[Does 'strange' have a negative connotation?]

I would have said yes but I do not think it had a negative connotation in the context of that conversation. If it was used at a person it would definitely be negative. I do not know different is the best adjective either to describe being unfamiliar with another way of doing things,

[Apples and Pears help]

Thank you! I will use the samples for now until it gets here. Some parts are a little hard to read but I think I can figure it out.

[Apples and Pears help]

I finally got my Apples and Pears A workbook but instead of teachers notes a different workbook got sent by mistake. A homeschool oversight charter ordered the curriculum. I do not think they ordered through Sound Foundations. They reordered the teachers notes today but I have been waiting a while already and would like to start. What kinds of things do I say for a lesson?

[Nourishing Traditions - what do you think?]

I have looked over Nourishing Traditions stuff and it is definitely pseudoscience and quacky information. I think that kind of diet does work well for some people. Different people do good on different diets but the info that they put out on nutrition is not accurate or scientific. Sally Fallon and Weston Price is similar to using Mercola or Natural News as a source for information.

[What kind of supports do you think the public school could offer?]

What you are describing reminds me of Pathological Demand Avoidance. It is not very well known yet but it is related to autism. There usually is a passive early history followed by really avoiding any demand and wanting to be in control. They typically have good pretend play and on the surface social skills and a few other differences from autism.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathological_demand_avoidance

 

http://www.pdasociety.org.uk/what-is-PDA/autism-and-aspergers

[What kind of supports do you think the public school could offer?]

If they trialed him in a regular classroom and he had destructive behavior that put others at risk in my district they have a behavioral program where the kid goes until they are stable and no longer need the program however long that is. Right now it is in a separate building but it will be moving to a school within a school model. It is a smaller class with teachers who have special training. The kids get social skills and behavior training that teaches them. The kids get academics at their level. I would put a request in for a IEP assessment so he can get a behavior plan worked out in whatever type of classroom he ends up in.

[Signapore questions]

That does help. I thought the pencils might have been lessons but pencil and corresponding workbook pages can be very different amounts. Some pencils have barely any and others have a lot. He finds the concepts really easy so far but there is so much practice problems between the textbook and workbook.

[PSA, JAWM, Vent: "Plans" to get together]

I completely relate to this. I am finding it very hard to make friends at this stage in my life. Every time it seems promising it never actually happens. I am sorry you are going through it too.

[Signapore questions]

Maybe this will be clearer when I get my Home Instructors Guide in. They ordered that after the textbook and workbook and hopefully it will be here soon. I am looking what the textbook is teaching and going over the concept the textbook is teaching then we do textbook examples and workbook examples. It is a lot of problems between just that and there may be even more to with the HIG. Do you do all the problems from both?

 

When we get to multiplication section soon it is teaching mostly through skip counting and tables. I do think it may be beneficial to do some little skip counting but we watched the

Education Unboxed video recently on the distributive property of multiplication recently and he actually has been thinking of problems like how they split up the Cuisenaire rods for this math assessment he took and I think that kind of practice really help him.

[SRA Corrective Reading Comprehension]

They were giving away materials they know longer need at a local school and I picked up the B2 presentation book and student workbook. They did not have it for B1 just a teacher guide which is a lot thinner then then the presentation book and does not seem to have all the lessons. I gave dd the placement test and she placed in level B1. I am guessing what I have is an older edition. Do you think I can use the current B1 and followed by an older B2? It does not appear to be the oldest edition they have because I have an even older version of the B2 workbook with older clothing on the cover and the workbooks look very similar in content.

 

I heard it mentioned on here before. Has anyone used it and seen improvements in comprehension?

[PSA: Thin People Also May Not Like It When You Comment On Their Food]

I used to get tons of comments about being too thin and what I was eating as a kid and teenager. I naturally am very skinny. I always ate a lot but I was a very picky eater. I was basically bullied over being thin in high school. I had people say cruel things about being a stick figure and how disgusting that was or blowing over in the wind being anorexic etc on a very regular basis in high school. I hated high school and just put in the minimum and wanted to be done with it. It really hurt my self confidence and I made some bad decisions do to lack of self esteem. I see memes sometimes trashing thin people and they bother me.

[What to know before Kindergarten?]

Before kindergarten I like to minimally work on phonemic awareness like hearing rhyme, the beginning and end sounds etc if that is not down yet. I like to do skip counting by 10s and counting to 100 if counting to 20 is down. You can also work on number sense like being able to look at numbers and know what they are with ten frames or an abacus grouped by 5s Cuisenaire rods etc and knowing numbers are made of smaller numbers in them then branch into addition and subtraction from there.

[Please help me figure out how to help my 6 yo]

My youngest had the hardest time with what you are describing. She finally does have that down but it took quite a bit to learn to count to 20 correctly and learn her numbers and letters. She also tripped up with saying 30 and 40 and the difference in sound between things like 13 and 30 and the the same teens numbers. I am not sure what helped the most. We traced with sand paper and the meet the numbers app worked better then the meet the letter sounds or numbers videos. She did not like the videos but they can work very fast. She did have tracking issues and irregular eye movements when she got checked for a COVD exam recently but I am not sure if that is where it came from. She does have good number sense now and is coming along well in math now.

[when to know your kid has mastered the addition and substraction facts?]

My youngest went through Addition Facts that Stick and it definitely improved her ability to do addition and picture problems in her head but she still needs more practice and is not completely accurate yet. I will be using the subtraction version that comes out soon and I am deciding whether to keep practicing with the addition book too or using Cuisenaire rods or a mix. I will probably do a mix. I do believe practicing with visualizing and then playing games is helping her develop a math sense. My son needs multiplications facts practice and I think practicing visualizing the problem and how to decompose it with Cuisenaire rods will help. I wish there was something similar to Addition Facts that Stick for multiplication and division using Cuisenaire rods.

[Spalding]

I will be a voice of dissent. My struggling readers do not do well with Spalding. Since words are introduced by the most common words first and the weeks spelling lists had so many different rules at once it did not work well for them. Also having reading tied in with spelling was another difficulty. Even though it is learning to read through spelling it was not helping to learn how to spell well. I got an assenment and a few tutoring sessions at a place that uses Barton and in that time between lessons I saw a few families from the school they went to that uses Spalding there. One of my children did really well with it and I have seen a lot of kids reading well from it. It can get a kid without a weakness reading well pretty fast.

[How do you feel about food banks?]

If you had to qualify people would fall through the cracks who miss qualifying. Food banks should be no questions asked. People might need help putting food on the table even if they do not meet qualifications. Most people going to a food bank need help getting food. It is not worth worrying about the rare person using it who does not need it when people who do need it could go hungry.

[Does handwriting practice work?]

In the grades where we used theraputty to strengthen the hands, really worked on correct formation and they used 3 lined paper it made a difference in legibility but it was still slow. This year where they did not work on formation and the writing output went up it really deteriorated to it where it was barely legible or not legible and everything was poorly sized and squashed together. I will be trying writing 8 exercises and limiting writing to when we can focus on formation and using theraputty again. I also have callirobics and will work on formation on paper once we finish writing 8. Plus we are doing some vision therapy exercises. If all that does not work then at least I know I tried. I will add in typing soon.

[really bad cogAT test score-- eek!!!]

Kids can have bad days where they do not test well. One test does not mean a lot. If the test does not match what you see I would chalk it up them just not doing as well as they could on it either by being careless, rushing or not paying close enough attention to the directions etc.

[Does anyone else see this? Do you think it is cause for concern?]

This made me think about an article someone posted on another thread a while back. It was on a superintendents association website, and the basic gist was that Gen X parents are the most likely to date to be silent, not complain, but then take their kids and walk out of the school- to private school or homeschool- much to the shock and chagrin of the school administration. They never saw it coming. So on that front, a decent amount of these people are probably pulling their kids because they are PISSED and feel like it's their only option.

 

I will honestly say that was a lot of what motivated me! I mean, I did my research on homeschooling for months before, but it was a complete and utter dissatisfaction with the school and public school as a whole that drove me to walk. It wasn't on principle per say- it might be that way now though, but I didn't complain or anything prior to leaving school because it would've done no good. I also felt like an outsider amongst the parents to think something was wrong- the basically thought I had joined a cult to be dissatisfied with such a wonderful district.

 

Anyway. So I bet it's a wildly mixed bag of why and where the influx is coming from. But that article I believe called it the Stealth Bomber parents of Gen X, rather than Helicopter parents of the boomer generation. I wish I could find it to post again. Maybe someone else will remember it! It's an interesting off shoot to this conversation.

Yea that article made me a little self conscious because some of it was very true but they said that Gen X parents were only concerned about their own kids unlike Boomers who were community minded. Also the way the article talked about how to advertise to Gen X parents and I felt that was a little off.

 

I totally let little things go but not when something comes up that is a bigger issue just like it says. I also "suddenly" pulled a kid from school with no warning. It just looks like that from their end though. When issues came up and the school could not do anything to make it work I got to researching for the next few months and stopped bothering them. I do care that other kids fall through the cracks very much but I feel more powerless there.

[Does anyone else see this? Do you think it is cause for concern?]

I recently went to a homeschooling parent orientation for a homeschooling oversight group. I was really surprised by how many did not want to directly teach their kids and were just latching onto all the online stuff talked about not even knowing anything about these programs. Most said they did not want to do the teaching.

 

One parent it made sense because it was an older kid in high school who had a specific career goal who was motivated and advanced and the kid was the one who wanted to. The mom who was a little worried about handling higher level math.

[What do you do on a daily basis versus a weekly basis?]

I just started homeschooling him. He is reading well. Last time I checked he was decoding at a 6 or 7th grade level and he comprehends really well. He seemed slow but on his testing they did at school he actually was well above national norms and he is finishing books faster now.

 

His spelling on the other hand is a struggle. Writing is also a struggle. He probably has dysgraphia. His handwriting deteriated this past school year. Now it is barely legible with everything squashed together. He is very strong on oral narration and can go on and on but his written output is very simple. I am starting with Write a Super Sentence then will do The Best Writing Lesson Ever when he finishes but it will probably be taking his narration at first and maybe having him copy that. I am doing the writing 8 exercises for handwriting. Latin roots does not take long each day.

[What do you do on a daily basis versus a weekly basis?]

He is a second grader. He is bright but a slow processor and the biggest issue is that nothing gets done really fast and things end up taking longer then anticipated.

[What do you do on a daily basis versus a weekly basis?]

I am hard time wondering when to fit everything in everyday in the time I have to work one on one with ds. I scheduled to have math, spelling, writing, latin roots, and handwriting every day but time wise I do not know how to fit it in with the things we do a few times a week. I know for sure math will be daily.

 

I just was wondering what others do every day and what things are scheduled on a weekly basis and how many times a week they are done.

[Book recommendations for the 4-6 year old crowd?]

James Herriot's Treasury for Children

Boxcar Children

Magic School Bus

Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel or other Virginia Lee Burton books

Winnie the Pooh the original ones by Milne

Harry Kitten and Tucker Mouse

Bink and Gollie

Strega Nona

Madeline

The Story of Ferdinand

Stone Soup

Toys Go Out

[Frustration]

I agree it sounds like she has learning issues going on. If you cannot get evaluations where you live then I agree with the advice to just assume she has things she displays symptoms of and just intervene for them. Comprehension is something different from dyslexia. Dyslexia can cause comprehension difficulties but more because the decoding is so poor and takes so much effort. I have one child with difficulties with comprehension and she is definitely not dyslexic and my child who had dyslexia type quirks comprehends really well.

 

Off topic but the prices in OhEs area are MUCH lower then in mine for the neuropsychologist, simple screenings, vision evaluations with a COVD etc. I wish I lived where health care cost less and some of this was covered.