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Piper

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Everything posted by Piper

  1. Years ago my friends had a beat-up, old, green Datsun sedan, and called it "Agnes". I've never come across a better-suited name for a car since then - it was just perfect for that car. I dubbed our current vehicle "Pearl". It's white - and it cost a lot! (As in, the "pearl of great price").
  2. When I was pregnant with dd, I ate a lot of granola bars in the mornings to help stave off the nausea. It took me about 6 years after she was born to even be able to *think* about eating a granola bar again. The associations were just way too strong! When I was pregnant with ds, we bought dd (18 months old at the time) a baby doll for Christmas. It was one of those ones that is really strongly scented, with a baby powder smell or something like that. With my "morning" sickness, the smell just made me want to toss my cookies, and it was so strong, that I ended up confiscating my poor dd's doll until after ds was born! (Thankfully she wasn't super attached to it at the time!)
  3. I just saw this video about the best cookie sheets the other day, and learned something myself. :) Hope it helps.
  4. TBH, I wouldn't even worry about it. Kids are all different. There's no harm in his being cautious. My two are very different - my dd is cautious and totally not daring, while my ds does everything with a full body commitment. (Even now that she's 9, there are things that my ds has been doing for years that she's not entirely comfortable with.) It's just their personalities, and there's nothing wrong with either way of approaching life. Let him explore his own boundaries in his own time. He'll be fine! (And on a side note, being cautious is not necessarily a guarantee of safety! Contrary to all expectations, it's my dd who broke her arm, not my ds! :tongue_smilie: )
  5. Haha, yeah, I wondered about that too. I've been wondering what my dairy farmer friend could do... ;)
  6. For those in the midst of studying the Ancients, here are a couple of fun links! This one is a fascinating blog where various Ancient Roman recipes are replicated for your viewing - and tasting! - pleasure. And on a side note, here is a really interesting news article about a 1,000 year old recipe that kills MRSA. (I know, neither "Ancient" nor "Roman", but intriguing all the same!)
  7. And "congradulations"...
  8. If you want a gentler introduction to the study of Latin for your littlies, and you want to explore what Kalmia said, check out "English from the Roots Up".
  9. Really interesting. The genes are against us in this family, but we could all use more time outdoors. Thanks for linking the article.
  10. Thanks for posting these links; they are fascinating, especially the last one. On a personal note, the phonics program I use doesn't teach the "two vowels go walking" rule either. :-) I'm very impressed by your analysis,OP! Thanks!
  11. I sucked my finger until I was five...I remember having a callus on the back of my pinkie. I stopped when I went to kindergarten and noticed that no-one else was doing it. Positive peer pressure! Both my kiddos were thumb/finger suckers, and it was starting to affect their teeth. For both of them, at around age 4, the use of the "Thumbbuster" glove (it's on Amazon) along with an appropriate reward strategy, worked miracles. They both quit within about six weeks of starting this. Your idea of using medical tape is the same principle; I'd tie it to a sticker chart and some favorite toy(s) as a reward, or whatever motivates your dd.
  12. My kids have a book they find inspiring: "What Shall I Do Today?" (Sorry I can't get the link to work at present.) It has various art and craft projects. There are lots of similar books/title you can probably find at your local library.
  13. Wow, there are some long lists here! Off the top of my head: AAS - it's a good program, and I wish it had worked for us, but it turned out to just have too many bits and pieces to it - not a good fit for me, and once dd started moaning about it, I stopped getting it out at all. GWG - complete waste of time. Zero retention. WWE3 for 3rd (or even 4th) grade - not here! Way too big of a jump between WWE2 and WWE3 for us. Since I found some other stuff to help bridge the gap, I've come to like the others a lot and I'm not sure I'll even be going back to WWE3 and 4 (although I own both...gotta stop buying ahead!)
  14. Saxon Phonics for 1st and 2nd grade. The PP up-thread who mentioned it is the only other person I've ever seen admit to using it! But I love, love, love that program. My ds whinges about it, but it has made both my kids into very competent, confident, and avid readers, as well as very good spellers. Did I mention that I love it?!
  15. My variation of the Trader Joe's Red Quinoa salad (sorry I don't have a link). Totally yummy and a hit with everyone. Red Quinoa Salad 1 cup red quinoa 2 cups chicken or vegetable broth 1 can (15 oz.) black beans, drained & rinsed 2 cups roasted corn kernels (or one can corn kernels, drained) 1 avocado, chopped 1 pint grape tomatoes, halved ½ cup red onion, finely diced ¼ bunch cilantro, chopped zest of 1 lime juice of 1 lime salt & pepper to taste extra ¼ bunch cilantro, chopped Sauté quinoa in pan with a dash of olive oil until lightly toasted, about 5 minutes. Cook quinoa in broth according to packet directions. Set aside to cool. Combine beans, corn, tomatoes, avocado, onion, lime zest, lime juice and ¼ bunch cilantro. Season with salt & pepper. Toss. Put the quinoa on a large serving platter, top with the corn/bean mixture, then garnish with the extra ¼ bunch chopped cilantro. Serves 6.
  16. I'd suggest that you brine the chops for an hour or so before you cook them. Every time I cooked it, no matter what method (broil, roast, crock pot, etc. etc.) it always came out really dry - because most pork is so lean now - so I just gave up buying it at all, although we all like it. Then I came across the brining idea, and now pork is back on our menu! :)
  17. Thanks for the tip! And thanks again everyone for helping enlighten my ignorance! :)
  18. Thank you for answering this! I really appreciate the responses. I can't say I fully understand everything (unfortunately, I wouldn't know a gerund if I fell over it in the street), but the light is beginning to glimmer a bit more. As I said, profound grammatical ignorance here! I think I will tell my dd that she's sort of on the right track ("verby" words that are acting in a different way), but it's a bit more complicated and she'll have to wait until we learn some more about parts of speech. Then we'll be able to come back to these sentences and say "Ah! That's why!" :)
  19. We are working through TC at the moment and loving it. However, I am coming from the disadvantage of profound grammatical ignorance, so I hope that someone can help me out here! Today we did Lesson 9, Day 2, and the problems came with the grammar review/paragraph copywork. The first sentence is: "Sherry leaned over the dock trying to find the mermaid." My dd wanted to label "trying" and "find" as verbs, in addition to the correct answer of "leaned". Why are the other two not verbs? What are they instead? Also, she (and I too!) thought that "over" must be an adverb, as it modifies the verb "leaned". Is this correct? If not, why not? In the second sentence, the part that reads "so she leaned even farther over the edge" has both "even" and "farther" labeled as adverbs, which we both understand, but why isn't "over" labeled an adverb? (I think this is probably the same thing as in the previous sentence.) The last sentence, "The movement caused her to fall into the water" also had dd asking questions I couldn't answer. She wanted to label "fall" as a verb, and "into" as an adverb modifying that, and I couldn't tell her why that's wrong. I'm sorry it's such a long question. As I said, I come from profound grammatical ignorance. I know when things sound right or wrong, but all I learned in school about parts of speech was the very basic idea of verb, noun and adjective, and maybe a bit about subjects, but that was about it. So I'm floundering a bit today! Thanks for any help!
  20. ...when you're such a sap that the poems make you blubber like a baby?? :blushing: I really want to read them all my favorites, but it's hard to make myself understood, and my poor kids are confused about why I'm "sad"! :blushing: :blushing: Please tell me I'm not the only one like this!! :laugh:
  21. There's this, though it does include India and China: http://mapofthemonth.com/site/products/ancient-civilizations-map/
  22. Been there...still trying to figure it out. :) I would recommend that you do level 2 of Saxon Phonics. Although there is a lot of review, they do add a lot of new concepts. The review is great, anyway, as it helps make the rules really stick. I moved to AAS for 3rd grade after my dd completed Saxon 1 and 2 (we didn't use K). It's a good program, and the rules are presented fairly similarly. I didn't stick with it, because for me, I found all the bits and pieces just stressed me out and I dreaded pulling it out, but that's about me, not the program, so don't let that put you off investigating it. Then I moved to R&S Spelling, partly for the fact that it could be done more independently. It's not something I'm raving about, though, for my dd. It's pretty simple for her, to be honest, and I should have probably started her at a higher level with it. And that was all in 3rd grade! So for this year, 4th, I'm simplifying even more (schole and all that, you know :)) and I'm just going to draw dd's spelling lists from the writing she does in the rest of her schooling. The words she misspells will be put on a weekly list, and we will discuss why they were wrong, referring to the rules from the Saxon program. Then she'll practice and test on them until she can get them right a certain number of times. I'm hoping this will give us a more "targeted" spelling approach, addressing the rules that she's weakest in, without wasting a bunch of time practicing and testing words that she can spell in her sleep. Good luck, and if you find the magic formula, let me know! :) My ds will be completing Saxon 2 this year so I have to figure out where he'll end up with all this...
  23. That is totally. awesome. :lol: Also uber-coordinated!! Thanks for reviving the thread - it predates me, too, and my life was missing something until I saw those videos! :laugh:
  24. I don't know if this is just a CA thing? Maybe others can enlighten me...but I abhor the so-called word "Lookit". As in, "Lookit! My new toy!" I'm sorry, people, that is NOT A WORD! (Which I have drilled into my kids since they could talk.) What you really mean to say is "Look at my new toy!" or even, "Look! My new toy!" Repeat after me: "Lookit" is not a word!!! Another one that gets my goat is "momentarily." As in, "We'll be with you momentarily." Well, I sure hope not, because it's going to take more than a moment to attend to my problem here! You may be with me in a moment, but you'd better not be with me momentarily! [/Rant off] :)
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