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SanDiegoMom

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Everything posted by SanDiegoMom

  1. Mostly ones that I picked up from recommendations here! Numpberphile, Vi hart, documentaries on or off Netflix (Between the Folds, Story of Maths, Secret Life of Numbers). All the Mathcounts or AMC videos on Aops.
  2. My ds does usually an hour to an hour 15 of math per day (fifth grade). That doesn't include reading books about math and watching videos about math (another hour usually). My dd, not math accelerated, is happy to stop after 45 min. (also fifth grade)
  3. We quit spelling after third grade. I have one natural and one decent speller who reads a ton. Gradually with all the reading she makes fewer and fewer mistakes. I like having a very streamlined day, so no extra time working on skills they are already pretty good at!
  4. Because of my insecurity and desire for a little structure in our lives, my twins have been doggedly working through WWS. And since they have worked so hard, I gave them a break and let them do unjournaling prompts all week. My ds was thrilled and 15 minutes later sent me this. The prompt was to tell a fake news story (appropriate, eh?) as believably as possible. It has recently been found that eating ice cream during a lightning storm increases your appetite for cold food. Consuming large quantities can, over time, cause you to be unable to eat any food over 32 degrees Fahrenheit. This bizarre symptom was first contracted by Harold Churchill, the owner of Churchill’s Chills, one of the largest ice cream producing companies in the nation. “It’s shocking. I am simply unable to eat warm foods.†Churchill says. “It’s a real shame, too-- grilled cheeseburgers were one of my favorite foods. This unfortunate happenstance makes it almost impossible to go out to dinner with my family.†The cause was isolated by Rodney Garland in 2010, when one of the most severe lightning storms seen in years hit Frankfort, Kentucky. Thanks to him, we can now be safe from this life-ruining syndrome. Make sure to warn your family and friends about the dangers of ice cream, and have a safe and warm-food day.
  5. I just had to share, that after three years living here and basically giving up the thought that my son would have any friends other than the ones his sister brings home, he has made a new friend! They hit it off immediately over card tricks, scratch programming, and minecraft. After the boy left my son said that there is a hundred percent probability that if the new friend comes over again they will have a good time. :-) Not to mention this new friend is the exact same age as my kids and has a twin sister as well! I am so thankful!
  6. This sounds like my son -- he's always happy to do interacting with family and tells me how nice it is to go on family walks or grocery shopping together, but if he had to choose, screens are an easier choice. Not having screens during the week, however, might instill the feast or famine mindset. We have a lot of screen options during the week -- my kids usually play minecraft for 30 min before school, 45 min after, sometimes they play 30-45 min at night (my oldest got the latest Zelda game so they hang out with her watching her play it) -- and even with all that time they still usually have time for swim practice, ballet practice, piano practice, a short board game and 30 min to an hour of reading! And if they didn't end up playing that much on the weekend because of an all day monopoly or risk marathon, they don't have the worry that they won't get to do screens again until the following weekend.
  7. My always PS child tested gifted and did not enjoy school until 11th grade when she was able to load up on AP's. They were taught by the best teachers and she shaped her schedule based on who was teaching. She had plenty of challenge finally. She is going into Political Science or Econ and has really enjoyed her Micro/Macro classes and Government, as well as her AP English classes. Peers have been more of a challenge. Even though she goes to a very good school, she still is in touch with most of the kids from the last HS she attended that was very highly ranked. (83rd in nation). She can tell the difference in the level of discourse and the issues that the kids talk about at the previous school -- here she has had problems finding anyone here that just CARES quite as much about anything the way she does. So not perfect. She has made friends, but they are all pretty much surface friendships. We've never had access to other options for high schools, so I don't have any experience with project based or arts magnets. Most of her friends from San Diego finished at least Geometry before high school, doing Alg 2 in 9th grade. If they did make it to PreCalc in 9th, they took either Calc AB/Calc BC/AP Stats, or Calc BC/Stats/DE Calc 3 or whatever was offered nearby. That's not as common where we are now. We live in an area that is very strict about districting. Since we are military I researched a ton to figure out the best school here and moved into its district. So that affects the amount of AP's and the quality of teachers.
  8. My senior is not homeschooled (the younger two are) but she feels like an honorary homeschooler from all my time on these boards:-) So I don't know if she belongs on the list but she just got her UCLA acceptance yesterday! Just waiting on the last few which will be coming soon. It has been a long year of applications and waiting!
  9. I don't know if I'm allowed to post this, but I have my copy for sale on the classifieds board. :-)
  10. Coming in late with just a couple of anecdotes as to why teachers are leery about unfinished work going home... My daughter in second grade had a Magic Treehouse book report and made a castle to go along with the report. My husband helped her on it. She at that time attended a struggling school with very low parental involvement. Just seeing the other kids' faces as they looked at the incredible castle my husband had "helped" my daughter build -- we realized immediately the different levels of work that come in from students WITH parental support vs the majority of kids there that did NOT have parental support. Then at a different school in fifth grade my daughter had to sign a contract saying that parents would NOT help with the project they were assigned. I signed and forgot to tell my husband and came home to yet another masterpiece. She had to do it all over. If asked he would have said that it was her work -- it is hard sometimes when collaborating to tell how much you are actually helping. The fourth grade teachers had actually scrapped the California Mission project entirely as they were tired of having the parents doing it for the kids -- or at least three fourths of the parents. The kids without help had projects that looked dismal in comparison and usually ended up feeling pretty discouraged. It wasn't worth it to the teachers. Agreeing with others -- completed work is actually a must I feel -- how else to make sure he is on track before report cards come?
  11. When we had extra time I did an Ellen Mchenry Unit (they are very crafty, so good for spring time, but are also deceptively deep). And maybe some documentaries, creative writing (i use unjournaling and rip the page for prompts and do a supplement of math or math games. So keep working, but maybe make it the fun stuff!
  12. My ds has been enjoying Here's Looking at Euclid; And for computer science he loves the series by Jeremy Kubica -- Computational Fairy Tales, Lauren Ipsum, and CS Detective. They use the first in his online class and he asked for the other two. He also loves the Weird World of Words by Mitchell Symons. My dd loves the Scientist in the Field books.
  13. My daughter did only Physics, Hon Bio and APES and took AP Psych instead of science for her 12th grade year. Overall she had 10 AP's, but only the three sciences. So far she's been accepted to two Honors Colleges at a State School and a private U, and is looking to get another Honors Invite. We felt that rigor is more important than box checking but she definitely worried for awhile! She will be a humanities major for sure.
  14. My kid's teacher went through a Julliard pre-college program, music camps every summer, and then got a performance degree at Oberlin. Even though it might not have changed the way she teaches (she is actually extremely laid back and does not push her students unless they push themselves) by having that degree and those colleges on her resume she gets a lot more students than if she did not have a degree. She consistently has around 40-45 students coming for half hour lessons (in a populous high col area).
  15. This situation really makes me wonder. My roommate was a night owl, staying up until 1 am, and I went to bed around 10. I got up at 7 and she slept usually til 11. It sucked sometimes but we made it work. Would have never thought about going to the RA. We just tried to be quiet and if we needed to we would have used ear plugs. Like I did when my husband used to get up at 4 am for a flight!
  16. Out of My mind by Sharon Draper. Fifth grader with Cerebral Palsy who cannot speak or talk but has a photographic memory and learns to communicate using a computer. Ends up joining the school's Wuiz Bowl but still experiences subtle discrimination. It's very good.
  17. My daughter at 13 sat in the hotel room the entire time we were in Hawaii. We rarely took vacations that big -- we were going for mid deployment leave from my husband's year long in Afg, and she literally sat in the hotel room for almost the entire 8 days! Now that she is older I understand it more, however. We didn't do much more than lay around with a few short side trips -- my husband was exhausted and needed a lot of down time, but for a teenager with 6 year old siblings, that wasn't very exciting. So she preferred just to be by herself.
  18. Beast Academy for my grade level math kid. She switched to Singapore briefly when it got a little overwhelming, but quickly switched back after two weeks. She adores the puzzles and variety even though everything is super challenging and she's not a natural math lover. Her math advanced twin loves AOPS. He would have done BA if it had been out in time.
  19. We have one game suggestion. Just one. We started doing a pictionary round in the morning with my fifth grade twins -- I show one twin the latin flashcard, they draw the picture (so they have to be able to remember the translation) and the other twin guesses it and has to use the latin word. They've been enjoying this and we only do it for 10 minutes as a way to start the day. We do Latin every day but we literally just started second semester fifth grade.
  20. Just make sure you don't make my mistake - starting a curriculum that you want to finish and give enough of its due, but you also take summer holidays. It's hard to go back to a specific curriculum (in my case it was an Ellen Mchenry unit) once summer hits. If it's something that you can just pick up where you left off its no problem (math and Writing With Skill for us). So just make sure you've got a good stopping point if you take a summer break!
  21. And just as a fyi, the Veterans Health Care and Benefits Improvement Act of 2016 was just passed, closing the loophole that was created by unclear language which disallowed in state tuition for students using transferred benefits from a sponsor who is still active duty. So now anyone using the GI bill will get in state tuition everywhere, not just dependents of retirees. This was something that made applying to schools very interesting for my daughter, who applied to some out of state public universities not knowing what would happen! It really does vary quite a bit, bah-wise.
  22. We love the History of US and the Story of Science, but cannot outline it. I've been using it occasionally to teach note-taking instead.
  23. We do WWS. It's the only thing that gets done consistently. My son struggles too much with open ended assignments and we tried BW projects and short story writing and kilgallon, but nothing got done consistently except WWS. It was a steep learning curve - we started in the second half of fourth grade at half speed and there were a lot of tears and frustration to start. Now they have the hang of it and their writing has greatly improved. They are learning outlining, they have gotten worlds better at narration, and they have learned how to organize their writing. I am very happy with WWS. I sound like a bad infomercial. Try it today!
  24. We are using the Newton book and Quest Guide. I really like the Quest Guide for this one - we mostly verbally answer the written work together but the experiments or demonstrations help them a lot. Some of them are tough (one was studying the rate of acceleration using a toy car, ramp, taking a video and analyzing it frame by frame adm graphing the curve- they aren't all that difficult but I do find most of the demos so far to be worthwhile and not just fluff!) We did not use the quest guide for Aristotle, just read, and there isn't one for the last book. There's an online download for five dollars on the NSTA website, but it's not nearly the same. So I don't know what we will do next year. :-(
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