JohannaM
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Posts posted by JohannaM
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My daughter is in WWS2 with WTMA this year (after doing WWS1 with me). I would put my estimate at about 5 hours plus class time, like redsquirrel. We allocate an hour a day during the week, with 2 days being class days. She is usually not done by Fri and spends another 1-2 hours Fri afternoon/evening or over the weekend. She really enjoys the kids in the class and the interaction, and wants to take WWS3 next year, even though it is a pretty large commitment. We compensate for the workload by having her do almost no other writing for history or science, other than an occasional project or small tasks like adding events to a timeline!
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I'm planning for my 5th grader to work roughly 8am-3pm Mon-Thurs. This includes:
1 hr music practice (piano and band instrument)
30 min free reading
1 hr 30min lunch&breaks
15 min chores
45 min writing & spelling
1 hr math & logic
45 min literature class
30 min foreign language (with some English vocab mixed in)
45 min science/history (each 2x/wk)
Friday is just art, free reading and music practice.
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So if we don't have a center near us (didn't see one listed in the entire state of Nebraska) how would you all recommend I go about getting one set up? Try it myself through their teacher registration, work with a local school, try to get the university to host it (they're already relatively involved in the community so it might be right up their ally, but also just be too much to add to their posts right now), or something else?
MK is very friendly to homeschoolers. Check back with the website later this year, and email Maria about setting up a new site. They'll be thrilled to have you because you'll be allowing more students to participate.
Yes, just contact Maria, maybe in Aug, when they are renewing test centers and getting ready for registration in the fall. In the meantime, check with local libraries or other places (like the university you mentioned) that might let you use a room!
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My DD did Saxon Intermediate 5 in school last year, and when we pulled her to homeschool this year, I decided to work through Dolciani's Pre-algebra book. This has been working pretty well. When we come across something that she hasn't had enough practice with, we pause and so some extra outside work i.e. Khan Academy. We have had to do some extra work on decimal and fraction multiplication and division, but otherwise she has been able to work through this book without a problem. It's been a challenge for her, but she is learning a lot! The plan is to do AOPS Pre-algebra next year to solidify everything before moving on to algebra.
Johanna
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DD got a silver. This was her first time doing the NME, so she was pretty excited about that! Do they post the answers? She only did the 30 question test, but tried the Theseus questions in the test booklet and wanted to find out how she did with those as well.
Johanna
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At a hardware level, computer architecture is the discipline that gets into how the sequence of instructions from the compiler is executed by by the CPU. For instance, a few bits of the instruction might indicate the type of operation i.e. addition, memory load, others indicate which registers hold the operands. These feed into different parts of the Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU) to execute the command and store the result.
https://www.coursera.org/course/comparch
Johanna
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Does the student have to be 1st grade by age, or will they let a K-ager participate as 1st if they can read the questions and do the math? She will turn 6 by then.
You should check with the manager of the specific test site you want to use, but last year that was allowed as long as they could independently take the test (i.e. read it themselves and fill in bubbles). MathK just wanted a note in the comment section when registering that the student was a Kindergartener. Then, next year she would still register as level 1 when she is in first grade.
Johanna
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Also, I commented to DH when he was not enjoying trying to figure out the answers after we got home that there was a big cultural difference. Most of the parents after the competition eagerly sat down with their groups and tackled the problems. I didn't get the impression there was any pressure on the kids to perform (they were all playing frisbee at this time) but that the parents (mostly dads) were excited about trying to figure it out.
My DH was having fun trying to figure out the answers too! Our group was mostly Caucasian, but that reflects the demographics of the smaller Midwestern town we live in.
I was relieved to see the blue shirts, Last year's pictures showed showed bright yellow!
Johanna
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Anyone else doing Math Kangaroo this week? My DD is really looking forward to it!
Johanna
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We tried one of the summer Leapfrog programs last year, but haven't tried their Sat. programs. The classes have a 2 year range (i.e. for PreK-K or K-1), did she take one where she was on the lower end? We were pretty happy with the teacher for my DD's class last summer. For the summer classes I know they recruit teachers with training in gifted education, so they were able to extend the activities and give her something more challenging. We took an English/writing class not math though. :001_smile:
If you are wanting to teach your daughter specific things i.e. higher level spelling, then you probably want to buy some materials to teach her yourself. There are lots of threads on all different subjects and materials on this forum!
Johanna
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Another thing, besides Scratch, that I discovered recently is the Cargo Bot (free) ipad app where you program a robot arm to move boxes around.
Johanna
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You can ask them specifically, "How do you differentiate for <insert subject>." This type of question got responses describing the reading groups they use, use of Accelerated Reader, and/or Accelerated Math depending on the school. When speaking with the K teacher, I asked if she had ever had a student start the year reading (which she had) and that led into more questions and description of how that was handled. If you are talking with the principal, you can ask if they have ever skipped a student. Their response will tell you a lot about how resistant they might be to that option! Search the district's website to see if there is any sort of GT coordinator, they may be able to provide additional info or at least be a resource for the classroom teacher.
I see from your signature you are using a Montessori preschool. If you are considering a Montessori school, ask what they do once a student has mastered the material in their room. My DS attends a Montessori school for PreK, so they just pulled in materials from the K room for him.
Johanna
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I'm glad to hear it went well! We also ran into the "social and emotional development" argument against skipping. The school personnel REALLY clung to that argument! However, at least they were willing to discuss a variety of accomodations for you! Congrats!
Johanna
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It sounds like your district has some sort of GT coordinator. I would make sure they are involved in any discussions. My DD's school ended up sending her over to the first grade room for academics (reading, spelling and math) and the rest of the time she spent in the K room, doing the "fun" stuff such as snack time, recess, lunch, afternoon free time etc... She also did all her extras i.e. music, art, gym with the K class. So she was able to participate in the more social aspects of K, as well as the numerous parties that no longer happen after K! Then after her test results were in, in the spring, the formal decision to accelerate her to 2nd for the 2013-14 school year was made. This worked pretty well, the top reading group in first was several other kids reading at a 3rd-4th grade level, so she had a group to meet with vs the K room that had 1 other kid reading at the beginning of the year! However, the teachers did have to modify their schedules so that she wouldn't miss things in first when with the K class.. My DD's birthday was also very close to the cutoff, so even though the administration was initally somewhat resistant to the skip, that helped.
Good luck! Since your district already has a pathway for early entry to K, they probably have a set of criteria for skipping, and talking to the pricipal and teachers should help you find out what those are.
Johanna
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Which book would you get for a third grader? I assume the third one.
Somewhere here there is a thread where someone analyzed the text and showed levels for all the books. I copied the levels into a Word doc for myself, but have lost who originally did the work (so, it's not me!), but here it is...
"I have just processed, with the Lexile Analyzer, prose samples from the McGuffey Readers that I’ve been able to find online. The books are not in the Lexile database. And I don’t think poetry can be mechanically, yet accurately analyzed. Occasionally there is a sample that isn’t aligned with the others in grade level, deviating from upper-level books normally, to 7th-grade, 8th-grade, or graduate-school level. I have determined the general pattern, though, to be that the books cover a two-grade range in lower levels, and a range of several grades in the higher levels. Because the Lexile Analyzer accepts selections of only one-thousand words at a time, I selected sections ranging from several lessons in the beginnings of the primer and first books, to a few paragraphs each of two lessons in the same section in the later books, checking the beginning and end in lower books, and also the middle parts of the higher books. I don’t believe revisions have changed the grade levels, but think it would require a more thorough analysis of various editions, which I don’t have access to, to be sure.
Here are the results:
Eclectic Primer: 1st grade
1st Eclectic Reader: 1st–2nd grades
2nd Eclectic Reader: 3rd–4th grades
3rd Eclectic Reader: 5th–6th grades
4th Eclectic Reader: 6th–8th grades
5th Eclectic Reader: 7th grade–college sophmore
6th Eclectic Reader: 9th grade–college senior
1st New Reader: 1st–2nd grades
2nd New Reader: 3rd–4th grades
3rd New Reader: 4th–5th grades
4th New Reader: 5th–6th grades
5th New Reader: 6th–12th grades
6th New Reader: 12th grade–college sophomore
High-School Reader: 9th–12th grades
Alternate 3rd Reader: 6th–8th grades
Alternate 4th Reader: 8th–12th grades
Alternate 5th Reader: 11th grade–college senior"
Johanna
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If you are going to make some basic kids pants, I've found this blog with a lot of free tutorials/patterns really helpful! I started sewing about a year ago to make some skirts for my skinny DD and have slowly branched out into pants and fancier skirts with a lot of help from blogs!
Johanna
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Welcome! Your post sounds a lot like us! I was planning on homeschooling, and was shocked when we got the letter saying my DD was accepted to the charter school we had entered the lottery for, so we are giving it a try! :lol:
We have a 30min window in the morning when we do a little "afterschooling," mostly finishing the AAS book she is in, then we listen to SOTW audio in the car on the way to school. It's surprising how much we get done given how little extra time we spend!
Johanna
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The Lost Battalion. It's been a while since I watched it, so you may want to check reviews because the whole movie is battle scenes (it's rated TV14).
Johanna
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My daughter enjoys this Vocabulary Power flipbook thing. It is designed more to flip a page a day though, not read through all in one setting.
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Has anyone used KISS grammar as their first grammar program for grade 2 level? It looks interesting but I'm having a hard time getting through the info on the website. Not sure that I want to print everything out myself but I like that it uses real literature to teach grammar.
If you used it please share your pros and cons. My son will be 7 in sept and is reading above 2nd grade level (not sure what level though!) but has not learned any grammar and done little writing.
We're about a third of the way through the level 1 grade 2 book. My dd is about a year younger than yours, and also a good reader. I would recommend reading (or skimming) the "How to Use KISS" and "Psycholinguistic Model" essays towards the top of the workbooks page. There is also a lot of good info in the Analysis Key to read through as the teacher. After getting through that I felt like I understood the KISS method better.
Pros:
- doesn't require writing
- uses sentences from literature
- I like how it uses the logic of the sentence to teach grammar. i.e. the KISS approach asks how a word is being used and therefore what part of the sentence it is instead of having a static list of, for instance, helping verbs
Cons:
- it doesn't have as much repetition as something like FLL, so as we get into the parts of speech (noun, pronoun, adjective etc..) I'm finding we have to slow down to add in more repetition (this may also be because my dd is on the younger side)
I hope this helps you think it through. Besides, there is no reason you can't print a few lessons and try them, after all, it's free! :lol:
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Ditto on the Expedition Earth. We mostly just do the reading, flag coloring, and country information sheet with my 5yo. We don't do a lot of the projects. It doesn't require a lot of prep from me and the Expedition Earth author includes books for geographic knowledge (i.e. pennisula, continent, hill, stream etc..) as well as cultural knowledge.
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I thought I saw someone mention using KISS grammar with a 5 or 6 year old a month or two ago and didn't have a chance to follow up at the time. I am interested to hear how it is going because we are using it with my 5.75 yo. She was asking to do grammar and we had done some condensed FLL1 the previous summer and I was not excited about the thought of trying to do that again! Meanwhile, I had been working through KISS myself and really liked the approach.
We have been using the Gr2 level 1 (I think of it as level 0.5 because I plan to follow it with the Gr3 level 1 :tongue_smilie:) together with Montessori grammar symbols. I write sentences on the white board and she places the symbol over the word (we had to augment a little and create a 'complement' symbol). I've been really surprised at how well it is going. She has to work at it, figuring out what the subject, verb and complement are, but by the end of a section i.e. finding complements, finding helping verbs she is getting almost every one right.
The only snag we have run into was the contractions exercises. Even though she can read quite well, she had never been asked to 'decode' a contraction into the original words. So, we just skipped the KISS exercises and did a couple matching worksheets I found online.
WTMA Homework/Assignemnt Time Commitments
in K-8 Curriculum Board
Posted
Sorry! Writing With Skill (WWS) is the book written by Susan Wise Bauer that is used in the Expository Writing WTMA classes. I always forget the class has a different name!