Jump to content

Menu

mamabear2three

Members
  • Posts

    567
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by mamabear2three

  1. No, I checked, she had her meds this morning. Part of my difficulty is knowing how much it is behavioral in her control and how much of it is behavioral out of her control. Her whole mood changes and I can't figure out if it's the ADHD preventing her from focusing or if she's choosing to not do her work so that I will let her go play.
  2. My 7 year old has ADHD combined type and we are currently using medication to help her because of a lot of reasons, but basically the bottom line is we need the meds at this stage of life. Anyway, she's having a bad day today and I'm so frustrated and feel so helpless! I've sent her off to play because she literally couldn't focus on anything. I had to walk her through the English page (she loves English and typically does this independently before I have a chance to come sit down and help her - I always have it laying ready for her in the morning so she has something to start on before I get to the table). Then we did spelling - that went ok, it was test day and she was prepared and knew her words so she didn't have much of a problem finishing that quickly. Then I gave her a break because I could see her ability to sit and focus was gone. After a break I tried to do math with her, but her brain was shut down. She literally couldn't do even the simplest math problems that she knows how to do (like her 10s fact families). Her automatic recall works, but her thinking ability isn't. So for example if I say "7 and 3 make..." she'd automatically say 10. But if I showed her 7+3 on paper, she would stare at it like she's never seen the numbers before in her life... and she had just told me the answer! This was just the warm-up and I was already frustrated, so I stopped and sent her off to play. I feel helpless on days like this and don't know how to help!
  3. I'm terrible with art - the last 2 years (K and 1st) I've used coloring pages that go along with something we are studying as our "art". I am planning on SOTW 2 next year and thus will have opportunity to use coloring pages again with history, but am wondering if that's enough for art? I feel like I'm falling short in this area but it's also hard to spend money on an art curriculum when it's not a core subject... what should I do?? I should add that I tried drawing with children last year and it's just not going to happen, the book is too confusing to figure out an individual lesson from.
  4. I'm in a similar situation - my daughter is going into second next year and reads up to probably 5th/6th grade level with comprehension. I love the idea of having a list of preapproved titles for her to choose from and have her rate when she's finished! This year I just gave assigned books of a variety of levels and allowed her to choose other books to read outside of that on her own time. It's worked ok, but I felt like it was really haphazard. My plan for next year is to get MCT Island level including the MUD trilogy. I think I will also use the idea of having a list of books for her to choose from and rate as she finishes reading. And a book as a reward for finishing the list is an awesome idea!
  5. Thanks for the ideas, I was thinking that a good starting point might be having her memorize something simple to repeat. I start working with these tips and ideas this week and hopefully this will go better than the show and tell did!
  6. We have just over a month to prepare for a presentation in our homeschool co-op. Each person will be presenting something about a famous person. My 7 year old tends to get very excited about presentations at home, and then can't follow through when on the spot in front of people. She couldn't even talk about her favorite book/toy during show and tell after practicing and getting so excited about sharing. What tips can I use to prepare her for the next presentation? I would love to see her stand confident and share what she's learned for this, but I just don't know how to help her!
  7. (Thanks for the bump) :) yes, third - she's technically going into 2nd, but she's easily at a third grade LA level. My two main contenders at the moment are CAP Writing and Rhetoric and MCT. Here's what I'm debating: CAP lacks the instruction in revision/editing that I feel is important, but includes the reading analysis without any extra work on my part. MCT is probably more pieces than I really need (I am starting Latin next year, and I have found a free grammar program that I'm ok with) but it wraps poetry in really well which is something my daughter would just LOVE. I wish there was something like MEP for LA!
  8. Looking for a writing curriculum suggestions: my daughter is a quick study on grammar and is finishing BJU English 2. She loves the writing assignments in BJU and does a really good job on each one, taking such joy and pride in a well-written published project, but I need to shift gears for grammar and it seems a waste of money to use only the writing portion.
  9. That's a good point - I can try it and if it isn't working, I can always purchase something later. Thanks!
  10. Is copywork followed by dictation (a la dictation day by day) really enough to learn spelling? I was going to purchase Rod and Staff spelling for next year but was considering trying a public domain speller instead to save money since money is super tight for us right now, but I don't want to end up with a "you get what you pay for" scenario.
  11. Funny that you say Kiss grammar is more user friendly, my eyes glaze over every time I try to comprehend their website... maybe I should try again?
  12. I am trying to put together as much free curriculum for next year as possible, and this seemed to be an easy, straight forward grammar program but I haven't been able to find many reviews on here about it. http://www.dailygrammar.com/archive.html I figured it'd be pretty easy to copy the lessons into a document and create my own "student book" and the same for the answers for a "teacher book" but was wondering for those of you who have used it, is it any good?
  13. the samples available of the Ready Readers looks pretty foolproof - I am really seriously considering going that route as the cost is doable. My daughter would do well with that style of lit study, and it's cheaper than buying an equivalent number of lit guides from progeny press or somewhere like that. We'll see how I feel as it gets closer to next year and I have some money to spend on curriculum :)
  14. I was just looking at reading roadmaps! And the ready readers... seems the ready readers might have more handholding than the roadmaps?
  15. Thanks for the suggestions! I'll take a look at those and see what I like :)
  16. We don't need phonics anymore, and I have a plan for spelling, but I feel like throwing books at her to read (so to speak) is not accomplishing what I want, and am wondering what curriculum options are good for encouraging critical reading skills/developing comprehension and teaching things like plot, main idea, literary elements, etc. I want to challenge her to think a little bit about her reading and be able to learn more from a book/story than just enjoying it for the literature. She will be in second grade in the fall but is reading on a 4/5 grade level. This year I've just asked her to tell me about the books she's reading for school in order to ensure comprehension and she is always able to retell the story accurately and can answer basic questions about the text, but I know I'm missing a lot of opportunities for teaching, I just need some hand-holding so looking for a curriculum to do it for me. I'm even thinking maybe something on a second/third grade level wouldn't be bad, if the lessons and discussions are challenging her to think. Suggestions?
  17. I have a doula. She told me that it's ok to not feel ok, and to feel discouraged and that I need to try to not put expectations on myself when things like this are out of my control. I'm supposed to keep telling myself that I'm healthy and baby is healthy until proven otherwise, to prevent dwelling on things.
  18. What I WANT is to not have to go to the hospital for birth. I want a redo on my last baby. I want him to turn head down and for my fluid levels to stay at a healthy level. What I want is a fantasy that no longer exists. I want to be able to do things in a low intervention/low impact way, without a fight. And I feel horrible for wanting to not be pregnant. I want this baby, I just don't want to do this thing called pregnancy and delivery. Can I just skip ahead to being home with a healthy baby? :sad:
  19. I'm 25 weeks pregnant with surprise baby number 4...had extreme morning sickness first trimester. Had a kidney stone which resulted in a bad kidney infection, hospitalization and procedure under general anesthesia... in all the entire ordeal took me out of commission for a month and all before I hit 20 weeks. Have gotten the stomach flu, and two bad colds. Now I'm staring down the possibility of a diagnosis of Gestational diabetes which is super frustrating because I have a severe gluten intolerance and am already limited in what I can eat. I'm a VBAC patient, and my previous birth - c-section - was traumatic, so I have been trying to wrap my head around a hospital based birth, and the possibility of another c-section. To top it off, a huge part of my emotional support - my mom - left to go cruising for the winter back in October. Prior to them leaving, I got together with her twice a week. She's supposed to be back a few weeks before my due date, but I really miss her and am afraid she won't make it back in time. So the bottom line is, I feel depressed. I have a part of me that feels like giving up on the VBAC idea and just scheduling a RCS. A lot less fight in that scenario. I've ordered a therapy light to see if that helps, but it won't come until Monday. I exercise 2-3 times a week and am working on trying to do that daily. I take prenatal vit. and vit. D. but am just tired and gloomy and feel overwhelmed. :(
  20. my state requires both science and "social studies". I was thinking through some plans for next year (2nd grade and prek) and was going to use Voskamp's A Child's Geography for history until I looked through it tonight and realized that it would work as an Earth Science curriculum. Instead of pairing it with and earth/space science curriculum, would you pair it with a history curriculum?
  21. my daughter is technically finishing up 1st grade and is quick to comprehend math topics but detests repetition and does not retain memorized math facts. This year we worked through Horizons level 2 and are about half way through level 3A, and I have been trying to modify the lessons so they don't include as much repetition each day, but the spiral approach means constant repetition regardless of how much I modify it. We've been taking breaks with beast academy 3A, too, which she loves the format but I get tired of it because she's not really mature enough to deal with the challenge questions and I feel like it would be better to come back to that later. (She love love loved the first chapter on shapes, but the skip counting has been a challenge because of her lack of retention of basic addition facts and inability to work mentally). I am considering switching to singapore because maybe a different approach to learning math might help the basic facts stick in her head better... and hoping the focus on word problems instead of on rote repetition of skills might help practicing be less tedious for her? I'd go back to MEP but it is just so teacher intensive and next year I'll have 3 littles underfoot and I'm worried about getting to it. We've tried several times and failed at Math Mammoth, so I'm not even considering that anymore. Just looking for advice to see if this might be the right way to go before I spend the money.
  22. Today is dance day - that means we get about an hour to do whatever schoolwork before it's time to go... and with two girls in dance plus drive time, that's all we get to on Thursdays. So anyway, English has recently been her favorite subject and yesterday she did all the prewriting for her first essay. Today's assignment was to use her prewriting worksheet to write the rough draft. But she also had already learned the steps for writing the essay through the examples given her in her book: Prewrite, rough draft, revise, edit, final draft. When she finished her rough draft, she handed it to me and demanded I read it and tell her what questions I had so she could revise it. In the end, she insisted on completing each step through to final draft and we got nothing done except that she wrote an awesome first essay! Now if I could only harness that kind of enthusiasm for every assignment I give!!
  23. I have to look up her height growth - no one caught the lack of weight gain until now, which is kind of odd, I suppose she is still on the growth chart otherwise they would have noticed something sooner. I'm glad she's being monitored because of her medication, that's how they caught this. She's never been FTT before though. I wonder if she has celiac, which caused the weight issues in the past, and then going gluten free fixed that except for the lowered appetite from medication which we started not long afterwards, and caused the continued weight loss?
  24. Thanks for the hugs :) I don't know if parasites are a possibility - how do you get them? She's never been out of the country or swam in anything but a regular pool??
  25. So I found out tonight in talking to my older daughter's (she turns 7 next month) pediatrician, that the lack of weight gain (and indeed, a bit of weight loss) is NOT related to the medication she is taking for her ADHD like we thought - in fact she's only been on the medication since about October and yet looking back in her chart, she has't gained any weight for a year and a half. And the pattern repeated prior to that. So we saw a weight loss winter of 2012, gain summer 2012 weight loss/no change (about a pound loss) winter 2013, weight gain summer 2013 no weight change winter 2014, summer 2014 was a high anxiety summer and she maintained her weight now going into winter 2015, she has lost 2 pounds. Now the other interesting thing is that each winter she also had issues with potty training accidents - all testing showed no infections or other issues so we assumed it was just a stubborn potty training issue and continued with rewards, etc. and eventually beat back the accidents. We discovered at the end of the summer that removing gluten from her diet decreased her anxiety dramatically so she is currently gluten free but it hasn't helped the weight issue. Pediatrician is seeing us on Friday to weigh her again and will probably order a battery of bloodwork to rule out all sorts of things because we are also seeing her be very bla and tired during the day, resting in her bed for an hour here and there several times a day. She eats normal amounts of food when comparing her to her sister and other kids, but prior to medication for ADHD she was just always hungry and always eating- obviously that didn't make much difference in her weight though. I've been making sure she's eating and focusing on getting more calories into her, we started her on ensure drink daily as well per pediatrician's recommendation, but I feel like (and the pediatrician agrees) that it's not simply a calorie issue, something else is going on. Anything specific I need to look for? Symptoms to watch out for? Tests to ask for? Even just calming words for me so that I don't feel panicked about something being wrong with my baby girl?
×
×
  • Create New...