Well, turns out I just hadn't hit the right angle enough :glare:. It's working now :), and dd has already tried it out. The grip is helping a lot - I didn't realize how off hers was until I was showing her how to place her fingers - and I do find it to be very natural. We're working now on relaxing her grip and not pressing so hard on the paper - the pen has so far survived her less-than-gentle first attempts, so that's good (a year ago she managed to kill a pilot varsity on first use :glare:).

I ordered two Pelikano Junior pens, one for dd5 and one for me. Mine works just fine, but I cannot for the life of me get the ink to flow with dd's. It's a lefty pen, so I know I'm writing way more awkwardly with it, but I'm pretty sure I should have hit the correct angle at some point :glare:. If you look at the nib, you can see ink about 2/3s of the way down the center line (whereas mine has ink all the way down). I switched the ink cartridges at one point, and both cartridges work in my pen and don't in hers. So what gives? Is dd's just flawed :glare:? Or is there something I can/should be doing to fix it?

AFAIK, under decision theology they are either below the age of accountability and thus get a free pass, or it sucks to be them :001_huh:. I don't believe in decision theology. Understanding is *not* required to be saved - "understanding" or "making a decision" are both works of men, and salvation is 100% the work of God. And we don't "accept Jesus"; rather, Jesus accepts us. And He is perfectly capable of accepting infants and others who don't have the mental capacity to get it.

I don't do make-up, but I do feel off if I don't do my morning routine - hair, face (washing), and teeth. I just feel much better about myself if I get ready for the day, even if I don't go anywhere.

For me, "doing hair" means detangling and using a comb to put it up, instead of throwing it up sans combing. And besides looking nicer, combed hair *feels* better than tangled hair, and the resulting updo is more comfortable. Making sure to wash my face and brush my teeth likewise feels better than having an unwashed face and unbrushed teeth. Plus, taking the time to look nice *by _my_ standards* does good things for my mental health - I'm in a far better frame of mind when I get ready in the mornings than when I don't. I don't do much, but what I do matters quite a bit to me. If others choose to do more to achieve the same feeling, I can understand why.

I was never qf, but I was drawn to the no bc position. Never quite sorted out how it fit in with my belief that by and large God works through means, and that includes us using our brains to make intelligent decisions - and there are certainly intelligent reasons to choose to stop having children. But I mentally tabled that, and went with no bc, figuring that at some point I'd have to decide whether I really believed in it, but for now we still planned for more, and natural spacing was working out well enough. Well, it came to a head with #3 - pg became unexpectedly high risk, with lots o' monitoring, and earlyish induction, and an ICU stay for ds. And it will only get worse with each subsequent pg. Dh is *done*, and as much as I want just one more, I can't justify choosing, on purpose, to do this again. But hard as it is, it makes the bc decision easy - clear medical reason to stop having kids. I believe we should be open to having kids unless there's a reason not to (rather than the modern default of preventing unless there's a reason *to* have a child), and how that plays out wrt gray areas of "reasons to stop" - is my reason intelligent or selfish? - is something I was struggling with (and is fairly individual anyway).

Here's some thoughts from Ambleside Online, which is a free CM curriculum: Toward a Definition of a Living Book, which expand a bit on what pp have said.

I know the thread is a bit old, but I had to search far and wide to find a case that seemed genuinely protective with small children, so I'm throwing out what I found. We have an otterbox for dh's iPhone, and that has been *awesome* - we don't think twice about how we use it, or worry about little hands getting a hold of it, and it's been dropped so many times, but still works perfectly. I wanted equivalent protection for my Kindle, but unfortunately the Kindle otterbox just isn't nearly as good, so my search began. I ended up getting the KlearKase (horrid spelling, but awesome case :thumbup:), which is hard, clear plastic that completely encases the Kindle (with silicone covers for the keys that maintain good functionality), and is water resistant. I coupled that with a Belkin neoprene sleeve for the Kindle 2 (the klearkase adds a 1/4" on each side, so the encased k3 is just about exactly the size of the k2) to store it in when not in use. The only thing that would make it better would be to add a silicone skin to the kindle before putting it in the klearkase (for added impact protection), which I might do in the future - looks like you have 2mm of clearance on all sides. I've been leaving the kindle out where my dc can get it (and they do, bringing it over to me all. the. time.), and let dd5 use it, and not a single problem - it feels very secure, and holds up well. I just don't feel that a non-enclosed case could protect the kindle nearly as well around small children.

I just got a kindle last week, and I love it! I bought it to put all my school pdfs and ebooks on, and it has worked out great. Put MEP and CSMP on it, plus all sorts of ebooks; dd5 is enjoying reading through Aesop's Fables, and even does her syllables on it. (Alphabet, too - she had me type up the alphabet real quick and send it to the kindle so she could do that, too :tongue_smilie:.) I even tried putting pdfs of simple sheet music on, and that looks reasonable, too :thumbup:. I've got over 100 books on it, without spending a cent :). I went a little nuts on protecting it (see the ages of my dc ;)) - have a klearkase (yes the spelling is awful, but the case is great ;)) and a padded kindle 2 sleeve (to accommodate the case, and it was cheap) - but I now can use it without feeling paranoid. (No, I'm not still in the honeymoon phase - why would you think that? ;))

Oh, I don't want to chase you away :(. And I've heard lots of good things about Japanese math - just haven't had a chance to look at it. And resources on how to be a better teacher are always a good thing. And, honestly, I will probably not go textbook-free - I don't have the skills for it. Wish I did, but oh well. It's like the multi-generation thread - *I* will have to use curriculum, but maybe my dc will have the skills to not have to, even if they choose otherwise. And at least the better math curricula reflect their creators' love for the subject, so they are probably darn close to good math themselves. But I want to have a framework for going tb-free, even if I don't use it. Besides, already this thread has solved several problems I'd been wrestling with wrt how to approach math.

If "good math" is analogous to the good books, then part of that is surely firing the imagination. If we think of "good math" as the sort of math that inspired the people who grew up to create the "great math", then what does that give us? From what I've read, it gives us fun problems, games, and building/designing toys.

:iagree: This, exactly! Only I just realized it today :tongue_smilie:. (Well, the fact that math through LA was not it is a new thought; I've noticed for a while the craptasticness of most "math lit", which is neither math nor literature :glare:.) Thank you for the blog link and examples! Science does make a great avenue for math - very much how history works for LA - will have to think more on how to approach it that way.

To further refine - in LA, you get to interact with the good books while you are learning the skills to tackle the great books. In pure WTM, you actually learn those skills *through* the good books. So what is the math equivalent of the good books? And is it possible to actually learn math skills *through* interacting with "good math"? And if so, how?

WRT problem-based vs lecture - well, sort of. I'm not entirely sure what it is I want - this thread is so I can talk it out :tongue_smilie:. WRT arithmetic vs real math - I've seen arithmetic developed axiomatically (proofy algebra, basically). And Hands-On Equations shows that kids can do algebra, properly presented, earlier than you'd think. So why not a proofy HoE? And various New Math stuff introduces proofy-ish thinking in K-3 with cuisenaire rods (Miquon has some, Math Made Meaningful has a great progression). So I don't want to consign K-6 math to procedural arithmetic entirely. But I'm not sure how to go about it. I guess what I want is to learn math through primary sources, of some sort. But unlike LA, there's not exactly a wealth of primary sources or even quality secondary sources for the younger set. Natural, since they didn't teach it to the younger set. Looking at it from another angle, the LA progression equips you with the tools to go forth and learn from books on your own. What skills are needed to go forth and learn math on your own? Let's say you are working through someone's math-heavy journal article - what do you do? Read through it and work carefully through the math till you think you have it, I suppose. Being able to reproduce the proof from memory, with understanding, would be evidence of having learned it on one level. Being able to apply it to whatever you are doing (why you read the thing in the first place, unless it was just for curiosity; similar to putting different levels of effort in studying a book based on why you read it) would be evidence of learning it on another level. The LA progression kind of has baby steps in learning to interact with the material - what would be the baby steps in learning to interact with new math information?

I'm not actually looking for a math curriculum in the "here is you set of materials", but in a "here is your plan of attack" way. I have this anti-textbook thing, see - they're not "authentic" :tongue_smilie:. (Also, totally expensive - I just bought 10 books off Amazon for my little homemade world-cultures-through-fairy-tales unit for $60; any curriculum would have added $25-30 - that's cost of *half* of my living books - so imo I gain a lot by learning how to teach without a curriculum.) WTM lays out a great progression for teaching LA without much in the way of curriculum (nothing, if you already knew the skills in question, which sadly, I do not), thus saving you time and money and allowing greater focus on living books - the "real" stuff. So I was theorizing about how to apply the underlying principles of WTM's LA approach to yield a textbook-free, living approach to math. Most of the living approaches I've see are a bit loose for me - I'm not skilled enough to teach to the level I want without a bit more handholding. Plus they mostly still use textbooks, just differently and with extensive enrichment. But mostly their enrichment is not the type I'm looking for. But now at least I know what I *am* looking for :). And I've got back-up plans - a MEP/CSMP combo is my fall-back plan. And a very good plan it is :) - I just have this dream of finding a way to do it without curriculum. And so I'm looking at WTM's LA progression, awesome as it is, for inspiration in my quest :tongue_smilie:.

I really, really like WTM's LA approach, which to me boils down to teaching explicit skills through living books (a Charlotte Mason thing, which I think of as books that present good ideas in a good - accurate, logical, and aesthetically pleasing - way; in short, good stories, well told). I think of it as having a skills progression list for each LA component (spelling, grammar, writing), a few flexible tools (copywork, dictation, narration, outlining) through which you can teach the skills, using any raw material that you so choose - with the caveat that said material is worth imitating. I've tried for a while to figure out what the conceptual equivalent would be for math. A skills progression is not hard to come by, but what are living books for math? Most "living math books" are twaddle-y stories with rote math shoved in :glare: - an offense to both literature and math. But even with the good ones - ones that present true math in an intriguing way - you still have the question of how do you teach the essential skills through them in a systematic way? With LA, *all* the LA skills are used in any given living book - you can teach whatever spelling rule, whatever grammar rule from any old book you have lying around. Not so with living math books, at least the ones I've seen - you'd need a careful book progression to make it work. But maybe the "book" part of "living book" doesn't really fit with math. Think about it, the end goal of all those LA skills is to be able to read and write well - in effect, to be to comprehend high level written work and to produce written work of your own that, if not high level, is at the very least competent. (An aside: as I think about it, WTM's LA isn't *just* part-to-whole; rather you are immersed in the whole - reading living books - while you systemically learn how that whole is built up; you are getting both the context and the specifics the whole way through.) The end goal of math, however, is *not* to be able to read math in story form and write about math in story form. The end goal of math is either engineering math, the ability to apply math to "real world problems", both to follow others' math and to do the math yourself, or pure math, the ability to comprehend math proofs and write proofs of your own. Thinking of it that way, "living math" would consist of solved problems and proofs, ones that could be comprehended by the student at their current level (probably with help), but not necessarily ones they could solve themselves. Now where do we find such things? And how do we use them to teach our progression of skills? As to finding such things, there's the standard unschooling/living math technique of using daily life to provide problems - talk them out as you solve them. You can solve out of level problems for/with you dc, explaining as you go; I read about one mom who did an SAT math practice problem each day with all her dc from a youngish age, talking them through and asking leading questions. Probably any collection of interesting problems could be used this way - math competition problems would be a great source, I think. Plus you could look for interesting problems in history. I'm just brainstorming, here - I only just thought of this angle. Proofs are a little more interesting ;) - have to get creative here. I have a book of visual proofs that's interesting, though not sure how accessible it is to youngish kids. You can demonstrate proofs with cuisenaire rods and other manipulatives. Geometric constructions might be good. Math history might be a good source. But how to make sure they are *good* problems, not tedious or twaddly? And how to find elegant proofs for the elementary set? As for how to teach math through these sources - what flexible tools to use - I have no idea :tongue_smilie:. Yet ;). But at the least we could go the WTM LA-with-textbooks approach easily enough - where you spend time with living materials, but use textbooks to teach the skills. So that would be basically adding working and talking through out-of-level problems and proofs, preferably interesting or intriguing ones, to a regular math program - letting them see what math can be like, what it can do. Which would be valuable, I think. But I'd love to figure how to actually teach math through those sources (in a way that avoids the problems of new, new math ;)) - the key would be, I think, teaching the skills explicitly and systemically (which progressive math avoids). But what would be the math equivalent of copywork, narration, outlining - the tools by which we interact at an ever higher level with our source material? Given that The Elements is basically nothing more than a collection of solved proofs, and was used as a text for millennia, I bet the traditional approach there would be illuminating - I just haven't yet been able to find it :glare:. Anyway, that's probably enough to be getting on with - thoughts?

I see it as similar to how you know if someone irl's wild 'n' crazy story is legit or not - some people are good at it, and some people are less so. And some people are just better and more personable liars than others. And others just can't present themselves as believable even when they *are* telling the truth. Mostly it seems to be a matter of noticing that things are "off" - both in that liars generally have inconsistencies in their stories over time, and that the personality who gets some sort of pleasure from lying about (usually horrible) personal circumstances is a bit off from the norm themselves. And whether you notice the inconsistencies, and how you interpret them, is affected by your life experiences, too. If you know someone irl who suffered the same thing, you are both more likely to believe the poster and more likely to notice inconsistencies if they are lying. And if there was a similar story that was the work of a troll, you might be less likely to believe this one, even if it is true. In short, it's an art, not a science ;). (Coming from someone who is at the level of stick figures in troll-detection :D.)

Heh, I give a spoiler warning for classics, too - not everyone's read a particular title yet, and I'd hate to spoil it for them - but I don't expect it of others. And I figure a year old movie is fair game, too - I'd have quit reading the moment I realized they were talking about a movie I didn't want to be spoiled for.

Call me optimistic, but I'm hoping he just had a really bad day - we've all had days where we really shouldn't have clicked send ;) - and will soon be apologizing for his hasty and ill-thought email.

My dd's in a similar spot - late recognizing rhyme, all the standard "beginning" PA activities are beyond her - and we are working through Webster's, too, with similar success (though haven't gotten as far ). Anyway, I bought this book - Phonemic Awareness in Young Children - b/c it starts with far simpler activities/games, ones that she *can* do, and the progression to the standard ones and beyond makes sense to me (and I'm crap at coming up with PA games on my own beyond the common handful that are all I saw online). It's meant to be used alongside any reading program, so I'm going to continue Webster's while adding this in. (It just arrived yesterday, so I've no btdt experience, yet, but it's well reviewed and cheap, esp used, so thought I'd throw it out there.) ETA: I've also been modelling blending and picking out phonemes - she loves to write and is always having me spell words, and I try to talk through hearing the sound and which phonogram is used to spell it. Hopefully it is sinking in some, even though she mostly can't do it herself.

1) That God loves us. 2) That Jesus died on the cross to take away our sins. 3) That Jesus rose from the dead, and therefore so will we. 4) That God creates and strengthens our faith through the means of grace - the Word and Sacraments - and that's why we go to church, to be refreshed and renewed through God's gifts. The above wasn't planned, but it's what came up as we lived our lives, and is a fair representation of what's most important to us - good that it worked out that way :). We also teach the Bible and the catachism through our devotions, which include common prayers and Bible texts.

I know that Dr. Veith said there were extensive contributions in IV from himself, his daughter (a classical educator), and John Montgomery, and he and his daughter were also contributing several essays to V.

Wow, I totally screwed up that url :001_huh::glare:. It should be fixed now.

What I do know is that in the past couple of years or so, VP brought on a new editor to work on Omnibus, Gene Veith (here is a post on Veith's blog about it). Veith is Lutheran (also a professor and provost at Patrick Henry College), and he stated in a comment that he was mitigating some of the Reformed influence. Omnibus IV lists Veith as an editor, along with Wilson. I don't know whether Veith was actually working with Wilson, or if Wilson is listed b/c of his previous work on Omnibus (I'll email Veith about it). I respect Gene Veith a lot, and he certainly isn't involved in patriarchy or any of that mess. And as for the Federal Vision stuff, which I started reading about b/c of the previous thread, it's a Reformed thing, he's not going to have any of that influencing him, either. (Though the FV emphasis on a high view of the Sacraments is almost Lutheran in nature, actually; but combining it w/ Calvinism just kills it entirely, makes me want to hate God even more than just Calvinism in general :glare:.) So the fact VP brought in a new editor, one that isn't Reformed at all, kind of suggests they are trying to distance themselves from Wilson, but isn't conclusive. ETA: Veith is listed first on the cover of the book, but not in the description on VP, which just lists Wilson :glare:.

Basically I want to learn how different cultures, both modern and historical, practiced and expressed their Christian faith. Preferably either academic/scholarly in nature or written by a member of that culture (or both :)). Also, any children's books that do this would be welcomed (either fiction or non-fiction). TIA :).