Using Island Level. First time :D Got through Grammar Island and enjoyed it. Through the first chapter (or two) of Sentence Island. Ds likes the story and is doing much better at recognizing parts of speech. We're not doing as much as I'd like with Building Language or Music of the Hemispheres. Ds doesn't like the writing assignments much, and it's easier to do the story and sentence analysis without doing the writing assignments. (sigh) Those assignments are what I need to be working on. We're also using WWE and AAS. Still planning on continuing with the next level next year.

Jonathan Larson (author of the musical Rent) had Marfan Syndrome and it was not diagnosed. He died of an aortic aneurysm which was misdiagnosed but might have been caught had he been aware of Marfans. I'd think having the testing done would be for the best. Some further info here at National Marfan Foundation.

After getting credentialed and completing student teaching, I took a position at a community college with a 45 mile drive one way, for less money and teaching year-round, to avoid teaching at any high school. At the cc I generally teach the same math (or lower) than I'd teach if I were in a high school. But if a student doesn't do the work, they fail. They don't stay in the classroom to disrupt the class. I don't have to assign them a 50 even if they do no work (yes, that's the requirement in the districts here). If I had to, I'd teach in the public school, but things would have to be very dire for me to. I worked fast food in high school. It was a much easier job than teaching at the public school - and I felt that I got more respect. And I did my student teaching back in the mid-90s. I can't imagine how rough it is now. :(

I'm not sure this will be much help - hopefully others will post! One thing I'm doing with my son is when we start with an algorithm (most recently for division), we work some problems with the base 10 blocks (or whatever manipulatives are most appropriate). Only after he's done work with the manipulatives for a few problems do I show him the standard algorithm. He can then use the algorithm but if he makes mistakes, he has to go back to the blocks. At any point he can use the blocks if he needs them. As time passes, he gets faster with the algorithm than with counting out blocks, so he prefers using the algorithm. I know some developmental math teachers at the community college who will have students who don't know their times tables (yup... it happens) draw a representation of it - so for 8*7 they'd draw a rectangle made up of 8 squares on one side, 7 on the other, and then count the squares. They pick up speed with time. So what I'd be doing would be going back to the concrete meanings of what your daughter's doing and have her demonstrate an understanding of what is actually happening before using standard algorithms.

I never read Johnny Tremain as a child, so I preread it earlier this year and thought it was good. Let my son read it recently and he enjoyed it overall. He was disappointed at the ending though (thinks it should be clearer that Tremain gets his hand healed or improved). I preread My Brother Sam is Dead and thought that would be too much for my son at his age, but it may be a possibility for your class.

SWO didn't work for us. My son read well but learned how to read without phonics. We switched to All About Spelling in March and its been a much better fit.

I'd hope it wouldn't be followed by projectile vomiting. :D I'm just curious if anyone thinks it might work. Should dh pick up a funnel while he's picking up the liquid? I have a strong gag reflex (whimper).

I hope it's going better! I get to have my first later this month & I'm rather anxious about it as well. I don't have my information yet and so don't know about the mixture, but has anyone tried doing something like a beer bong with it? I never did it in college, but the concept seems pretty good for something like this liquid. Could it work or is this too silly to attempt if it's not drinkable? :bigear: (I really don't want to go through the prep!!)

Use the comma if you'd have a period in the sentence and are continuing with additional information. "She ran next door," said Larry. If it's other punctuation, you'd use that. "Run! It's a bomb!" yelled James.

Ds and I both got the flu shot last week. Sore arm for the day, but then we were both fine. Dh got his as well. Last year dh got the swine flu (officially diagnosed) and was out of it for a couple of days, so he had a pretty mild form. I probably had it earlier but it presented without a fever. You may want to spread out the vaccinations... but I get the flu shot every year and haven't caught the flu (apart from swine before shot was available) since high school.

We keep a list of meals and if the family eats together we all eat the same thing. It's easier here since I do lunches during the week and dh does dinners and weekend lunches :) Breakfast is the oatmeal/poptart combo most times (strawberry or frosted cinnamon). I often do larger lunches which is rough... Ds loves pork & bean burritos - toss in a hot dog sometimes and it's a quick lunch. There's also pasta... spaghetti sauce - or toss with butter (safe margarine) and garlic salt. I really do find having a list of menu possibilities is helpful - and we both plan out our menus for the week so there's no need to think much about it on the days.

There have been a few threads on this (I know I've posted on some), so you may also want to do a search to get other ideas as well. :grouphug: It can be a rough change. My son is allergic to dairy (and nuts). Keep reading - and re-reading food labels. They sometimes change ingredients, so you've got to read EVERY time. McDonalds french fries do contain dairy. My son doesn't have a reaction to them (phew) but some people do. For breakfast - bananas, bagels, fruit is pretty good. Silk yogurt does have a dairy starter, but again, this is something my son doesn't react to. It's tough if you're trying to avoid soy as well. I'm assuming you aren't :) Earth Balance has good margarine. Tasty overall & I can even do it on popcorn or with baking and be okay. Enjoy Life products are expensive, but they do have dairy-free chocolate chips!!! The cookbooks I use most often (they also have dairy-free cake recipes!) are: The Milk-Free Kitchen, What's To Eat, and its sequel. Bread can be tough to find that's safe. We're using Arnold Whole Wheat at the moment. Used to use Sara Lee but they changed ingredients. Keep reading labels! For breakfast, our son usually has oatmeal (Quaker instant apples & cinnamon) or cinnamon pop tarts (yup, we're bad). Bagels work well too. Hope this gives some ideas... and good luck!!

We're watching News Radio on Instant Watch. Better Off Ted was pretty fun too :)

I regularly sleep with damp hair (long and takes too long to dry otherwise). In the winter I'll sleep with a blanket over it since I'm too cold, but I've never had problems from sleeping with wet hair. I just try to have it towel dry enough that it's damp and not soaking so the pillow doesn't get too wet.

:iagree: Although you'd set it up as an inequality. Plan A <= Plan B Prices are what's shown above.

The problem is that this approach breaks down as material gets more complicated. I could just "see" answers through high school. I didn't understand what was going on behind the problem nearly as well as I thought. It kicked my butt a couple of times in college. I'm going to be sure my son is better prepared than I was, so I'm not accepting that from him. YMMV.

We're in book3. Bar models were introduced in book 1. I haven't seen the model method book mentioned above, but I imagine that might be a better place to start. I teach math at a cc and have taught solving word problems for years. It's been rough going to bar models since I'm so used to the algebraic approach. As I've struggled with them, I'm more impressed with the bar models though. I'm going to keep pushing my son with them since I see some benefit to them. The iExcel books helped me with seeing set up with the models and with starting my son with doing a model for a math sentence, then using a model for a word problem. They are like CWP in that they have one example, then they have a few (only 3-5 problems for each topic) problems for the student to do. I found the iExcel books good for that transition - and I often make my son do the bar models even if he can get the answer without them. I think that setting up the bar models on "easy" problems helps him on later trickier problems (like the ones above!). The iExcel books don't give more in the way of solutions though. The answers have the math sentences but don't show the models. The book a PP mentioned may be better than the iExcel for getting set ups. I'd also start with book 1 and just work from there.

It is a very different way of thinking. I'm using some variables so my son gets used to a variable representing a quantity. I think a reason for not using algebra at this stage is that the bar models are more concrete. I think it'll give a good foundation for the abstraction of algebra. It'd be a good question to ask at the singapore forums though... see if there's a clearer explanation of the reasoning. I don't see any harm in introducing the algebra, but I do think that keeping at the concrete stage a bit longer may be helpful in our family. And it has been neat to see a few problems that the bar models are faster than algebra.

There are also some problems (thinking it was in this section) that were MUCH easier to solve with bar models than with algebra. Gave my husband the problem and he tried with algebra but it was significantly easier with the bar model. My son was so pleased to be "faster" than Daddy. :D

Yup, the forums are at singaporemath. They're good. FOr 24, I was pleased after the hassle of 21 (and a few days later), my son was able to do 24 on his own (if I'm not misremembering!) :) Our model is two bars again (a comparison) Pencils Pens Start with the bar for pencils and pens with 43 as the difference between. Shade 17 for removal from the pens. At this point, there are twice the number of pencils as pens, so this should be at the halfway point for the pens. (It may take some rough attempts at the bar models on scratch paper to get to this so the model looks accurate!) So now you can see that the amounts of pens is 43+17 (since that's equivalent to 1/2 the pencils). This means there are 60 pens and 120 pencils, so 180 writing implements. We are starting to use some algebraic approaches (variables for the bars in some cases... on this one, ds wrote pg in the pencils bar twice... then labeled to the side "pg = pen give amont left" I'm encouraging defining variables :) ) We're in the mult/div problems now. They're going much smoother - and so far have been easy enough that I haven't forced the bar models (although I will soon again).

Many districts here (including the one we're zoned for) have a policy that a student can't score below a 50. Turn nothing in, get a 50. Draw a picture of a cloud, get a 50. It's so they don't get too far behind and can't get caught up. It helps them avoid getting discouraged and giving up. :glare:

The HiG doesn't have anything about CWP. I also use the iExcel books. The first part of the book has general problem-solving approaches, but the last half of the book is about using bar models. They start with numbers so you'd do a bar model for 31-15 for instance, then do word problems. Those have been a significant help with moving to the bar models. The problem you're looking at was a challenge for us :) What worked with bar models was using the two bar model for Marie and Sharon and then using "before" and "after" models. So the "before" picture has Marie and Sharon with the same length. Cut off (shade) a 16 for Marie and add it to Sharon's length. We can't know what ratio it is, so in our drawing, we don't see any specified length. Then we draw an "after" model with Marie and Sharon, but now we know that Sharon has 3 times as many clips as Marie, so we draw the diagram to represent this. I think we needed some adaptations when my son was drawing the model and there definitely was a lot of discussion about this one. The key was seeing the comparison... that since Marie lost 16 and Sharon gained 16 and they started with the same amount... now Marie has to have 16 and thus Sharon has 3*16. The drawing did work... but I do think this was the toughest one in this section. I don't know if anyone else has other suggestions for books on bar models. It's been quite a change for me, but I'm liking them. iExcel books have been useful as well.

:iagree: You can also get a second laptop for less than you'd pay for the iPad. I surf much better on my laptop than on the iPad. I type MUCH better on the laptop. There are some things I can only do for my job on the laptop. The iPad works well for eBooks. Just downloaded Five Children and It for my son to read since it wasn't checked in at the library :001_smile: I can see using the iPad more as time progresses - and it's certainly more portable than the laptop - but if money were any issue and I didn't have a need for the portability, I'd go with the laptop.

We're doing italic handwriting. I write in cursive occasionally and have my son read my writing. His grandparents send him postcards and write in cursive. Those are things we're doing to get him able to read cursive writing. He hasn't been happy reading cursive, but I think it's important. And he's getting it. I think as long as you do some practice with reading cursive, there won't be a problem using italic.