Yay, yes, it feels like a miracle! And it's right in the nick of time, because this kid was getting seriously sick of practicing the same old thing AGAIN that he couldn't do. No formal RAN/RAS, but I have always been intrigued with your dots pages.

That's kinda making my brain spin! Just figuring out what the problem is... let alone fixing it... is definitely difficult. Yes... and it's annoying when people say, Well, I differentiate for 20 kids, so a small group of 3 shouldn't be so bad. And maybe not, but if they've all got different needs but they're all in 4th grade, so they're grouped because of time and staff constraints, huh. Reality vs. what COULD happen is what keeps me up at night. That and my cat meowing all night, lol.

My success is that my student with SUPER low visual memory scores, who I was getting really worried about, thinking maybe it's vision, maybe there's just a really sucky disability going on in addition to dyslexia, is starting to BLEND! For the first time ever, he read actual sentences to me without sounding out every. single. sound. It just happened out of the blue. He read actual pages (multiple!) of the sound-out series (CVC words) from High Noon.

Awesome!!! Completely opposite of say, controlling reading material to what a student can read in Barton. I'm starting to see my students thrive more with more difficulty and less control, too. The Spell-Links curriculum (which I haven't bought yet) samples show that they introduce ALL the ways to make a certain sound at the same time, no drip drip drip. I emailed and asked, do you do this even for first graders? And they said yup. So I've been mulling that around in my brain. So happy you're seeing positive developments!

Wow. I can't believe her local doctors said there was nothing they could do, and sent her on her way. Thank goodness she ended up in that hospital!! So glad she is getting good care now.

This happened to my friend as well, after being gf/df for about six months, all acid problems disappeared. Before that point, he was regularly having to try and sleep sitting up because the acid was so bad. He was only in his mid-20s at that point. Also, he had his gallbladder out a year later, not sure if that's related or not.

I'm getting lots of great ideas here! I've had my UKonserve food containers for at least five years and they're good as new. They are also watertight. https://www.amazon.com/stores/node/7518367011?_encoding=UTF8&field-lbr_brands_browse-bin=U Konserve&ref_=bl_dp_s_web_7518367011

I purged a ton of stuff recently, not by choice. A sewer pipe backed up and our basement had 4 inches of water in it last week 😞 We stupidly had a bunch of stuff still in cardboard boxes on the floor from our move over a year ago... so we had to chuck two pickup truck loads full of old clothes, books, and who knows what, and also learned that you should never keep cardboard in the basement! Yesterday we went to Home Depot and spent a bunch of money on plastic tubs (which I hate... they smell SO toxic! Kinda nervous about having them in the house), and a giant metal shelf. Still have so much stuff to either keep or chuck. I think a lot of my organizing problems stem from not having the right way to store things... so I get really disorganized. Why is it so hard to spend money on storage that will improve my life greatly for the long term, and so easy to spend the same amount on clothes or fun treats from the grocery store??

Well geez, guess I don't know much about these programs after all 😁

Ok, you guys have convinced me against. We started playing Zeus on the Loose, and they love it (and have remembered how to round to the nearest 10!). More games like that would be awesome.

I didn't know this! Thanks!

There's no way she can know that the rest of the family won't get it. In fact, it sounds to me like they probably WILL get it. Definitely reschedule!

Aww. What a sweet kid. And a good writer, too! Sounds like he had an eventful and worthwhile year 🙂

Aw, bummer. I was thinking about something computerized that would provide some worthwhile practice for 15 or so minutes a day for my 5th graders. I don't want Prodigy because I can't control what the kids work on. I don't think I can control the topics with ST Math or ALEKS either... hmmm. IXL is not good either because the kids will not want to click on any 3rd grade math topics when they're in 5th grade.

Has anyone tried ST math? I did a few sample games and they were pretty nifty. I especially like that there are limited/no words on the games. https://www.stmath.com/

This sounds great. I kinda wish I could do things over and not have $$$ debt from a college degree that I only kind of enjoyed getting. It took me at least 10 years of twists and turns, career-wise, to find something that I am good at doing and really like doing. Just the fact that your DD is thinking about the big picture (having a part time job for health insurance, for example), and has insight about herself (that she doesn't like who she becomes in an academic environment, despite the appearance of success) is very mature for a teenager. I went to college because it was "the next thing," without any self-reflection at all. If her mental health is not good in an academic environment, and she knows that for sure, there's really no point in encouraging her towards that direction. Recovering from trauma is no small task, and a marathon, not a sprint. I have a friend who is outwardly very successful, and inwardly an anxious, miserable mess. Nobody would know that from casually talking with her. She is hesitant to step off the career treadmill because... what could happen? What if she regrets it later on? She's already put in so much time! But the fact is, she is unable to function now.... all of her friends want her to GET OUT and do something, anything else... work at a coffee shop, ANYTHING, because it's clear to us that she may not be able to survive this level of stress. For real. For some reason, she is not able to do it yet, but it's scary watching her like this. Once your DD starts learning about the requirements for a small, organic farm, she may find that she needs to do some learning that requires college courses, and if that happens, she may be okay with it because it serves her larger goal. Or maybe she can get some kind of certification that does not require college, but that helps her towards her goals. Since she is really interested in learning about farming, I'm sure she will soak up opportunities to read books about it, do apprenticeships related to it, etc., and figure out the next step as it happens. I think it will be very important to her to connect with other people doing the same thing, so she can be connected to a community. Having people her own age to connect with will also be very important for her mental health - she will see that she's not the "odd one" doing something unheard of... because other people like her also think it's a valuable and fulfilling path. I'd love to read her blog... sounds right up my alley 🙂

I would be pretty furious if my AirBnB host had a party when I was renting the space!! It's bad enough when people are loud in hotel rooms, but to purposefully schedule a party when you have paying guests... geez!

Now THAT sounds like a neat place to go to school!

Yeah... I feel no desire to do any Christmassy things aside from relaxing and looking at twinkly lights. I don't want to buy or receive any presents.

Wow. That's awesome that she got through such difficult math 🙂 Did she ever talk about how she felt about her math skills?

Could be the same for this one! As long as he understands what he's doing, I'm fine with it...

I'm not trying to teach him to count on his fingers, I'm just surprised that he CAN'T, because for most kids it's so natural. I'm trying to figure out what his holdup is with "counting on"... maybe he's just not ready to move to a more abstract way of thinking about math.

Thanks for reminding me about generalization. I will find out how he does with our math concepts in other contexts. Also, gonna mix up the manips!

Hi all, thanks for the ideas. This child is 8. We're doing lots of Ronit Bird, and he does well with Cuisenaire rods. We will continue to use manipulatives as long as needed for counting and adding. He is pretty good at visualizing a number line and counting up in his head, but when it's a lot of counting up, like 8 + 7 or something, he makes mistakes. He can count up mentally +3 or +4 with no problem. It's just surprising to me because I've only met one other child who hasn't been able to count up by using fingers. I definitely think it's a matter of not really having a sense of quantities, like geodob said above... fingers are not connected to actual quantities when counting, it's just a recitation.

What would you think? Say, for something like 9+3. Child puts out 9 fingers, then gets stuck because there aren't 3 more fingers to count. When told to "put 9 in your head," and then count 3 more fingers.... blank stare. Clearly, this child doesn't understand "counting on." It's just a developmental stage that eventually comes with enough number sense, right? There's no rushing it, in my experience. This child does well with number lines.