hsmamainva
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Posts posted by hsmamainva
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We're doing our CAT testing this week as well, and here are some suggestions that work in our family.
Just fyi....My 1st and 3rd children do well on testing, so they don't have any issues. My 2nd and 4th children are on the autism spectrum and testing isn't something they excel at without assistance.
More background...we moved to Virginia 3 years ago from a state where we didn't need to give standardized tests, so I was as anxious as my children at first!!
When you have a child with any kind of 'issue' / 'disability' / 'anxiety', etc., if they were in public school, they would be given accommodations for testing (i.e., no time limits, frequent breaks, etc.) I've even heard of schools going as far as pointing out the right answer to the child, if they still don't understand what's being asked of them.
So I give my oldest son the following accommodations -- no time limits and he's allowed to use a calculator for the math portions (he's an 8th grader this year)
He's done extremely well with these accommodations -- usually scoring in the 80th percentile.
For my youngest, language is her big stumbling block and I will rephrase the questions, to make it easier for her to understand it. For instance, today's section was vocabulary. My daughter didn't understand when the test said, "Point to the vehicle", but she understood it completely when I said, "Which one can Daddy drive?" She didn't understand, "Point to the insect", but she did understand, "Point to the bug." (She's a Kindergartener, btw...so I don't even need to send hers in to the state this year)
For both children, I give them LOTS of breaks!! I try to complete one 'test' per day -- each test has 6 'tests'. At the end of each page, I give them a break (meaning, if there are 4 pages in that one test, that's 4 breaks, 4 different times that we come back to the table and continue).
I also don't do school during the testing week -- so all they have to do is the test. It would be too much to add this on top of their regular schoolwork.
I hope this helps a little...
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It's been raining here in Fredericksburg for what seems like days!!
Now the winds are picking up!
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For my oldest, she started music lessons at 7 and I dropped her off without hesitation (her teacher went to our church and she was a lovely woman and I trusted her completely).
My second plays baseball and my husband is the assistant coach, so he doesn't attend practices or games without his dad, so it's not really an issue for him.
My third is in Tae Kwon Do. He's 8, but he attends with his oldest sister, so she's always with him -- but I trust the instructors, and wouldn't hesitate to send him alone without her.
My fourth just started gymnastics lessons, but I wouldn't drop her off alone. She's only 6 and the gym is very crowded on Saturday mornings. (It's not really the coaches I would worry about, as much as it is the older kids and the parents)
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My oldest is an upcoming senior and will be starting her second year at the community college this fall. She's hoping to receive her AA degree and then transfer to a 4-year school. (It's less expensive to do the cc route, at least in our state, as she'll be guaranteed admission to any 4-year in-state college or university).
I highly recommend it and will be doing the same thing with my younger children, once they're capable of college-level work.
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I will be praying for your little boy!!!
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I'm trying to think!! Ummmm....
We went out to eat as a family during our last vacation twice -- once to an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet and once for breakfast at Denny's. That would've been in late March.
My husband and I went out to dinner on a 'date' several months ago, but I can't remember when! (lol -- that's a bad sign! -- we need another date pronto!)
As far as fast food goes, we have a 'fast food night' on Fridays, and we'll get tacos or burgers or pizza or something, because Fridays are hectic, as we have our homeschool co-op during the day and Tae Kwon Do classes at night, with gymnastics lessons at 8 o'clock in the morning on Saturday.
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This is an off-the-wall question, but I thought someone might have an answer for me!
My son's baseball team is hosting a tournament in our county this weekend and we're renting a cotton candy machine, so we can sell it during the tournament and the proceeds will go to our Little League chapter.
My son's team is the Reds, so the coach has asked if we can make the cotton candy red, rather than the traditional pink or blue.
Does anyone know if this can be done?
The place where we're renting the machine is also where we're picking up the cotton candy 'ingredients' -- so not sure if this is something they could do, or if we could make it happen with some food coloring?
Thanks in advance, gang, and GO REDS! :)
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My oldest graduates next year! She'll be 18.
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If it's the video that I'm thinking of, the song is "I Can Only Imagine" by MercyMe
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Eleanor Roosevelt or Edith Wilson -- the latter ran the country for an entire year after Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke.
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The Scarlet Pimpernel
I was expecting something dry and boring .. it was a real page-turner! I stayed up for two nights in row, just to finish it!!
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Is your little guy on the autism spectrum?
Many autistics look at you via the corner of their eyes because direct eye-to-eye contact is uncomfortable for them.
My youngest has autism and she does this from time to time, especially when her sensory system is overloaded for whatever reason.
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My oldest dd will be 17 next week and we have yet to give her a driver's license.
She's had a learner's permit for a year now and she's very close to being ready for the license, but we felt that we wanted her to have more than the 40 hours of driving that the state required.
We've had so many young people killed on the local roads in our area that we really wanted her to have ALOT of driving experience before we gave her a license -- we live in a rural area, so lots of winding roads with low shoulders and high speed limits.
As for a car of her own, she has one. My sister-in-law and her husband bought a new car and the dealership offered them $700 for their old car. It's 8 years old, but it only has around 70,000 miles on it and it's in great shape, so they sold it to us for $500 and my daughter just loves it! And it gets better gas mileage than my own car! ;)
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I strongly believe in child-led weaning and every child is different!
My 1st nursed until she was 2 1/2, my 2nd nursed until he was 2 1/2, my 3rd nursed until he was 3, and my youngest nursed until she was 4 1/2.
Nursing offers great immunity against illness, and a little known trivia tidbit -- the longer a woman nurses her children, the less likely she is to have breast cancer later in life.
I'm very grateful that my youngest nursed as long as she did. She has autism and I've received numerous comments about how affectionate she is -- and I attribute some of that to extended nursing. It kept her emotionally connected during that critical 'early intervention' time for her.
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My husband said that when he was 5, he planned on running away.
He packed his pajamas and his Dr. Seuss books, and put them in the back of his little red wagon.
His mother even packed him a lunch and kissed him goodbye. ;)
He said that he got to the end of the driveway and said to himself, "Where am I gonna go?" ... so he went back inside, unpacked his wagon, ate his lunch, and stayed!
(Apparently, this was an "I don't like going to Kindergarten" protest!)
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My oldest (17 next month) wants to be either a US Marshal or an FBI Agent -- at the very least, she wants to join the State Troopers, if she isn't hired by a national protection agency. She's planning on going to college full-time in 2009, with a major in criminal justice, and she's working on achieving her Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do
My second (14 in May) wants to be an artist -- he's also looking at graphic design and architecture
My third (8) wants to be a doctor -- most likely a pediatrician
My youngest (6) so far wants to be a librarian -- hey, she loves to read!
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I have two boys.
My 13 year old plays baseball -- he's so psyched! He was picked for 2nd base this year .. after playing for 3 years as a shortstop! He needs a bigger hat to fit his swelling head...that's how proud he is! :)
My 8 year old takes Tae Kwon Do .. which I highly recommend, if your son doesn't care for team sports. He's close to receiving his Blue Belt after spending a year and a half in the sport.
Both boys take art classes, and both play chess, although we don't have access to a chess team -- I wish we did!
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I love this one ... Frank Caliendo on Bush & Clinton
Completely clean and hysterical!
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I think it was me!
I love "Snow Cake" ... especially as the mother of two autistic children!
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We don't go on vacations in the summer -- that's half the joy of homeschooling!!
We take our vacations in the spring or fall -- this year, we're going to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina the last week of this month -- last year, we went to the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
Off season, we can rent a 4 bedroom house for the week around $500. We bring our own food and make breakfast and dinner in the vacation house and we eat our lunches out, as that's when we're sightseeing or at the beach, etc.
My hubby and I have the benefit of having a built-in babysitter (our 16 year old), so we usually go out "on the town" once or twice during that week.
We've been doing this for years -- we just vary the location (we've been all over the east coast -- from Pennsylvania all the way down to Florida)
When our children were younger, we sometimes took my MIL along to help with babysitting -- we've also rented a house with another family several times -- then we can trade off babysitting services. We need a bigger house then, but it doesn't cost us anything more than what we pay now, because the cost is divided between the two families.
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My oldest is taking her SAT exam as we speak -- and she's praying she does well!! She was sooo nervous this morning, she was up and ready at 6am! :)
This afternoon, the DH and I are off to our county's Home and Garden Show to see what's exciting and up for grabs.
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I have 4 children - 1 is a Wednesday.
I wouldn't say he's melancholy, but he's serious. We always joke that he was born middle aged! He's very sensible and generally more polite than most 8 year old boys!
Very interesting!
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I'm taking a 3 credit College English class -- just for fun.
My oldest dd is taking classes at the same community college and she doesn't have her driver's license yet, so I have to take her .. and I figured it was better to take a class for my own enjoyment than to sit in the car while she's in class (the cc is too far away to drop her off and then come home, only to have to go back out again).
I'm really enjoying it and -- mommy brag!! -- I'm making straight A's!!! :)
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Well...here's my take on it and my own theory....
At first, I was elated with the episode, as I've often had the theory that Kate had a little boy that no one else knew about before the plane crashed and the show started. That was why she kept the little plane and why she wanted off the island so badly -- otherwise, why would someone wanted for murder and all those other crimes want to leave the island??
And then, it all got blown to heck!
When she met Jack in the parking garage, I started to think that it was Sawyer's child...and she had lied to Sawyer earlier about being pregnant, to keep the child from him (a really crappy thing to do, as he already has one child he didn't know about, but that's another tangent), and Jack didn't want to see the baby because it's Sawyer's. That theory worked great for awhile - the little guy even had blonde hair, just like Sawyer!
Then she called him Aaron! ACK! How did Kate get Claire's baby?
I still don't know why that's the case, unless something happened to Claire during the rescue and she's dead ...
The fact that Aaron is so much older than we think he should be doesn't bother me -- time could move slower on the island than in the 'real world', so years may have passed for everyone else, while very little time passed on the island -- but nothing else makes sense.
Unless we go back to my original theory that, once they left the island, which they weren't meant to do, or supposed to do, everything changed as we know it -- I have a 'parallel universe theory' about Lost and always have!
It's like Star Trek...if there are any Trekkies here ... Next Gen's "Yesterday's Enterprise" episode ... when the timeline became messed up, by the Enterprise C coming through that wormhole / anomaly, then life on the Enterprise instantly changed ... there never was a peace treaty with the Klingons...the Enterprise was a ship of war because the Federation had been at war for 80 years ... Tasha Yar was alive when she should've been dead, etc. ... once they 'fixed it', then the timeline that we knew (i.e., the viewers knew) returned (Worf and Troi were there and Tasha had been dead for years, etc.)
The same thing could be occuring on Lost .... that's why in the current, messed up timeline, fewer people survived the crash. Jack and Kate really DO think that only 8 survived the crash because in *their timeline*, that's their truth -- their reality...if that makes sense.... If Jack can find a way to go back to the island (as he referred to at the end of season 3), he can undo everything that's happened -- everything that's wrong -- and the timeline will revert to the one we (the viewers) know and understand.....
And .. remember .. JJ Abrams is a huge Star Trek fan! This sort of thing would be right up his alley....
So those are my early morning ramblings! :)
Question about labor
in General Education Discussion Board
Posted
You never know what to expect, after your first! All of my subsequent babies didn't follow that 'standard procedure'!!
For instance, I had the bloody show with my 2nd child about 20 minutes before he was born -- so it's a good thing I wasn't waiting for that to head to the hospital!
I didn't remember losing a plug at all with my 3rd child, but I did with #4 - about a week before she was born.
I would recommend taking a bath. If you're in labor, it won't stop the contractions, and it will make you more comfortable. If you're not in labor, it'll relax you and you can then try to get some rest.
Best wishes for the upcoming delivery!! :)