airforcefamily
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Posts posted by airforcefamily
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I would do less copywork. I don't know that I'd double up the days frequently, though; I think some of those skills need some time to sink in.
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Normally I wouldn't but he was in a very academically advanced private school last year so he knows a lot of the material already. I don't know exactly what he already knows and I don't want things skipped so we're going to do the whole book to be sure everything is covered, even if it's more review than anything.
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*grammatically* correct sentences but, fwiw, most of our sentences are dramatically correct too :P
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What objective is intended by all the copywork?
That's just it.... I don't know. Maybe the point is to accomplish something really great that can only be done with copy work? Maybe it's to practice handwriting (a non issue except for speed)? Maybe it's to practice writing dramatically correct sentences (again, not a problem at this point)?
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Our almost seven year old is doing WWE1 and it's going well but he can't stand the copy work. He likes to make it look nice which makes it take longer. I've tried encouraging him to write more quickly, even if it doesn't look quite as nice, but that's how he wants to do it.
Eight weeks into the school year and we're both starting to dread the copy work. We've started to do two lessons a day since he picks it up quickly and it's just so.much.copying. It doesn't help that many of the narration pages are now set up so the student narrates a sentence or two that the instructor writes down for the student to copy.
The eight lessons we do each week usually involve 10 sentences to copy. Each sentence takes 5-15 minutes, depending on length. With an average of about 10 minutes each it amounts to 100 minutes - more than an hour and a half - of copy work each week.
It just seems like excessive busy work for a first grader and I'm wondering if it's really necessary.
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I'm having trouble finding information on all about reading levels. Our almost seven year old can read simple books already but I feel would benefit from a reading program.
A sentence he could read would be: 'Did the children go to the park today?'. He might possibly need to pause and sound out the word children. A sentence that would be too difficult would be: 'Everyone is going to the amusement park after the afternoon concert'.
He is using FLL1 and WWE1. No problems with either and except for getting tired writing out all the copy work (he likes to make it look really good) breezes through the lessons.
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I gave the suggestion bartering. I am a single parent and have been for almost 12 years. I have found ways to make it work. FOr me my kids being in activities has been very important to me. I can not work for more money in a second (or at this time 1st job) due to my health and special needs of my kids. BUT I can work out working a bingo, or cleaning or doing other volunteer work in various ways. Sometimes I asked my family to watch the kids, they would occasionally say yes. We now live 2 hours from my family so that is not always possible. Sometimes I becomes about triangulating bartaring. Suzy down the street will watch the kids, so I can go work x bingo and in exchange I will do Suzy's hemming. So I can get the extra for the kids and the free babysitting. Now that my dd is 13 it is easier. I have her watch the 2 youngest kids and make ds14 come with me.
When The kids were in soccer I was the volunteer coordinator, so I organized all the other parents into volunteer hours but didn't have to be anywhere but home sending out emails to do it. With scouting I was a leader, so the kids were with me there. Dance this year does not do reduced fee but they have worked out a doable payment plan with me so the girls can do so much dance with out me paying so much all at once. (Normally you do a monthly fee but in sept you do the registration fee, exam deposits, costume fee, plus all the gear. They did not charge me anything in sept so I could pay for the the gear, and then added in those extra fees to the grand total for the year and recalculated the monthly fees.
I stick by the adage Where there's a will there's a way. Whether single or married if you are determined to find a way to have the kids in extra lessons you find a way. Did you know you can collect enough pop bottles in local parks, roadways and asking from family members to cover the fees for 1 set of swimming lessons for 1 kid in a 1 month period. Yup, I have done bottle picking to pay for extras (and on occasion to pay for basics).
Nothing about it is easy. It is way easier to write the cheque and not have to worry about it. But if you are poor but want those extras badly enough you make it happen.
I didn't intend that post to address anyone in particular. More of a general 'you'. I've seen many times where bartering is suggested and I don't see it as realistic for everyone. Our kids are in the activities we want them to be in but if we couldn't afford it we would have to drop activities before bartering.
In our family we don't have family within several hundred miles and when they visit we have limited time to spend with them so I wouldn't be comfortable using them as babysitting so I could volunteer/barter. None of my kids are old enough to be left by themselves, let alone watch the younger ones.
We live on a military installation so the amount of cans/bottles we could pick up within walking distance would be pretty limited. We could drive to another area but between the cost of gas to get there, garbage bags, gloves, and gas to drive to a recycling location to sell the cans/bottles we wouldn't end up with much of any gain. The closest recycling location is 40 minutes away. With five kids in the car not many cans would fit making it not profitable. I could see collecting cans in a nearby park possibly being profitable, especially if you live where there is a bottle deposit but I don't think it would work for everyone.
Collecting cans on the side of the road with a baby on your back, two little ones running into traffic, and two slightly older kids to keep track off.... I just can't see any activity being worth that kind of risk.
I can see where there might be somewhere desperate enough to allow a mom with a baby, a toddler, a preschool age child, and two young elementary age kids the chance to barter with those kids with her but I haven't seen any yet. When a dance studio has a steady stream of parents without little ones willing to man the desk while their child is in class they don't want to have to accommodate anyone else.
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Most often I grab unifix cubes. We have regular colored ones, ones with numbers and +/-/=/x on them as well as a pattern board and counting stairs. It's easy to illustrate ideas with them and the kids like building with them too.
We have pattern blocks, counting bears, and cards for both but they don't get much use.
I really want a math balance (where you put little weights on different numbers) but I'm not sure we would use it much.
We used math u see blocks when we used math u see and they were pretty good. They're still pulled out at times.
I'm interesting in the c-rods but I can't seem to wrap my mind around how they would be helpful without a lot of reading to understand what to do with them.
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Generally when one is low income working more hours isn't going to help, you still have to pay the baby sitter which is often more then what you would make working. Its not like you could just get a job while the kids are at school and that job is likely to be min wage:(
This is sort of how I feel about bartering. I see it brought up as though everyone can do it. Most dance studios, gyms, etc. don't want a person with a bunch of little ones and babies in tow trying to clean or answering the phone with noise in the background. When groups have mandatory volunteer hours to keep costs low we almost always have to pay the fine instead of doing the work. When DH is away and I'm functioning without a spouse home everyday I would have to hire a babysitter to barter or volunteer which would cost more than the amount it would offset.
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I want to know this, too! My kids (9 yo and 7 yo) still haven't had swim lessons because the absolute cheapest lessons are $55/mo.
I've been a swim instructor and the price was a big complaint. FWIW - I never earned more than $10/hour and I volunteered to teach classes of paying kids so the pool could make ends meet.
Pools are massively expensive to maintain and operate. Every pool has to carry insurance and, as you can imagine, dozens of little kids who don't know how to swim being there every day is a huge liability.
Swim classes aren't really social gathers anyway so my best advice (assuming you're a reasonably proficient swimmer) would be to look up skills for each level and teach them to your kids until it's beyond your ability to teach - generally around level 3 or so if the parent was never a competitive swimmer or went far in lessons and put them in formal lessons then.
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I agree that it probably isn't really a health concern, especially when I think about how much produce we've gotten there that has been bad. I just thought it was interesting that they had a sign up saying not to touch the grapes due to health concerns, but people can still touch other produce, bakery items, etc.
Most stores will split packages of cheese, candy, macaroni salad, etc. Pretty much any container that the store weighed and labeled in house can be split. Fininding someone to do it for you is another matter....
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My older two do a homeschool gymnastics class. It meats once a week and amounts to $10 per one hour class per child. They do real gymnastics instruction but with it being a mixed age/level group lots of the instructor's time gets focused on teaching new skills to the oldest girl (who is probably the most rewarding to teach) while the other kids practice something on their own without anyone watching or correcting them. I still haven't decided if we're going to keep doing it or not. It's 45 minutes away and I have to entertain the younger kids for the hour in a waiting area with bleachers that drop 8' to hard floor at the top step.
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When our oldest was selling girl scout cookies it was all on her - she was five years old. I would give her advice on what to say and help her write the numbers on the chart but it was up to her to ask to go out and knock on doors. She sold almost $2000 that way. DH and I don't think parents should be salespeople by association. We were not participating in girl scout and they were not our cookies to sell. I can't tell you how many neighbors told me later that they usually don't buy fundraiser things but they did because she was the one to knock, make the pitch, and give the info to me to write down herself.
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We pay cash up front for a pediatric dentist and accept the covered amount from insurance. Four kids for cleanings and x rays comes to about $750. We get back about $575. If we took them to a network provider we wouldn't pay anything.
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What really grosses me out are people who stick their dirty hands into bulk candy bins for a sample. I'll only get individually wrapped bulk candy because of it.
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Grapes or produce are different, though. The customer is expected to touch it, to pick out what is wanted. The customer also expects to wash the produce at home.
The customer does NOT expect to wash pastry, though.
Organic grapes are expensive. It didn't occur to me that one could pick out one's own customized bunch of grapes, but I have no issue with someone who does so.
I was thinking the same thing. Besides, grapes are touched by the people who pick/sort/pack them. They're too fragile to be picked/sorted/packed by machines.
We once saw someone looking at each bunch of bananas and picking the best ones then putting those in a bag to purchase. Who even thinks to do that?
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I'm only doing school with two kids but with three little ones too I have to divide my attention. The older ones used to up and run off the second they finished something. Now something is taken away if they do it. It's their choice to run off but if I have to call them back when they didn't have permission to leave the work area (except to use the bathroom) there is a punishment. In school they would be punished for running to the playground as soon as they finish their math quiz so there are punishments at home too. Usually a privilege is taken away, often going outside to play that day. Sometimes they are given an extra chore instead. It used to drive me nuts to have to call them back to the table over and over, they don't always stay put but running off is uncommon now.
I do find that they need to have something to keep them occupied while they're waiting. Handwriting pages, flashcards, math review, map puzzles, and reading assignments all work. They've realized that it's best to work diligently on what they're doing to avoid extra work.
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Diet Coke. Seriously, crack must be in there somewhere.
I don't know what it is with diet pop but I'm always in the mood for it. It doesn't even matter to me that I get a stomachache from artificial sweeteners. I like to shake it up and get diet pop besides diet coke. Right now diet wild cherry pepsi is my favorite.
Have you tried zevia? It's pop sweetened with stevia (real stevia not truvia or other things like that). It does have sugar alcohols but it's got to be better than aspartame. The only downside is the price - $5+ for a six pack of cans. The black cherry is the best.
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This is ridiculous.
Haven't the schools got bigger problems than what the kids are eating for lunch? If you are simply worried about them "cleaning their plates" then just give them soda and ice cream for lunch. Or here's another idea...don't serve anything unhealthy, and then they won't eat anything unhealthy. A truly hungry child WILL EAT VEGGIES.
Or they'll toss the veggies and wait until they get home to eat junk. For the rest of the day at school they'll just be a hungry behavior problem interrupting the learning of other kids. The school day isn't long enough for a child to become truly hungry. They could always just bring mountain dew and oreos from home instead of getting the healthy meals at school.
I'm generally very against frivolous government spending but researching how to get kids in school to eat relatively healthy food seems like a decent investment. Many kids, especially those from low income homes, don't get healthy food at home and won't eat unappetizing school lunch veggies so why not figure out a way to make that healthy food more appealing?
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hmmmmmm....
toss up between our big magnetic porcelain chalkboard, beeswax block crayons, and teaching textbooks
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I'm planning to order it soon and plan to get the basic kit plus the storage box for the cards and a sheet of stickers. It comes to $9 less than the deluxe kit and is only missing the tote bag which we don't need anyway.
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I'm hyperthyroid from graves disease. At it's highest my free t4 was over 5 so yours being over 7 is really high. I've had it for two years and the free t4, total t4, and free t3 numbers have all varied (they were almost normal when I was pregnant) but my tsh is almost always undetectable. I now take atenolol (a beta blocker) to keep hy heart rate normal and methimizole to lower my t4 and raise my tsh.
I'm like you in that I feel like I have hypothyroid symptoms, losing weight is a huge challenge. I went to the doctor originally thinking I would get a hypothyroid diagnosis and be put on extra thyroid hormones that would help me lose weight. Instead they put me on an anti thyroid medication that makes losing weight even more difficult.
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Grilled cheese or leftover grilled cheese sandwiches - cut leftover ones into cubes and re-toast in a hot pan with a bit of olive oil or butter to make cheesy croutons to put on top of the soup.
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We get 50% too - I didn't even know there were people who might get less than that.
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I haven't read all the responses so I'm not sure if this has been said yet but what struck me about the original post in this thread is how non typical it sounded. Parents of one middle school age child dealing with homeschooling that child while they both work? It would be great to have a show that includes homeschooling but that is just so different from my life (and the lives of most homeschoolers I know) for me to watch.
In my experience the average homeschooling family has several young children and possibly a few older ones (it's not that uncommon for a homeschooler to go to a regular school for middle and/or high school). They could be considers religious but have many other interests as well. The mom doesn't work, at least not outside the home. They are concerned about issues like politics and healthy food. They have tons of activities, groups, etc. they attend. They have lots of friends. I'd watch a show about a family like that although I'm not sure a show about a 'run of the mill' homeschooling family, even if they were suddenly thrown into it, would get picked up.
AAR1 for a child that is already reading?
in K-8 Curriculum Board
Posted
Would using both be redundant?