:svengo:

We bought a kindle last May. While we were en route to Malaysia, at the Hong Kong airport, it stopped working. Once we arrived in Malaysia, we sent it back to Amazon and they sent us another one. Well, they don't ship them overseas. So I had them mail it to my brother, then he mailed it to us. But when it arrived in Penang the post office would NOT give it to us. :glare: They wanted us to pay some outrageous fee that was almost as much as the kindle was new!!! So a man who works with us and is a local went down there to plead our case (and he speaks the language). And lo and behold he came back with it, no charge! Of course it did cost a mint to send it to amazon and to pay to have it mailed back and the whole fiasco took 6 weeks but... It is back! I was half-way through "Three Cups of Tea" when it quit working. Now I can FINALLY finish the book! :party:

The problem has so many angles... One angle is the preschool children already being diagnosed because they were fed sugar-water as a baby and still drink it (that and white rice) Another issue is the continued use of sugar-water with new infants Another issue is the malnourished moms (who were also raised on sugar-water) Another issue is the breastfeeding is rare in Malaysia (stats I read said less than 15% of mothers breastfeed their babies). I don't want to guess why they don't breastfeed since I don't really know. Lack of education? A cultural issue of some sort? So we need to help the kids who have diabetes, help the new babies get something besides sugar-water, help them moms eat healthy and educate moms on breastfeeding...sigh...and this is just ONE neighborhood. :crying:

wow :grouphug::grouphug::grouphug: Thank you to you and your dh and all our military people. I never thought of it that way.

Have you read this? I just finished it and it was ...ummm... a little disturbing. I can't decide if I liked it or not. I couldn't put it down so it felt like I liked it but when it was over I felt like I had been hit by a truck. It was just kind of strange. What did you think of it? Are you going to see the movie?

I am looking for opinions on your favorite curriculum for elementary...from teaching them letter recognition and sounds to phonics to elementary reading. What works the best for you?

Our school does a lot of outreach in the community especially in the very poor neighborhoods. One of the sad things we've discovered is the huge increase in diabetes in young children. The doctors tell us this is because the mothers are too malnourished to breastfeed and can't afford milk so they give the babies sugar-water. :( So at our open house last Friday we raised about $1000 USD (which is about RM3500) and we collected about 30 bags of powdered milk for this community. But that is only a band-aid fix. Poverty is so sad and overwhelming sometimes. It's like you just don't know where to start, ya know?

:lol: Just put it in my Kindle!

:lol::lol::lol: I am far too prissy for that. :tongue_smilie: I would need a lobotomy! :D

YES...exactly. It's not that I am not willing to have my kids put their nose to the grindstone. It's just that I want it to be worth it. And, of course, I also don't think homework is the only way kids learn outside of school.

OK, I realize I am coming in late on this and I realize that you are all talking about lofty things but I have read all 10 pages and I just gotta ask... Do we really have to TEACH little kids that touching their private area is pleasurable? I mean, I have two boys and as soon as they discovered they HAD a penis they started playing with it. Sheesh...we had a tougher time teaching them WHEN and WHERE it was OK to do this. The "HOW" came pretty natural. :tongue_smilie:

Well kudos to you for speaking out! I think my other problem is the type of homework they are giving... worksheets and more worksheets. If his teacher said "I want you all to go home and read X number of pages out of (insert classic novel)" I would be jumping for joy. But all we get are piles of worksheets, pointless projects and math problems (I can live with the math problems but there are just too many). I am not going to buck the system for all students but I will for my own. And yes, culture shock is definitely setting in... but not in ways I had imagined. :confused: It's not even the "culture" as it is the massive change in our family schedule and family dynamics. Oh yeah, and the driving. I still hate the driving. But wow, it is so beautiful here. How did I ever live without staring at the ocean while I drink coffee? :D

This is a BIG part of the problem. About half of the parents here want LOTS of homework and even sign their kids up for extra classes and tutoring outside of the school day. The other half of parents have more of a western mindset and complain that there is too much. And we ARE relying on tuition. So I am not sure what I will do. i can work in the system but I don't necessarily want it for my own kids (if that makes sense). As of right now the policy for middle school is 15 minutes per academic subject so for Kyle that would be one hour and 15 minutes for homework. I am going to make sure he does one hour and 15 minutes of diligent, focused homework and then he is DONE even if he isn't "done". This is what I told his principal this morning and what I am going to tell his teacher as well.

And other reasons why I already miss homeschooling... My life is a paradox. On the one hand, I love my job. It is challenging and interesting and fun. My dh loves his job here for the same reasons. My kids like the school...they like their friends, and recess and art and sports, etc. BUT WE HATE HOMEWORK. Why does an 11yo boy have to sit in school for 7 hours and then come home and do 2-3 more hours of homework? By the time we leave the campus it is 5pm (Kyle has class until 4pm but I have to stay until 5pm), eat dinner, do homework, practice piano, shower, get stuff ready for the next day...it is bedtime. We have NO time together as a family to do anything except a little on the weekends. It has only been 3 weeks and we are already suffering the effects. We are snapping at each other, the kids are crabby, etc. I was researching best practices in private Christian schools and one website I found listed the ideas that particular school believed in and I couldn't agree more (because it sort of sounds like homeschooling): We believe that families are too busy and that schools waste lots of time on busy work and homework and justify it in the name of academic rigor. We believe that schools should be efficient enough to teach your kids in the 35 hours per week of class time. We believe that late afternoons in childhood are meant for riding bikes, playing ball, and hanging out with close friends. We believe that evenings are for families and reading and rest. We believe that “why do we have to learn this stuff?†is a very good question. We believe that parents are responsible for their children and have the right to control their educational experience and goals. We think parents (and students) have the right to know what is going to be taught before it’s taught. We believe that on nice days it might be better to have class outside. We believe money follows excellence, excellence follows vision, and visionaries must follow God. Pretty cool, huh? So has homeschooling just ruined me? How can I love working somewhere when I don't agree with the philosophy? Am I a traitor? Will I seem too uppity if I pull my ds out because I want something different for him? I feel like I have a split personality...loving something and hating it at the same time. AHHHHH!

hmmm...very interesting....I will have to think about this more.

:D Close. I am a principal, a missionary in a strange country, and taking grad school classes for a master's in theology all at the same time. But my kids are not technically homeschooling. They are attending the school where I work, so we are after-schooling and vacation-schooling for now.

well I am off to a staff meeting...not boring but not that exciting either. :tongue_smilie:

What are you doing up at this hour? :D

My new theology class starts next week and I have to pick one of these topics to research and write a lengthy paper. Which one should I choose (there were 28 choices but I narrowed it down to these)?

Keep in mind that I am about 12 hours ahead of most of you. I posted a link of something interesting I read and then I went to bed. Apparently, the thread went haywire and got deleted and apparently there were posts lambasting me. Since it got deleted before I could defend myself (and since I never got to read the thread I am not entirely sure what I am defending myself against) I just wanted to clear the air and point out that I made NO judgment statements about the link. I merely read the article, thought it was interesting, thought some of you maybe interested in reading it, talking about it, etc. All I said was "Have you seen this?" I did not say I agreed or did not agree with it and I was not necessarily promoting it. I just thought it would be interesting to talk about especially since we discuss all sorts of hot topics here. My bad. Moderator: feel free to lock this thread. I am not interested in even knowing what people said about me or rehashing the argument. But since I slept through the deluge I at least wanted a chance to respond and clear the air.

I am still waiting until the test results come back because then we will know better where to put the kids if I can pull this off.

Those of you who were part of that thread might be interested in reading this: A Low-Cost Way to Accelerate High-Achieving Students In this Education Week commentary article, Laura Vanderkam and Richard Whitmire bemoan recent cutbacks in programs for high-achieving students and suggest that double-promoting them (or having them take above-grade courses) is an efficient and effective way of nurturing their talents and providing academic challenge. “There is no better way to give gifted kids what they need,” say the authors, citing research on the efficacy of boosting these students up a level or two. “Acceleration is also cheap,” they continue. “It costs nothing to send a 1st grader to 3rd grade for reading, or to have a 4-year-old who is already reading start kindergarten early. If a student moves through grades K-12 in 11 or 12 years, rather than 13, taxpayers save money.” Yet most schools don’t use this approach, opting instead for pullout programs in which high-achieving students engage in activities like learning about insects or myths or going on special outings. “While these programs are fun for gifted learners,” say Vanderkam and Whitmire, “you don’t have to be gifted to enjoy enrichment activities, and they don’t give gifted kids what they really need, which is academic work that challenges them to the extent of their abilities.” A few schools are experimenting with acceleration. Zuni Elementary School in Scottsdale (AZ) has a one-hour block for math instruction first thing every day and students join the level for which they are prepared. About 25 are working two or more grades above their chronological grade. “If we see students getting 100s on pretests, it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever to leave them in that class,” says Kim Lansdowne, a district administrator. Acceleration avoids some of the problems of pullouts and the “gifted” label and gives students work that’s on their level. The schools in Lebanon (PA) are taking a similar approach, even transporting some students from elementary to middle schools, middle schools to the high school, and high school to college. Laura Cramer, a middle-school student in Lebanon, takes honors chemistry and honors 10th-grade English at the high school, does Algebra 2 online, and is back at her middle school for lunch, history classes, and the track team. “Acceleration by subject or grade may not have the same cachet as seeing 2nd graders labeled ‘gifted,’” say Vanderkam and Whitmire, “but it serves the needs of children in an uncontroversial, straightforward, and relatively inexpensive way. The only puzzle surrounding acceleration is why more districts don’t embrace it.” “What Ever Happened to Grade Skipping? Accelerating the Gifted in a Time of Tight Budgets” by Laura Vanderkam and Richard Whitmire in Education Week, Aug. 12, 2009 (Vol. 28, #37, p. 36, 30) http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/08/12/37whitmire_ep.h28.html It is just more ammunition for me!!

Well I have an 11yo boy and we live in Malaysia. I know you said you were looking for a girl but I promise he still doesn't "like" girls in that way yet. :D And he would be happy to be her penpal.

How about materials from Veritas Press? They are definitely reformed.

Yeah, I wonder how his wife feels about his "other women"? :D I also miss Plaid Dad.