Mango
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Posts posted by Mango
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There is a google classroom app, but it's only available to organizations that have a website.edu
Has anyone been able to get this for homeschooling?
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If you've been using Google Calendars for home work assignments..... is there a way for your students to check off they did an assignment? Would this need to be a To Do list item with a date?
Trying to figure out how to make things streamlined.
Google Calendars is my preferred choice of software. It's free. And I'm already using gmail accounts for all my kids.
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Thank you! Yes, I'm looking for free. I started having this week by asking him to write out his word problems in his current math book. They don't require alot of thought, but he can practice writing it. I'll take a look at these suggestions.
Thank you.
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You know the kind of word problems that stop and make you think?
A rectangle has one side that is 6' feet long. The perimeter is 20'. What are the lengths of all the sides of the rectangle?
Or
Billy and Bobby caught 4 frogs each day this week. How many frogs in all did they catch?
The resource would be to supplement my math curriculum this year. Potentially I'm looking for a math curriculum that includes this type of activity.
Thank you!
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I highly recommend a virtual charter school. I have a teen who prefers not to work for me. In desperation I outsourced her schooling 2 years ago. It was a big learning curve for her. She doing it, she's working harder than she ever has before. There's a certain pride in her accomplishments that never was there before too. And I've become the "good guy" in her life again advocating when there's a need. :)) Now's the time of year to enrolll in the virtual schools.
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In California, hers is the norm. Also, there are two general kinds of home-based charter schools in California: Internet-based (those which provide/require K12, and Connections Academy) and those which provide actual textbooks or other instructional materials, with the families being given stipends to purchase those materials (or they give their shopping lists to the charter school which then purchases the materials); they might also pay for outside classes. Only those which do Internet-based instruction are referred to as "virtual" charter schools.
Our charter school is a virtual based charter school. Math is always online using Aleks.com for k-12. This fulfills the virtual requirement.
For all other subjects you choose: Online or Project based. It can be some or all in either category.
The project based learning is where the challenge arrives. My stupid begins when the lesson plan ends. I like a lesson plan. The school will buy me curriculum to use, if I can get from it the required amount of projects per quarter. They don't care if I teach the lesson plan or not. Their objective is the project. This is whole other debate, please don'tstart that!
Personally I chose this year to teach the lesson plan. My hope was that the projects/experiements/optional activities in the curriculum coud count for the required number of projects. Therein lies my challenge, there are projects, but no clue which fulfills which standard. Also projects in the curriclum never go far enough. So it helps knowing which standard we're working towards so we can make up the deficit by asking the teacher for suggestions.
What we will do next year is in discussion. But for now I must dig my head into the internet and help 3 of my kids kids come up with 8 projects for second semester. The the other two just need 5 projects each. The teachers are asking for 2 projects minimuin English, Science, Soc. and 1 in PE. YIKES! Did'ja do the math? 34 projects. Yes, I already know you don't want to be me. Please don't be cruel.
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Sorry, they are the next generation science standards.
Yes, the process is new and messy.
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OK, I called our curriculum providers, gave THEM the list of standards I have to choose from. They agreed to let me know where in the texts these standards might be/or not. :)) I think they were shocked because they didn't realize there are now science standards too. They thought it was just English and History. Nope, science has come online since the fall.
Ours is a virtual charter school. It is different from K12 and Connections Academy.
Change? Aboslutely is being considered. The letter to pull the kids out is drafted. The broken part is on the teacher's end. The children are learning despite the bickering over standards. If I pull the kids out, I lose their school materials half way through the year.
Part of the reason we chose THIS virtual charter school was that we were given curriculum choices. The math curriculum is the only standardarized curriculum that every family has to use. It's Aleks Math, online with standards by each lesson.
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Her children are enrolled in a charter school, and so are not legally homeschooled children. IOW, she is not following the homeschool requirements in her state because her children are not legally homeschooled children; they are public school children.
I know there have been many threads about whether people whose children are enrolled in public school charters are really homeschooling or not; Mango's predicament points out the importance of knowing what the *legal* ramifications are of enrolling the children in a public-school-at-home program. I would not tell her that philosophically she's homeschooling; I would only point out that the legality is that her children are public school students and so she must comply with public school requirements, not homeschool (or private school, depending on the state) requirements.
Exactly, we're not homeschoolers any more. We're public-school-at home.
We started this 2 years ago. Previously we'd been homescooling for 9 yrs.
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I'm having trouble getting a good picture of your situation, particularly why you are having to do 20 classes from scratch if they are providing you curricula (which you describe as "nicely laid out") and checklists for them and how projects fit into that vs lessons. Is it every lesson for every class or just special projects?
Which curricula are you currently being provided by the school? What sorts of projects or experiments are being required in which subjects for what grades?
The school has given us a short list of standards(15-20) that we have to choose 7 from for each subject area for the grade. It is not a comprehsive list because evidently it costs money to get the whole list put into the grading system. I take my curriculum and decide which activity/assignments/experiements can fit a standard they've listed. If our curriculum doesn't have anything to fit, then I have start googling looking for a lesson plan that will fulfill the specifics of that standard.
Having a standards by lesson would make this process easier. Instead, with the common core aligned material I spend hours with my curriculum trying to figure out if any projects match. The projects and experiments are detailed in the rubric along with the standard. They're ultra specific. You could have a beautiful project and have picked standards that don't quite match. So your final grade will be that you don't meet standards. It's not about creativity & ingenuity. It's about doing those inside ultra specific parameters.
Yes the school bought the materials. No they didn't have a handle on this when ordering materials. We were given a list of common core aligned curriculum to choose from. Hours have spent trying to understand the standard, and then to match it to an activity my kid can do.
Our school is frantically trying to complie to DPI requirements for common core implementation. I do think they are being held to a higher standard than the brick and mortar schools.
Believe me the school has evolved. If it was like this when we enrolled or we never would have enrolled.
Why did we do this? In the top ten of reasons it was to give our kids an added layer of accountability to step up their academic rigor. The kids have to meet the deadlines. They have to do the assignment. They have to tell their complaints to another non-family individual. I tried many creative things as a homeschooling parent to hold their piggies over a fires of get-it-done. Those of you who exceed at this, kudos!
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"Lessons keyed for common core standards" That's exactly what I'm looking for!
"Common cored aligned" doesn't go far enough. I have to tell the teacher's/have to choose the standards for the lessons we're doing. I am not a profession curriculum writer, I am not a professional teacher who's supposed to know CC standards and when something fits it. I'm just the parent coach who's stupid starts the minute I'm without a lesson plan.
Our reasons for getting more help is because of many personal reasons. Lots of thought has gone into this decision. I'm not open to debate it.
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I want a curriclum that lists the standards covered in their curriculum.
Is there any such thing? I'm exhausted with trying to come up with common core projects to cover standards that aren't being covered in our materials.
We're virtual charter schoolers, for now. The teachers won't help with this. Their job is to give me the curriculum, emphasize the check boxes, and then evaluate how well we check off the standards. The project is entirely up to us to come up with.
If I had 1 child, maybe.
I have 5.
This has me teaching 20 classes from scratch to meet grade level standards.
No longer can I "lump" a couple kids together.
My stupid started where the nicely laid out curriculum ended.
Just give me a curriclulm, with the standards listed next to the projects/experiements in the curriclum.
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I wouldn't, and I don't, protect my kid's from any grandma lectures about safetey. Now lectures that start to go into negative predictions of their future.... those I stop, "Squirrel!"
We tell the kids that a grandma's lecture is sooner over when you nod and blink--don't ever start to argue! Wait until she takes a deep breath and then stand up to go and say, "Thank you."
We also tell them to be respectful, no matter what.
We know that grandmas like to lecture in our family and if the kid disagrees with the lecture to talk to us about it before trying to reason with granny.
DH and I have been known to politely leave sooner than planned because one of our children seems to have a target on their back. There's only so much grief a person can handle before they explode. We like to detonations in private. Less fall out, and less to regret.
And it's OK that we disagree, but we don't have to convince granny with our words or logic.
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This is what we did when our horse-mad daughter turned 13. We bought her a horse. He was very very old. She loved him for 3 years before he had to go. He never was able to go to shows. And she did have most of her lessons on a lesson horse (that she showed at fair).
I knew next to nothing about horses when he got here. It felt like bringing home a brand new baby as a first time parent, "What did we just do!"
She's does all the feeding and watering and exercising of animals in the barn now. We currently have a lame pretty horse and a standard size donkey. She still takes lessons on another horse, that we lease. We would like to get another horse, but frankly we haven't had much luck.
I'm not certain what she'll do with this in the future. I don't really care if she quits or takes it another direction/level.
I was pretty excited that the boy who's interested in her, after being introduced to her horse, "He's nice. But "Mick" doesn't like him." Mick was her old horse. :) The boy stopped coming around. :)
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Woot, having the flu didn't knock me tooo far down in the standings!!! Although my sister is beating me in my personal friend list. :( HAH!
Can we start a 2015 Fitbiters thread?
Gym membership certain adds a couple thousand to my day. :)
Who's up to logging 10,000 tomorrow?
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Yes, we've put quite a bit of thought into it.
We will do it, eventually.
Too small of a tiny house would be having to move something to get to something else--like the ones where you have a couch/bed or a cabinet/table. That would be ultra frustrating to me.
For now we did succeed in cutting our house foot print 3 years back. We went from 3500 aq ft to a 2500 sq ft house. We're a family of 7, living here 24/7. DH works out of his home office. The winter months is when we al start to fee the pinch of a small space.
The plan is to move out of this house and rent it out while we put a tiny house up behind the hay pasture for us to live in. :)
Interesting, we have my great great grandparents "tiny" retirement house that they built back in the 1920's here. It's a small 2-room house. Nothing fancy. Just a wood burning stove. No bathroom, no running water, bare-bulb light hanging from the ceiling. It needs repairs. We use it as a guest house in the summer.
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soups!
We don't have recipes. But it's usually starts with frying the vegetable combination in butter and whatever spice. Adding 2 quarts of water to that and bring to a boil for 10 min or so. Then either adding a can of tomato or a cup of milk.
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:)) Catching up on all the reading here. . . .
I know the books are old, 20-25 yrs old at least maybe more because I was into buying used books back then too. I didn't realize/think about the bindings getting brittle.
My kids would rather build houses, walls, forts from books than read them. This is true of all my kiddos. None of them are avid readers. My MIL once gave us a beautiful set of encyclopedias. My kids never cracked them open to read--even though I showed them what was in them-- instead they made GREAT forts.
Stepping on a book while building a fort isn't unremarkable. My daughter is heavier so that with her enthusiasm to engage in role playing with her sibs.
Evaluations -- they're in the works. Yes she's delayed in school. Yes there are many many character issues that I dispair we'll just have to learn how to work around rather than expect her to correct. I pushed back to the school district for an IEP for her (thankx to the advice of many in another topic) Hopefully we can get that rolling before the end of the year. But until they do the IEP the school district will see if we can't get her some help for the stuff we do know.
Because she's my daughter, because I can't deal with the idea of this being more, I'm going to go with brittle bindings and general book misuse. I will put away my things and count it another lesson learned.
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It may be time to go back to homeschooling. I'm bummed. I really like the built in accountability, momentum, and variety of schooling materials that I get with a virtual charter school.
But today I got a call, due to their change to rubric grading with standarda and common core implementations it has come to their attention that, while my 2nd grade is making phenomenal progress this year she's only "partially meeting" standards an they want my permission to demonte her to 1st grade. WHAAAT!
This is our 2nd year in the program. Last year no common core standards, her progress was great!
This year, she's moving along faster and better that last year and it's not enough.
Common core is either that you meet standards or you don't. No way to igve her crecit for her progress or to show how much she's learning this year unless she "meets" standards.
My dd in 8th grade IS behind. It's a learning disability that I've been waiting and asking, begging, them to test her for an IEP. I've been told that there's no IEP possible and if she's given an IEP then she can't be in their school.. WHAAAT!
This is a public charter school.
It was my solution for homeschool burnout and for this particular 8th grade daughter.
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They are old books, 20 yrs old.
My dd says they break whe she steps on them or tosses the like a frisbee.
Yes, there is a history. Its typically my things. :(
Yes, there's been intervention.
Thanks for your thoughts. It's easiest to just blame it on the old bindings.
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They are older books.
Yes, she has a history of destroying my things. When she was younger it was my make
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I'm a literature major. These books she's ripping are all my classical literature books, Great Expectations, Heart of Darkness, ....
The books are 20 some yrs old. But back in college I'd take then time to put clean lamiate on them so they're in fantastic shape.
This daughter does stuff like this frequenly--destroying my property. Books are just a part of the cycle.
She just got a whole bunch of new books. Although I'm tempted to rip on in half, since she hasn't stopped with me merely asking, I know that's not right.
Ugh. I'm sad.
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Oh my, this stuff is good.
BUT I'd like to try to make it with stevia powder instead of sugar. I know it won't be the same, but that I can have vs. the sugar in the other one.
I'd set out and experiment myself, but I prefer to start with a recipe of some sort.
Unfinished basement-active indoor place for children ideas
in The Chat Board
Posted
my kids loved the swing we hung in the basement. If you're concerned about them falling on the cement, there are some mats you can buy (at Menards) that snap together. We still use the mats though they've outgrown the swing.