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Chrysalis Academy

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  1. It is. The good news is that it has been cool, drizzly and overcast - and no wind- all day. I just heard a bunch of air tankers go over, which is a huge relief. The planes were all grounded yesterday because of the smoke and wind and that not only made the fire harder to fight, but it made it really hard to see where it was going. It has apparently been spluttering and jumping around in the hilly ridge country just east of us all day today, but it has slowed down enough that the firefighters have been able to create firebreaks and set backfires, so they are feeling increasingly confident that it won't do a repeat of Saturday night. Best case, they can kind of corral it to the east where it will meet up with the already burned-over area from the Rocky fire, and die out. I'm so thankful it didn't head north toward Clearlake. Or west toward us. Sorry, no book talk to share, I've been pretty mesmerized by this fire thing the last few days. Thanks for letting me offload about it. ETA: Yes, Harbin is apparently gone: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Harbin-Hot-Springs-ravaged-by-Valley-Fire-6503417.php#photo-8624173
  2. And C) so many northern CA'ers choose Lake County because it is much more affordable. Lots of the Napa and Sonoma county workforce actually live in Lake Co and drive south and west for work. People who have lost their homes, even their whole towns, aren't going to be able to pick up and move easily to alternative housing still in driving distance of their jobs. If they still have jobs - if the business they worked for didn't burn down. We've already got a huge housing crunch and lower-income people have a horrible time finding rentals. I'm trying to get my head around how 400-500+ more families are suddenly going to find alternative places to live in the surrounding areas.
  3. It hasn't been drudgery here so far - the TC lectures were interesting and engaging, and the has short, engaging chapters. The practice on note taking is on interesting content, for her classes, so it's stuff she'd be reading or watching anyway, this just makes it more in-depth. Now, in the past when I tried a study skills book where she had to practice the skills with random content, that was drudgery. But this isn't.
  4. The first 10-11 weeks were easy. It got more challenging after that. You should keep in mind that in some cases, it wasn't the difficulty of the assignments that was the problem for people, it's that the very step-by-step, whole to parts way of teaching didn't work well with their kids. If it clicks with your kid, you are probably golden and won't find it so difficult. It's also the case that a 6th grader who as done TC would be so much better prepared than a 5th grader who had just done WWE! One of my issues when WWS was first released was that there was a big jump between what was asked of students in WWE vs. WWS. WWS didn't spend enough time teaching paragraph construction, IMO. TC really focuses on this, so a kid who has done TC would be in very good shape to thrive with WWS. Some of the reading passages are challenging for younger kids, too. More mature readers will do better with them than your typical 10 year old.
  5. Heartbroken for all those affected by the CA wildfires. Some of the poorest communities in the state have been devastated. Help is pouring in now, but what about the days, months, weeks ahead? Where do these people go and how to they rebuild their lives?

    1. Show previous comments  1 more
    2. idnib

      idnib

      A friend of mine made a piece of art for Burning Man and in it was a key, which was the only thing left from a house that burned down in the Oakland Hills firestorm. Newcomers look at the Oakland and Berkeley hills and never realize 3K+ houses burned down there. People do go on, but are never the same.

    3. Chrysalis Academy

      Chrysalis Academy

      True. But I think of those areas as higher-income, residents more likely to have insurance, etc. That's definitely not the case in Lake County

    4. idnib

      idnib

      That's very true.

  6. We could see the glow in the sky last night. It's about 20 miles as the crow flies, but there are a couple of substantial mountain ranges between here and there. I've been collecting clothes and toiletries and taking them to the dropoff locations here in town - don't want to clog the roads over the hill. That's part of what makes it all so scary, there are only two or three roads in and out of these communities, they are pretty isolated, and people got trapped last night. I think everyone is out who needs to be now, but they are in makeshift Red Cross shelters in Napa. This is a rural area, so many people have horses, sheep, dogs, etc. they are having to evacuate as well. It has been heartwarming to see the outpouring of support, particularly from people with ranches/space who are offering to take in and board horses and other animals and house people as well.
  7. We could see the glow all night from the Valley fire, and the smoke this morning. Over 40,000 acres affected, several towns burned to the ground. 0% contained. And this is only one of many. I'm heartbroken for the people who have lost everything. And so grateful to the firefighters and first responders who are risking their lives to help others.
  8. I'm sitting here glued to news sites watching the devastation of a fire in the next county - the latest of many, but close enough to home that I've been to all the places that are now devastated, and know many of the people who are being affected. It's frightening and sad. So many people's lives turned upside down overnight. I finished Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney last night. I liked it more than I expected to. It ties in well with War of the Worlds, which Shannon and I are studying right now. It's interesting to see the progression of alien-invasion stories, from Wells' original story where the aliens are defeated by earth's biota, not by humans, to Invasion where they are defeated by the human spirit - resistance, which seems futile on the surface, turn out not to be, to more modern movies on the topic where the aliens are defeated by brave humans with lots of firepower and special effects. It was a much less hubris-ridden view then than it is now. Books Read in September: 133. Invasion of the Body Snatchers - Jack Finney 132. Memoirs of a Porcupine - Alain Mabanckou 131. Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded - Simon Winchester 130. Itch: The Explosive Adventures of an Element Hunter - Simon Mayo 129. The Castle in Transylvania - Jules Verne 128. Andrew's Brain - E. L. Doctorow 127. The Dark is Rising - Susan Cooper
  9. We are really focusing on learning to take notes from lectures and from books this year in 8th grade, so that the skills are in place for high school. I'd start by having the kids watch How to Become a Superstar Student, a TC lecture. Well worth it, my dd learned a lot from it. She is now reading What Smart Student Know by Adam Robinson which is a detailed explanation of how to take notes from books and lectures, how to study successfully, etc. I definitely recommend both those resources. As far as what I'm doing to help - we are doing several TC courses in science, and she is taking sort of Cornell-style notes. The first couple of lectures I sat beside her and took notes myself, to model the process. Now I sit with her to watch, but don't actually take notes. I do pause the video and comment if I think she's letting something go by, as well as offer hints and tips on what to write, how to write it, etc. It's kind of at the "we do" stage of learning. For texts, I've made her study guides for the first two books she is reading this year, to help her read slowly and focus on the important points and develop the reading-to-learn/writing-to-learn skills that she'll need. Modeling and scaffolding is important at this stage, I think, with the goal of getting them to independence with the tools they'll need to learn in high school and beyond.
  10. Virginia Woolf comes to mind - A Room of One's Own is a pretty classic tract on what it takes for a woman to be able to have the time and space in her life to make art. I think her novels are better for when you are older (personal experience speaking) and I wouldn't assign them to a teen. Charlotte Perkins Gilman - The Yellow Wallpaper and Herland are classics of early 20th century feminism. Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Charlotte and Anne Bronte have feminist themes The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton - for a rather tragic take The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
  11. I agree with Lori that The Invisible Man is the best first Wells. I like WotW second best, and I agree that Time Machine drags. And is creepy. As is Dr. Moreau, I love all the movie links! My girls are film and theater buffs, so adding a film version of the books they read works really well for us, and helps them develop observation and critical thinking skills, and it's a great first, easy, compare-and-contrast topic. FYI, dd read Invisible Man as a 7th grader. She just finished WotW in the beginning of 8th, and she commented early on that she didn't think she would have been able to read it as easily earlier. She felt good that she was able to tackle a more challenging (to her, meaning older syntax/vocab and writing style) book but I think it was good that it wasn't a super long book. My dd is a voracious reader and doesn't have any LDs that make reading hard, but she hasn't really made the transition into reading older/harder books and I'm trying to gently lead her in that direction without pushing too hard. I've found that short stories/novellas/short novels are proving a better gateway to the longer classics. Wells, Poe, Hawthorne, Stevenson all have short stories or novellas that are engaging and good for this. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde was a good choice for us in 7th.
  12. My dd just finished War of the Worlds. She really liked it. There are a couple of movie versions, and that can lead into a whole exploration of early space-invasion sci-fi - check out Jack Finney's The Body Snatchers and the Invasion of the Body Snatchers movies, compare and contrast the War of the Worlds book, movies (several versions) and modern alien-invasion movies like Independence Day. Listen to the Orson Welles radio performance of WoTW and talk about how media has changed - and not - in the last 100 years. There is so much you can do with a story like that! And it doesn't all have to involve reading to involve a lot of analysis, critical and comparative thinking, etc. I think there is a lot of space for analysis and comparison of films and stories that would be great for kids with reading and writing challenges. It doesn't have to involve reading lengthy tomes in order to be a good exercise in analysis and higher-level thinking.
  13. This seems like a better list than the one on the page I linked - it had all the usual suspects, but then it also had Matilda by Roald Dahl, which I don't think counts, and it also had Paddington. Paddington? I probably haven't read that since I was a kid, but I can't imagine what makes it special from other kid's books with talking animals. James and the Giant Peach, Coraline, The Graveyard Book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane - those are children's books I can see straying into the MR category, but Paddington? I don't get it. I felt like Inigo Montoya, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
  14. Good point! I've run into that too. Another difference is whether your kid is planning to specialize in the given area, right? If they know they are STEM-bound or humanities bound or languages bound or whatever, it can make sense to knock prerequisites out of the way in the middle grades so that they have time to go deeper and/or specialize. Now I have to apologize if I'm being cranky - I'm having a really stressful day/week/month. I'm having a hard time keeping it all in perspective. Probably not a good time to be thinking about big picture long term plans! :tongue_smilie:
  15. This was my return-to-multiple-times comfort series of my 20s and 30s! Every time a new book would be published I'd go back and read the whole series, so the early books I've read multiple times. It's been a few years. I do have some critiques of how he has his female characters relate to one another, especially his obsession with corporal punishment, but overall it was a series I've loved over many, many years. Shannon keeps asking when she gets to read it. Next summer, I think - if she starts it during the school year I'll never get her to read another assigned book! :lol:
  16. I'm glad it feels that way for you - it means you are doing something right! And meeting your student's needs. Which is great. For me, this is how it fees: I've never liked the idea of having middle school be all about preparing for high school - taking high school level versions of the same classes they will take in high school, so that they can take college level courses in high school, so that . . . what? They can get into a good college? They can skip courses in college? My personal choice for us has been to use the middle school years as a chance to explore science, broadly, and to try and cover some of the topics that don't fit into the biology-chemistry-physics "buckets" that seems to be the norm for high school. There isn't a right or wrong answer, right? People are just expressing the situation they understand, and how it feels to them. Kids, parents, family constellation, goals, and constraints are different for each of us, so we're all going to navigate this path differently. It's good to see how others are doing it.
  17. You might really enjoy SWB's Literary Analysis lecture if you haven't listened to it. She makes it sound easy and doable! And lists a couple of resources, including the one I linked. http://peacehillpress.com/index.php?p=product&id=126
  18. I think that's the part that really bothers me, too. I don't like the idea that education - or childhood, for that matter - always has to be about preparing for the next level.
  19. Ok, yeah, that was a great discussion! Very helpful. I liked Jenn's explanation of the built-world vs. real-world-with-weird-stuff-happening angle. I think it's what I was reaching for in my real people experiencing unreal/magical events comment above.
  20. I thought this site had an interesting discussion of Magical Realism: http://road-signs.org/What-Is-Magical-Realism-Magical-Realism-Examples "Magical Realism happens when a highly realistic setting is invaded by the supernatural as a matter-of-fact. The reader accepts 'the reality' of 'the magical.'" It seems to me that it is the intrusion of the magical into an otherwise realistic/real world setting, and its experience by "normal" not otherwise special/magical people that distinguishes MR from other kinds of magical/fantasy stories set in "the real world" like Harry Potter or Percy Jackson. Thoughts?
  21. In her high school lectures, SWB suggests this book, Essential Literary Terms: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0393928373/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pd_S_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=2DA53TKIL7ENA&coliid=I2J3IMZML4ITSF Figuratively Speaking is good, but more of a middle school level than a high school level treatment. Is this what you are looking for? A book to help you understand and discuss the elements of literature that one would write about in a literary essay?
  22. I'm not quite sure exactly what your question is.. Are you wondering what issues should be addressed via instruction? Trying to make a plan for beginning writing instruction? Wanting a comparison to the writing of other 10 year olds? Or something else? For someone with zero writing instruction, she's picked up a lot of the rules of English grammar via reading or something, and that's great. Her spelling is pretty good, her sentences are grammatical, she uses most conventions correctly. There are small issues to address, I think it's a tough assignment for a 10 year old, out of the blue. If it were me, I'd be focusing on the ability to do basic narration, descriptive, and how-to type writing at this point, and teaching her how to organize a paragraph with a topic sentence and supporting points. She mixes up a couple of different topics in her piece, it could be split into a couple of different paragraphs and each developed to answer the question more fully. But again, was the goal to see if she could write an essay on this topic? Or was it treated more like a test question? The assignment to "write about" something is kind of vague for a 10 year old, hard to pin down, so it wouldn't be surprising that she wouldn't have a perfectly organized multi-paragraph response. She looks like a kid who has a good grasp of English and is ready to be taught academic writing! Not a bad place to start.
  23. It's so true. Kids can get hung up on those "real world" problems when they haven't actually had that real world experience. I notice that a lot. My dds also get caught up analyzing and critiquing the "story" in a story problem which can interfere with their actually solving it. In a timely manner, at least, first they have to discuss whether it makes sense, why it happened, what is likely to happen next . . . sometimes I think they get more mileage out of discussing math word problems than stories. :001_rolleyes:
  24. Ah, I'd love to take a peek at that! Anybody remember around what week?
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