retiredHSmom
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Posts posted by retiredHSmom
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Tryengineering.org has a series of STEM based lesson plans. They can be searched based on grade level I used them teaching an engineering co-op class. You would ned to gather materials and most need some level of explanation but the bones are there.
Engineering Everywhere is written for 6-8 eighth graders. The lesson plans are very complete but are written for classroom use and will need some tweaking. Collecting materials could be harder as you will need to buy 24 packs of things that you only need one of.
There is also Ready, Set STEM. I haven't used it but the site looks good and the price is reasonable.
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My husband used a made-to-order place (not online but on the military base) because he has a very short inseam, very broad shoulders, huge biceps and a thick chest. The suits came out looking great and were a much better fit than tailored off-the-rack suits
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I graduated from a Texas College in 1993 with an engineering degree and had to take all those core curriculum courses. I remember fondly getting to take PE and Arthurian Literature and Child Development. It was a nice break from my engineering classes.
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Unfortunately for you it seems that the only consensus so for is that every c-op does it totally differently!
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Ours is a 30-32 week year. We do not do semester classes.
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Two other amazing options that are farther out but so worth it.
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Tania,
I found a Patricia Nash Cauchy wallet about a year and a half ago at TJMaxx for a good price. It is gorgeous Italian leather that is of the highest quality and I love it so very much. It still looks brand new after all the use and still smells lovely like leather. This is the one I have except mine is a different pretty floral pattern:
I looked for the one I have on eBay and there are a lot there but not the pattern I have. But there are lots of pretty ones.
Ooh, that is pretty! Thank You. Off to check out eBay.
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https://www.ebags.com/product/anuschka/check-book-walletclutch/246231?productid=10414452
It was more than I wanted to spend too.
Big Skinny does have leather ones, but they aren't that nice IMO.
Thank you. That is quite pretty but I know what you mean about being more than you want to spend.
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Thank you all so much. I have ordered the Big Skinny Executive and will see how I like it.
I really wanted a bigger, fancier, leather wallet I liked but it is bulky and heavy, and I think this one will be better for me in my attempt to minimize my purse.
I am starting to need to carry a few things I used to not need.....and I am trying to keep things more organized.
And the price is such that if I hate it, I can change it out.
Can you point me to the leather one you liked? I like the form factor of the big skinny, but I want leather and I am not a fan of the Big skinny logo prominently on the wallet.
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My oldest just graduated on the 12th and starts full-time work tomorrow! It is so weird to think that she isn't a college kid anymore.
My middle is a grad student and is spending the summer walking across the country with a pro-life group.
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I would tell him that successful long term weight loss involves learning to deal with food in a healthful way. Fasting to lose weight quickly is the exact opposite of that.
I wish I could like this 1000 times. Just no. Eating is healthy.
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Claude Moore Colonial Farm- a colonial farm with costumed interpreters, they do a fantastic school program (open to homeschoolers) twice a year
Mount Vernon- George Washingtons home, don't miss the gristmill
Reston Animal Park-a small zoo with a lot of farm animals from around the world to feed/pet and some exotics that they are licensed to rehab
Hidden Pond nature center-small displays of local wildlife and short kid-friendly hiking trails
Gunston Hall- George Mason's Home
Pohick Church- the church that George Mason and George Washigton attended, still an active congregation
Woodlawn Plantation- Nellie Custis Washington's home
Pope-Leighy House- a Frank Lloyd Wright House
Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Museum- a 1792 business that was sold in toto in the 1930's and went straight to being a museum, original workshop, woodwork etc. founding father's were clients here and they have letters, signatures.
If you can arrange trips with a group, my kids favorite ever trip was the Library of Virgina in Richmond. They got to hold a book that belonged to Patrick Henry and a cup that belonged to Thomas Jefferson and see some beautiful example of book art etc.
If you are living here, the Kennedy Center offers a series of school performances. Many homeschool groups buy tickets (you need to buy min 10, but they are only $5 each so I know families that have bought them on their own and just taken 4 people to fill their 10 seats)
If I think of more I will post again
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Timely thread for me, but I don't want to take over the thread. We are moving to NoVA at the end of the month, but in the Springfield/Burke area, I think.
Any other co-ops that would be close to that area?
I looked up Capitol Baptist co-op, and chess. Chess seems a little far with traffic?
We are coming from a Great Plains state, and 7 miles takes 7-10 minutes of travel. I know the same won't be true there! It'll be a bit of a culture shock!
Compass, STARS and Harvester would all be convenient to Springfield/Burke. If you are Catholic, St. Raymond's Homeschool Group is good as well.
I could be off the mark but in my experience while many great plains areas people are used to traveling 7 miles in 7-10 minutes you often travel more than 7-10 miles to your destinations.
I drive
15 min to the grocery store,
15 minutes to 2 different major shopping areas,
10 minutes to church,
10 minutes to Boy Scouts,
10 minutes to Krav Maga,
20 minutes to rugby,
15-20 minutes to co-op,
15 min to one community college,
20 minutes to the other.
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I've lived here for almost 16 years. I'm east of Vienna, in Lorton. I was in a Nature walking group with Alice back when my now-17yo was about 6 or 7. :seeya: Hi Alice!
Anyway...
Yeah, lots of traffic, but tons of things to do and people to do them with.
We go to Vienna when we attend things at Wolf Trap--it seems like a nice place!
I'm convinced it is what you make it.
Chris I think that we discovered this before but I live in Lorton, too.
I especially wanted to address what Chris said about living here being what you make it. I have lived every one of my 45 years as a military dependent. I have lived in many states and countries, many homes and all of them have had good points and bad points. I would love to return to every one of them and hate it too.
I didn't address housing in my last post so I will now. Housing, as with all things in life, has trade-offs. Someone upthread mentioned that she wanted more space around her so she live in Bristow and her husband commutes 4 hours a day, Alice mentioned that a trail was important to them. We wanted a short commute. We bought our home as new construction in 2006 on a single income military salary so its not extravagant but location was important to us. We live five miles from my husbands office on local roads with no traffic. It takes him 15 minutes to get to work but our neighbors house is 24 feet away and our backyard is about 25 feet deep. My friend bought a house at the same time for the same price. They wanted a yard, their house i3 2/3 the size of mine, 50 years old and about 30 minutes from work.
I will say that while I agree with Alice that Vienna has a small town feel (2 of my siblings live there) I wouldn't want to live there because of the traffic. The small local roads have a lot of traffic every time I go there. I live off of 95 which is often a parking lot, especially on Friday-Sunday but our local roads have little to no traffic at all and I can usually avoid the freeway in my day to day life.
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I live in NoVa, about 15 minutes south of Vienna. To be honest, I love it here. I have no desire to move. There are many, many opportunities and yes, there is traffic and yes, kids activities can be very competitive but there are backroads and you get to know the traffic flows and there are many, many extra curricular options for kids that are low-key and you will find them.
As far as homeschooling goes there are a plethora of options. There are groups at just about every level of involvement from support groups that only feature park days and field trips to drop-off day long schools. I think that one of the best options around is Capital Baptist Co-op. The co-op is christian and is hosted by a Baptist church but is attended by students of all faiths. It is a true co-op in that there are no drop-offs. Parents work in some capacity for two class periods and participate in support group for the third period. There are 220 families enrolled with about 600 students. The 9-12 grade class usually have about 120 students overall. Classes include curricular classes but feature many electives as well. The parent teachers are usually very good with most teaching in areas of expertise. We have Phd's from MIT teaching Chemistry and doctors teaching A&P. They have a very well-developed high school drama program. As a true co-op costs are minimal $100 per student/year with a family maximum. There are also at least five different options that I know of where you can pay for classes and drop your kids off.
This year my high schooler had five different homeschool proms to choose from. We have a homeschool sports league that competes with private schools in Football, Soccer (boys and girls), Volleyball and Track. There are homeschool martial arts schools and homeschool classes at most martial arts schools. There are two different homeschool performing arts program and a worship dance program. If you van think it up it probably exists.
There are a lot of very competitive extracurricular programs as well and yes some of them can exclude "normal" kids. There is math circle here that my daughter taught at/ran for a year and the group for kids that had completed algebra had many 5th and 6th graders in it. An 8th grader who just loves math and is taking algebra would not have fit in very well. You will meet many people who have their kids on workout schedule for their sport that take 20+ hours a week but that is more prevalent in the public school set than the homeschool world.
We moved here when my kids were 12, 9 and 6 and have lived here for 11 years. I know there area well. Feel free to PM me if you want to talk offline or talk on the phone.
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In my area, Northern VA, all the high schools have a team. Its pretty popular
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We had fast passes (very necessary, even during the first week of March when we were there, IMO. Otherwise many of the more interesting rides would be out because none of us would stand in like for an hour for anything) for three rides each day. We were able to walk right on a few rides. We spent one day in the MK, one at Epcot (split the day by going back to condo for the afternoon), a free day (no parks) and a final day at MK in which we left at 3.
IMHO, which I know doest match the majority, even without the fast passes and lunch reservation, I just found it hectic. I personally don't like standing in line, don't like the heat, and don't like crowds. Most theme parks are hectic. It's the nature of the beast and not just Disney. Just not my thing which I knew going in. I, however, assumed my girls would find it wonderful and magical. They did not.
Many rides involve a moving car through dark tunnels/caves (Winnie the Pooh, Ariel, even the People Mover) and my ASD SPD daughter was completely freaked out. She ended up hanging on me all day because was scared and didn't want to ride any more of the rides, which meant I was taking pain meds for the rest of the trio because my back hurt. My other daughter was just kind of like "meh...can I have an $$$$ Mickey Mouse ___ (insert expensive food item or balloon)". She liked the rides but was never overly excited about any of it. We probably could have done things differently, schedule wise, but that wouldn't have changed my scared daughter or somewhat uninterested other daughter.
It's fine. To each their own, as they say. Given the price and the underwhelming response I don't feel the need to give it a second shot. As I mentioned in another post, our 2.5 week trip to Switzerland, Germany and France a few months ago was almost the same price as our 5 day Disney trip (minus airfare, though we used FF miles) and much more our speed. Glad we gave Disney a try but its just not for us.
Well I cannot imagine a situation where 2.5 weeks in Europe would ever be beat out by 3 days at Disney! FWIW we never did make it back to Disney and its been 13 years.
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One thing I learned on that trip was that my girls definitely enjoy vacations that are more laid back without a packed itinerary. Getting them up and ready to get to Disney when they opened, having to be at x at a certain time for a lunch reservation or having to be at this section of the part for fast passes didn't work out well. We are much more of a laid back family, especially on vacation, and that part was annoying to all of us. I know you can do WDW without the schedules, but we were only there for 3 days and wanted to make the most of our trip.
I think that you hit upon the "problem" and "solution" right here. When we went to WDW in Orlando, we didn't do any of the high-intensity pre-planning that most people do. We intentionally went during a "slower" time. (October) When we checked in to our hotel we called and made dinner reservations for that night. We like to eat dinner early so we had several choices. We went to the park and wandered through and got on the rides that interested us. If a ride was too long we skipped it. No fast passes. We had a great trip. The kids loved it. we didn't see the whole park. We missed famous rides that I might have wanted my kids to see. We figured that we could always go again. We went back to the hotel when we were tired. We missed the evening light parade. Maybe we would have loved it but we were tired. It was a great trip. We stayed three days and each day went just like the first. I think that many problems are created by the "gotta do it all" mentality. The idea that unless you go to the most popular restaurant, ride every ride that it was a loss.
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My oldest graduated with a mechanical engineering degree from our state university in May. She took Pre-calculus and Calculus at our CC as DE. She also took chemistry and electronics at the community college. Now in our area many professors teach at both the CC and the State U so take that into consideration. She did not feel that her CC left her unprepared.
My middle daughter graduated with a BS in Math. She took Calc 1 & 2 at the community college with no ill effects.
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the closest high school to us is 3.1 miles. It is the public school that we are districted for.
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VermontCountryStore.com. Full and Half slips I cotton and nylon.
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Glad she's safe! Hope they caught the guy.
Your post reminded me of a time when I was a young mom and hubby was in the area where an office shooting took place. He called me to let me know he was safe, but I was scared for him and had to turn the news off. I put my youngster (an only at the time) in the stroller and went to a nearby park we always walk in - total daylight - working hours. There we saw a man sitting on a picnic table looking like he had just had a hard time - lost his mom or something similar. I almost went up to him to talk with him, but didn't.
Later on the news I saw that he was the shooter... and committed suicide in that park in front of another mom with her kids.
I was worried about hubby, but in reality, I was the one who was in a dangerous spot doing a totally ordinary thing. It's stuck with me. One can't predict these things.
One never knows.
I'm glad your daughter is safe.
So you now exactly how we feel. What a story to have. It is odd when something happens that even with its non-happening-ness it shifts the entire way you view the world.
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The moral of this story: always be polite. :)
So glad your daughter is okay!
We did wonder about that, if the fact that she stopped and apologized had anything to do with him leaving her alone.
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So glad she's safe. Perhaps places and times to avoid in future would be going out alone at 11:30 pm and walking through alleys. The first step to self-defense is avoiding potentially dangerous situations.
Sorry that I wasn't clear it was 11:30 am. Right before lunch.
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Veteran Moms - how do you maintain an atmosphere of spiritual formation and discipleship?
in General Education Discussion Board
Posted
That is a great question and one that I know that I struggle with too. As far as fostering spiritual growth, our family has pursued religious education at home as part of our curriculam we have also tried to impress the concept that religion is for everyday not just once a week. In my family and my religion that has meant attending church 3 week days each week and taking advantage of special speakers who come to church. We also have worked on praying together by saying night prayer together each night.
On the service front we sound a lot like you. We try to serve at the soup kitchen once a month and pray at the abortion facility once a month but like you I felt like it was sporadic and never enough and then it occurred to me that I was trying to make it too big. Our neighbors everyone including our own family and people at the grocery store etc. we set a goal that each day each one of us should do something to make someone else's life a little easier. Sometimes that is working at the soup kitchen sometimes that is letting the lady at the store with just a few items or crying children go ahead of us. Sometimes it is folding your sisters laundry when you know that she has a had a busy day.