I've been falling back on just opening the book and skimming a few pages :/ I don't think it will work for long. DS is still on easy chapter books like Magic Tree House, but he gravitates towards graphic novels. Those are the tougher ones for me right now.

I haven't been able to make their poetry tea time idea work in our house yet (maybe I need to figure out for myself why poetry is important, or good, or how to explain it's importance and goodness to DS?) I didn't know about the Bravewriter freewrite page. I like it! And we did our first one today, and it went surprisingly well! I wrote, and DS wrote too. He only got one sentence out in the 3 min, but I'm sure things will get better with time. He was amazed when he saw that I had written half a page in the same amount of time that he had written 2 lines. I told him he'll get faster with practice. I DO believe he was writing the whole time. I was expecting him to write something boring like "I hate writing. I don't want to write." but he wrote, and was totally comfortable sharing his writing with me once he realized I wasn't going to correct his spelling, and it was about how he wanted to be part of the Roman empire.

Yes, that totally makes sense. And makes me feel so much better!

I have it in my head that young children shouldn't be encouraged to write with invented spelling. That they shouldn't "write like they speak." That they should be exposed to many examples of great writing before they are expected or asked to write their own stories. I have it in my head that they shouldn't be asked to write down their own stories (i.e. creative writing) until, middle school, maybe? That is the classical/WTM way, right? But DS has some issues with writing. I've posted a bit about it before. I now suspect that he's just trying to get out of the physical work of writing the words down on the page. That if he gets more practice it will come easier to him. That maybe I SHOULD start asking him to write about whatever he would like to tell people about. He LOVES to talk about things - constantly, so finding things to write about wouldn't be that hard. Encouraging him TO write, now that will be difficult. We've been doing a lot of oral work. He can formulate thoughts and stories, he just can't/doesn't like to write it down. I worry he will get stuck on a certain formula of writing if I ask him to write paragraphs and stories and essays now. I do have my own hang ups when it comes to writing. I was taught the 5 paragraph paper, and that was my English teacher's go to assignment through middle school. Constant 5 paragraph essays, reports, stories. Boring, boring, boring. Part of it is that I'm trying to not do that to DS. I don't want him to have a go-to repetitive formula for writing boring 5 paragraph papers with a conclusion that repeats the introduction, just barely reworded. Part of my fear is not knowing how/what to teach, which I'm sure could be remedied by finding a program to help me, and part of it is worry that by letting him write with poor handwriting, bad grammar, and incorrect spelling, it would reinforce THOSE things in his work. Thoughts?

Kudos for conveying the use and importance of the oxford comma to your daughter!

:lol:

yes. and he has a chair short enough to get his feet flat on the floor. But it's a hydraulic lift chair, and the first thing he does when he sits in it is to lift it all the way up. Chair ends up almost level with the desk, and he goes into the knee sitting. But in the class, they are at a regular sized kitchen table/chairs. Sometimes he does schoolwork on the floor with a clipboard. Or at the coffee table on the couch or ottoman. In any setting he doesn't have much stamina for writing.

I'm actually glad so many people are telling me to get him writing more. Scaffolding him into doing more writing (with a written plan/goals) is doable. I was already sort of doing that, but maybe I need to keep my expectations firmer. I have always been against letting him write with misspellings and sloppy handwriting. I want to advocate good penmanship, and not reinforce bad spelling. We haven't completed cursive yet. I've had some pushback on it, but maybe that will help too? Cursive "hurts" less than printing I think. We did try fountain pens. They were great when they were a novelty, but when the novelty wore off, he wanted pencils. Mostly for the erasability factor, I think. He uses his eraser way too much. I teach cross it out or ignore and move on, but the mistakes seem to bother him.

I'll observe his handwriting next time he writes. Maybe he's slipping. The last time I checked, he was holding his pencil correctly, and he knows(and uses) the correct formations of the letters. We use the WRTR scripts for letter formation. I'm pretty sure he turns his paper. He holds the paper down with his non-dominant hand when he is writing (unless he's trying to show off/be silly) What constitutes good posture? I learned feet on the floor, straight spine, arms resting on desk. He doesn't like posture. At home, he usually sits on his knees in the chair, and leans over the desk. He didn't want to try the way that "will make it not hurt so much when [he] writes" as I put it, and I actually think he's more comfortable the way he's been doing it. ETA: missed a question mark

By "notes" I mean the teacher dictates a sentence or a couple of words to them to write in their notebook. If this were a science class(it's not, so the following is just an example), the expected written product of the entire hour would look like this: dictated / student generated We learned about Newton's 1st law of motion. An object at rest stays at rest. An object in motion stays in motion. _______Rule ________|______example_____________|____Picture____________ | | an object at | my shoes stay where | rest stays at rest | I leave them | [picture of shoes] | | | | an object in motion | if I throw a ball, it | stays in motion | will keep going forever | [picture of a ball flying in a straight line through the air] | | | |

I'm getting slightly frustrated at this (again). I usually don't mind writing for him when he does his work, or doing things orally, but he's getting older and starting to take more outside classes where writing is necessary. He writes very slow, and has very neat handwriting when he writes slow, but for taking notes in one of his classes, he needs to be able to finish more than one 8 letter word per minute (exaggerating, but only a little bit). His hand is DONE after writing about 20 words (that's with breaks.) Interestingly enough, he CAN draw for hours. Just not write words. I wonder if he's gripping the pencil differently while writing vs. drawing. For the time being, I've told him to "write as fast as you can, don't worry about spelling correctly, and don't worry about having neat handwriting" but I wonder if this will be harmful (encouraging bad handwriting, and discouraging proper spelling). He takes a 2x weekly class, where he has to take notes, but the teacher doesn't have time to write for him or spell words for him. And I don't expect her to! But he needs to write down what she asks them to write. And when he attends other classes, the teacher can't write or fill out worksheets for him. Another layer to this is when my friend was around when he was doing his work today, she basically said "you need to write, if you went to school you'd have to do it yourself" so, that was discouraging. It came off a little as "you can't be learning if you don't write." But one of the major bonuses to homeschooling is that he doesn't need to write when writing is so hard for him. That he CAN learn orally, and will still be able to both learn, and demonstrate that he knows the material. He's in 3rd grade. Is this something that gets better with time? Practice? Does anyone who has been through this have any tips? Do some sort of hand exercises help? Painting? Will I be sitting in college classes scribing for him? That last one was tongue in cheek..

You could move on to having him summarize 2 paragraphs at once. Ask for 2-3 important details. Summarize short stories (5-8 paragraphs) I like Writing With Ease for this kind of work. Strong Fundamentals gives you a good guide + examples of how to approach it. Bonus in that Strong Fundamentals includes info on all 4 levels at once, so you can jump to whichever level you think your DS is at. Extra bonus that you can purchase it used for about $10.

I'm just under 30, and recently had mine removed, 2-3 were impacted; all were at least partially erupted. I didn't go under general anesthesia, and didn't take narcotic pain killer. it was AT least a week before I could eat properly again (i mean, like big bites). I got them out on a Saturday morning, and the next wednesday, I was still in pain. Enough that I COULD do a 3 hr dance practice, but I wouldn't have wanted to. I remember because someone called me asking me to babysit for them, and I really just didn't feel like I could be out of the house that long (about 3 hrs) the pain was of the annoying variety, but I was taking it light on the motrin too. The monday following the extraction, I was home with the 2yo, and it was a "do as little as possible" type of day. On Tuesday, I was glad that my regularly scheduled classes were on break. Saturday and Sunday were "sleep all day, even though you aren't taking the narcotic" kind of days.

:lol:

crumbs and left behind dishes on the table a dumped out bin of play food in the basement a pile of clean clothes needing to be folded (but will, most likely, be dug out of the pile worn before they get folded, but not before the pile grows) multiple piles of books, "decorating" the living room. All of our bookshelves are downstairs. I clean up before guests come over, but as far as the books are concerned, that sometimes means rearranging the piles so they look a bit more organized/intentional.

Why would it be unhygienic to throw them in with something else? They all get clean by the end of the load, don't they?

I don't get squicked out about dirty things being in the kitchen sink like other people seem to. I wash my hands in my kitchen sink (after being outside and before/after cooking and eating) rinse my mouth or face, etc. To me, it's a sink. I don't let clean stuff or food touch the actual bottom of the sink, and sink germs don't "jump." Anything that does touch the bottom of my sink gets washed. The sink itself gets washed frequently too. To me, the gross part of all of that would be that the person presumably opened the door with dirty hands, contaminating other things on his way.

peanut butter crackers are probably a no go for a school, but what about cheese cracker sandwiches? pretzels? apple sauce? a jar of peanut butter substitute (assuming peanuts aren't allowed at school, a bunch of plastic knives, a jar of jelly, and a bag of bread? tuna salad and crackers? I've seen tuna salad sold in little packets. Is that something kids will eat? Mine would, but it might seem weird to some kids.

I didn't know medicated nasal sprays (for congestion) existed. In the past, I've bought a saline spray, and it really helped DS's stuffy nose. The one nasal spray I do have experience with is an allergy med, and when I use it, it feels like a ton goes down my throat, but that's mostly because the taste (in the back of the throat) is so strong. Just thinking maybe that's why she thought she had swallowed so much.

Happy PI Day! We don't get too much into holidays (even religious holidays are feebly celebrated), but I'm all for PI Day. For the Math, not the pie. I almost never remember in time to get pie in time, and I don't have enough "drive" to get myself to the store to buy pie (let alone make pie) on PI day. We did take advantage of a nearby pizza place's pizza for $3.14 deal, but that was yesterday. Today, because I remembered it was PI day, we read a book about PI (the Sir Cumference one) Friends of the family... Our family never had any growing up. Like, any. I thought it was super cool of my friends when they mentioned that "so and so" was a family friend of theirs. We do have family friends now, and most of them/the ones we see most frequently have kids the ages of our kids, and our kids get along for the most part. Something odd I've purchased... hmm :/ our food processor blade broke (DH ran it over with the car) so I couldn't make laundry detergent like I usually do. Not only did I buy liquid detergent from the grocery store, but I also bought a new food processor blade, without waiting months with it in my amazon cart before purchasing.

title made me :laugh: :lol: :smilielol5: mainly because I knew next to nothing about the mongol empire until, well, I started homeschooling :blushing: actual content (i.e. parallels/history repeating) not so funny :(

We have a brother laser printer/copier, and I find that frequently, when I copy pages from our spiral-bound books, a huge black area will print on one side of the page. It seems like this is because the spirals don't allow the lid of the copier to close all the way + the fact that the book I'm copying is not as big as the copier glass. Sometimes I'll stick papers around the page I'm printing so the edges will be white, but it's such a hassle. I've even gone so far as to shine a flashlight at it while copying, but I can't always stand there and babysit the copier. It's using so much toner! Anyone have a solution/hack? Is there a "brain" setting to tell the copier to ignore huge black areas? Or a "dim" setting to print lighter than default? I'm printing a lot of worksheets and coloring pages, I don't need it to be printing jet black all the time.

this made me LOL imagining all of the suggestions mentioned above ending like romeo and juliette

I haven't really had too much time to start, but based on the few strokes I tried, it's definitely something that will take me some time to get used to.

I recently got a book on spencerian handwriting(mostly for me) and from what I've understood so far( haven't gotten very far in it, lol) is that you are supposed to use your whole arm for at least some of the strokes. That said, I've always written with my fingers/wrist rather than whole arm. Since reading some of the book though, I've tried incorporating more "whole arm" movement. I do wonder if whole arm vs wrist/finger writing has an impact on fatigue from writing a lot.