My ds 11 is pretty shallow. He likes anything big in size, like a can of soda or a bag of chips (a few places hand those out). He also likes the little packages some houses make up that have several candies tied up in tissue paper or something. Doesn't matter what's inside -- he loves the fancy presentation. :lol: When it comes to the eating, he likes it all, but especially the fruity and sour candies. Sour skittles and sour gummy worms are two favorites. He used to dislike Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, but somehow I found something to do with those. :D But unfortunately a couple of years ago he decided he does like them after all.

Sounds like a great experience for your ds. A kind mentor taking the time to share his knowledge is a precious resource. I don't understand being "put off" by something like this. :confused: I'm fervently hoping that my ds will find mentors in his areas of interest as he gets older. As for quizzing, I don't know. I'm familiar with the older generation type of quizzing mentioned here, and it's always seemed kindly and friendly to me. A way for an older person to make conversation with a younger one. And it often gives them a chance to share their life experiences. My ds has had many conversations that start with something like, "Do you know where Mumbai is?" and end with a wonderful story from another part of the world. We've never had the kind of quizzing that some people mention, in which it seems like they are questioning the quality of our homeschooling. That would definitely bother me, if I noticed it happening.

I said that I would never have asked my child to write down his narrations because his narrations were way too long to write down. His CM narrations last for many minutes of excited talking.

I would also add that I would never have asked my child to write down a CM style narration. They are way too long, sometimes almost a word for word retelling of a story or chapter! Summarizing is a stepping stone toward outlining and, eventually, research. Summaries are related much more closely to academic writing than CM narrations, plus they are short enough for a child to write (perhaps with help at first).

Ah. Gotcha! :)

If you're avoiding dairy, then I guess you'd have to be sure to pick one of the ones that doesn't, right? Earth Balance has non-dairy products. Maybe I'm missing your point. :confused: We pop our popcorn in canola oil and then the seasonings stick pretty well. We like to put on nutritional yeast.

I love them, but the rest of my family does not. I also like chewing on ice and I bite my ice cream. That may give you an indication of whether or not they'll work for your crew. If you do like them, try frozen honeydew chunks too. YUM!

If you have to avoid dairy for some reason, it's nice to have a substitute. Earth Balance tastes good, though not exactly like butter. And it has no trans fats or hydrogenated oils. If I couldn't eat butter, that's what I'd get.

Fanny Before [------] Fanny After [------][24] Gina After [------][24][------][24] (because it's twice Fanny After) Gina Before [------][24][------][24][24] (because it's Gina After + 24) But now remember that Gina Before is three times Fanny before: Gina Before [------][24][------][24][24] 3x Fanny Before [------][------][------] You can see that 1 bar unit must be 24 + 24 + 24 = 72 So originally, Fanny had 72 and Gina had 216 for a total of 288.

I agree with this as well. I did several years of narrations, as you define them, with my ds starting in kindergarten all up. They are an incredible tool for oral communication, reading comprehension, presentation skills, and more. My ds could do FABULOUS narrations. Starting in about fourth grade, I started to introduce the concepts of "main idea" and "summarizing". Oh goodness, such agony. He would beg me to "just do a narration". Finally, I broke down and bought WWE Level 2. It was perfect in the way it broke down for *me* how to walk him through the process. He was old enough to write his own summaries down, so he did. But the step-by-step questions were invaluable. Personally I don't think WWE would have been useful for us at the earlier grades. I'm glad we spent several years doing those fully detailed narrations (and we still do them frequently). My ds just wasn't ready before about fourth grade to think "summary". Now he's got summaries down quite well and we're moving to the next level with WWS and History Odyssey.

If you want to use that rubric without a lot of changes, you could just slide the point allocation slightly. If you changed the scale from 1-4 to 2-5, then the same paper would get 12/15 or 80%. If you slid the scale over one more unit to 3, 4, 5, and 6 points, then the same paper would get 15/18 or 83%. Sliding it over like that gives more weight to "completing something" and less to the quality of the paper, which might be appropriate depending on the student and your goals.

The Magic Anatomy Book by Carol Donner

Very good distinction here. Isn't that the truth! :lol: I've been using Easy Grammar with my ds, starting in 5th grade. I would call it both gentle and explicit. He was able to jump into the 5th grade book without much previous grammar study with *no problem*.

WWE is a good program, but I think there are ways to help this situation even without it. What if you said, "Okay, what fact do you want to write down? Tell it to me." After he's thought of it, ask him to make sure it's a complete sentence. Then ask him to say his sentence over again. And again. He might change it slightly each time. That's fine. That's good, actually, because he's probably improving it. Now say, "Great. Now write your sentence down. I will be back to check it in five minutes, and I want to hear you saying your words out loud as you write." Is that handholding? I suppose it is, but I think ten minutes of handholding is better than 30 minutes of getting nothing done. Over time, you will be able to short cut the procedure to just, "Compose your sentence and then write it down." But maybe right now he needs help breaking it down into steps and developing the habit of staying focused.

:iagree: Great advice in this post. We've been homeschooling for six years and this year I think I've finally figured out how to have a smooth start. It has taken us THREE DAYS to get through the first day of work, but ds is having a great time and is looking forward to doing more. We're aiming to get the next day done in two days. :lol:

Scary! I saw a bear recently but from INSIDE the house. I can't imagine how I'd feel if I'd been right out there next to it. I don't live in bear country. I live in a small town -- in town, mind you, with sidewalks and streelights and everything. But we're in a rural area and there have been increased sightings of bears this summer for some reason. Last Saturday, as Hurricane Irene was coming up the coast toward us, I looked out my porch window and saw a black bear IN MY YARD. It was sitting on the retaining wall between the vegetable garden and the sumac. I was stunned. We've lived in this area for six years and in this house for 3.5 years and have never seen a bear. Anyway, every time I remember it gives me a shock all over again, but other than that it isn't worrying me. I think I've mentally chalked it up to weird behavior before the storm. My ds still plays outside by himself. I'm not changing anything because of one freak event. But we did go over bear safety too!

Thanks for taking the time, both of you. I'm going to save it for a rainy day. I'll have to think a bit about how to approach it without calculus. It does sound like a challenge!

Thanks!

I'm awfully curious about this problem now. Is it available online anywhere? We don't do AoPS, but I'm intrigued. Can you share this infamous problem?

You'll definitely want to do the Freedom Trail. Walking and historic sites. It's best over a couple of days (or more) to have enough time to see the sites. Paul Revere's House and the U.S.S. Constitution are some of the highlights IMO. Boston Common and Public Garden are must-sees, especially if you've read Make Way for Ducklings and Trumpet of the Swan.

I used to teach in the UMTYMP program. Great program and great kids! I wish they had something like that where I live now. My ds is on an advanced math track too.

I think he's spelling very well. He's spelling phonetically, which is a great start. And he clearly has a visual memory of some of those odd ones like "rough" that he's trying to reproduce. He could use some help in learning spelling rules, I think. For example, we don't usually use "ck" in the middle of a word, so that would help him out in recommend. Also, that's a word that you can break down. It comes from the base word "commend" and the prefix "re". Now over time, like many words in English, we have changed the pronunciation so that we don't say it like re-commend, but it will really help if you know where the word came from. All About Spelling uses a strategy called "pronounce for spelling", and recommend is definitely a good word for that strategy. Finally, why are there two m's in recommend? Well, when you know it comes from commend, it becomes very clear. In order to make the first syllable (COM) have a short vowel sound, it wants an extra syllable at the end. This is a very common pattern in English. If there were only one consonant in the middle, it would have a long vowel sound. Try writing it out -- COMEND -- and you'll see that you want to pronounce it with a long O. That's because your reading eyes instinctively know these English spelling rules. Once you articulate these rules through a spelling program, it makes spelling the words a piece of cake. So, to sum up, I think your ds is doing great and is ready for a rule-based spelling program. He'll probably make tremendous progress, since he's so good at the phonetics already. We use All About Spelling and have found it wonderful.

I couldn't think of anything we've called it besides "school", but this post reminded me. When ds was little, just starting school work, we called them "lessons". "Let's do your reading lesson" or "let's do your math lesson". Maybe "lessons" or "classes" or "subjects" or "work time" would be more appealing than "school"?

We just started today, so I don't know yet how this is going to work, but here's my plan. My ds is 6th grade and he'll be doing WWS. For history, we're doing History Odyssey Ancients Level 2, which has outlining and summaries built into the program. Now, I'll be tweaking HO somewhat but I like the step-by-step approach to developing outlines. I *think* it will complement WWS very well. I'm not sure how the writing load will be, and I may eliminate some assignments in HO or WWS occasionally if it seems like too much. I will also sometimes do creative writing exercises on day 5. Journals, story starters, writing games, etc. I know, it's not the classical way, but I like to do a bit anyway.

I don't think we have that in our town. Our town was settled about 250 years ago, and they didn't give the neighborhoods any names, if there even were neighborhoods then. But that's getting off topic. Sorry!