buddhabelly
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Posts posted by buddhabelly
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So far no one on this thread is on my ignore list and now I feel like I must reply to each and every one of you.
I must not understand what "ignore" means. How on earth would you know if someone on your "ignore list" posts on a thread you were reading?
Help me out here....
Julie
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I second the idea of a geography game like "10 Days Across Europe" or "10 Days Across....anything."
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Well honestly, I have heard that the best preparation for high school chemistry is an excellent foundation in math. High school chemistry starts at the beginning -- you don't see brick and mortar schools offering chemistry in elementary school, right? No need.
That said, I highly recommend Ellen McHenry's products. She is very responsive if you have questions, and I can't help bragging that she revised some games and illustrations because of our suggestions. We did "The Elements" and "Carbon Chemistry" this year in fifth grade, and (kind of like Right Start Math) if you really do the games frequently, your children will retain the knowledge! I would suggest doing them more often than the curriculum recommends.
Julie
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No A/C, but we keep the thermostat at 65 and guess what..... the heat does come on in the summer!
Julie
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As awful as the "interview" was, I cannot get past the fact that she charged money for it !! When I met with a violin teacher recently to see if he could find room in this VERY full schedule to teach my son, I offered to pay him. (My son was just about to perform a recital and I said that I would be grateful for any last-minute suggestions as to how to improve his performance.) He responded, "No, please consider this an audition. No fee." But then he proceeded to teach him for an HOUR and gave him the best lesson he's ever had (including numerous summer Suzuki Institutes.)
I am glad that you had this experience BEFORE the piano lessons began. The summer is still new. There is still time for the right piano teacher to find you, or vice versa.
Julie
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I would highly recommend Right Start Math. I homeschooled my son grade 1-5 (K was public school, which, uh, spurred us on to homeschooling). Out of everything we did those five years, Right Start Math stands out. He has a deep conceptual understanding of math and is able to manipulate numbers easily. Now that it is summer, sometimes I give him math and he says things like, "I didn't even need to do long division on that problem, Mom. I just figured that _________________." So he really understands it.
But the real reason that I would recommend it for your family is that they can play the games together. The first grade games are still fun for an older child, and the more children you have around, the more fun the games are! By the way, you do not need to buy the "Games" book until Level C (or maybe even D, I can't remember). But they are all included in Level B (and possibly C).
Best of luck and enjoy your mathematics journey.
ETA: Well, your 6th grader might not be able to jump right into RS Math. But perhaps he/she could teach your younger and thus "re-learn" math? And then Singapore wouldn't make your first grader cry?
Julie
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My son loves girls :001_smile: and, whether he has noticed it or not, most of his best friends are girls. So I think it will be something we should read together. (He has already downloaded "Watership Down" and is loving it.)
He didn't really get Tom Sawyer at all. Unless you are the kind of boy depicted in the book, it doesn't really resonate, you know? My son would always rather be indoors with a soft bed and the next meal all planned. He didn't understand Tom's motivation at all!
He liked "Hatchet," though. It was possibly his worst nightmare (especially the mosquitos or biting flies or whatever they were), but he enjoyed the book.
Julie
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Have you considered the Gary Paulsen books such as Hatchet, Brian's Saga series, and many others that he has written that are more male oriented books?
Already done it. Loved them!
Julie
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Little Women is pretty estrogen-heavy IMHO. I wouldn't assign it to my DS. We've got a copy available to him if he ever decides to read it on his own, though.
There's a good thread on classics for boys on the "Accelerated Learner" forum.
Thanks for the link. He has read all of those (except for Call of the Wild, which I really think is deathly boring but maybe we'll try again). Except for "To Kill a Mockingbird" -- too soon? He's only 11. I think he'll be okay with it. We have heard a lot about it and I think he's sufficiently curious. We covered the Civil Rights movement in excruciating detail....I was all huffy about how much SOTW skipped and I sort of went overboard. :001_smile:
He LOVED 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Another classic that I forgot about is "Watership Down." I think we'll start with that -- he doesn't seem to object to animal protagonists as much as I did when I was young.
Julie
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Just don't get carried away with the realism and send dh to "town" eight miles away in a snowstorm on foot. I don't remember the distance, but I do remember worrying about him getting home! (I kind of knew that Laura Ingalls Wilder would not kill off a main character, though.)
Julie
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We used Mother-Ease and they had the cutest prints on the diaper covers back then. They make for cute baby pictures!
Julie
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My son is going to go to private school this fall, and I'm still going to buy the next level of MCT (Voyage) and the rest of the LOF series.
How do I justify THAT????
ETA: Well, if school doesn't work out, we're all ready to roll, right?
Julie
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Thanks so much. We'll give it a try. I secretly suspects he skips most descriptive passages anyway. (Sigh.)
And I totally agree about Jane Austen. I think he might like the BBC film of Pride and Prejudice, though!
Julie
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My son has NOT been reading lately, so I want him to read something worthwhile but not TOO "educational." I am thinking of "Little Women."
Will he like it? Should we wrap it in brown paper so that his friends don't tease him? Here's the angle I'm using: "It will give you something to talk about with the girls." (He adores girls.) "Girls LOVE this book, trust me."
Would love to hear from anyone whose ds has read this one.
Edited to add: he's 11, and a good reader. I thought his age was in my signature, but I guess not.
Thanks!
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The book I recommended, "Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years" takes as its source the actual journal written by Columbus. He matter of factly states how the Taino were treated. They were enslaved workers on the island, and many of them died. It's all there.
So that's one way we know the truth. I now see that my quote from "The World of Columbus and Sons" was a terrible one (I was very tired last night.) There is no one quote that will reveal the overall bias of the book. I can quote a few, but it's the overall tone that is so terrible. It's more about what is NOT there, you know? What were conditions like on the slave ships? Not a word. Not one.
"None of the Africans brought to Portugal were ever mistreated." (p. 30)
"How could [Prince Henry] imagine a world without slaves? There had always been slavery since the beginning of time[..............] All Europeans who now sailed the Mediterranean might be captured by Moorish pirates and end their days in slavery. African tribes fighting one another sold the women and children they captured to Berber traders who went down to Morocco to the great inland trading center of Timbuktu." (p. 30)
So yes, the above things may or may not be true, that's not really the point. The point is that the whole book is written from the point of view that European whites do stuff, and because they are white and they have power in the world, it is somehow okay.
I am not an eloquent writer, but I just want to say one more thing about history books that were written a long time ago. One hundred years ago, perhaps more than fifty percent of the white population of the United States sincerely believed that black people were not as intelligent as whites, and somehow not entitled to the same privileges. There were many other beliefs in place, for example regarding the role of women in society. I just think that when choosing a history book for your children to read (it is less important if you are going to pick out snippets and read them aloud), you should be vigilant for these "assumptions" that we no longer believe.
Thanks for listening.
Julie
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There must be some new protocol. The doctor asked him if he "and his dad" had had a talk about sex. I said no, but he and I had. (His father would have been mortified, but I have bought him every book on the planet and answered a myriad of questions on the topic.) He also wanted to make sure that my son knew the correct words for the body parts, and didn't use the slang that he might have picked up from peers.
At the time, I thought it was because we have been homeschoolers for all these years, and the doctor wanted to make sure that my son knew about sex. Some of my acquaintances who homeschool for religious reasons don't include quite as much sex ed as we do in our homeschool! :lol: (The doc was an older fellow, and he spoke about things like respect and morals instead of giving any real factual information. Very cute.) I, too, wish we had been given a heads up. We were just there for vaccinations!
Julie
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Now you have me curious so I am going to have to do some reading in"The World of Columbus and Sons" to find out what you are talking about. I have that book but I haven't read it. I've heard it's really interesting but I've never heard it called evil. :lol: Is the content so horrendous that a good discussion could not clear things up when using it with my dd ?
No, I'm going to have to go with Bill here and say that there is no overcoming the general bias of the book. I would go with the book "After Columbus: the Next 500 Years" instead. This gives the real story about how Columbus was actually arrested for being such a cruel governor of Hispaniola and causing the destruction of the Taino. (The name is perhaps not exactly right, but I need to get my child to bed here soon.) I guess you need to ask yourself why are you studying history? Why study slavery? It still exists today. Is it right? Is it ever justified? I believe that we study history (especially things like the Vietnam War) in order to learn from it. Really learn from it, as in don't repeat mistakes.
Much of the discussion of slavery is simply a justification for it. On p. 30: "How could it not have seemed to Prince Henry that slavery under these conditions could be wrong?" There is nothing about how many died, how they were packed into the ships like lumber with no fresh air and no exercise, nothing about how it is WRONG.
As we say, just my humble opinion! Going to bed now.
Julie
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Please read my post about "The World of Columbus and Sons" on the spin-off thread "most evil history books." It is largely a justification for why the slave trade wasn't bad. On the other hand, there are fabulous books (very difficult for younger children) which treat this topic accurately.
Julie
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I'm afraid that I am not going to be able to resist responding to your title, rather than to your actual question. (Clears throat.)
The most evil history book that I, personally, have encountered, is called "The World of Columbus and Sons." It is by Genevieve Foster and could have been written by the slave traders, LOL. (The only reason that I still have it is that I don't want anyone else to read it! :lol:)
Julie
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We did Town level and lived it. My son had absolutely no interest in poetry before, and now he writes them for fun. We laughed and laughed over Paragraph Town, and we learned so much. I really, honestly, had no idea that two independent clauses should be separated by a comma. And the program also solidifies understanding of subordinate clauses and how to punctuate
them (answer: it depends on where it comes in the sentence).
I do think having student books is essential for the books that have the answers written in. That includes the "extra" material in the back of
Paragraph Town, and Practice Town. In either case, you could rewrite
the exercise on a white board if you knew in advance which pages you were going to look at that day.
Julie
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I told you that you would like it! I said it very eloquently, too, something about how you and MCT share a love for thrilling language. Yay.
Julie
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Well, since they can't be considered
FOOD by any stretch of
the imagination, of course they never expire!
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While you are waiting for an answer, I'll bump up the thread bt telling you what we did after Right Start "E" at the end of 4th grade. Singapore 5A, Life of Fred:Decimals, Singapore 5B, Life of Fred Decimals & Percens. We do have RS Geometry, which we will do over the summer. I do know that some people on this board have done the Videotext Algebra after "e", so stay tuned for your real answer!
Julie
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Don't knock this one until you've tried it. Seriously, it works so well. Just put a small piece of onion on top of your head while you cut. I have no idea why it works, but it works like a charm. You will, however, invariably forget about it and greet your husband/children/dinner guests with a small piece of onion on your head. :lol:
Julie
Math question - Time, Speed, Distance
in K-8 Curriculum Board
Posted
What helped my son (and yes it is simple but yes he needed to see it), is for me to ask him what is seven times six. After he answers that, I ask him what is 42 divided by 7. Then I show him how that applies to rate, time and distance. Distance is always the dividend or the product, and rate and time are always either the multiplicand (is that a word?) or the divisor. You don't have to use those words, but it is surprising how it helps. Actually I think I used an easier problem like 4 x 3 = 12 and then 12 divided by 3, 12 divided by 4.
Good luck!
Julie