mellifera33
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Posts posted by mellifera33
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Build Your Library has some secular unit studies. The prehistory unit study is one of my very favorite things we have ever done for homeschool, and my oldest son is loving the WW2 study right now. There is currently a 20% off sale.
Mystery science is free right now, I think. My younger kids loved it, and it is really easy to implement.
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I've been wondering when this would be announced--all k-12 schools in King (main city Seattle) Snohomish (main city Everett) and Pierce (main city Tacoma) counties are closed through April 24. Our local hs music program has been moved online, and our coop is canceled. This will be interesting, locally--Tacoma school district and our local, smaller district are both high poverty districts. Hopefully they can continue nutrition and health services to families in need.
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7 hours ago, leahtalbot96 said:
As a child, I loved Blokus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blokus
I forgot about this one. It's another favorite here--simple enough for the kids and interesting enough for the adults.
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2 hours ago, Emily ZL said:
I don't think it's crazy to have a side hustle going as a homeschool mom, especially if you are already putting together plans from scratch for your own family. The devil is in the details, though. When SCM or Pam Barnhill sells their plans, they are mostly using credible outside resources for the actual info. They aren't claiming to have the expertise to literally write the curriculum from scratch and be the primary resources too. There's a huge difference between GR telling you "here's all you need to know about this subject and you can trust that it's accurate" and the morning time plans that say "read this book by Demi" and "play this CD from maestro classics."
Yes, I am organizationally challenged and I happily pay for a nice schedule and booklist that helps me stay on track.
7 minutes ago, Æthelthryth the Texan said:I think I have this figured out with a plan- after all, imitation is the sincerest form flattery, right?!
The secret to success appears to be appealing to the insecurities of a bunch of homeschool moms, telling them they can't do it alone, and then getting them to pay you vast sums of money (which a large percentage struggle to afford) to let them all join together in a Community™ (make sure you get that ™!) with equally insecure mothers on a weekly basis so they can be insecure together, and make them also do all the work of reserving the space, planning the meetings, collecting the dues due to you, providing the materials, and doing the actual teachings.
It will also be advantageous if you make up some catchy songs, yet
spend vast amounts of timehire some lawyers for the purpose of keeping said songs off of YouTube, because heaven forbid someone hear your songs without paying through the nose to do so. Threatening legal action is highly effective. Then you get the Moms to spend money to go to workshops to learn the singing of The Songs™ complete with Hand Motions™. Definitely, prohibit them from using any materials other than yours, or those sanctioned by you and your top MLM members (who also conveniently curriculum publishers!) while said Mothers are meeting in the Community™ they paid vast sums of money to enter into. This while also then slowly bringing in other curriculum publishers over the years that are *required* purchases they also can also pay to use within your MLM (joint exploitation!) and aren't allowed to buy used.And yes, you can have all of this income while no one actually produces any leadership or service value on your end whatsoever! Oh, and then the last step is you block anyone from your websites/forums who suggest these same mothers could do this all for FREE if they wanted, were one of them to do something so daring as buy a used Manual™ used online for $7 and then meet up with some local friends at the park of library. You should pretty much banish anyone who suggests that. Through those steps, voila. You will have a highly successful MLM, even perhaps Cult, before you know it! At least from what I can tell where I live. Maybe start in Texas.
Expect a cease and desist letter in your mailbox tomorrow...👩💼 Does that emoji look like a lawyer? She's supposed to be a lawyer.
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4 minutes ago, lulalu said:
Well, if it is this easy to make money selling a curriculum maybe I should give it a try. 😂
She seems to bypass talking about her qualifications. So I can only assume she has none. I have nothing wrong with moms designing and writting curriculum for their own families without any qualifications. But selling it to others is a problem.
I think this is a symptom of people wanting to make an easy dollar. It really just feels like she wants to make money easily. It really might be best for her to just get an established part time job. Making and selling curriculum is not this easy. It takes work and time lots of time, and knowledge.
Someday someone’s going to make a killing with a homeschool curriculum MLM...
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16 minutes ago, Jean in Newcastle said:
I don't know if other people who live here will agree with me, but I think that the local news stations have done an excellent job covering COVID19. They have explained what is going on where. (Better than places like Life Care Center in Kirkland to their own patients and families.) They have put out warnings against panic and have explained the difference between prudent preparation and stockpiling which doesn't help. They have given people timely information on shutdowns while also explaining some of the difficulties in making some of these decisions. For example: school closures. Do you keep the school open if a staff member or student has been exposed knowing that for many families this means that their default childcare is the elderly who might them be exposed to more illness by these children? And yet, parents have legitimate concerns and there are legitimate reasons to deep clean the facility.
Agreed. I have also appreciated the state and county health department briefings, and how open they have been that on many issues, they just don't know what's going to happen.
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Haba has a lot of good games for that age group. We have liked Orchard, Animal Upon Animal (I think they make a version of this with chunky, toddler-safe pieces), Sleeping Princess, and Unicorn Glitterluck.
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4 minutes ago, Sneezyone said:
This makes me so sad. My most vulnerable family members are in elder care facilities in Pierce County.
😥 I'm sorry. Dr. Chen made the point that being a bit behind King County meant that they could see what they did right and wrong and hopefully not make the same mistakes. I'm sure that any respiratory illnesses in nursing facilities are going to be scrutinized from here on out.
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https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article240979166.html
Pierce county in WA has a confirmed case. I actually feel calmer after watching the press briefing--Dr. Chen, the head of the doh, has such a calm demeanor, and his attitude is that "this is what public health does, and we've been preparing for it for years."
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The UW developed a test early in the outbreak, and according to this article they will be able to process 4000 samples a day in the near future. I'm glad that someone was paying attention to world news and preparing!
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3 minutes ago, Plum said:
A quick read shows that this is a 14 month long safety trial, after which efficacy trials would be done. I wonder if the timeline would be sped up if there are no red flags early in the safety trial. If this virus shows a seasonal pattern, ebbing in the summer and circulating again in the fall and winter, it could be causing disruption for a long time.
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25 minutes ago, Arcadia said:
https://www.chronicle.com/article/U-of-Washington-Cancels/248198/
“The University of Washington's flagship Seattle campus announced that it would cancel all in-person classes and move them online for at least the next few weeks. The university is the first major U.S. campus to take such drastic action amid rapidly growing fears of the novel coronavirus and the disease it causes, Covid-19.”
ETA: https://www.washington.edu/coronavirus/
“Update – 03/06/2020: As a way to increase precautionary health measures, such as social distancing, and ensure the successful conclusion of the quarter for UW students on all of our campuses, as of March 9, 2020, classes and finals will not be held in personfor the remainder of winter quarter, which ends March 20. Our campuses will remain open to serve all those who rely on our services, including hospitals and clinics, dining services, residence halls, and recreation and athletics facilities. Husky athletics events will proceed as scheduled. We plan to resume normal class operations when spring quarter begins March 30, pending public health guidance.”
That's a big step. Will the other colleges and universities in the area will follow suit? I'm watching the public schools too. Young adults staying home is one thing, but kids being home would be a huge disruption. I'm glad I don't have to do the cost-benefit analysis on that one.
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At what point will all healthcare workers and first responders be using the proper exposure protocols with all incoming patients? When I see numbers like this—30 people quarantined here, 2 dozen there—I wonder who will be left to run the hospitals. Staffing margins aren’t great to begin with.
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9 minutes ago, 8FillTheHeart said:
I am going to bail on engaging in this conversation bc in no way do I agree even though I am an advocate of unit studies and non-textbook education.
Conversations in which everyone agrees are not very interesting. 🙂 But yeah, my five minutes of daiquiri-inspired brainstorming isn’t really the basis for a high school curriculum. It seemed like a good idea at the time. 😄
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2 hours ago, 8FillTheHeart said:
Thanks for sharing. Your post clarifies the appeal.
I personally cannot fathom using any science or history units at the high school level put together by just anyone without a background in the field. I can't imagine approaching high school science in random units b/c I cannot fathom mastering chemistry or physics without logically designed sequencing. Ecology, yes, I can see units working for ecology. But, no, not biology as taught today focused on cellular biology and biochem.
I hope parents who have kids who think they want to pursue a STEM field or a 4 yr U recognize the weaknesses.
Looking at the curric in question, it's obviously not for stem-y high school kids. But I think that a series of unit studies for high school could work. There would have to be a flowchart to show which classes were absolute prerequisites for others, but there would be some choice. History units would go along with the science units, and would be non-chronological. For example, one unit might be classical mechanics, Newton, the English Civil Wars, Pope, Dryden, and Pilgrim's Progress. Another might be atoms, elements, the periodic table, Mendeleev, 19th century Russian history, and selections from the golden age of Russian literature--Gogol, Chekhov, Pushkin, Tolstoy. The elements unit would have to precede stoichiometry, Jeremias Benjamin Richter, Holy Roman Empire/Prussia, and The Sorrows of Young Werther. Astronomy/Mayan history/Popol Vuh. Botany/the role of plants in Ancient literature--Gilgamesh, the Bible, Greek Myths. Microbiology--story of Cholera in Victorian England, class system, workhouses, Dickens. Just spitballing. lol.
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3 hours ago, 8FillTheHeart said:
Which comes back to the point of who decided the scope and sequence? The content? Has anyone successfully used the same approach long-term? Is there any evidence supporting it is a sound academic program? What is her academic background? How old is her oldest? Other than marketing and artwork, what are her qualifications for people trusting her materials?
Usually I'd breeze over these types of questions, trusting that a homeschooling parent would be willing and able to determine what materials fit into the scope and sequence of their homeschool, but I am coming to realize that the proportion of the homeschool community with which I am familiar is rather small, and perhaps not representative of the community as a whole. With self-publishing easier than ever, and so many people deciding that expertise is bunk, I can only see this problem growing in the future, and not just for homeschoolers. Wasn't there a recent thread about how many public school teachers cobble together lesson plans from questionable materials on Teachers Pay Teachers?
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I Speak Latin by Andrew Campbell might be a good fit for you. It's fun but not cute, and the author has audio files on his website if you get stuck with pronunciation.
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I'm sorry if this was already reported upthread, but I just saw on one of our local news channels that the COVID patient in North Caroline had visited the nursing home in Kirkland.
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Welp, I'm toast. I have a friend whose husband works with a guy whose wife works with the covid patient who works at Amazon. Is it time to weld myself into my bunker?
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2 hours ago, OKBud said:
I think that this Spooner woman appeals more to the group insisting that one does not need to read any books to prepare themselves for homeschooling their children [I come across so many of these and it makes me unendingly furious!] than the religiously-motivated homeschoolers.
Is this a common view? I have come across lots of people (online, anyway) who want a 100% online curriculum because they don't have time to teach or don't want to teach, but I've never encountered someone who bragged about teaching from ignorance. That's just bizarre.
Edited to add: I called over my 12 y/o to ask him about the Viet Cong error. His eyes got wide and he was speechless for a moment. And it takes a lot to get this kid to be quiet. 😛
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I suspect that lots of people put off prepping for emergencies in general until they have a reminder. While grabbing stuff they might need in the next few weeks, they think "might as well make a hurricaine/earthquake/teotwawki kit while I'm here."
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Huh. This reminds me a bit of a curriculum that I rejected last year. Beautiful format, lovely pictures, fun activities, and an apostrophe in each plural. lol
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The Wa DOH briefing this morning stated that there have now been six deaths from COVID-19, all from Evergreen Hospital.
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6 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:
Is stat news reliable or sensationalist?
cases in a nursing home doesn’t sound good?
I don't know about the source, but our local news is reporting one employee and one resident from the facility are infected.
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How About Sharing Something Amusing.
in The Chat Board
Posted
Has COVID shut down the meat trucks? I can't believe that you have to mail-order meat!