That's some good food for thought. I'll run the ezine idea by him. I'll have to think about how I might help him find some internal motivation. Writing seems so difficult because as a homeschooler he knows full well that he could communicate any information with me verbally much more easily than through writing. I'm imagine we'll figure this out. Thank you fellow "mother of many!"

I have a few children that really struggle to care about doing a good job on their school work. My 12 year old son in particular races through his work to move onto something more stimulating. His one and only goal is to get it done to a level that I will let him move on to something else. He acts like this with his chores too. I'm sure that this is normal for a lot of children but it seems to me that homeschooling makes this a little worse because a teacher's failing mark is worse than a mothers' and wondering if your peers will look down on you for a failing mark also discourages this. This can be particularly obvious with his writing. This boy oozes creativity from every pore. He writes stories for fun although they're horribly written because he just has to get the story out without pausing to think about grammar or spelling. He has stuff to say but forcing him to slow down and create a logical train of thought and then actually write it out in an engaging manner is like torture. Lately I've just been having him write letters about our life to the grand parents because at least that has the hope of a reply attached to it. But still it comes out something like this: His math suffers too but a little less so. At least with math it's a little easier to hold him accountable. Any thought?

Thanks!

That looks pretty good. Thanks.

Hey everybody. 👋 I haven't been around here in awhile but I always end up back here when I have a question. I have found myself more and more convinced that cutesy media is really not helpful for children. I hate trying to find early elementary resources that aren't sickeningly sweet or cutesy. I'm sure that some of it is the cheapness of producing digital animations that are cute vs. videos of actual people that are capable of giving an age appropriate presentation. Despite the great activities even Khan Academy Kids app annoys me (and my kids). The saccharine "KHAN ACADEMY KIDS!!!" in the introduction makes my hair rise. I feel like it belittles children and even sometimes humiliates them. I figured I might find some support here to find alternative resources. What I'm looking for are apps that are useful learning resources that have minimal cutesiness but are still able to engage young children. A few that I have found for young children that meet my requirements are GCompris, Tux Paint, and Scratch Jr. What do you use?

Hey all! I haven't been here for awhile but I always come back here when I need to find a resource because you all are the most knowledgeable people on the topic of homeschooling anywhere that I've seen on the internet. 💖 I have a very delayed 9yo boy and a very energetic 5yo girl that I would like to find a book to look at with that has some math question prompts. MEP's reception book is basically what I'm looking for but I need more than that. Any ideas?

Hey thanks! I actually just wanted a readable TOC anyways so this was perfect. I forgot about these. Perfect!

My son loves listening to SOTW while he does chores. He would really like a TOC for all four volumes. For some reason only V1 has descriptive chapter titles for the mp3 files. Would it be a copyright violation for someone to share with me the TOC?

Years ago I came upon a youtube channel that had a bunch of little old-school physics animations showing how forces, friction, etc. work. They were really simple line drawn animations made ages ago, maybe in the 60's. Does anyone know what I'm talking about or have a link for me?

I've never considered shorthand. I personally think that many handicrafts are way under valued. I think that some areas of Europe still intentionally teach handwork. Even if the child never takes off with knitting or woodwork at least they learn how to control their hands. I've tried to teach a few adults to knit but they just couldn't get their hands to obey. I suspect the lack of cursive practice is only going to exacerbate this problem. I was just looking into basket making with my children and came upon this old gem: https://archive.org/details/handworkitsplace00plai/page/n13/mode/2up

Interesting, I'm not sure. They do eat the chayote greens, watercress and parsley so I know that they're not adverse to eating greens. I'll have to look into that.

Thanks! That's been my main suspicion. I just don't like confirming plants by their leave with internet pictures.

Thanks! It's on my to-read list.

This is great! Bonus points for covering the other subjects too. 🙂

Thanks for these suggestions. I'm going to look into each one.

I've seen wild thyme and I bought a green called "Lyann Panye" which I've had quite a bit of difficulty identifying because I haven't yet seen it flower. It's tasty though. I planted some.

Thanks for the video suggestion. I'll have to watch that. Other than corn--beans, squash, sweet potatoes, bananas, pigeon peas and chayotes are the primary crops. There are few other insignificant thing that they add here and there but that's about it. The lack of variety really surprised me because I had spent some time in rural Mexico before and they had tons of variety.

There were but most have pulled out because of the recent instability in the country. A lot of the organizations that are there or who were there had set up at sea level in the cities. The mountain people are really without even gov't help. I'm not even sure the police would come if there was a murder in some of the mountains. Where we are set we are the only white people for a long ways. The children run out when they spot us and laugh and yell, "Blan!" It's very cute.

I seriously doubt that there is much subterranean life left in some of their "fields". There's approximately no organic material left. They plough up (well actually pick up) 45 degree hillsides that are half rocks. They don't plough because they have too many rocks. it's really bad.

I've read a reasonable amount about permaculture and I've read some about using green manure cover crops. The local people did respond well to us when we brought up our concerns about the animals. Not everyone does this (some continue to stake animals on the grazing land) but it's enough to hurt. They want us there so they said that they would work to keep the animals reigned in better. I suspect that this issue discourages the proactive people from planting anything other than the standard crops. Any reforestation efforts are just munched down by stray cows and donkeys. Maybe we can start something. We'll see. We might succumb to fencing but that's not our first choice.

OK, I'm sorry. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what might be better. Ultimately I think that reforestation would be ideal but that's a long term goal. We're slowly planting a food forest but the free ranging animals blindsided us this year after the harvest and ate all our efforts. It was very sad.

I think that if it's handled delicately they might accept the help. We're trying to restore the property that we bought in order to show them what can be done rather than just coming in and ramming our plans down their throats. We're hoping to let some land go fallow help them see it without the cost. We're also thinking of asking if we can collect their bean plants after harvest before they burn them to add to some plot of land as a demonstration.

They are NOT doing well right now. Their land is practically infertile and the animals are sickly. The grazing land is stubble. They need to change or they will die off. It's very plain. I'm guessing you're probably hinting at what may seem like an imperialist mindset but I've been there. Corn should grow taller than 3 feet. Children should not have to suffer malnutrition. Something has to change. I'm looking to known ways of improving soil conditions and growing more food. It's not wrong to try to help a broken way of doing things. It's complicated and I may not know all of the ins and outs of their society and why they do things they way they do but something has to change. They need help from outside because they're suffering now.

I suppose that they may actually know that manure is good for the soil but they don't utilize this at all. Their animals are staked on communal grazing land during the growing season and then roughly allowed to wander wherever when the crops are harvested. They would do so much better to grow a small portion of their land for fodder, pen the animals and save the manure. One thing about Haiti to consider is that the population is made entirely of the descendants of a massive slave revolt. The education from parent to child may have been severely disrupted by the years of slavery.

These are interesting observations. The children that I met did learn things but only the narrow range of materials that were passed on by their parents, what was on the radio and a little that they got from their poor schools. Unfortunately it is just too little or just plain wrong. I think that you're absolutely right that I child doesn't have the capacity to know what they need to learn. It also seems intuitive to believe that an early lack of direction will shape their ability to learn later. We shouldn't conclude that we need to be teaching algebra to toddlers but our example of engaging with research, for example, will shape our children's desire to learn to do this as well.