NancyNellen
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Posts posted by NancyNellen
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I am on my third pass through the SOTW series currently. I can say, without any doubts, that my history-loving high schoolers were exceedingly well-served by their trip through SOTW. I can think of no inaccuracies that required unlearning at higher levels. As a matter of fact, they have consistently been among the most well-prepared at every outside history club, activity, and class they have taken. Does SOTW deserve all of the credit for this? No. But I absolutely credit it with opening my children's minds to the wonders of history, making the historical events of the past interesting and captivating to them, and contributing greatly to their early and continued love of learning. They have most definitely not been harmed in the least by any potential "inaccuracies."
I guess you can say I am a big fan.
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Thanks, everyone, for the continued reviews and insights. Nancy...please do not mention ANY OTHER books! My TTC addiction is already spiraling out of control, and I am trying to tame it! :001_smile: ha ha!
Another question...do most of you read the chapter and then listen to the corresponding lecture or vice versa? For the Homer epics, I scheduled the book chapters first and then the lecture. It seemed to work fine, but a few chapters into the Aenid, my son said that it might be helpful to listen to the lecture first. I switched the scheduling around, and he said it worked out much better.
For Confessions, I'm thinking it might be better for him to grapple with it first and then listen to the lecture afterward. What do you all think?
I solemnly swear not to mention any other fantastic TTC lectures (in this thread, at least :-) ) Personally, we prefer listening to the lectures after reading, in general. It helps to tie it all together after we have had a chance to "grapple with it," as you say.
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8Filtheheart, I think you maybe the only person to have read the whole Comedia! :D As far as I can tell, most folks just read Inferno. Tapestry says that they are reworking to reading the whole thing, but it is rare.
I listened to the lectures on the Comedia, and although I wanted to read the full thing, I did not. I suppose you could say that I paid my penance because I did buy the whole thing, just didn't read it. I'm afraid I did the same thing with Paradise Lost after reading Lewis's Introduction.
We just finished the whole Divine Comedy and thoroughly enjoyed it. The TTC lectures were a very helpful addition. We loved the TTC lectures for Confessions earlier this year and are currently using the lectures which accompany Milton and Paradise Lost. Highly recommend all!
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The funniest one I've ever seen said, "What if the hokey-pokey is REALLY what it's all about?"
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I would say we have averaged 2-3 additional books per topic. I will also disagree and say, for our family, the encyclopedias have been essential. My children really love reading them and looking at the pictures. My oldest, during his 6th and 7th years took the Usborne encyclopedia with him everywhere and used it as his bedtime reading EVERY night. Maybe my kids are weirdos, but I can't imagine doing SOTW without one or the other encyclopedia (my kids preferred the Usborne in the early years.)
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2/3 C. Greek yogurt
1 frozen banana
Small handful frozen blueberries
Splash of all natural OJ (or fresh squeezed)
1 spoonful RAW Organic Green Superfood
Handful fresh spinach
3 T. Flax seed
Enough water to blend
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We are! We are leaving Monday to go to Pigeon Forge. I'm super-excited, since the last few weeks have been nuts!
Ooooooo.....we did Pigeon Forge two years ago and LOVED it! Enjoy!
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We love major road trips in the minivan! We have done Boston to Colorado Springs and back, Los Angeles to Boston and back, Los Angeles to eastern Tennessee and back, and many other smaller trips...all in the minivan with five kids. We actually really, really enjoy these long trips and love spending the time together.
I do recommend rationing water/drinks so as to not be stopping so frequently. We can easily go 4 hours without stopping now that the kids are older. We also take lots of high protein snacks for the car so we don't have to stop for lunch: nuts, granola, Greek yogurts, beef jerky, trail mix. My husband does a lot of traveling, so he has a bazillion Marriott rewards points, allowing us to stay for free quite a bit. This is a double blessing because we can almost always get a free breakfast. Spring hill Suites and Fairfield Inns are our favorites, because we can usually fit the whole family into one room.
Good luck with your planning!
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Well, I do think it is a skill which should be acquired and strengthened. My 9 year old, 4th grader has gotten better this year. Sometimes we had to shorten the excerpt and do shorter narration of smaller chunks, but with practice he is able to do longer bits now. When I think back to my high school and college career, I can think of many required classes or portions of classes that I had little interest in (upper level music theory comes to mind:-) I would not have been well-served by a brain that checked out, although it certainly happened occasionally. I would probably read in small chunks and take shorter narrations as she builds that muscle.
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Either age 5 or 6 based on reading ability. We are big FLL fans here.
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You make the choices. Dc can eat the food or not. They don't need to know beforehand what's being served. Whining results in time-out and no food.
I'm just mean like that. :D
Count me in as another meanie, but I make the meal choices around here...and complaining about food definitely does NOT result in getting what you want.
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Lots of nuts: pistachios, raw almonds, cashews, peanuts. Sometimes we mix in dried fruit.
Mini muffins
Z Bars
String cheese
Fruit
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Hard boiled eggs, muffins and fruit?
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I am so sorry for your loss. Prayers being lifted for you right now.
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Takeout: sushi rolls from my favorite place...the Candy Cane, Shat Love, and Special Library rolls
Wine: J's Pinotage
Ice Cream: B&J's Chubby Hubby
Movie: probably Bourne
Polish: definitely red
But since the hubs is away on business, it's peanut butter on rice cakes, cheap Cabernet, Mythbusters, and naked toes. Oh well.
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Yes, we're in Southern California. We happened to hit things at the right time, I think. We started seriously talking about moving out of state in September. We took our first visit to scope out Portland, OR in November and found somewhere we love. We went back in mid-January to look again and secured a real estate agent. We were there again last weekend and put an offer on a pre-build that was contingent on our house here selling.
We spoke to our agent here last Thursday. We had photos taken this past Friday, went live with the listing yesterday morning and have an offer tonight.
Right now, in our area, there is low inventory and high demand.
Two years is a long time and I can't imagine how that's been for you. I hope things turn around soon!:group:
Oooooo.....ours goes on the market next weekend...I SO HOPE we have the same traffic and quick offer you got!!! Congrats!
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Baked Potato Soup
Grilled Thai Beef Salad
Quinoa Cakes with Poached Eggs
Kielbasa and Black Bean Chili
Roasted Chicken and Corn Chowder
For sides I have planned salad, roasted cabbage wedges, steamed broccoli, and roasted Brussels sprouts.
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I find something I love and that I'm fully equipped to teach. Then I teach it, tweaking it for individual students the best I can. Because I'm so comfortable, I'm usually able to adapt to their quirks. I stopped trying to meet every students needs and started meeting my own as a teacher. I'm just one person with limited resources. I can only accomplish so much. If I spread myself too thin, I do no one any good.
I agree. I have found that a curriculum that I understand and feel confident teaching can be used in many different ways to suit the child. Sometimes it means writing on a whiteboard, or using manipulatives, or not using manipulatives, or reducing the amount of writing, or adding to it, etc. I have actually never used a different curriculum for a subsequent child because of learning differences. I would not have enough shelves or money in the bank to do so. No one seems to have suffered so far.
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I want to reiterate what Tibbie said. She gave you some wonderful and gracious BTDT advice and I agree with all of it. Stick with HOD if it works, focus on school for your older two...especially the 8 year old, and worry less about how the kids feel about everything.
First things first, I would work on some significant training right now. If it were me (and I have most definitely been there) I would really focus on character and obedience in the short term. The kids should not be "wild" or "bored." The times I found my children to be most bored was when I was micromanaging their days too much. Children need large swaths of uninterrupted time to use their imagination, be creative, and entertain themselves. This will come slowly with training. Start with short periods of time and let them know that complaining will not be tolerated.
A far as the activity level, what worked for me when my oldest was a VERY active youngster was to begin each day with some significant physical activity. Depending on the day, the weather, and the other children, we might take a very brisk walk, spend 10-15 minutes constantly jumping on the trampoline, riding bikes, or, on some desperate days I would assign my oldest laps around the house as fast as he could run. I would wash dishes at the kitchen sink and count as he passed the window. Beginning the day with some physical exerrcise made him more able to sit and focus and made everyone generally happier.
Next I would work on obedience. If you are wanting a quiet time in the afternoon, then enforce the quiet time rules. If the children are supposed to stay in their rooms, insist that they stay in their rooms. There must be consequences to coming out, especially if they do it repeatedly. My children all received a snack and a sip of water or juice before their afternoon quiet times. Typically I would read a story while they snacked. This helped to signal that it was time to quiet down and be more still. In the beginning of quiet time training, you may have to camp out outside the bedrooms in order to quickly squash any rebel sneaking :-) Whether they were tired or not, the rule was they stayed in their room until their book on CD was done (usually 60-75 minutes).
Lastly, I would speak to the snack issue. Make sure your meals are high protein, and your snacks even higher protein. I found that my kids were always hungry with high carb, low protein snacks. Crackers just don't cut it around here. Our snacks consist of lots of nuts (raw almonds, pistachios, cashews) usually mixed with dried fruit, hard-boiled eggs with a slice of cheese, apple and celery slices dipped in almond butter, etc. We have scheduled times for snacks, and I insist that they eat good meals....no refusing dinner and then claiming to be hungry 30 minutes later. Once they get into the rhythm of meal and snack times, and they get used to playing and entertaining themselves, they will probably stop asking for snacks incessantly.
Just likeTibbie, I hope you can hear this with the warm smile of someone who has traveled this path and learned lessons along the way, not as a haughty, know-it-all response. I would even go so far as to say that the schoolwork can take a back seat to getting your house in order and focusing on training. In the long run, you will reap far more benefit from spending the time now.
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Yep, our roads are always clear. We couldn't get out of the driveway until we shoveled, but once we did....blacktop with not a flake on it. I love our road crews! And there is no such thing as a "grocery store run" before a storm here. Actually....we laugh when we see news stories of people doing that back east for an expected 4-6 inches.
While I, too, laugh at the city dwellers who wait in long lines to get a gallon of milk, I think that you need to take into consideration the many country folk who are a long distance from grocery stores and very much at the bottom of the priority list when it comes to plowing and power restoration. My parents live in the house I grew up in in a tiny town in central Massachusetts. They almost always lose power if there is more than a foot of snow, or if it is heavy/wet snow, or even slightly windy. When they lose power they lose water because they have a well. Because they are rural they have one small town grocery which is privately owned and will usually close when the weather is bad, since workers can't get there safely. They require a large store of non-perishables since they may not be able to get out or use electricity for multiple days. And the state snowplows consider them extremely insignificant when it comes to clearing the roads. They are predicting 24-30 inches of snow where they live, falling as fast as 4 inches an hour.
The huge storm they had last fall had them without power for 13 days. That is just the reality for them. So, obviously a huge storm coming requires a bunch of advanced prep on their part.
Utah probably has buried power lines, cutting down on long power outages. They also don't have issues with WHERE to put that much snow once it has been cleared...lots of open spaces and all that the northeast does not have. The northeast, with all of its dense metropolitan areas, major international airports, corporate headquarters and centers of commerce, has a lot more overhead when it comes to a major blizzard.
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My oldest daughter and I did Couch to 5K for the first couple months of this year. Now, she uses our elliptical 3x a week for 30 minutes.
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I decided to do something a bit different with my 9th and 10th graders this year. We are doing a Christian literature survey and have decided to aim for depth instead of breadth, so my list is relatively short. We bagan the year with Augustine's Confessions and listened to the TC lectures. We also lined up the suggested readings in the TC course book, so we read through a number of pertinent books of the Bible and some reference material, as well. We are just now finishing a 3 month study of Dante's Divine Comedy, also listening to the TC lectures and lining up extra reading (primarily, the Aeneid, which they read last year but are enjoying again as referenced in Dante.) We also studied Dore's carvings for the Divine Comedy. We will spend the next two weeks working through some Christian poetry (primarily Donne with some others thrown in). My husband is a lover of Donne's poetry and has set a few of his works to music (he is a classically-trained composer and pianist), so he will play a major role in that study. We will finish the year with Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and Milton's Paradise Lost.
BTW, my husband has written the music for a Pilgrim's Progress pop-up book iPad app. A bit juvenile for high-schoolers, but it has been a great way for my younger set to be exposed to this great story. :-)
I have really enjoyed our conversations, and the reading list has been a good challenge for me, as well.
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What are you using for 1st grade?
in K-8 Curriculum Board
Posted
Miquon 2nd grade
Singapore 1a/b
Dabbling in Beast Academy 3a/b
ETC 5, 6, 7
FLL 2
Copy work
Assigned reading
IEW poetry
SOTW 3 w/ activity guide
Lego WeDo & Technic Kits
Piano lessons