Deniseibase
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Posts posted by Deniseibase
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My husband looked at it for our DD. He thought the introductory lessons were good, but after that there were too many lessons that had minor errors, or what he felt were not very good instructions (as in not very complete as to what you needed to do). Now that was when the site was newer, and I know they are working on it all the time, so it may be better now. I know he started finding problems pretty quickly, within the first few hours of using it, so I'd suggest you take a few hours and work through a bit of it. If it seems fine, then hopefully that means they fixed the errors.
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Not vegan, but eat a lot of vegetarian meals. I really like the Moosewood Cooks At Home cookbook, because the recipes are fairly quick, fairly easy, fairly kid-friendly, and don't call for too many far-out or super expensive ingredients. We just ate the Greek Pasta Salad for dinner, and even my 6 year old ate most of it.
If your family will eat more exotic things, I would also suggest you get some cookbooks by Donna Klein or Nava Atlas. I made a Curried Sweet Potato, Chickpeas & Chard dish from Nava Atlas's new Wild About Greens cookbook and 3 out of the 4 of us loved it (the 6YO ate a PB&J!! :) ).
I really liked that Forks Over Knives documentary too, I can't say it made me rush right out and change everything we ate, but we have started making some slow changes. The best healthy changes are the ones you can get done consistently with a minimum of complaint from the peanut gallery, after all!! :lol:
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Wow. Y'all are making me feel really, really lucky!!! Our library has children's computers, in a separate room, and staffed by a librarian who makes you sign in and out. Very easy to avoid if we just want books. I sometimes let my son play games on the computer if we are there for my daughter's tutoring session - they have special little kid computers that just have reasonably educational games like Reader Rabbit and JumpStart. The computer policy of no violence or s*x is posted and lots of websites are blocked because of it, and since the computer lab is staffed, if something inappropriate shows up (because new websites are created every day after all, and no filter or blocking can know everything), the librarian will come over and inform the user that website is not allowed and take note of the web address and go back to her desk and block that site immediately. I have been assuming this was all fairly standard stuff - now I feel like I should go hug my librarians!!! :D
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I guess it's up to me :-)
Zumba 2 is definitely better - the music is better and the moves are MUCH easier to follow. It is a pretty major workout for a Wii game! Even my 12YO, who is thin and active and does martial arts and biking and still runs around like a little kid at the park, is huffing and puffing after we do several songs in a row (I start huffing and puffing LONG before then, :lol: !!). I have several Wii exercise games for our cold winters when I can't walk (Exerbeat, EA Sports Active, Walk It Out, and the Just Dance series are the best other than Zumba), and Zumba is the most active of all of them.
The music is all Latin or Latin inspired, sometimes a little rap-like, occasionally a bit suggestive in the lyrics (nothing out and out raunchy that I've been able to discern with my old ears), and they do bleep out a lyric here and there. It is very catchy upbeat music and will make you want to move, it's not just 'generic aerobics class music' like some of the other games (I love Exerbeat but really wish I could change the music on it).
Night Elf, I hate to tell you this, but doing it in the early morning before everyone else is awake might not work too well - it's hard to do this properly without some jumping and thumping, and it's pretty easy to shake the floorboards! :-) Also, you'll probably want to have the music a little loud and that might wake people up. Do it with your dd14 and try to convince her it's a fun family activity! :-)
It's tricky at first because they don't really do verbal cues, just show graphics on the screen for what is coming up, but if you have done Just Dance then you know how that works. It does take some getting used to, because the graphics don't always look much like the move, but after you have done that song a few times, you will remember. I can't explain the scoring because I don't understand it myself!!! :-) But basically, the closer you are to what the dancer onscreen is doing, the better you will score - and probably you won't care too much about the score because it's just fun :-) You put the nunchuk in an included belt that goes around your hips, and that can be a little tricky to get placed right the first few times you use it, but it seems to be pretty forgiving. (The belt is also large enough to be used by men or plus-size women up to at least size 20, my mom was able to use it just fine.)
Hope that helps! I'm glad I have it, if you are looking for an indoor active game this is a really good choice.
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My DD is 12 - she took one look and said "Oh, those are kawaii! (Japanese for cute, apparently.) They look like the stuff girls in the animes have!"
So they are not just cute, they are apparently somewhat 'hip' in certain circles :lol:
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I think it very much depends on your DC's learning style. If you have a visual or hands-on learner, I would absolutely teach bar diagrams first. But if you have a kid who is more another style it may not matter too much. My DD is very auditory, I never had heard of bar diagrams until she was already in pre-algebra, and it doesn't seem to make any difference so far. She's very comfortable with variables and seems to have a good conceptual understanding of them.
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10 and up is probably pretty high, agreed. My DD started looking through The Periodic Table one in early elementary, and my DS6 likes me to read him the Biology one. They are a very cute supplement. The Periodic Table used to come with a really cute cartoon periodic table poster, don't know if it still does, but my DD still has that poster over her bed :-)
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*$#@^ Catcher in the *#%@$ Rye. D*mn over-entitled whiny rich kid. Blech!
AND &$%^ Lord of the *#$% Flies - wow, hate humanity much?
Also Steinbeck and Hemingway, just never could get into those. But I don't HATE them the way I hate Lord of the Flies and Catcher in the Rye.
Anything Russian. I hate depressing stories. Heck, we're seventh grade this year and we're only just NOW getting around to reading Charlotte's Web :D
Oh, and James Fenimore Cooper, but I'm in good company there - http://www.pbs.org/marktwain/learnmore/writings_fenimore.html :D
OTOH, a lot of the things everyone here is dreading I'm looking forward to! I LOVE Great Expectations, and Don Quixote, and Milton! But, one of the big things I'm trying to teach DD this year is to sample widely in literature before she decides she ONLY likes fantasy or mystery or some such.
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"I advise my students to listen carefully the moment they decide to take no more mathematics courses. They might be able to hear the sound of closing doors." - James Caballero
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BTW, if you are looking for supplements for HST middle school science, there is also this - http://go.hrw.com/hrw.nd/gohrw_rls1/pKeywordResults?HS5%20MASTER%20TOC Extra worksheets, labs, puzzles, math tie-ins, all kinds of neat stuff :-)
I don't know the specific answer to your question, but I have HST Earth Science and the chapter titles are listed in the website that I just posted, so you could check against those too.
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Another option for middle school might be Holt Science and Technology Physical Science. It combines physics and some basic chemistry, but requires very little math.
Hewitt Conceptual Physics is still pretty math-intensive for most middle school kids. A couple sample questions from the middle of the book will illustrate (I have the tenth edition).
- Rearrange the equation 'Current = voltage/resistance' to express resistance in terms of current and voltage. Then solve the following: A certain device in a 120-V circuit has a current rating of 20 A. What is the resistance of the device (how many ohms)?
- Will burns a 0.6-g peanut beneath 50 g of water, which increases in temperature from 22 C to 50 C. Assuming 40% efficiency, what is the food value, in calories, of the peanut? What is the food value in calories per gram?
Keep in mind, this is for the Conceptual Physics, not the Conceptual Physical Science.
Hope that helps!!
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We really like Order Up! by Z-Man Games (there is another, different game by Gamewright with the same name). You are making and delivering pizzas. There is the usual counting practice when you roll the dice and move around, but there are also different prices on the pizzas. The goal is to have delivered the most monetary worth of pizza at the end of the game, not simply the most pizzas. The pizza prices range quite a bit, I think from $5 to $45, so there is quite a bit of double digit adding and comparing - Dad delivers the $30 pizza and the $10 pizza, but I can still win if I deliver the $20 pizza and two $15 pizzas, and so on. It is pretty cheap on Amazon right now, under $10.
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My DD has wanted to move to China since she was 3 years old, so I fully expect that she will head to China at some point. My DS still says he's going to live with Daddy and me for the rest of our lives and cries when someone talks to him about maybe going to college or anything like that. He even says he's going to bring his wife to come and live with us too! :lol:
That said, a few years ago my husband was unemployed and had a couple interviews for a very good position in another state. He had been unemployed for four months and this was far and away the best position that he had interviewed for. When I was telling my mom about it, she immediately started crying and begging me not to take her grandchildren away. Apparently she was ok with us starving, but not moving away :-/ For the record, she lives 45 minutes away and sees my kids once every two or three months, and moved 12 hours away from her own family when she got married and her husband took a job in another state. So go figure.
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How have you made Saxon work for your family? My oldest just thinks like Saxon. I would like to use it for all my kids starting at 54.How do you teach your Saxon lessons? I heard some do all the problem or just evens/odds. I heard some do first ten to see if the child understands.Do you use the test book? Do you do flashcards?What do you have them write their answers in? How do you handle a struggling student? Also do you add other math curriculum to supplement it?
We have used Saxon from Saxon K up through Algebra 1/2 and are doing Algebra 1 this year. Also, I have used Saxon myself as an adult math learner to fix the huge gaping holes that you could drive a truck through in my own knowledge! :lol: My kids love math and always have, except for last year when we tried something that was not Saxon :-( (Which DD did just fine, understood it and all, she just hated it.)
We do all the problems for the upper levels. I certainly have done all the problems in MY studies, which started at Algebra 1/2 (I'm doing Saxon Geometry right now). I have found that a lot of the homework problems will 'twist' a previously taught concept in a subtle way to lead the student into a new concept that will be taught in an upcoming lesson. If you happened the skip that homework problem, you won't be as prepared for the lesson than you would have been. I cannot recommend skipping problems for Algebra 1/2 or above. Now, below that we skip huge sections of books when my kids tell me that they are bored & they were flying through the lessons, but as someone else said, the early levels are pretty basic. I just went through the books to make sure we really had covered that material and skipped ahead to the next lesson that I wasn't 100% sure my kids could do easily.
We do math by sitting down together and going over the lesson. When my DD was younger and the problems were easier, we often did most of the lesson out loud - I figure if she can tell me what 87 x 17 is correctly without touching pencil to paper, then she does indeed understand the concept! :D This has lead to unfortunate problems with not wanting to write ANYTHING down, but that's because she is 'allergic to pencil work' in any form (this child even hated coloring books!), so it's probably not a problem most families would have!
We do use the test booklets. The tests are so much easier than the homework that it really makes the kids feel 'super smart' and also having had years of easy math tests means I have kids who have little to no test anxiety when yearly testing rolls around.
We used flashcards some with DD when she was younger, but she hated them and was learning her facts fine without them, so we dropped them. DS likes the flashcards so far, but he is more competitive and likes to see how fast he can say them. They are definitely optional.
We ARE creating our own flashcards for algebra vocabulary this year. Algebra is pretty concept heavy. Our flashcards have the word or phrase on the front, and on the back have the definition (or formula and what it is used for), what lesson number and page number it is first covered in, an example, and any particular helpful info as a note. For example, for the flash card for coefficient, on the back we have "The numeric factor of a product including a variable. Example: In the expression 4xy, 4 is the coefficient. Note: Also sometimes called the numeric coefficient." When she goes over her flashcards, I just expect her to know the definition of course.
My son doesn't write down his answers yet except on the provided workbook pages, but my DD used graph paper notebooks. Target has these in their school supply section right now, $1.99 for 100 pages. We stock up when they have them and bought 12 this year for the two of us combined!! :D The graph paper notebooks really helped with neatness for my DD, and for myself, the graphing problems are SO much easier to work out on graph paper.
My DD has not needed curriculum to supplement for the most part. We will once in awhile add in a video, usually from Khan Academy or AOPS, to help teach a concept that she's not getting but is plugging her ears when I try to help her by explaining it. DS did a lot of math games last year, mostly from Kitchen Table Math, and some Singapore word problems. We've read the Beast Academy comics, but he clearly doesn't 'get' everything they are talking about yet, so we have not done the workbooks, but I can see it coming for later.
Hope that helps! It's a solid, thorough program.
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I am using that exact combination - Saxon Phonics 1, FLL1, WWE1. I am not adding anything else - there is PLENTY of spelling and handwriting practice in Saxon Phonics 1 for a first grader. I suppose if you have a DC who is really struggling with letter formation, you might want extra there, but honestly for me, if that were the case I'd probably set Saxon Phonics aside or modify it slightly to do less work. Saxon Phonics 1 is full enough of stuff that we actually started it over the summer so that I could have the freedom to break a lot of the lessons into two days. We also skip a few of the activities as they get mastered - for instance, I have taken a lot of the single letters out of the letter recognition flash card deck, and mostly use that to review digraphs and the few single letters he still forgets sometimes, like m & n (one hump or two? is a daily question at our house! :D ). We also only do one side of the double sided worksheets, unless we are splitting that lesson into two days. Some of those lessons are pretty long, and my little fella is pretty interested in learning, but I think 60+ minutes of phonics would kill him!! :D
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We have all of the "10 days in ____" games.
We play them often, and the gets "got" geography VERY quickly! Especially since the knowledge could be used to DEFEAT mom in a game! They are getting really good at it!
They are tons of fun. Try them!
Hot Lava Mama
:iagree: We have just started first grade with my DS6, and are playing 10 Days twice a week - once for 10 Days in the USA, and once for whichever game goes best with our STOW studies for this week. (The others in the series are 10 Days in Europe, Asia, Africa, & the Americas.) After playing 10 Days in the USA 3 times, my son made a comment about the shape of Wyoming - we live NOWHERE near Wyoming & I'm pretty sure he had never heard of it before the game. It's a not a complete geography course, but you will learn the shapes and locations of everything pretty painlessly.
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I have a Brother printer. Check your printer settings on your computer. Even when the printer itself is set to duplex, if your computer settings are not also set to duplex, it will not print duplex. If you were printing a file directly off your computer, I would bet that is the problem.
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In the early years, there are few perfect days :D When your youngest is as old as your oldest is now, it will be a LOT easier!! My youngest is 6 now, and I was just talking with another mom the other day about how unfair it is for the oldest, that all the REALLY crazy days come for them for years and years, because they have to cope with their younger sibs craziness too!! :D
We have a lot more calm days now. Right now, my oldest is reading in her room and my youngest is building with legos and listening to an audiobook in his room. This is a typical at-home afternoon these days. It was NOT like this AT ALL even a year or two ago!!!!! :lol: Hang in there!!
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Just Dance is better for a group of friends than Dance Dance Revolution, because with Dance Dance Revolution, only one child can play at a time. Also, Just Dance is more like dancing, and DDR tends to be more like just jumping.
I like a Wii for this kind of game, because a) it is a cheaper system with more active/dance titles to choose from and (Zumba is especially fun!) b) it has a lot FEWER of the more violent, Mature-rated games. But it is not maybe as exciting to a 16 & 19 year old! :) The Xbox also has Just Dance, Dance Central, and some other dance games. PS3 probably has the fewest dance titles to choose from.
Also, you probably don't need to invest in a metal dance pad just yet, those are pretty expensive compared to the plastic ones, and are pretty much used by the serious DDR competitors, not people who are just wanting to get a little exercise at home.
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I have yet to listen to SWB's lecture on how to get kids to work independently. I need to.
I second SWB's lecture on getting kids to work independently. She has GREAT ideas. That lecture made the difference between my going insane and not going insane last year with my then 11 year old!!! :lol:
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I don't know what one from before you were looking at, but here are some ones I like -
http://veganlunchbox.blogspot.com/
http://www.laptoplunches.com/healthy-lunches-bored.php
http://happylittlebento.blogspot.com/
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It's in my sig line, but here it is with commentary :D
Math - Saxon 4th edition Algebra I - yes, the public school version with all the errors in the solution manual. (I spent half my summer going through and finding all those $%*# errors and fixing them!) She hated AoPS when we tried it last year - she's got engineer brain and Does. Not. Like. competition style math, but we did about 2/3 of 3rd edition Saxon Algebra I last year after we dropped AoPS, and so that wouldn't be fun to go over AGAIN. 4th edition is more challenging than 3rd edition in some ways (other than the challenge of figuring out which answers are wrong, LOL!!!). It was kind of a toss-up between Saxon 4th and Foerster, and we may yet switch if she wants. AND we are definitely going to do Foerster chapters 6, 11, 12, 13, & 14 after we finish lesson 95 of Saxon because after that there are TOOOOOO many problems that call for a graphing calculator.
Language Arts -
- sticking with Hake Grammar for the third year, this year we're on Hake Grammar 7
- second run at Writing With Skill - we got through part of it last year, but it was just beyond her reach. She did a lot of writing on her own and has a much better sense of writing structure now, so it should be much more doable this year
- reading - I have a whole big list of things I'm gonna make her read, partly classic sci/fi and fantasy (The Martian Chronicles, The Once and Future King), partly tie-ins with WWS (The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Sherlock Holmes), partly tie-ins with our US history studies (Tom Sawyer, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn), partly children's classics that she's going to miss if we don't get to them soon (Charlotte's Web, A Wrinkle in Time), and part adult popular fiction of times past that is accessible to younger readers (Thank You, Jeeves, Murder on the Orient Express). I spent a week earlier this summer compiling the list, calculating how long it should take to read each book, and tying it all in with the most appropriate other lessons in the rest of our curriculum - yes, I over-plan! :D I have Great Expectations on the list as the big, end-of-the-year book, but I may switch to Little Women if she doesn't quite seem ready for it. There are also some poetry, plays, and short stories thrown in for a break here and there.
Science - HST Life Science, which will also be DS6's science - I'm going to read the text aloud, and DS6 just has to listen, DD12 will need to do the assignments and the labs too. Since she HATES the idea of biology and he LOVES everything about it, this may actually work despite the major age difference.
History - books 3-10 of Joy Hakim's History of US, reading 2 chapters a day and writing a 2-3 sentence summary of each chapter.
Chinese - sixth year of Mandarin studies with a tutor
Study Skills - Hake Grammar is a little short for a school year if you don't do the writing assignments, which we don't. So we're taking the first six weeks of the school year to read through and discuss Study Is Hard Work.
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I'm not mathwonk, but AOPS (which stands for Art of Problem Solving, BTW) starts with Pre-algebra, so probably not appropriate for your seven year old! :D There is a lower level program by the AOPS people called Beast Academy, but it currently starts with third grade and assumes mastery of basic math facts, so that probably wouldn't work for your current issue either.
If you are just having trouble getting basic math facts to stick, try some math games to reinforce them - the book Kitchen Table Math has some great ones, arranged by skill, so it's easy to figure out what to use. An online game like Dreambox can also be really helpful for that kind of skill building.
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Obviously, it's somewhat a matter of opinion, but I'd say for physics, Archimedes, Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, and Albert Einstein. For chemistry I'd say Dmitri Mendeleyev and Antoine Lavoisier are the two that really stand out to me.
Am I the only homeschooler who *doesn't* like to do groups during school hours?
in General Education Discussion Board
Posted
Until this year, I kept TRYING to like these kinds of things. We have park days with our support group, but that's just once a week, in nice weather, and they start around lunchtime, so it's not too hard to push everybody to get everything done in time to go. LAST year I foolishly decided I must be missing something wonderful by not doing all these outside classes, and ended up going to some class or other 4 days a week for the first half the year, and 2 days a week the second half. It was really disruptive and made me crazy and the worst part was I really did NOT feel like the academic benefit was significantly better than what we would have done at home, with the exception of one fabulous nine-week physics class. This year I am not doing ANYTHING between 8-3 except on Thursdays when we have park day. We are just a couple weeks into our school year and I can already feel how much less stress this schedule is going to be! :)