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lakerks

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Everything posted by lakerks

  1. I would like to find tests to go with the dragonfly edition, too. Anyone . . . ? :lurk5:
  2. Thank you all so much for the great ideas! You've brought to my attention several items of interest that I simply would not have known about otherwise. Off to continue my research and start booking . . .
  3. Thank you all so much for the great ideas! You've brought to my attention several items of interest that I simply would not have known about otherwise. Off to continue my research and start booking . . .
  4. Thank you all so much - this is great! I would definitely not ride bikes in Boston; that sounds very dangerous to me. I meant to ask if there was an established path to ride between Lexington and Concord, or if riding in the Lexington/Concord area would involve riding on regular roads with cars. I'm not sure I even want to drive in Boston. (D.C. was nerve-wracking enough for me. I can do it, but I don't enjoy it.) Maybe there's a way to stay on the outskirts and then take public transportation or some type of shuttle into town? Would that cause us to eat up too much time going back and forth? Or would it be better to stay at a hotel right in the thick of things b/c once I make it to the hotel parking, I can leave the car and not need it again until I leave Boston? (Seems like that might be really expensive though . . . )
  5. Thank you for the helpful suggestions. We like biking - are there designated paths? (And I'll need to ride extra to work off the cannolis!)
  6. I'd like to take my teenagers to see the historic sites in Boston. I'm in Virginia and I guess we'd drive. Please post your tips and suggestions to help me do this one-time trip well. Is there a "best" time of year to visit? Where to stay? How to get around? I've heard of the Freedom Trail, but I don't understand how to fit the tour (guided by a costumed interpreter) together with getting to go inside places like Paul Revere's house, the Old North Church, etc. Also, while I plan to emphasize Revolutionary War history on this trip, I'd like to sprinkle in some other "lighter" fun activities. Suggestions, please? We're all into music and theater. Any "must see" info would be greatly appreciated, too. Thanks in advance!
  7. I'm partial to Williamsburg, VA (W&M); Fredericksburg, VA (Univ of Mary Wash.); and Chapel Hill, NC (UNC).
  8. I've almost always taken my kids with me to the polls. It seems quite normal to me to take them with me on errands, etc.
  9. We bought a Thule Apex 4-bike hitch rack at REI during a sale, and we're pleased with it. As part of this project, we also had a hitch installed on our vehicle by a local mechanic we know. I think we paid about $200. You might find that you also need a crossbar to fit onto your bike(s), depending on what type they are.
  10. One level = one credit, but I do supplement w/extra grammar work, reading, culture, etc.
  11. I actually would like to buy a coffee table! For now, we pull the piano bench over and use it like a coffee table on occasion.
  12. I was thinking we should do something like that, too! I'd be game to try it (but I don't happen to have any bee stickers).
  13. I'm going. I've been every year for a decade or so. I'm going to stop by the info booth and try to meet you. I'd like to meet some fellow Virginians who frequent the boards. My advice to the person who was hesitant to meet people: Try asking a brief question such as, "This [curriculum} looks interesting . . . have you used it before?" You can also notice from name tags where people are from and make chit chat about that. "I see you're from [whatever town], I used to live there" or "my family lives there." I have found most other convention attendees to be very friendly. Hope you all have a great convention!
  14. Yes, and it's one of my very favorite things! I remember admiring my grandmother's ring when I was a little girl, and I've always thought they were neat. Mine has the name of my older child engraved, then his birthstone, then the name of my younger child, then her birthstone. They have the same birthstone. It was a gift to me - I didn't design it, but I love it!
  15. Sugar and some grains (especially wheat) seem to be an appetite stimlulant for a lot of people. Myself included. Eliminating them, even for a short time, helps with weight loss. I also had a major pasta/bread/sweets addiction. Reducing them did not help, I had to completely eliminate them ... A very small serving of rice on rare occasions, but only in the evening and only if I can be careful to not go nuts that night or the next morning, otherwise all the cravings come crashing back. :iagree: I think I've been able to manage something similar with my postponing strategy. I'll eat mostly proteins (deli turkey) and vegetables earlier in the day. I can eat whole-wheat pizza crust w/veggies in the evening and be fine. I can even eat a whole-grain banana muffin as a late evening snack and be fine. But if I eat a sandwich (two pieces of white bread w/something) at lunch or spaghetti for supper, I just feel like I can't get enough to eat and all my good habits fly right out the window. You'll probably learn what your triggers are and then you can know to avoid those. And if you "fall off the wagon," all is not lost. Just get back to it. (That was supposed to be a quote at the top - sorry - still learning how to do this!)
  16. Ultimately, I think it's a matter of calories in/calories out as you mentioned. I'm using an app called "Lose It" to track my calorie budget for each day, and I have found that really easy and quick to use. For me, writing down what I eat (or logging it in on the app) makes a world of difference. I've lost 15 pounds in 4 months (trying to lose it at a sensible rate while developing habits I hope to be able to maintain). Yes - exercise. (Then you can "afford" to eat more!) :) Yes - fiber/whole grains/produce will fill you up and give you needed nutrients. And I tend to save a lot of my calories for later in the day, telling myself that "I can have that if I want it, but I'll just wait a little while." That way I don't wind up having spent all of my calorie budget too early in the day. I've even had days when I looked at the list of what I had eaten and realized I needed to consume a lot more calories - so I took my daughter out for an ice cream cone! That doesn't happen often - it's all about balance. I wish you much success - you can do it!
  17. Homeschooling made the front page of the Richmond Times-Dispatch this morning. http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/news/2012/apr/29/tdmain01-out-of-the-home-into-world-to-learn-ar-1877021/ Nice article. What I find most notable about it is that it's on the front page of the Sunday paper - and at a time when there's not a homeschooling convention in town or homeschool legislation being discussed in the General Assembly.
  18. Thanks for posting. I've been thinking about signing ds up for this for next fall. Do you have an opinion on whether it would be more helpful to do the lab intensive before or after having completed most of your Apologia bio course? Also, what prior lab experiences had your son had? Does this intensive take the place of the experiments in the Apologia text? (Some of them - dissecting a cat, for example - go beyond what I had expected we would encounter in a first-year biology course.)
  19. When my children were in the preschool/early elementary stage, I made a point to do Spanish with them. Honestly, I wanted them to become fluent, and I was trying to catch that early window for learning languages, etc. Even though my experience had been with French, I chose Spanish because of the availability of resources for it in my community. In addition to occasional Spanish co-op classes and workbooks, I noticed that our public library had a section of children's picture books written in Spanish (i.e. "Goodnight Moon" and "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?") I began checking out these kinds of books and reading them out loud to the kids just like any other book. I soon learned that bookstores carried similar books and built up a small library of my own, and we eventually progressed to where the children could read them to me. Our library also had a bilingual "Story Time" - and it worked well for helping us hear more Spanish. I guess I was trying for some natural immersion. We had a Spanish-speaking family move in next door, and yep, I went over to the fence, Spanish-English dictionary in hand, and invited them to come over and play and get acquainted. So I'm all for doing what you can to learn languages early on. And I'd say use what you have available - Spanish will probably be easiest to come by, but in D.C. you may be able to find other options, too. Good luck!
  20. I think it would be interesting to hear your mother's observations since she's been involved in homeschooling for a long time. I hope you'll ask her and tell us what she says.
  21. Maybe you could get a college catalog from a school that offers a degree in environmental science and look at the requirements. That might give you an idea. I like science and was certified to teach it at the high school level. I would say I do like math. However, I was terrible at calculus. At the college I attended (in the '80s), and it was a selective one, the only math I had to take for a geology major was calculus, and I would have had to take that anyway, even if I had chosen to major in literature. For a psychology major, I had to take statistics. Hope that helps.
  22. :iagree: I've used Apologia (and still am using sections of it sometimes). I told myself I would just pre-read and skip sections I felt were too "editorial" or controversial. I also have supplemented some topics with secular information. That ends up being a lot of trouble to do, and it can still backfire on you. Dd (now 11) seems turned off by the religious talk and just dismisses it with a "here she [the author] goes again . . ." attitude and asks if she can skip that part, etc. I'm almost at the point now where I would rather use a secular text and talk with my children about why I have faith instead of using a religious text and having to overcome the overt religious references that seem to turn my kids off. Ironic, isn't it!
  23. We're doing French, but I think this will still apply. First of all, I do like to supplement (Breaking the Barrier, some cultural activities, and some opportunities to practice conversation with others). As for the worksheets, quizzes, and tests, I find it works better to let ds get a little farther ahead on the computer work he does independently before having him do the "paperwork." For example, he just finished up Unit 2, lesson 4 on the computer, but he was only on Unit 1, lesson 4 worksheets. Having this lag time between the computer practice and the worksheet practice seems to be helping.
  24. Ds 15 is using Rosetta Stone French. I have mixed feelings about it. Here's our situation: He chose French as the language he wanted to learn. We bought all five levels at once. He is on track with it, currently a little over half way through the second year of it. Particularly at the beginning, I felt the need to go over vocabulary with him, make him write down conjugations of verbs in his notebook, and explain a few "mysteries" of the grammar to him. I also chose to supplement with Breaking the Barrier and the French in Action videos at learner.org. I felt he needed to spend more time practicing writing out sentences in French, and Breaking the Barrier provided some good exercises for that. So my negative thoughts are that I'm not sure Rosetta Stone would be all that great without any supplementation. But my positive thoughts are that it is something that he can continue to work on steadily on his own, totally independent of me now, and as I look back over his study of French so far, I do see where he has really learned a lot. Oh, and he enjoys it better than the Breaking the Barrier. A year ago, I probably would have said that it was a mistake to purchase it, but now if I had to do it all over again, I think I probably would still go ahead and get it. I'm in a comfortable rhythm now of having him work on Rosetta Stone on his own for a unit or two, alternating with me working more closely with him in the Breaking the Barrier book. That way I feel like he's getting the needed practice writing, but the independent time in there keeps me from having too many plates to keep spinning all at one time. Finally, I agree with cheryl h's comment that it's not uncommon to take a lot of language in high school and still find it difficult in college. I took four years of French in high school (straight A's) and so had met the requirement to not have to take it in college. I signed up for a conversation class, though, just b/c I thought I'd enjoy it. Talk about "deer in the headlights" . . . :-0
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