF Pre-algebra I & II, and then...something
Spanish: continue with the free video series on knowitall.org (until we complete all three levels), at some point we will give SFC another try
Geography: Star Spangled States w/workbook
Health: Schoolaid Health 5
Art: Artpac 5
Music: R&S Music 6&7, continue piano lessons and children's choir
Science: Apologia Botany
History: US History using various resources I have on the shelf, maybe a little Truthquest if I feel like it
Bible: I don't know...maybe continue with PAC
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Have you looked at these? My kids love them.
http://www.knowitall.org/instantreplay/content/LanguageIndex.cfm
We actually stopped SFC last month (my daughter was learning grammar, but couldn't say anything in the language at all - the program doesn't provide the basic conversational Spanish that one would expect...it is a straight vocab and grammar program, even more so than the Latin program we use) and started watching the First Step Espanol videos...we watch the video twice, and then we watch the follow-up First Step Espanol Again video twice (for a total of four videos over four days). I kid you not, by week two the instructor tells the story of Little Red Riding Hood in Spanish (no English at all, it is a total immersion program) and my daughter understood it. We are now in week 6, and my daughter can put together complete sentences in Spanish. If I could do it all over again, I would have done this before ever attempting a strictly grammar program like SFC. I will eventually go back and erase everything from the book and start it over again, and I think that she will actually do better with it now that she understands some of the language.
All that to say that I highly recommend this video series! Honestly, I would pay money for these videos if they weren't free.
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I have decided to continue with R&S 5 and LOF Fractions and Decimals & Percents to finish out this school year, then continue on with LOF Pre-algebra I & II. That is all the further I can commit to planning! :lol: I have no idea when she will finish with the two pre-algebra books (we do math over the summer break), and I don't know whether LOF is going to work for her long-term. I don't know if she is going to hit a wall and need to slow down, or if she is going to continue to gain momentum. My tentative plan is to let her move through the LOF series at her own speed. She liked the preview of Jacob's Elementary Algebra that I showed her, though...it is something that I am keeping in mind. And if she continues to need more and deeper math than I can give her, I will start her in AOPS. I say continue because most days the "new" topic I present her with for her math lesson is met with much eye rolling and "duh, I already know this!" :tongue_smilie:
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I didn't get a chance to post what I read last week, so here it is:
#10 - Waiting for Summer's Return by Kim Vogel Sawyer. A fluffy, enjoyable read.
#11 - Crossing Over by Ruth Irene Garrett. The true story of a woman who left the Amish. While I understand that she is presenting her own one-sided perspective of the situation, it was rather eye-opening in parts. I enjoy reading this type of non-fiction to balance out all the Beverly Lewis books. :D
This week I read:
#12 - The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. It was...different. It never really drew me in; in fact, I had to force myself to continue reading it after I had stopped for a few days. It had the potential to be deep, but was so showy that it just never got there, which was kind of a disappointment. The aura of mystery that she cast over the characters hinted at a depth that just wasn't there. I might give the author another chance in a few years when she has had a chance to mature (her photo on the cover looks like she is all of fourteen, lol!).
I am currently reading:
#13 The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks. I have a degree in psychology and I enjoy reading case studies (even ones that are out-of-date and can be explained using modern research). This one has been on my list to read for years.
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Thank you...I bookmarked it to read it over again when I have more time. But my first reading confirmed what I have been feeling ever since I read Thirsting for God in a Land of Shallow Wells. Spiritual Relativism is just plain wrong (and heretical). There is (and can be) only one intended interpretation of the Bible. God can't have meant it to mean different things to different people (and I mean in the big areas, like the very nature of God).
There was a quote in the middle of it that stuck out to me, one that I have heard my husband say something along the lines of once...that he has to ask several carefully worded questions of someone when he meets them in order to find out exactly what they believe so that he knows what common ground they have, and what topics are off-limits. How nice it would be to know I have common beliefs with other Christians! To know that they believed exactly as I did, that there were no off-limit topics that could cause dissension.
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I am currently reading Alexander Schemann's For the Life of the World. It is making it really, really difficult to continue taking communion at my non-denominational church. For a really long time I have been having a "snack" and saying the Jesus prayer while everyone else "meditates" over their communion pieces, but I don't know how much longer my conscience will allow it. The difficulty for me is that I am part of the worship team (just a tech, lol, I am not musically inclined) and the eight of us take communion together before church...if I were to start declining it, it would be very obvious. My husband would not let up until I told him why I was no longer taking it, and he does *not* want to hear that I believe that communion can be anything other than symbolic.
But the book is really good! :D
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This week I read Jodi Picoult's House Rules. It was a bit of a disappointment, honestly. It was informative as far as Asperger's Syndrome, but at times it seemed to cross the line from fiction to non-fiction; it did not flow well. I also figured out how it was going to end 450 pages before it actually ended, so it dragged on quite a bit. All in all, I like it the least of all of her books that I have read.
#9 House Rules by Jodi Picoult
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I have been lurking in all these threads because I am in the same indecisive boat. My oldest will be in 5th grade next year (yikes!) and she is beginning to advance in math by leaps and bounds. Up until the beginning of this current school year (this past August) she was progressing normally through R&S math on grade level. Since August, though (86 school days logged) she has progressed through the entire 4th grade math book and is well into the second quarter of the 5th grade book. We have been combining lessons and skipping lessons when necessary (if I had a dollar for every time she rolled her eyes and told me she already knew the concept being introduced in the day's lesson, I could buy every pre-algebra book I know of!), and it doesn't look like she is going to slow down any time soon. She has also been playing on Khan Academy for the last month or so, and learning FAR too much over there, lol! :lol: Oh, and I tried to stump her with CWP, but no such luck. She views them as more of the same word problems that she is already doing in R&S.
Anyway, she is going to need a pre-algebra program pretty soon. I can't even say it is for next fall; this 5th grade book isn't going to take long to get through...maybe a few months. I could just go with R&S 6 and 7 at the same rate of speed, but honestly, I am tired of combining lessons and trying to find the level that challenges her. I have been considering AOPS, but I think she might freak at the jump in difficulty level (she has a perfectionist streak and cries at the sight of anything difficult)...it might be a possibility after doing another pre-algebra program. I have also been seriously considering Jacob's Elementary Algebra. I really like the looks of it, and I showed my daughter the sample of it and she liked it. I have also been thinking about LOF...starting with Fractions, Decimals, and Percents (just to make sure everything is cemented) before doing pre-algebra. I could do the first books while doing R&S (my daughter loves math and she loves to read, so she would not view it as extra work) and then move to the two pre-algebra books when she finishes R&S 5.
I really just don't know. I want something appropriately challenging, but I also don't want to rush her into higher math...she is a young 4th grader (she would be a 3rd grader by local public school standards). She is holding a high B average, and that is simply because she is only nine...she occasionally doesn't pay close enough attention to signs and will add instead of subtract, or multiply instead of divide. Or she will get lazy in her handwriting and misread a six as a zero. But as far as concepts go, she *gets* math.
I don't have the luxury of buying several different programs and comparing them...I am relying on y'all for that! :D I need to make a decision, and whatever I decide on will get purchased with the rest of our curriculum when we get our tax return. So, here I sit on this fence....:lol:
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I went on a retreat with my husband this week, so I had lots of time for reading. The first book I read was Summer Breeze, by Catherine Palmer and Gary Chapman. It is second in a series authored by the two of them, and it (like the first book) was excellent. I enjoy Catherine Palmer's style of writing, and with the help of Gary Chapman she portrayed marriages in a very realistic manner and showed steps that could be taken to improve areas in a marriage without coming across as a how-to manual.
The second, third, and fourth books I read were the three books in The Postcards from Pullman series by Judith Miller. The books were titled In the Company of Secrets, Whispers Along the Rails, and An Uncertain Dream. The series was set in the late 1800's in the town of Pullman, Illinois, where the Pullman railway cars were designed and built. While the topics of railway cars and railroad strikes are not highly interesting to me, the story line caught me up enough that after reading the first book in paperback, I immediately downloaded the next two onto my Kindle. There are a variety of recipes included at the end of each book that look rather easy (and delicious).
The fifth book I read (I told you I had plenty of uninterrupted reading time this week, most weeks won't look anything like this!) was Ruby by Lorraine Snelling. I thoroughly enjoyed this light read about a proper eastern young lady that inherits (of all things!) a brothel/saloon from her long-lost father when he dies.
I began reading Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline, but I was reading a borrowed copy so I have to get a copy of my own and finish it. So far it was very interesting and thought-provoking.
So for this week, my books are:
#4 Summer Breeze by Catherine Palmer and Gary Chapman
#5 In the Company of Secrets by Judith Miller
#6 Whispers Along the Rails by Judith Miller
#7 An Uncertain Dream by Judith Miller
#8 Ruby by Lorraine Snelling
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Direct objects come after action verbs; predicate nouns (a noun that renames the subject) come after "be" verbs. In your first sentence, for example, "Firs and cedars are tall trees," since are is a "be" verb and not an action verb, it cannot have a direct object. The noun "trees" renames the nouns "firs" and "cedars", so it is a predicate noun. If you look at all of the sentences you listed, they all have "be" verbs, so none of them can have a direct object. They all have predicate nouns.
We just learned this in 4th grade English a couple of weeks ago, or else I never would have been able to answer your question! :lol:
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I finished book #3 this week; Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult. The subject matter of the book, bullying, hit pretty close to home for me; I was bullied in junior high and high school. Thankfully I had the foresight to see that high school (and the idiots there) was not the end-all, be-all of life. :D I really enjoyed the book, and was kept guessing until the end what the twist in the story would be.
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Milovany wrote: Katia, I remember your posting before! (Unless we've had someone else recently whose husband is a protestant minister not interested in Orthodoxy?). Welcome back.
That would be me! I am still here, quietly reading and praying for the requests. Until God opens doors, I am patiently staying in one spot on my journey.
Katia - I am in a very similar position. My husband is a protestant minister who is not remotely interested in me (or him) exploring EO at all.
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Ok, I actually managed to read two books this week...Her Mother's Hope, and Her Daughter's Dream, both by Francine Rivers. I really enjoyed them both, enough that I had to read the sequel once I had finished the first one. I can't say that I really identified with any of the characters, but it was interesting to see how the family dynamics played out over multiple generations. I was surprised to read in the back of the first book (less surprised to read it in the back of the second book, lol!) that a considerable amount of the story line was taken from the author's own family. The books made me think about my own upbringing, and my mother and her mother's upbringing, and how each of our relationships with our own mother affected the relationship we each had with our daughter. Overall it was a very engaging read, with an unexpected ending to the second book.
1. Her Mother's Hope by Francine Rivers
2. Her Daughter's Dream by Francine Rivers
After I finished the above books I attempted to read Delivery, by Diana Prusik. I made it 20% of the way through the book and had to delete it from my Kindle. It had no story line, boring characters that did not seem to be remotely authentic, and did not hold my attention. It was just plain boring.
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Enchanted Learning has a free booklet that you can print off (one page at a time for non-members) that covers the different coins. My oldest used that booklet for at least a year (beginning in 2nd grade) because she had the hardest time remembering which coin was which. I let her keep the booklet in her math book and whenever she encountered a problem that involved adding money, she was allowed to use the booklet to help her identify all the coins.
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This week I decided that I needed something light to read since I am starting school back up with the kids and trying to get back on a regular schedule with my part-time job, so I am reading Her Mother's Hope by Francine Rivers. The book is long, but it seems to be a rather easy read, so chances are I might actually finish it by week's end! :lol: When my life is a little more organized and settled down I might attempt a book that requires some thinking...we will see if that ever happens....:lol:
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Ok, I think I am going to be brave and try this. The idea of fitting in a book a week into my busy schedule for the entire year leaves me feeling a little panicked, but since I desperately love to read (and never seem to have the time) perhaps this will give me the motivation and accountability that I need in order to make time to read regularly.
Perhaps I need to re-read the quote in my signature! :lol:
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Congratulations!!! And thank you so much for sharing the pictures!
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I guess I'm looking for something mastery based with a good TM that provides lots of hand-holding (scripted, I guess). And I'd like drill included. I've tried CLE with my younger ds, but I'm not crazy about the spiral approach. I just want to focus on one thing at a time.
I like the looks of R&S math, but it looks like the lessons have a ton of problems and could get very time-consuming. But I'm wondering if you could just skip some problems if you feel like your child has mastered that particular area?? One thing I DO like about Singapore is that there isn't too much repitition and the lessons are fairly short.
Thanks again! :)
The repetition is only there if you need it. Otherwise, if my child shows mastery of the concept we just move on. My 4th grader is flying through the 4th grade book (she should be done some time in January); the way it is set up one concept is introduced each day, which makes it easy to combine lessons. Each lesson includes a lot of review, so I can choose between a number of topics to review, depending on what I think she needs. She is doing approximately one chapter per week (9 lessons covering new concepts, one review, and one test).
As far as word problems go, R&S has done an excellent job of teaching my oldest how to do them. I bought her CWP3 at the beginning of the year, and she finds them rather easy to solve. I did have to teach her how to draw a bar graph to set them up, but as far as figuring out what needed to be done to solve the problem and deciphering the important information, she has a very thorough understanding of it. R&S teaches key words, drills discovering which operation(s) is/are needed to solve the problem, and teaches how to tell which important information is missing from a word problem.
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If you are going to switch to R&S English, I would recommend just doing the writing exercises in there. You have to apply what is learned elsewhere (i.e. assign the student to write a descriptive paragraph about something in reading or science), but the instruction in the textbook is excellent. And if you do go with R&S, I would not use WWW as well; table of contents and sample exercises on the website are extraordinarily similar to the writing instruction in R&S, so it would be redundant.
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My oldest child...some time in her kindergarten year (and she didn't do a math curriculum in kindergarten, so it was something that she picked up on her own). My second child...some time in the last month (and she is in 2nd grade). I think part of learning two digit numbers is a developmental thing, so I wouldn't worry about it too much at this point.
FWIW, my oldest child appears to be naturally math-inclined (she is doing as many as 4 lessons per day of math and is holding an A average). My second child is not naturally math-inclined. So I would guess that the children that you hear about that are understanding things like this in kindergarten are probably more mathy (is that a word? :lol:) than the average child.
Foreign Language Considerations
in K-8 Curriculum Board
Posted
I let my children choose which language they would like to learn (beside Latin, which is required). We start Latin in third grade, and this year I gave my oldest her choice of language to study in addition to Latin (she chose Spanish). I figure they will put a lot more effort into learning something that they find interesting. Interest-based electives; one of the perks of home schooling! :D