Deniseibase
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Posts posted by Deniseibase
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I think the water thing, and I'm basing this on what I hear from my sister-in-law the juvenile parole officer, is not so much about no running water as much as no ACCESS to water. In other words, if kids are in a situation where they cannot get a drink of clean water if they need it, that is a problem. Usually this seems to come up when the child is either confined or in a house that is completely ruled by neglect - i.e., there is no bottled water, no pump outside, no water in the house at all. Now I may not be correct, I'm just basing this on what I hear, but that seems sensible to me.
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Tiffany Aching books, in order, are -
The Wee Free Men
A Hat Full of Sky
Wintersmith
I Shall Wear Midnight
My DD age 12 started reading them last year, and has read the first three, and started the fourth. However, I Shall Wear Midnight has some intensity to it - a friend of Tiffany's gets pregnant and her father then beats her nearly to death. She got the foreshadowing of that and decided to put that book off for a while. The other three should be fine.
After that, she went on to read several of the other Discworld books. There's actually a reading order guide here - http://www.lspace.org/books/reading-order-guides/ I especially like the City Watch novels, for all that it is a humorous fantasy series, he makes a lot of serious points about civilization and the responsibilities of leaders.
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Well, Hake 5 does not have very complex diagramming, but it ramps up a good bit in the later years. Unless you have a particular reason to cover diagramming in a lot of depth in 4th grade, you should be fine.
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If all you are getting it for is the diagramming answers, you might not need it. Hake 5 lays a good foundation for later diagramming of complex sentences, but the diagramming in 5 is pretty simple. The sentences at the end of the book are things like -
Shh, people are thinking.
Can you elucidate this very difficult lesson for me after school?
During the spring, we tourists viewed the magnificent beauty of the Grand Canyon from different locations in Arizona. (I think that is the most complicated sentence in the whole book, actually.)
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You all are scaring me!! I'm trying to transition our read-aloud habit from mostly picture books to a mix of picture and chapter books, and the first book on my list is Pinocchio and I also have Freddy Goes to Florida on the list...
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Good heavens, that sounds like a DREADFUL public school option!! Honestly, it should not be hard to find curricula better than that.
Sounds like you already have a few things, so definitely stick with those. What has he done in previous years? It's especially hard to suggest writing or literature options for a dyslexic child without having an idea where he already is.
A couple things you might look at -
Writing program - Writing With Skill is very good, certainly adequate for 7th grade, but may be too advanced if this is an area where he struggles. My DD struggles with writing, but not due to dyslexia, and we did part of WWS last year and will finish it this year.
Reading list - go to your local library and ask them for their 7th grade reading lists from the local schools. Most libraries in my area at least have a long list from each local school. Go through and pick books that your son is likely to enjoy. Pick a LOT of books so your son can choose titles for himself. Then you can at least argue that these are the SAME books as the public schools are using.
Science - This tends to be the tough one when you are trying to do something comparable to public schools, because of the difficulty of providing the fancier sorts of labs, but it sounds like the public school option available to you doesn't do a lot of labs? If that's so, this will actually work in your favor. I personally haven't found a lot of homeschool curricula I like for science, but I know a lot of people who rave about Real Science 4 Kids and Science Explorer. We tried RS4K with a co-op class and found it kinda dull and expensive. Science Explorer is better, but I like to have ONE book as a spine, not a new book every few weeks.
Personally, for middle school, I like to just get a standard public school textbook and supplement it heavily with Bill Nye videos and fun hands-on stuff. I'm using the Holt Science and Technology series because it has a lot of hands-on activities and labs actually in the student book, and a lot of them don't require crazy amounts of lab equipment, so I only had to buy the one book AND we are still able to do a lot of the labs! :)
Online elective - have you looked at http://www.codecademy.com/#!/exercises/0 ? That might do for learning some beginning coding. No idea on the robotics, sorry.
Hope that gives you a few ideas!!
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Let the word get out that you are accepting broken stuff for take-aparts, and pretty soon you'll be able to forgo the Goodwill trips, people will give you all kinds of stuff :-)
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Do they like history? Joy Hakim's The Story of Science is a TERRIFIC 3-book series on the history of astronomy, chemistry, and physics (no 'gross' biology!! :lol: ) from the ancient Greeks to the 20th century. I taught it as a co-op class last year and there were a couple non-science loving pre-teen girls in the class. I won't say I converted them into science-lovers, but they had fun and learned a lot. If you did it as an at-home class it would be mostly reading and discussion - there are Teacher Quest Guides and Student Quest Guides for the first two books that have some activities, but not a lot of what I'd actually call labs, but it's pretty easy to find supplementary activities. It's much more of a narrative than most science courses, and I think that appeals to a lot of girls. The three books are Aristotle Leads the Way, Newton at the Center and Einstein Adds a New Dimension.
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I guess as a person who has SEVEN Algebra I books on her shelf, I have to answer yes to this one :D
I think I overbuy for the subjects I am most nervous about teaching.
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IMO that probably has more to do with adolescence than math. :tongue_smilie: If he's done well on the tests' date=' I'd move on. :)[/quote']
:iagree: 'Puberty brain' is a big problem around this age!!! Make him re-do the ones he misses until he gets them right, just so he doesn't get too lazy and carefree about it, but if he clearly understands it, don't bore him to death by going over the same content again. They can't really HELP that their brains have been hijacked!!! :D
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I think it depends on what level you are using. I'm honestly not familiar with the DIVE CDs, but I do know that for Saxon 54 to 87, there are HUGE differences between the 2nd and 3rd editions. The 2nd editions are the old hardback books, and the 3rd editions are the newer paperback ones. They were completely rewritten, so I'd imagine the DIVE CDs would be very different.
However, for Algebra I & II, the only difference between 2nd & 3rd edition that I know of is that 3rd edition lists the lesson numbers next to the related problems, and the 2nd edition doesn't. So you'd be fine with those, as far as I know.
Hope that helps some!
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I'm an adult math learner working my way through Alg II. I do every single problem. Often two or three times, as I keep doing them until I get them right :lol: My DD will start Alg I in the fall and she will have to do all the problems too. The Saxon method isn't really meant to be used any other way.
I have found, working through the problems on my own, that a lot of times, the homework problems will slowly 'morph' and increase in difficulty in a gentle and 'bit by bit' fashion, so there are some concepts that you actually 'creep up on' and learn them before they are actually taught directly in a lesson. If you skipped around, you'd probably miss out on a lot of that. If you just go through and say, "Oh, this problem references lesson 37, I already get that concept, I can skip that problem", then if it is one of those 'morphed' problems, you will miss out on one of the pieces that will help you really understand what the concept does.
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We have used AoPS. I quickly looked at the TOC and the geometry text covered analytical geo of lines and circles... can't remember right now when we did parabola/line intersections, it might even have been in algebra 1... but I distinctly recall some problems DD worked. Sorry, I am traveling right now and do not have the books at hand.
That is all right, thanks so much for responding!! Would love to hear from anyone who has any suggestions of other geometry books that cover these subjects - I'm not quite AOPS material myself!! :lol:
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Do your books not cover any analytical geometry? That's the area where we needed most math:
linear equations - lines from point/slope or two points
systems of linear equations - intersection of lines
quadratic equations - circles, ellipses, parabolas
systems of linear and quadratics - intersections of lines and circles/ellipses/parabolas
Not to hijack the thread, but regentrude, what geometry books can you suggest that cover these topics? I just looked in my old 1972 Jurgensen-Dolciani geometry book, and there's nothing on quadratics or parabolas or a lot of this stuff. Can you suggest some titles for me? Thanks!!
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I had a similar issue with my DD. With her, when she was 8, it was the Rainbow Fairy books :D They aren't BAD, per se, just not.....GOOD, y'know?
It took a long time to get past 'junk' books, so be prepared to be patient. When she was in fourth grade, I just insisted that she had to READ, every day, for a set amount of time. It had to be a chapter book, and it could not be something she had read before. There are a lot of Rainbow Fairy books, but eventually she ran out!! :) Then she had to read something else for that set amount of time. I suggested slightly better quality books, everything from Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing to The Tale of Despereaux to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Some books she thought were ok, some were rejected outright. Eventually she read her way through Harry Potter and the Warriors series, and really enjoyed them. OK, not exactly high literature, but it was a step up from Rainbow Fairies!!! :) After that, she decided she did like fantasy and branched out into a larger variety of titles, but still stuck with fantasy novels. I continued to insist that she read daily, and encouraged her to choose better titles, but that was it.
By sixth grade, she had decided on her own that she was a reader, and stated choosing to read over other leisure activities. Once she hit that point, I knew I could move forward to the next stage. I then informed her that every other book she read had to be chosen from a list that *I* had made. I then made a list of books that I thought she would like - a lot of classic novels of her chosen genre (like The Hobbit), similar genres (like sci-fi), and a lot of just really good books that anyone might like. I made sure there were enough books on the list that she had a good amount of choice - over the course of the year, she read about 1/3 of the books on my list. She didn't like everything she read, but she liked enough of it that she's now starting to believe that not EVERY book mom suggests is necessarily awful! :lol:
This is still a process. For next year, I am choosing ALL her books, but still, I've gone to great lengths to pick books that I really think she will enjoy. AND she's old enough now that I can talk to her about why it's important to branch out and learn to read lots of different books, and she doesn't always LIKE it, but she GETS the concept.
So, I would say, the important thing IS that he enjoys reading, but there are ways to guide him into better reading choices without killing his love of reading. It takes time, and you have to break it into little steps, but it can be done. Be patient, and keep at it!
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I'd try looking places other than Petfinder, they seem to have the very strictest requirements, some of which are a little bizarre. I've owned dogs all my life & worked in a dog kennel for several years before my kids were born. But when I went to try to adopt a second dog from them, they turned down my application because I wouldn't promise to crate-train the dog. I have a large fenced back yard & just put my dogs out when we leave, which obviously is not that often with a homeschooling gamily where both the parents work from home!! :) But that was not acceptable to Petfinder. I had NO trouble whatsoever adopting a dog from the local Humane Society. You might try your local Humane Society.
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since you have used these, what did you think of the adhesive? the biggest complaint seemed to be that the adhesive was TOO sticky and it didn't come off too easily? So I was curious if that was your expereince.
I didn't find that to be a problem, but this was on top of sheets that are a little slippery anyway, so YMMV.
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ok, but how do I get my kid to release some of the clutter/junk after he has taken it apart and can not put it back together? There's about pounds of phones in his room that he has taken apart and tried to put back together repeatedly and he doesn't want to get rid of a single piece! I'm nervous to give him more items because I don't want to junk in my house forever.
Any suggestions?
Just tell him that's the price - if he want new stuff to take apart, he needs to toss the old stuff to make room. And then don't let him have anything new to take apart until he gets rid of the old stuff.
My kids take stuff apart too, pretty much anything broken. Old modems, alarm clock, toasters, hair dryers, whatever. Ask friends to save broken things for you if you run low - we always have a 'take-apart' box in the garage of various stuff. One time we had a furnace blower motor. That was done with dad's supervision out in the garage because it very oily!! :D
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Sounds like you might enjoy AOPS, all right. Try reading a couple of the sample chapters from whatever books strike your fancy on the AOPS website - http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Store/index.php and maybe watch a few of the videos, too, if you like.
I'm also re-learning math as an adult learner, although I didn't get NEARLY as far as you did in high school. I mostly use Saxon because I'm NOT good at math and seriously need lots of repetition or it just doesn't stick. But, I still own a few of the AOPS books and use them to supplement my understanding. Even the pre-algebra book, which you would not think would have a lot to offer an adult, really helped me UNDERSTAND better. It is an excellent program for those who get the math 'routine' and want to go beyond that to real understanding.
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I used one a few weeks ago when babysitting my niece, who has a tendency to take off her pull-ups in the middle of the night :( She took off her pull-up, rolled off the bed mat, and still peed on the mattress :( It's not a bad idea, but I sure would have wanted one in a larger size!!!
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That includes going over the new material and doing all problems. We skip the journal entry as we use a different writing program, and we make corrections the day of the lesson, so we don't usually go over the previous lesson unless she just REALLY didn't get it. It takes us about 20 minutes writing in the book, yes. Grammar is a "get 'er done" subject for us, and DD works fairly efficiently most of the time these days. Now when she was in 5th grade we had a number of 'dawdle days' where she easily spent an hour or more on grammar, but she wasn't actually DOING the lesson most of that time, she was examining her nails, or sharpening her pencil, or looking out the window - you get the idea!! :)
So that's probably a good range - I'm pretty much doing bare-bones and saying 20-30 minutes, Dana in OR is doing all the bells and whistles and saying 40+ minutes, so somewhere in between is probably about right :)
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30 minutes (or less if you let the child write directly in the book as a worktext).
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The Moon is a Harsh Mistress has some very ODD sexual attitudes in it that you may not want to expose him to, or at least you will want to discuss - group marriage is the norm, and I seem to remember one grown man character saying something at one point along the lines of the only thing more attractive than a pregnant 14 year old is a pregnant 14 year old with a baby on her back. Also, a lot of Heinlein's works treat incest as a great thing for all concerned, I can't remember if that's specifically in Moon is a Harsh Mistress, but you probably want to check for it. Definitely one to pre-read if you haven't already read it! :-)
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Well, I don't know much about Abeka, but I do know that it teaches a non-evolutionary viewpoint, and the Miller-Levine book teaches entirely evolution (as in pretty much every single chapter is tied to evolution in one way or another). So depending on your family's views on this issue, that's probably the main thing you need to decide on. I have the Miller-Levine dragonfly book if you have any specific questions, I'd be glad to answer them. Hope that helps!
A Week of Day Camp ---> Bad Behavior
in General Education Discussion Board
Posted
My DS age 6 did a summer day camp last year. He came home argumentative and whiny, too. Some of it was simply that he was tired out from the extra activity, so give your guy some extra rest & that might help. But YES most of it was the other kids. We had talks in the car on the way home EVERY DAY about what kids had done that was unacceptable - everything from singing little racist songs to actually hitting the teacher - this was in a group of kids age 5-7!!! Bless him, he really wanted to do it again this year...I set him up with lots of play dates with NICE friends instead!