:grouphug: My parents had their cc number stolen once when I was a kid - the bank took care of it easily, but it was still not fun at all. In their case, Mom is pretty sure the number was stolen by some teens hanging around when she put her cc payment in the mailbox. We found out when $300 worth of electronics parts that neither mom nor dad had ordered were delivered to the house - it was just luck that we found them on the porch before whoever *did* order them was able to abscond with them :glare:.

bump :)

Wrt what sorts of memory work is more prone to causing bad habits of thought, the phonics/whole word thing seems to hinge around memorizing core facts - phonograms, say - versus memorizing facts that are actually composed of other facts - whole words. That the problem comes in when you memorize stuff that you really ought to have been logically figuring out. Like in math, maybe it's fine to rote memorize the basic number bonds up to 10 (the facts up to 18 and beyond can be logically determined from there, and are good practice in using math laws and learning mathy thinking), and skip counting through the multiples of 10/12/15/whatever (to get useful patterns into one's head without getting into the potential minefield of whether memorizing the mult/div facts without understanding mult/div causes problems). In Latin, I don't think rote memorizing the paradigms and being able to give specific forms - so long as you didn't get into the trap of using English all the time, and thus develop habits of turning Latin into English - would *hurt*, but I wonder if it is really the best use of time. By avoiding bad/false contexts, you are left with *no* context, hardly - other than looking at Latin sentences/passages and parsing by giving all possible options for the given endings, since you do *not* have the context required to actually figure out which one it probably is. The only point would be to rote memorize the endings, really - is it worth that? And it seems that *some* level of context is required, because *way* too many people *do* end up thinking of math, or Latin, or history, or science - any school subject, really - as nothing more than a bunch of random crap to be memorized and regurgitated. They *never* get beyond that. But *how much* context is the question . And how *specific*. Are lots of living books on the subject, read contemporaneously to the memorization, whether or not they apply to the specific things being memorized, sufficient? Or do they need to be specifically related to the things being memorized? Or is rote memorization - memorizing things without context - inherently going to cause bad thinking habits, for which no amount of secondary context - living books, real life applications, anything that is not *explicitly* how it will be used - can prevent? I mean, whole language types are all about context - but the context they provide is secondary, the context of "why you want to read in the first place" - similar to the use of living books to flesh out memorizing - and in teaching how to read, it seems that, for many kids, that context just isn't good enough. They need the primary context that words are made out of phonemes, and are combined in these ways, and are sounded out like this. Do other subjects have that same issue? Or maybe just skill-based ones? Thoughts? (I'm particularly interested in btdt advice, either with one's kids or with oneself, but all theories are welcome :).)

Given that younger kids can easily and fairly happily memorize things without being capable of understanding the context. I'm thinking of Latin and math, particularly, but it applies to other subjects, too. And for the purposes of this post, I'm assuming that *both* memorization and conceptual understanding are necessary and desirable for complete mastery of a subject - the question at hand is whether memorization can/should come *before* conceptual understanding, or whether memorization and conceptual understanding ought/must go hand-in-hand. So, my understanding of classical ed (both neo-classical and traditional classical) is that it is largely in favor of getting necessary memory work started in the younger years, and it's ok that they don't understand it right away - get the foundation laid now, and teach them how to use those facts when they are capable of it in later years/stages. Of course, if they *are* capable of it in younger/grammar years, then go ahead and provide the context - but I'm talking about where a given child, at least, just isn't capable of understanding the context/concepts yet, but *is* capable of memorizing the facts that will be necessary in order to use those concepts. Thus the emphasis on math facts and Latin paradigms without worrying overmuch if they can't understand the necessary math or grammar concepts yet - basically, that memorizing without context won't hurt them so long as you *do* bring in the context eventually. And in fact, delaying the memorization *until* they can understand the underlying concepts is actually counterproductive and slows down the overall mastery of the subject. But evidence shows that, in many cases, students just never moved beyond memorization without understanding in math and Latin. Lots of ink has been spilled trying to sort out the problem (part of which is undoubtedly because many of those students were never *taught* anything beyond memorization in the first place :glare:) - and one common answer is that students should *never* memorize without being able to understand the concepts - that once they get in the habit of thinking that all there is to a given subject/skill is rote memorization and all problems are/can be solved by straight regurgitation of memorized facts, it is very hard, and in some cases impossible, to now teach them to *think*, to break the habit of mindlessly regurgitating facts and instead *use* all those memorized facts to learn and apply the underlying concepts. Therefore, you should be training the proper habits of the mind from the start, teaching students to *think* from the start, and thus never have them memorize anything outside of the context in which it will be used. And now, I'm sure, you see shades of the conceptual math debates, and the Latin debates over teaching the language as a logic puzzle versus as a language ;). I've been pretty strongly on the conceptual math side, as well as the Latin-as-a-language side, as a result of my own learning experiences and the end goals espoused by those positions (too many classical types don't seem to realize there is more to math than memorization and the standard school applications, and don't consider reading Latin as Latin to be worthwhile). But as I'm starting to teach my dd4, I'm running headlong into reality ;), which is that she just doesn't get some math concepts, won't even let me show her them (they are apparently things that should not be :tongue_smilie:). And I'm waffling about whether I should stop any formal math until she is more ready, or keep on with the bits she likes, which undoubtedly are going to get into memorizing without understanding, or go whole hog on memorizing, and do lots of chants and such (which she'd like, I'm sure). Also, I've been reading up on Latin teaching - Bennett's "Teaching Latin and Greek in the Secondary School", which is rec'd by Cheryl Lowe, and Distler's "Teach the Latin, I Pray You", which is rec'd by teach-Latin-as-a-language advocates - it's been interesting seeing the similarities and differences b/w the two approaches. I'm mostly in favor of Distler's approach, which is a rigorous, in-favor-of-memorization-and-drill approach (but always and only in context!) to teaching how to read Latin as Latin. But unless one's kids are language/grammar types, you would hit a wall really quickly if you started in the grammar years - a lot of the grammar topics are the sort that seem to require logic-stage thinking (and the book was about teaching high schoolers). So what is better? To stick with context, and thus memorize mostly vocab and a few forms, but you can use them all? Or to just not worry about context, memorize all the forms along with vocab, even though you can't use them yet, relying on memorized prayers/songs/etc to provide enough context to be getting on with until they are ready for real grammar/syntax study? Classical advocates say the former makes the grammar/syntax study more difficult than it needs to be, since you have the memory burden on top of learning how to use all those forms. Reading-Latin-as-Latin advocates say getting in the habit of using the forms out of context makes learning to apply them *in* context much harder than if you'd done it right from the start. (And there's the related issue of whether an early emphasis on translation and otherwise constantly turning the Latin into English at every turn - seemingly inevitable with a memorize-first approach - sabotages later efforts to comprehend Latin without *having* to go through English.) Conceptual math debates tend to go along the same lines - does memorizing without understanding the concepts first inhibit learning the concepts later? And if so, how do you deal with kids who just can't seem to get the concepts at all - is it really best to just drop math entirely until they *are* able to understand? And, just to make things more interesting, classical advocates are all about the necessity of memorizing in context when it comes to teaching reading. Memorizing sight words outside of the context of being able to divide the word into phonemes/syllables and sound it out - phonics - is considered a bad, bad thing. It is better to wait until the child is ready to comprehend phonics than to go ahead and memorize whole words now, figuring you'll go over phonics later, when the child is ready. Why? Because teaching sight words sets up bad habits, habits that take longer to break than just doing phonics from the start. For some kids, *years* longer, it seems. So classical educators *do* acknowledge the issue of out-of-context learning causing bad habits. (And cognitive science has established that we use different parts of our brains when we read via memorized words versus phonically.) But on the other side of the coin, the idea that the best way to teach expert thinking in a subject is to teach those thought processes from the very first - no setting up bad habits of thinking wrongly or not at all - is likewise rejected by cognitive science. Expert thinking requires a *lot* of domain knowledge, and trying to reason like an expert *without* that domain knowledge is futile at best, and establishes its own bad habits at worst. Their findings support the classical idea that it is best to learn facts, lots and lots of facts, before trying to think about them. And certainly reality tells me that my kids are ready to memorize a *lot* earlier than they are ready to logically think through things. But a lot of things can be memorized *with* enough context to be getting by - like history and science stories/sentences and poems and songs - even if the kids don't understand them now, what they've memorized still contains quite a bit of context, that is available to them with no further effort than growing up. But math facts and Latin paradigms aren't quite the same - on their own, they give little-to-no hint of how they will eventually be used (bare lists of history facts or science facts have the same problem). Which isn't a problem if they can be memorized without causing damaging bad habits - but is a *big* problem if the memory-work-without-context *does* build bad habits. (Part 2 in next post; some people might think that hitting the post character limit means you ought to start hacking and slashing ;) - but not me :D.)

Just to clarify, while I don't see anything necessarily odd about the other family wanting to drop in on short notice (which was the q I thought the OP was asking) - it's very normal for some in my family (and verboten for others) - I don't think it is fair to operate that way unless everyone affected is ok with it. Since the OP is *not* ok with it, I agree that she shouldn't just have to suck it up and deal - that her dh should be willing to work out a compromise. Personally, I'd bring up my pov constantly until I was sure my dh understood just how important this was to me, and we had a compromise we could both live with in place.

Caveat - I don't have IG, but it's on my to-buy list, and I've researched it heavily. Anyway, reviews and the fact there is now an IG workbook available both suggest that it is more a philosophy/approach type book than a book with readymade lessons. I've gotten a pretty good of what it is like through Amazon's look inside feature (keep hitting surprise me and you can see quite a bit). To me, of all the resources you listed, MCT would be the closest in approach, in that it also really stresses the point of grammar being communication (I know that killgallon does as well - also on my to buy list ;) - but somehow it just doesn't have the same feel as MCT and IG to me). I do think that IG offers enough of a different take to be worthwhile, partly b/c imagery is something I *never* really grokked in high school, just muddled along making up stuff in essays - and just the samples of IG have really helped me start getting imagery, as well as making sure the point of grammar study doesn't get lost (another big selling point for me).

My paternal grandparents always had/have people calling up to say that they are in the area, mind if they stop by? And they were always welcome - the short notice wasn't a problem. Grandma used to cook for everyone, but now she just says that you're welcome to use the kitchen and eat whatever you can find :). My mom, otoh, would *freak* at anything resembling short notice wrt guests. And she'd hate the dogsitting thing, too - likes dogs well enough at other people's houses, but not hers. She happily pays to board ours when we visit (since it is out of our budget). But my dad knows that, and would never do it to her (and would totally hear about it if he did ;)). Heck, my entire family knows that - mom hates short notice for anything, and seriously stresses about hosting people - we all know the combo would be *very* bad. I would freak at one hour's notice, b/c that is not enough time even to crisis clean. *But* if I happened to *have* a clean house, I wouldn't care at all. And if they wanted something particular, they are more than welcome to make use of my kitchen ;). I'm never going to be the dinner party sort, but I would rather like to have people drop in (if only I could keep the house clean <sigh>).

I've not come across a classical approach that was strong in math or science - it seems to be a real weakness, imo. LCC, which I *love*, frustrates the heck out of me in how it goes into so much detail for the humanities, with all these little touches to really get the most out of your study, and then has barely five or six pages on math - which is one of its main three emphases, mind - that basically consist of "find a good math program - here are a few suggestions - and follow it" :glare:. So I've been searching out the best math and science people and resources, with the intent of plugging it into my overall classical approach. I rather like Nebel for science, but I admit I've spent *way* more time sorting out math than science.

I mentioned the OP to my dh, a pastor, and he commented that in seminary they told them to just not wear cologne or anything like that - that it just isn't worth it.

I *did* get this for my 4.5yo for Christmas. The books are exactly like I'd pictured from looking at the website and watching all the sample videos - they do a good job of conveying an accurate picture :thumbup:. Putting together the manipulative set got a little pricey, but that was mostly by choice (I *could* have done it cheaper ;) - the website gives instructions for making sacks and treasure chests, and I found other "jewels" for $3 that I didn't like as well). It was $12 for the jewels, $6 for the sacks, and $14 for the treasure chest, all at Hobby Lobby. I rather like how they turned out: Anyway, dd4 loved the books and her "jewels", but we ran into a snag when initially doing activities - apparently, as far as dd4 is concerned, regrouping in any form (including putting 10 jewels in 1 sack) is A Thing That Should Not Be. She completely freaked at the very idea, vehemently insisting that it was *not* how it was supposed to be :001_huh:, and so we ended up putting it aside for a bit. (We also have a slight issue with dd4 not wanting to do subtraction, b/c that is a boy character - instead she insists that dd2 be "Linus Minus" while she is "Polly Plus".) Anyway, all that to say that mom-made-up activities haven't gone so well :glare:, and I was getting worried that this wasn't going to work out. But today I tried something different - we pulled out SM 1a, and did a page of that (easy addition, 0-10) and that worked wonderfully :) (except for a brief meltdown when I tried to use C-rods instead of diamonds - dd4 wanted to use the rods to make the *numeral* seven, not the number seven, and freaked out at doing it any other way). So I think I'm going to use it in conjunction with SM and MEP and whatnot, instead of just making up problems on my own. For whatever reason, it seems to make all the difference. The only real downside of the program is that, in how it structures the activities, it reinforces the idea that the equal sign means "do something" instead of meaning that both sides are equal. I'd noticed that before I bought it, and I decided to go with it anyway. We'll see if any trouble erupts. My current plan is to try to come up with other activities (balances, see-saws, etc) to make sure I also get the idea of both sides being equal in there quite a bit.

My dd4 loves stories of all sorts and loves numbers, but I've had a hard time getting any of my many early math stuff to work. At the moment I'm torn about just shelving math for a while - as she's just 4.5yo - just working on language and doing just real life number stuff as it comes up, like the method in the above link (I love Benezet's ideas). But she loves numbers so much, I feel like I'm doing her a disservice by just waiting. So I'm toying with writing my own math stories around the lessons in MEP and Miquon and CSMP (plus finally getting the CSMP stories printed). Waldorf has a lot of story math ideas, and their focus on oral storytelling would help with make things a bit easier than having to make a little book for each story. Anyway, MEP reception has several lessons that involve telling a story with a related poster that allows for asking mathish questions that relate to the story, so I plan to use that and the CSMP stories as models. Really, if I get the math that I want to teach down, I don't think it will be hard for me to make up a story presenting it - especially as I just want to use the stories as a way to get her interested in all those nice hands on activities I want to do ;).

My mom orders her eggs "over hard and stepped on" and my aunt (mom's sis) orders her eggs "dead" :lol:.

Huh. Hadn't heard that. Well, I'm still ordering mine medium-rare ;). (And have already, a few times this pg.) And, at least for me, I had no idea what I was missing eating everything well done. Dh converted me, and I'm never going back :tongue_smilie:. But my mom doesn't care - it's well done all the way, even though she agrees that it probably makes the meat less tender.

My mom likes her steaks the same way - *very* well done. One time she ordered a steak, and when it came the server apologized that it had been over done and said they'd bring her another one. Mom said, no, no, I'll take it - and said it's the *only* time she's ever had a restaurant get the steak how she likes it ;).

Yeah, dh and his family would see grilling filet mignon or another good piece of meat to well-done to practically be sacrilege :tongue_smilie:. But dh did grill a rib-eye well-done for my mom b/c that's how she wanted it, and rib-eyes were what *he* wanted for his birthday. I guess it depends how much you want to have filet mignon for that meal versus how much it feels like ruining the meat to grill it well done. Since they would be happy with burgers or chicken or whatnot, I see no problem with serving that instead, if you'd rather.

I took Wellbutrin, which worked pretty well. However, when I started birth control pills, I had a horrid reaction (that I had *not* had when I had previously taken bcp when not on Wellbutrin) - I have *never* felt that messed up before or since. I was randomly crying all the time, and constantly rocking back and forth unconsciously, and otherwise looking and feeling like I was falling apart (and it was in the two weeks leading up to my wedding - great time to be losing it :glare:). It stopped when I quit mixing the two.

Do you mean teaching English grammar through Latin only, with no separate English grammar program? Or teaching Latin without addressing English grammar explicitly at all? If the former, there are several old threads about the relative merits of teaching English grammar through Latin - the general caveats are that the parent/teacher must have a good grasp of English grammar and that most people's Latin study doesn't go far enough to provide a high level knowledge of English grammar. That was my experience - I learned all the English grammar I know from my high school Latin, and learned it well, but I never got beyond direct and indirect objects. If the latter, there's not much in the way of true Latin immersion programs - most, even reading programs, either assume English grammar knowledge or explicitly teach English grammar alongside the Latin. I'm not sure if even Lingua Latina could be done that way - a good grounding in English grammar is commonly recommended as the best prep for it.

You could also go the Charlotte Mason approach, and just use your pretty master sheet as a cheat sheet, looking up anything you can't remember as you are doing your problem sets, repeating each one you have to look up a few times to try and fix it in your head. You ought to get most of the commonly used ones memorized with little effort that way, and there isn't much call to spend lots of effort on little-used ones unless you are big on completeness for completeness's sake ;).

Skip counting, maybe? Works for kids ;). Ime most of the benefit of memorizing these sorts of things is so you can spot patterns quickly, and skip counting ought to help with getting relevant patterns in your head. I did squares up to 30x30 in school by reciting them in my head, doing mental calculations for whichever ones I forgot or wasn't sure of. I can still do most of it today - the only ones I have problems with are the ones I always had problems with (the odd ones that I never saw outside my practice sessions). And my practice was really haphazard, but I've gotten a lot of mileage out of knowing common squares. I memorized powers of two just from using them a lot. Anyway, my advice is to systematically go through it all once, figuring out the answers - make a nice master sheet - and then review frequently. You'll figure out real quick which ones are more commonly seen, because you'll learn them almost effortlessly. The weird ones will take lots more effort, because there is just about *no* reinforcement outside of your review sessions (and might not really be worth the effort).

Good to know :), though now I have a whole new set of misgivings wrt BSF ;). A few questions: Do the leaders present multiple views, and if so, how wide a cross-section of Christianity are they drawn from? Ditto for the lesson notes from commentaries - and are they official BSF material, or leader-specific? I guess what I'm wondering is if they are non-denom in the Mere Christianity sense (which would be near impossible in practice with this kind of indepth study - Lewis himself said that mere Christianity was a like a hall with multiple rooms off it, you can't live in the hall, you have to pick a room), non-denom in the "present all sides" sense (and what sides do they focus on, as you can't present *all* of them), or non-denom in the sense of American non-denom churches, which tend to be Baptist/Pentecostal in leanings, and not remotely non-denom in the sense of Mere Christianity at all.

I guess it's b/c, where I've lived, creed-less Christians (Baptists, Church of Christ) are the norm, and are the people who write most of the Christian books that one sees in Christian bookstores. That is the face of American evangelicalism everywhere I've been, and thus all my observations about generic Protestants were drawn from that. And it's my experience that lots of other Protestants are *really* influenced by that, even when it is against their church's teaching. I'm in a decidedly non-Pietistic Lutheran denom ;), and I'd say that we are pretty close to what you described. Certainly you can't make anyone believe anything - but that doesn't change the right answer ;).

I'm sorry if my wording was offensive :grouphug:. And, just ftr, I'm actually a cradle Lutheran, not Catholic ;). I guess I'd better clarify a bit, as I suppose I smooshed a couple different beliefs together, plus some of the errors that those beliefs can be prone to (and all beliefs have errors they are particularly prone to). I do believe the following to be common (but not universal) Protestant beliefs: *private Biblical interpretation, instead of interpretation only being done in the context of the overall church community, which is inevitable when there is no community standard for correct Biblical interpretation - as there deliberately is not in many Protestant churches (no creed but Christ, and such). *Related to having no man-made creeds, the belief that proper Biblical interpretation consists of minimal outside man-made influence - you, your Bible, and the Holy Spirit as the ideal. Not all Protestant churches reject the concept of man-made creeds and doctrinal statements - but many do :shrug:. And those that do, ime, generally subscribe to the above two beliefs - certainly private interpretation, anyway. And a rejection of man-made creeds as illegitimate does lend itself to rejecting all man-made commentaries, thus "you, your Bible, and the Holy Spirit" method of interpretation, though one doesn't have to, of course. Anyway, if you are part of a church that deliberately has no creeds, but *does* have some sort of binding community standard for Biblical interpretation, how is that standard *not* a creed? And if you have no binding community standard to judge Biblical interpretations by, then it *is* effectively up to each individual to be their own standard (with the guidance of the Holy Spirit) - what else is there?

This book, Voice Lessons, includes activites on how to identify tone (plus diction, detail, imagery, and syntax). Tone is defined as "the writer's (or narrator's) implied attitude toward his subject and audience", and it's the last element of the five covered, and uses the rest of the preceding elements in determining the tone. I was horrid at this in school, and never really grasped how one goes about analyzing this stuff until I saw this book. You can get a good feel for it with Amazon's Look Inside feature.

Kinda depends on your branch of Protestantism, I bet (as I said, very much not Lutheran, probably not Anglican, and possibly not Presbyterian) - but the OP confirmed that that was the view she grew up with, so it's not just me ;). It's just the overall view I've gotten over the years of reading Bible study books, most of which emphasis *you* coming to *your* opinion from just prayer and studying the text (with commentaries and such reserved only for *after* you've sorted it out or never), and seeing people dismiss the importance of pastors having formal theological training - all you need is the Holy Spirit to properly interpret the Bible, and seeing the general dismissal of church history and theological study (and the resulting reinventing of the wheel, heresies and all). Again, it depends on what branch of Protestantism how much this applies - but I've seen it a lot in popular American Christian culture. And dh is always having to explain to confused Lutherans that we *don't* hold to individual Biblical interpretation - that interpretation should be done in the context of the whole church and its teachings.

Hopefully I'm not libelling them :tongue_smilie:. But it's a common Protestant idea (*not* shared by Lutherans ;), which comes as a surprise to many) that each person determines for himself what the Bible says - that the right way to do it is just you, your Bible, and the Holy Spirit, with no outside "contamination" from what other (fallible) people have thought. And the BSF emphasis on staying "non-denominational", on not letting people claim their interpretation as the "right one", and on not letting people include anything other than the Bible and their own personal opinion (which could of course be shaped by church teaching ;)) in their stated reasoning makes me think they it is definitely part of that "tradition".