Good to know. I think someone 25 years ago was trying to make sense of something and got it wrong when explaining it to dh. This pack had a lot of good things going for it, so I don't want to complain too much. The leadership doesn't gossip, which I've heard it's a problem many places. They are good at welcoming all kinds of kids, passing uniforms and great around to keep costs down, getting kids outside, etc.

Oh, and minor follow up. In the linked ceremony, the leader says "two." In scouts, dh learned it as "toot" as though a whistle were being blown, and that's what I've heard during ceremonies with the boy scouts. Anyone know?

Those are the things my husband wanted to work on, but as a den, they haven't been focusing on that at all the last two years, so they aren't there yet. To us, it makes sense to focus on that first, especially as the pack as a whole seems to be a bit informal. Thanks for the link to the ceremony, Sherry. What this leader was going for was very similar, though with a few extra flourishes and no state flag. It's good to have that in written form because I think it will help people get on the same page for an eventually goal. This den needs a lot of help with building good, respectful habits and routines. When directed to go outside, half the group immediately ran to the Gaga ball pit and began wrestling. They aren't bad kids, but there's been poor communication of expectations between leadership and parents and children. Last year I went to all the meetings, but it has gotten worse this year. Dh couldn't go to any last year and so has been attending but trying to let leaders lead and growing frustrated.

Short summary: is there a standard BSA flag ceremony with very detailed and intricate movements, and if so, do Cub scouts need to know it? My daughter is a wolf, second graders, and one of their requirements is to do a flag ceremony as a den. They've done this a bunch, but their den leader doesn't want to count it until they've led it at a pack meeting. That's not in the handbook, but as long as they work with anyone who gets sick and can't make this particular pack meeting, I'm okay with it. The den leader had to miss the last den meeting, so he asked my husband, a former boy scout and current National Guardsman, to lead for him and make sure the kids knew what to do. Dh agreed willingly and also prepared to lead an elective adventure because he wasn't going to bore the kids with an entire meeting devoted to something they've done a ton. He teaches them to stand at attention, which was new to them, and also to carry the flag while doing a little marching. The den leader's wife then behind telling him he's doing it wrong, that they need to carry in both the American flag and the Pack flag (which may exist but has never been at a pack meeting for the last 2 years and no one knows where is) and carry them in a specific party that involves crossing movements, marking time and giving out a variety of commands. My husband was a bit upset by this because he felt it was not beneficial to the cubs and not reasonable to expect them to learn all that in one meeting, and also because she kept insisting this was the "standard flag ceremony" and it was disgraceful that the recently crossed over Arrow of Light recipients didn't do this ( they did a slightly more complex version of what dh was trying to teach the wolves). He's been in tons of flag ceremonies and hasn't ever heard of a standard one. He's pretty diplomatic and is going to talk to the den leader to compare notes, but if you have been active in Cub or boy scouts, or other scouts too, do you know about a standard ceremony, and is it important for Cubs to learn it? At pack meetings, the den leading usually just directs everyone's attention to the location of the flag then leads everyone in the pledge, oath, and law.

I wouldn't hold too tightly to the label "auditory learner," especially for a child so young. While certainly many people have a style of learning they prefer, most learn well with several styles, and certain tasks are best suited to certain methods of teaching. For example, teaching shapes is going to be probably visual, though tactile elements fit well and stories could be incorporated. Shoe tying is best taught by physically practicing, though some kids benefit more from first watching parents demonstrate several times and others appreciate stories about squirrels running around trees to help them remember the steps of shoe tying. The idea of teaching money using real coins is good. The more ways you present things, the better your child will learn, and you also will learn even more about how your child learns. Your particular cold would likely love you telling her stories about characters earning money and spending it, but if you also draw little diagrams of those characters and their actions, it will help her grow as a learner. Practicing using diagrams, even if it's not the easiest way for her to learn, will help her later when there is a topic best communicated through diagrams. Regarding homework, just go into things ready to be flexible. It sounds like you are planning on having a strong home/school split, which works well for some people. Others, including myself, find it more natural to not split things up that way, so we may do half a reading lesson in the morning and half right before bed, or do a math lesson after lunch and play a board game involving counting after dinner, but we don't call one of those ”school" and the other "homework." It's all just ” teaching our kids.”

My third grader will be doing SOTW3 with all of us, along with BFSU and Mystery Science and read alouds. She'll continue on with Beast Academy. We're on level 3 now, so she'll finish that if we're haven't yet, then go to 4. As helpful, we'll take breaks using Math Mammoth as well as extensions with other materials. She'll do The Good and the Beautiful handwriting, some dictation, 4 level analysis of sentences, and some writing across the curriculum. She reads like crazy, so she'll keep doing a mix of what she chooses and what I choose.

Thanks for starting this thread. It's given me a chance to start thinking, self doubt, check out the local school again, and re embrace homeschooling for the coming year. My kids will be 8, 6.5, almost 4, and 1.5 in the fall. Together we'll do SOTW 3, some BFSU, maybe some Mystery Science, and a lot of reading aloud and talking. We'll be working on Scout requirements for the older two, which we largely end up doing together. All the rest of this is heavily dependent on how they grow and mature over the next months. Dd8 will likely be finishing the tail end of BA 3 and then doing 4. I suspect she'll get through it all easily. I have some other things, like logic and graphing, to avoid going further than that. For ELA she'll be doing a lot of reading, dictation, and The Good and the Beautiful handwriting. Everything else about that curriculum makes me want to run screaming, but the handwriting is what we're looking for. I want to include more consistent writing practice for her. Currently she mostly writes her own projects, which results in some high-quality work done in long bursts, but very sporadically. DS 6 will likely be ready for BA2a. We're currently doing Math Mammoth, mostly to teach him a little independence and a lot of confidence, but it's super easy. I don't know how far I should go before swapping over. I think he'll be reading well but still be needing buddy reading to build endurance. He'll likely be ready to start simple dictation, and he'll also be doing TGATB handwriting. DS 4 has been demanding school and learning to read recently, stop who knows where he'll be. We may be slowly going through Progressive Phonics, or he may be reading nearly independently. We'll likely do MEP1 orally. DS 1 will continue his lessons in advanced climbing and trouble making, as well as beginning speech.

I can't answer much of this, but Math Kangaroo is open to individuals. My daughter is looking forward to participating again this year.

Yep. I'm reading a novel about "Quintland” right now for that reason.

I think Yellow Ribbon is a National Guard thing, and I guess a Reserves thing. There's always an issue with some soldiers having troubles settling back to life stateside, but since Guard families are so spread out, there were higher instances of suicide, domestic altercations, etc, and this program is to help counteract that. Really, I think the biggest reason it helps is that it let's leadership put their eyes on everyone in a more relaxed environment and see who may be struggling. The majority of the sessions were useless.

You didn't miss anything by skipping Yellow Ribbon. My older two love them, though, so we went. My baby stayed with me and entertained everyone during the "briefs." It is upsetting to think someone is patting themselves on the back for instituting mandatory suicide prevention briefs and "saving lives.” There is supposed to be a way to go through Mil Connect online and get free counseling for you, your spouse, the kids, or a combination there of. I haven't used it, but it's supposed to connect you too people who love in your area, or you can do online counseling.

I hate them so much, but I try to keep it quiet so I don't seem like a kill joy. My husband deployed last year, after having come and gone for training for over six months before, and I made sure he knew I would be very angry if he put mine or or kids'emotions on display. Thankfully, he was 100% on the same page with me. There reason it goes past "you do you, I will do me" is that it gives the population in general the wrong idea about returns and makes it harder for people actually dealing with it. When I've got 4 little kids whose emotional health I'm dealing with, on top of my own, I don't need to hear your opinion of how I should make sure to do a cute reunion video. They make people think that all kids jump up and down and weep for joy when their parent returns. My kids might cry when they see their dad or run away or just ignore him, and that's ok. Reunification is not one little cute moment that has to be perfect. It's a process that won't be. If you watch one of those videos and have the thought flicker through your mind that the joy of reunion makes it all worth it, that video is harmful. My husband is National Guard, so while we get to be near our civilian support system during deployments, no one near us knows anything about the military. They get their information from things like these heartwarming videos, and it doesn't help. Nor does making a big deal around the 4th of July about how the fireworks are going to traumatize dogs and all those poor soldiers with PTSD, but that's a really for a different occasion.

I was wondering if that is what they have found. If the majority of uncertified teachers are people who majored in something like business then got fired from their sales job and decided "well, teaching seems like an easy job,” then they probably aren't going to be, for the most part, very good. That's not the experience I had with uncertified teachers, who tended to be subject experts with phds, but I know my school was an outlier. I actually got certified in Teaching English as a Foreign Language through an apprenticeship program. We had to self study and test on subject matter before the start, then we had an intense few weeks of talking classes in the morning and student teaching in the afternoon and evening, with lots of observation and critique. We then had a strong mentoring program for several more months with monthly classes on various topics. Those first couple weeks would have been better spread out over a couple of months, but it was a great way to get much better fast.

Sorry, I'm not saying all teachers should be uncertified. I'm saying that an alternate method may produce teachers with stronger content area knowledge and equal classroom management skills. When discussing teachers who get into classrooms that way, reporters tend to use "uncertified" as a synonym for ”inept" and I wonder about that.

That's pretty cool. I wouldn't want it to be that way every year, but I think we've had enough all-male years to balance out a few all-female years.

This morning I was listening to a report on Arizona schools, and one of the issues is that a large percentage of classroom teachers are uncertified. It sparked my old "who cares” feelings based on how completely pointless the education classes I took were, and my observations of what was involved in those education classes I chose not to take. For the record, I dropped my education major, then dropped the minor, because I couldn't stand it. To me it seems like having teachers who have passed content area tests (tougher than the Praxis, preferably) and completed an apprenticeship program or other methods of gaining classroom experience would be much stronger teachers than graduates of education courses, but clearly most people disagree with me. Tell me why I'm wrong, please.

Texts do get lost or garbled sometimes, and sometimes things just get so overwhelming that someone who normally respond doesn't. I'd send another attempt at reaching out, but I wouldn't include the party about her possibly wanting to end the friendship as there could be so many other explanations and I wouldn't want to jump to that. If go with something like, "Hey, I was just thinking of you. How's life? If you sent a response to that other text, I didn't get it. No worries if you haven't gotten around to it yet, but if you sent it and my phone ate it, I don't want you to think I'm ignoring you!"

In 10th grade my chemistry teacher held up my homework next to my desk and asked, "did you really write this? GIRLS don't write like this!" My handwriting has always been in the legible-but-ugly category, and in high school I felt shy about the fact that I didn't wear makeup, cute outfits, etc. No one who knew me at all would have honestly suspected me off using someone else's assignment. I lost all respect for that teacher as a human that day. I learned a lot of chemistry and a lot about what kind of person not to be. Thankfully my class was mature enough to react with disgust to her, not me. All that to say, I'm glad you are defending your child in this.

This is interesting because it's so different from what we experienced. We lived in a French city that was not a typical tourist locale for 4 months and people fell over themselves apologizing for not speaking better English (some were essentially fluent, some knew very, very little). We had to reassure them that we were to blame.

I think that those who do this don't really enjoy being like that, so it doesn't fall into the category of "be happy they are who they are." It's more of a destructive habit that you would mind your own business about unless you are close enough to help or it is affecting you. So, if an aquaintence of mine was a smoker and it aggravated my breathing, I could politely ask them not to smoke around me because of my health problem. If a good friend smoked and I knew they were suffering poor health because of it, I would feel out whether they wanted help quitting and if so, I'd offer any moral support, names of dr's, etc that I was equipped to give. A stranger smoking in a legal place, I'd mind my own business. I think it's absolutely ok to feel out whether she would like to change this aspect of her behavior, but even if she doesn't, you can say, "I have a lot of stress in my life right now, and this talk just adds to it. Let's focus on lighter things or things we can change. Thanks so much for understanding." I've been changed by friends, both for the better and for the worse, so I think it's a good idea to try for the better.

If you like the methods of Singapore but find there isn't enough practice, have you looked into the additional books? I think there's one for extra practice, one with extra word problems, and one with challenging problems, or something like that. I'm afraid we don't use it, so I'm basing that of recommendations I've read here before. (We use mostly Math Mammoth and Beast Academy currently)

Our local high school has a care closet that stocks certain clothes, school supplies, snacks, hygiene products, and gift cards to the nearest grocery store and day food places. A school where a friend coaches has begun sucking pbj supplies for kids staying after school to get something to eat. It seems like this is a major area of need in many places, and if your school doesn't have something, there may be room to start something. For now, if there's a food place in easy walk of the school, I'd get a gift card from it and find a teacher or counselor who can pass it to this girl anonymously.

This summer I visited some family in the DC area and enjoyed showing my kids the black squirrels, since we have only gray where we live. My uncle said there's a little joke locally about trying to prevent a certain someone who lives in the area from finding out that there is an invasion of black squirrels that seems to be winning.

When I lived and taught in Russia I absolutely used my "talking to Russian" manners. My students would constantly ask for my thoughts on Russian and US politics, on certain historical events, on religion, etc. I got great at ducking questions, haha, but also at answering in ways that were true but sensitive to their ears, especially in a classroom setting. (Not even getting to those topics it would have been illegal to discuss.) There were a few times, with people I'd gotten to know well, when I answered honestly questions like "what do Americans really think of Russians"? Or even "what do you think about *insert political topic*, really." Only in very small groups, when I knew people really well, would I say "do you want me to talk to you about Russia like you aren't a Russian, or should I be polite?" I only made that offer a handful of times, and at least one of those times, the answer was, "please be polite."

The negative views I've seen of Americans differ depending on the county. In Germany I heard the criticism that Americans care only about quantity, not quality, so we'll be happy about an enormous mess of barely-food but will complain about the cost of a nice meal that is appropriately portioned, for example. In France I heard that we often fail to show respect when we enter a shop without greeting the shop keeper appropriately and chatting a little. In Russia I heard more because I was there longer. There we have the reputation for being insincere because we smile too much and give the appearance of friendliness, but it doesn't translate to true friendship as they understand it. We were also famous for the English Goodbye, which is where one departs a social gathering without taking one's leave of the others at the event. Having the ability to apologize and laugh at oneself comes in handy when going abroad. I think we as Americans sometimes forget how much diversity there really is in the world. We go abroad expecting to find people who are the same as us except for small differences of language, dress, and food, and I think sometimes we don't notice that there are lots of big differences we are overlooking, and it's in that overlooking we are most likely to really offend.