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garddwr

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Everything posted by garddwr

  1. Mowed part of the lawn, fed the kids, cleaned the house, hosted support group. My baby is sitting on the floor eating what is left in the candy bowl...I need to go see about putting away the stuff I dumped in a box to get out of the way in a hurry when I was tidying up...
  2. (Woops, toddler attack! posted accidentally :) ) Exam stress is my least favorite part of the European model of schooling. Having your entire future hinge on the results of a few days of testing... ugh! .
  3. I have some moms coming over this afternoon for a support group meeting. I would like to mow the lawn this morning, help the kids practice, feed my family, and get the house in decent order before people come.
  4. OK, here are my somewhat disjointed thoughts, maybe something will prove helpful? Is she trying to learn to read two languages at the same time, or is she just working on English? Have you had her eyes checked? Sometimes optometrists will say it is normal or kids that age to be farsighted and not want to correct, but I think reading glasses made a difference for me when I was young. Though it sounds like you might be doing this orally, so eyes would not be a factor. But if she is more visual that oral that could be hard... Six really is not so old to still be developing sequencing and blending skills, but I understand your fear about the school being inflexible. Have you tried Charlotte Mason's method of taking the words to familiar nursery rhymes or songs, putting each word on a separate piece of paper, and having the child put the words in order to make the rhyme, with help if needed? It's more of a whole language method, but some kids really do better that way. A story from my family: my mom used whole language methods to teach my older two siblings to read, but they failed entirely with me. She switched to phonics, which eventually worked for me (though not until I was 8 years old), so with the younger kids she used phonics from the beginning. When she got to #7, she made no progress at all with phonics--he didn't seem to be able to blend the sounds. She switched back to a sight word approach and he learned just fine. Little brother is very math oriented, maybe more visual-spatial or something, I don't know. He is however a very fast and fluent reader, probably reads more books per year than any other member of my family of readers. I know this is purely anecdotal, but it might be worth trying.
  5. I have a violinist and a cellist, I love group lessons for the practice in playing together, but a cellist at your son's stage in learning should be in a group with other cellists. Does you cello teacher have any other young beginning students? It would be great if she could do group lessons at least occasionally with them. As he gets a little more experience, joining a children's ensemble of some kind would also be great experience. Based on what you have described of the Suzuki program at the university, it doesn't seem like a good use of time and money for your family.
  6. Got it! Thank you so much for the explanation, I am anything but tech savvy. I see now that dragonbox, for example, has a check mark saying it is compatible with my kindle :)
  7. Thank you for the explanation! If I buy an app in Amazon's app store can I safely assume it will play on my kindle?
  8. Can someone please explain this to me: The kindle fire runs a version of the android operating system--but it isn't the same as other android tablets? If I buy an app in the google play store will it work on a kindle? What if I buy an app on Amazon--will it work on an android tablet?
  9. It's interesting how different experiences can be for different people. I was a late reader--my mom was a teacher, but didn't think formal schooling was best for young children. She didn't sent us to school until we were eight years old. In the mean time, we spent lots of time playing outside, building with blocks, helping on the farm, practicing music, and being read to. She did introduce reading instruction around age five, but if it didn't seem to click with a particular child she would set it aside and try again later. I didn't read at all until the summer I turned eight. That summer I was ready and motivated to learn, I remember working my way through a phonics program with great interest. At that point I took off with reading; I remember reading both David Copperfield and Oliver Twist the year I was nine, by the time I was thirteen I was choosing War and Peace for free reading. I can't remember ever scoring below 99th percentile on the language arts or reading comprehension portion of standardized exams, including the SAT, ACT, and eventually GRE. Which is to say, kids are just different, and late reading is not necessarily an indicator that a child is going to struggle with reading and language throughout their academic career. Nor of course is it an indicator that a child will excel in language arts :) For myself, however, I've often thought that if my mom had pushed reading instruction when I wasn't ready or interested I could have learned to hate reading. As it was, I discovered the world of reading and books at a time when I was primed and ready, and I dove in head first.
  10. Thanks for all the replies! I think I am going to try doing it myself, with one of the non-permanent methods. Since I'm just trying to cover up gray I'm hoping it will be straightforward.
  11. Hm, I was really hoping this was something I could do myself...
  12. I have never colored or had my hair colored. Right now I have a short cut, there is quite a bit of grey in front (though still more dark than grey) but very little in back. I don't mind the grey with short hair, but I am thinking about growing it out one last time (I expect I will keep it short as I get older) and I think it would look better dark. My natural hair color is very dark brown. So tell me, if I am just looking to cover up the grey, would it work to go with one of the self-coloring kits they sale at the grocery store? If so do you have any advice on brands or on how to use them? Or would I bet better off getting it professionally done? (huh, just noticed I used the British spelling of gray. I picked that up living in Europe as a kid and never have been able to break myself of the habit...)
  13. I actually think it is common for children to act up at home when they do not at school not because the consequences are more severe at school but because the child is tense/on guard/feeling stressed at school, so they keep everything inside. Then when they get home they finally feel free to let down their guard and all the emotions that have built up during the day come out.
  14. My 4th grader is using Elementary Greek and we really like it. The program is set up with short daily lessons, it is easy to follow and seems to have everything we need.
  15. All right, which of the super smart and capable moms on this board is going to write us a science-centered curriculum? :)
  16. The only thing I can think of is that maybe the option send personal messages appears after a certain number of posts???
  17. That is very strange, even when I tried inactivating personal messages the tab was still there for me. Have you tried contacting the admins?
  18. So was the "fog" really smog? How did the clean air act change the amount of fog?
  19. mmeblue, if you go to the top of the screen next to where it says "sign out", you should see your username. When you click on that a little box pops up and in the bottom right corner of that box there should be a "personal messenger" label.
  20. I think it's more inborn. I also pretend played for hours on end--but I don't visualize things. Some of my siblings do and some don't.
  21. Thanks AK_Mom4, I can suggest this--not sure it will fit this teacher's style (she is an older lady and more on the serious side, though the last teacher would absolutely have gone for this). One thought I had this morning is maybe I can bring a cello as well and if Jumping Spider won't play she can teach me. We have a 3/4 size cello that I sometimes play along with him with when he is practicing. I play violin and viola but cello is new to me. Maybe if we approached the lessons as her teaching both of us he would relax more.
  22. This is how I am. I thought for a long time that I didn't see pictures in my head, but when I started paying closer attention while reading etc. I realized there are images, they are just rather dim and vague. If I want details I have to work hard to build them in, and I can't hold them there (i.e., if someone's appearance is being described and I build in their eyebrows, I lose the eyebrows while trying to build in the chin...) On the other hand, I have a constant verbal conversation going through my mind...
  23. Jumping Spider (ds 8) started cello lessons about a year and a half ago. He is very musical by nature, likes to play the cello, and has made good progress overall. But we have struggled all along with one major issue: he won't play at his lessons! Almost every week his lessons have gone something like this: teacher: Hi Jumping Spider, lets hear how your practice went this week. Why don't you play (...song) for me? Jumping Spider: (sits with a scowl on his face and doesn't play) teacher cajoles, directs, encourages, etc. for 20 minutes. Jumping Spider continues to scowl. Finally the last few minutes of a lesson he starts playing, and once he starts everything is fine--his mood changes and he is cheerful and the music is beautiful. Teacher and I are both flummoxed by this. Jumping Spider has no trouble practicing at home--oh, he sometimes complains, but mostly he practices cheerfully and energetically. And he remembers instructions from his teacher and tries to follow them. Thing is, if you look past the scowl when he is sitting at his lesson and not playing, you can tell he is holding back tears. Teacher and I think this is an anxiety issue, he feels under pressure at lessons (no matter how lighthearted and fun teacher tries to make them) and is afraid of making mistakes etc. This is actually our second teacher, I switched not because I thought the first wasn't doing a good job but simply in the hope that Jumping Spider might connect better with someone else. But the some problem is cropping up. Does this look familiar to anyone? Have you dealt with lesson anxiety yourself or in a child? We're spending a lot of money and time on lessons, and he would get so much more out of them if he would just play music right from the start!
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