AnnaM
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Posts posted by AnnaM
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We are up between 8 and 9 generally and start our school day around 10.
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I have a Luke and people constantly call him Lucas. It drives me insane but I just smile and correct it. My youngest daughters name is Keira (Keer-uh). She has just learned to go ahead and answer to any variation of Kara, Kira, Key-er-a, or whatever and then politely help them pronounce it correctly LOL
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Originally Posted by BlsdMama
I'm curious too.
Let's be truthful here... He was just stating the truth rather than putting it in politically correct terms. He does. He will control what your children will be introduced to, what they will be taught, much of what values they will learn and absorb. He has them for 8-12 hours a day depending on their hobbies. You have them for 2-4. The public school does "own" them. It is what it is.
:iagree:
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Developing a child's mind is rather unlike developing their bladder or bowel control.
The brain is a complex organ that responds to appropriate stimulation by branching and forming a dense neural-network. Or, if not positively stimulated and creatively engaged, the brain loses connections and the neural-network declines.
The early years are a critical time. Young children has a tremendous capacity to learn. Wasting those years due to wrong-headed ideologies is a shame. These are years when children should be creatively engaged.
Bill
My point was not that they are the same, but that no matter what the topic if a child isn't ready to learn it, no amount of forcing it will help. I didn't base what I did on any ideology but on the individual needs of that child. It was what she needed. It may or may not be what my 4 year old needs. I will adjust as necessary.
Just because I didn't try to force my child to read before she was ready doesn't mean I wasn't engaging and stimulating her.
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The CP vaccine is not a lifetime vaccination. It requires a booster every 10 years or so. Getting CP naturally, generally, gives a life long immunity and at the least the second round is usually much milder than the first time. Most adults I know either don't realize they should be getting boostered for some of their childhood vaccinations or just don't do it.
As with each of the vaccines there has to be a careful weighing of risk vs reward and sometimes, the risk of the vaccine outweighs the risk of the disease. In this case the risks are that there are no long term studies showing the side effects of this vaccine and it is highly unlikely that my adult children will remember or be bothered to get the booster which leaves them susceptible to getting the cp as an adult.
I hope to have my children catch cp at some point, but that said, I would NEVER take them out while they have it.
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My daughter dresses like your daughter. She is very...eclectic...and as long as it is weather appropriate and we aren't going to a formal event or church, I let her.
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I actually think that we could potty train the vast majority of children by a given age, much younger than we do. We used to. Walking, unlike reading or peeing in a toilet, is a natural skill. But we can often teach children to walk earlier than they otherwise would, if we want to. Children walk at different ages based on the culture they were born into. I don't see a huge advantage in early potty training or early walking, and I don't encourage either. But yes, "potty training readiness" is in large part myth. That's why children suddenly became much less ready to potty train when their mums didn't need to wash flat diapers and plastic pants anymore.
Do you think that it would have been to your daughter's advantage to do very little or nothing until she was seven? Or that the years you spent teaching her were not useful, because she hadn't hit her "readiness point"? Because the research doesn't seem to bear that out.
I didn't mean to sound so rude in my above post. I am grumpy tonight LOL But to get to your points. With both of my daughters I tried potty training them. Did everything I was supposed to for several months. Cleaned up mess after mess. One day I decided I was done. I would rather change a million more diapers than clean up another puddle of pee. At 3 years my oldest got up and told me she was done with diapers and from that moment on was day and night trained. My younger was about 3 months after that. I don't think my "training" did any good. They weren't ready. Period. They weren't able to hold it at night, and they weren't mature enough to follow their signals during they day. When they were ready they trained quickly and easily and I never even had to so much as change a set of sheets due to an accident. I cloth diapered so that last bit had nothing to do with why mine trained later. It was a heck of a lot less convenient to still have to wash diapers than to have them potty trained.
Reading was the same way for us. I tried teaching her. I tried doing everything that the books told me to. She just wasn't ready so I stopped. We read together and such, and when she was ready, she picked up a book and just took off. MAYBE, I could have "taught" her earlier, but at what cost? My sanity? Her love of reading? And she probably wouldn't have read until she was 7 anyways. I don't think my teaching "hurt" her in anyway but I don't think it sped up the rate at which she learned to read at all. I am not saying I am against exposing them to it, but the whole idea that every child is ready for the same thing at the same time is exactly why I keep my kids out of the PS system. It is what holds back accelerated kids and leaves those needing more time in the dust.
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1. She would like to know if your dh/dw/so has made any friends of the opposite sex apart from you since you were married/in a committed relationship. [This is not a mutual friendship, and it includes phone/texting which can be as little as once a year or daily banter] No. He has acquaintances from work, but no one I would call a friend.
2. If that does occur, do your so have a pic of said friend in their contact list. You know, kind of like an avatar here. Work acquaintances can come up with a photo.
3. [This is the weird one, and she readily admits it] If so, are these pics ever provocative[at least in your opinion]? Not that I've ever seen, and I'd ask him to delete something like that if it were there. What would the kids think???? We're always talking to them about phone safety/internet safety/appropriateness of materials etc., so it would not be good if we didn't follow our own rules!
:iagree:
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Those are all skills that can be taught, rather than skills that appear at a certain age. I agree that there are prerequisite skills for reading. I don't agree that children have a pre-set age before which they are unable to learn to read, at least not after five. Jeanne Chall says this as well, and she is widely recognised to have done the largest and most comprehensive studies of the literature on learning to read.
Then you have not met my children. I tried until I was blue in the face to get my oldest to understand rhyming and simple decoding. All it did was frustrate us and make me cry and doubt myself. Suddenly at age 7 she understood and went from barely being able to sound out simple 3 letter words to reading 2 grade levels higher than her grade. You can't honestly believe that every child is suddenly cognitively ready to read just because they suddenly turned 5? That is like saying every child should be able to walk at the same age or potty train at the same age. If they aren't ready no amount of teaching will do any good.
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We did our first day of BJU today. Of course we have the first day with a new curriculum thrills, but she really did well with it! I think she liked having me sit down and work through the strategies one on one with her and she picked up what we are doing quickly (+9 and near doubles) and was very excited to call her uncle to tell him what she learned LOL.
We do a lot of the MOH activities but at their ages there is very little writing. I think for now I am just going to keep trucking along with mixing it into our other subjects and pick up something formal in the spring. Probably BJU again. Since both are reading well above grade level I guess I am not too panicked. I had the grade 2 BJU grammar that we started and stopped last year because I felt like it was too much for her. We did a page from that and it seems to be right on for her now. I think I am just at that point where I am ready to get what works and stick with it.
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Bible-LifePac 2 book 9 continuing with how the nations were separated after the tower of Babel
Math-Restarting with BJU Grade 3
History-Pythagoras, Confucius, Belshazzar and Cyrus the Great, and Darius I
Science- Finishing up the Moon and moving on to Mars. We will make a telescope sometime during the week.
English and Writing-Easy Grammar lessons and how to write a friendly letter (we are writing to Grandma), Brianna will be picking out her book for her first book report. Reading in Abeka readers for comprehension and book of choice for pleasure.
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My DH is also in IT and it seems to be doing pretty well in the Dallas area. Believe it or not my parents who are in the new construction industry are also doing quite well. There was a slump but it all seems to be picking up now. They have more work than they can handle for the moment.
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I am just indulging in a pity party at the moment. I keep finding things I think we will love that I think will work and they keep flopping. Both of my children have TERRIBLE spelling and my oldest is not retaining anything as far as simple math facts and basic grammar rules. My middle child is bored and her handwriting is nearly unreadable. I want to be eclectic, I want to be fun and interesting, but I am to the point where I have decided we will, at least for this year, use a scripted curriculum (BJU) until I can figure out what the heck I am supposed to be doing that I am not. /pity party
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If you are going to ASI no it isn't worth it. If you go to a reputable small local gym the classes should look identical to the regular classes. We do a homeschool class at our gym and it is literally identical to the regular classes we do for our other 2 classes.
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I don't understand what being a "home schooler" has to do with it. I mean, we'd pay the same taxes if we were childless. We'll pay them after our kids are grown. We'd pay them if our kids were in private school. Not using the schools is unrelated to whether or not one pays taxes. So what does home schooling have to do with it?
Do you mean why are homeschoolers more bothered about it? Well, homeschooling has no bearing on how much we pay in taxes of course but I think the reason we (or at least I) get so bothered about it is because that is money that I could 1. be using to enrich my own children's education or 2. Donating to educational causes that were actually working. I personally don't believe anyone should HAVE to pay into a system they don't use or don't believe is working. It is like forced charity to me (I am not speaking of the moral obligations we have towards children but just of the concept of forcing it). Anyways, I digress. On one hand I want to pay taxes because I believe it leaves less room for the government to come in and tell me that they need to make sure I am using my money the way they think I should, and on the other I am utterly against being forced to pay into a system that I am morally opposed to and that is failing on a grand scale. I hope I at least came close to answering your question somewhere in that rant LOL
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No, I really do not want to pay for public schools. I do not have a choice. But if I did, no I would not.
:iagree: If I am going to pump my hard earned money into something, I would rather it be something that is actually working.
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I'll probably have to turn in my feminist card for even thinking this, but I find it kind of sweet to see how many of the guys are instinctively protecting the women and kids they're with (of course, there is the one man who seems to be using a little kid as a human shield, but, still...).
There are a few that look like sibs that are kind of sweet (in a weird way).
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My parents own a small business and have always provided health insurance that was covered by the company. It was a really great perk for all of the employees (about 10). This year they had to drop it all together because the premiums got so high.
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Man, I need to put a warning before that post people keep quoting. I am NOT quiverful. At all. Dh plans to get a V after our 4th baby. I was trying (and had to rephrase later because it apparently didn't come across, so if you kept reading the thread it would have been cleared up) that there is a logical disconnect in saying that sterilization is messing with God's design when ALL birth control is in some way messing with God's design. It's in a more permanent way, but from a religious perspective it's still changing God's design. If you believe it's God's design to have babies (so that sterilization would be "going against that," as was mentioned previously as an argument against sterilization only,) then so is any birth control. That's all. And NFP didn't work well for me as I conceived when I had no physical signs of ovulation and hadn't gotten AF back yet while still heavily nursing my current wee one. I wasn't temping, but I also have always had a period of months when I was infertile after getting AF back and this time, ha ha, not so much.
:) I understand you now. This is touchy for me because I have had women tell me that if I really trusted God I would continue to allow him to "guide" my fertility knowing that it would probably kill either the baby, me or both. I mean really laid it on me hard.
I got pregnant with #2 just 3 weeks post partum. Seriously, I had not even finished with the after birth stuff (gross I know but I had been on bed rest from 17 weeks on so we were both pretty desperate for some tEA. I had no idea you could even ovulate while that was going on. Surprise!
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The thing is, wanting to have TeA without making babies IS messing with God's design. It's not like there are foolproof Biblical methods of effective birth control. To not get pregnant, you or he will have to have to physically stop conception, and if he truly wants NO chance of getting pregnant, barrier methods are not going to do that. Statistically there will still be a fair chance of getting pregnant. Plus it's easier to reverse it if he's snipped rather than you. Have you guys prayed about this choice?
Tell that to my uterus which has produced high risk dangerous pregnancies due to a severe uterine deformity. I don't believe for one moment that I am messing with God's plan for me by not playing fatalist and following the wisdom he has given me through doctors which have warned me that another pregnancy will almost certainly end in a ruptured uterus and a dead baby.
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Has anyone mentioned NFP? If you chart consistently it is very effective. We would abstain or use what we called the "pull and pray" (which was very effective for us) for a few days when I was ovulating and then go back to it after. It also gave me the benefit of knowing exactly when my AF was going to start. My two "surprise" pregnancies weren't planned exactly but we know that we had tEA during fertile times and knew it was possible so it was user error so to speak.
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You know, it did not surprise me at all. The long absences kind of gave away what was going to happen, though I still found it incredibly heartbreaking and hard to watch. I am very interested to see the dynamic between Lady and Lord Grantham in the upcoming weeks.
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Anyone want to join us for a week free of electronics (with the exception of the computer based math my kids do)? We are not usually heavy with them anyways, but because we are temporarily living with my parents while our house is being built, I have found myself more inclined to say yes when they ask to go on something, because most of their toys are packed away. Anyways, we are going to challenge ourselves to find better ways to entertain ourselves when we get bored. Feel free to jump in or give us some fun ideas to try out!
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I just wanted to add that upping your intake of healthy fats will also help to curb sugar cravings
Balancing schoolwork and outside activities
in K-8 Curriculum Board
Posted
I am sometimes not sure how we do it. Over the last 10 weeks we have been going from 3 gymnastics classes, 2 soccer practices (with two different teams), an average of 2 soccer games (per child so really a total of 4 games a week), and our weekly meet up every week. It is all a bit of a blur, but I decided when we started that we WOULD get school done. PERIOD. Sometimes it was squeezed into the cracks and crevices of our free time, but we did it and I am glad we did. Now that soccer season is coming to a close we will have more room in our schedule and I am ready for that. In fact today and tomorrow are the first two consecutive days that we have had no activities in quite a while and I am almost unsure what to do with it! Anyways, my point is, it is doable you just have to put your foot down and determine to do it. It may take some tweeking, but you will find your stride.