Kiara.I
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Posts posted by Kiara.I
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Regarding picking up the food bowl...I think the vet may have recommended this for a very specific reason.
Friends of mine got a husky. He kept losing weight. They left food around for him all day, and he kept losing. The vet instructed them to feed him once a day only and only for some fairly small time. Once he realized that food was not available any time he wanted it, when it showed up he ate it all--and gained weight.
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Learn about breastfeeding.
Please. PLEASE. More than the 1 hour lecture he gets in med. school. Learn where to go to look up breastfeeding information he wasn't taught in med. school. Learn that the first resource for breastfeeding problems is not formula. Learn that breastfeeding and infant feeding issues deserve specialist referrals too, and that specialist is an IBCLC.Don't dish out parenting advice that isn't medical. ("Your baby should be able to go 10 hours at night by now. You should cut out those night feeds!" :headdesk) If he really wants to give advice that's "everybody knows" advice, please at least say that's what it is.
Assume that your patient has a functioning brain unless proven otherwise. Assume that yes, your patient CAN find information on the internet and yes, it might even be accurate. It's worth at least hearing them out, without condescension.
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Well, his job prospects in a trade are a good deal higher than they are with a bachelor's degree.
If he doesn't have something in mind that he wants to do with a degree, I'm not sure I can argue the wisdom of spending $20,000+ on a "maybe this might be interesting to study...I guess...."
Let him get a trade and earn money. He will figure out when and if he needs/wants a degree instead.
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My aunt had children who "believed" I think into teen years. Of course, that could have been because in their house, only those who believed got presents from Santa... :-/ Didn't seem to me to be a good dynamic...
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Yeah, I opted for "Santa's a fun game that our family plays a bit. Some families play it REALLY A LOT though, so much that they really don't want to talk about how it's a game. So, like...don't mention it."
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A.
At 6, my basics were math and handwriting practice. (Well, I guess and religion, but it wasn't a textbook, and siblings were included as much as possible.) Though my 6 was reading. If not yet reading, phonics might have been a basic.
It's really okay to start other stuff later. Spelling, for instance. It's okay to let that wait a year.
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Remember that your daughter probably thought YOU were being snippy. I mean, you didn't ask her if she needed assistance, you asked her why she was up. Of COURSE the answer was "because I want to be." She is now used to being independent at college, and hears your question as you asserting authority over her that you don't have, and she needs to remind you of that. It's a delicate dance, but really...you might want to NOT check on her when you see a light on. You know she's independent enough to be away at college--you can trust her to come get you if she needs help.
Regarding your sister's kids...I would be SHOCKED if they worship the ground she walks on. Really shocked. That doesn't seem age-expected, somehow...
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Look in your local area for a rockhound club. They will be an invaluable resource to you, and maybe they have club meetings or outings where your child can go along. Most older enthusiasts (in whatever field!) are DELIGHTED to find a young, precocious enthusiast, and many of them will welcome them with glee. And I would think that rock identification would be easier to learn as an apprenticeship than from a text...
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My parents stopped making a stocking for me when I married. Then it was my husband's job to find a couple of stocking stuffers. (I told him that, they didn't, just to clarify. It's not that I have "precious" parents who tell him how to treat their daughter or anything.) And whoever's doing the grocery shopping does most of the rest of it, and we both fill them.
HOWEVER, if we were staying overnight at my parents' house, on Christmas, that might be different. I don't know how stocking filling would go then, I'm sure we'd work something out. But I could see how the parents might do a good deal of the grocery part of it at that point, especially if there were travel involved. The non-travel people would be the ones buying oranges, nuts, apples and chocolate for the stocking...
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Are there three year olds who, when mom says, "Time to go!" just up and say, "Okay, mommy, what you say, goes, every time" get on their shoes and leave?
I feel cheated.
Right? :lol:
I talked with a friend yesterday who had a son in - Montessori school for 4 months at age 3. She said that at home, when it was time to go somewhere for example,that he would say "I'm not finished yet" or "I'm not ready to go yet"...assuming that things were the same at home as they were in the classroom. She found it to be a hard transition home with a negative outcome.
Obviously there would be some positive outcomes...what would they be?
Out of curiosity...why would she feel that's a negative outcome? A child respectfully and politely stated the problem with her plan and why it wasn't feasible right then. That seems like an awfully big win! She would have preferred the screaming meltdown instead? ;)
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Yup, what PP said. Rightstart is amazing.
So, don't do counting. Instead work on recognizing quantities as a whole. Anything above 5 should be seen as "5 and something."
Start with this article (though it doesn't say much about the abacus): http://rightstartmath.com/resources/math-and-the-young-child
If you want to keep going, you could get the Activities for the Abacus book they have.
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I haven't outgrown stockings. My husband tried to suggest I had (before we had kids.) The conversation did not go well. :lol:
However: I don't see why stockings for bigger kids would be much more expensive than for younger kids. Perhaps a reassessment of what goes IN a stocking might be good.
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I don't think he sounds ready for Partnership Writing anyway, does he? He'd still be in a Jot it Down stage.
You make up silly stories together all the time--are you writing them down? I think the point of Jot it Down is not to do exactly her exercises, but to teach your children that their "voice" has worth, and can be written down, and that written words are a way to have a voice. And you can do that *better* with the silly stories he happily makes up than with exercises from a book that aren't appealing to him.
Maybe have him use *his own* stories as copywork sometimes. Not all the time, perhaps, because it's nice to get some really great sentences from classic literature in there as samples. But some of the time, definitely!
Your spreadsheet looks...very planned. :lol: Sorry, I mostly only do "what are we doing next?" So I have no idea what most of those are or whether they're level appropriate or not, and *definitely* no idea whether they'll be appropriate for him at the age he gets there. I really would suggest a bit more of a "do the next thing" attitude. Rather than worrying about grade 7 and grade 8, what does he need now? He needs you to jot his stories down. He needs to either practice a bunch of writing, or possibly to back off it completely and wait for a developmental leap instead. What do your instincts say about that? And for that matter, how are his physical skills in other areas? Does he have good balance? Is he physically competent? Or is he struggling with other physical skills too?
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Do you want to learn the stuff too? That's the easiest way, really, if you're learning it so that you *know* what the correct answers are...
If you want to, Piano Adventures by Faber does an "Accelerated beginner" book for older students, and you might find that helpful. It'll jump you ahead faster. The bonus is, apparently children who see their parents playing are more likely to stay with it longer, so there is a payoff.
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We just picked up the DK Smithsonian Animal-definitive guide to something-or-other. Next to it on the shelf was the DK Smithsonian Universe--definitive guide...It might be a nice way to pick up snippets about various topics. It's definitely not a course, but could certainly provide more information, in small topics at a time.
ETA: It was this, I think.
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As they get older? Well, Montessori classrooms are supposed to be a 3-year spread. So you have one year as the "new kid", being shown what to do, and helped to join into the classroom. Then you have one year as a regular student. Then you have one year as a senior student, being expected to be a role model and a leader for the younger kids. And then, if you carried on in Montessori, you would move up to being the "new kid" in the next level classroom. It's actually a pretty good paradigm, and works to help children develop leadership skills too.
Regarding "works", you progress at your own rate. So the preschool my children went to carried practical life skills and sensorial stuff that my children were way past when they entered at 3.5. But it might be appropriate for some of the children who started at 2.5, and of course different children develop at different rates. And at the same time, the school carried math materials up to grade 4. Just in case. ;) They didn't usually put those out on the shelves, because there was nobody close to that level, usually. But they had them, and if a child had been shooting through the math stuff, those higher-level math things would have been put out. They didn't specify if they had advanced materials for the other subjects but I'm sure they had something past the "typical" kindergarten level, in case of having students at those levels.
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To me, that looks like 35 straight minutes of sitting, then another 15 minutes of sitting for snack, then another 15 minutes of sitting for story. That seems like a LOT of sitting! ;)
I wouldn't put a ton of stock in library time for 3 and 4 year olds in a school setting. They might not get that at the Montessori school, but what exactly is it they're getting? Anyway, if it's something that really appeals to you, keep it in mind on the pros/cons sheet.
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:D It's always interesting when you encounter something that *isn't* what your particular taste is...sometimes you change taste to adapt to it, and sometimes it stays something that just plain isn't your taste.
I think whether a Montessori classroom has cute bulletin boards will depend a bit on what the teacher's taste is. As to how visually appealing the materials are...they're pretty carefully chosen to do specific things. You'll find, in fact, that the same materials are the same colour in ALL the classrooms. The red-and-blue rods are going to be red and blue, no matter how visually-oriented the teacher is or is not. One thing I think you'll find is that the visual appeal is *less* than what you like, specifically to avoid distracting the students from careful examination of the work they're doing. Too much other pretty stuff would distract them and not allow them to focus on their work (which THEY want to do, by the way, it's not all teacher-driven.)
How teaching works there: Sometimes a new activity is presented to the whole class during circle time, much as you're familiar with. But the way Montessori works, an activity is presented to a child. Then it is put back on the shelf. Then the child is allowed to work on that activity at any time that it's not already in use by someone else. So they can choose between all the activities they've had presented to them. Other activities will be presented to them as they master the precursors to the activity. Many of the activities have standard sequences. For instance, you wouldn't introduce a reading activity to the child until they've mastered letter recognition, right? So when a child is ready for the next activity in the sequence, the teacher will call the child over at some point, present the new activity to them, work with them a bit on it, and then leave them to it, and go introduce a different activity to a different child. Sometimes they do this in small groups, they'll call 3 or 4 kids over and present it to the small group of them that are ready to move on to the next step.
One of the tenets of Montessori is that the child works at the developmental level they're at. You don't teach them all letter recognition because they're 3. Some will already have mastered it, and some won't be there yet. There's less of teaching to the whole class, and more of teaching to the child as they're ready. But then there's circle time, which often introduces a letter per week to the whole class, and does weather, month/date/calendar stuff.
Are you able to tour the Montessori classroom and see how it works in progress? (Or have you toured classes before?) If your children are fairly quiet and independent, it might be a great fit for them. Or you might tour it and decide it really WON'T work for your children, for whatever reason. But it gives your gut instinct a chance to check it out. ;)
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I've researched Montessori, but have no idea how it plays out in a real-life classroom, or how children learn this way. My goals are for them to have hands on, creative play with music, art and literacy interwoven. I just need someone to explain what that actually looks like. I will tour in Jan. The first is more familiar to me, but maybe Montessori is what I'm looking for but I don't know it because I'm unfamiliar with it?
It will not meet your goals. Those goals were not what I was looking for in a preschool program, so Montessori worked great for us. But it will not do what you want preschool to do.
It is not play. It is work. The REASON it is work is that Dr. Montessori stocked a classroom with all kinds of materials, creative stuff, toys, and practical work skills, and watched the children. Then she took out what didn't get used--the toys and creative stuff. She saw that children *wanted* to do practical learning work. So that is what Montessori provides.
It does do literacy, if your children are ready for it. It does geography, botany, zoology, practical life skills, sensory development, that kind of thing. But it sounds like you want more of a fine arts program in a play setting, right? It will not do that.
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The problem is-this is our church preschool and the closest to our house. There is just one other preschool close to us, and it is Montessori based. Not sure how I feel about that exactly. I feel like, if it's not this, than nothing because I just can't travel 15-20 minutes in both directions. It wouldn't be worth it for me. I agree about play based being ideal, but the free 4 yr. old grant comes with strict conditions that must be met. There are a few preschools in town that don't adhere (and aren't free) but I can't afford them and they are far away. So I just need to decide I guess if I can live with this scenario, or not. Hmmm....
You dislike Montessori?
I only sent my kids to preschool FOR the Montessori, personally. I figured if it was play-based, I could do that at home, no need to spend money for it or lock myself into a preschool schedule. Your mileage may vary... ;)
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I don't know what you are speaking of, I do not stress, I over think and over analyze and think that I might be screwing up my kids for LIFE! But I am not stressing about it! :lol:
Word. :iagree:
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If you like checking off boxes....
Could you put in the half-hour or hour required up front to schedule everything and make your own boxes, that you will then happily check off as you come to them? You've said you've sorta-scheduled it, but that doesn't work for you. Well, could you make yourself hyper-schedule it instead? And then treat it like someone else's lesson plan that you're using?
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Is he liking reading? Is he reading for fun?
And regarding the comprehension questions, has he had practice in recalling details? Also, does he do well with details in other areas? Or is he not a detail guy? If he's not into details, it will take some practice (or some maturitiy, or both) before he'll start getting those better.
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So your daughter is a visual learner and having trouble with math facts and with the teens?
I'd use manipulatives and talk about groups of ones becoming tens....maybe even use popsicle sticks and make bundles of ten with her, and then use bundles plus extras to show place value.
The curriculum that we use for the first while uses "math language" and talks about 1-ten-5 instead of fifteen. Then it teaches that the "teen" part means ten, and helps the kids grasp it that way.
For math facts, I'd probably use the popsicle sticks too. We use an abacus, because that's with our curriculum, but you can do a lot with popsicle sticks! (Or beans, or smarties, or whatever you want, but they're harder to make into "bundles" if you want to be doing that part.)
Plus Sized Clothing Help
in The Chat Board
Posted
Also have a look at the book The Science of Sexy. If clothes fit you, but don't suit your body type, it doesn't matter how cute the clothes are...they won't make *you* look your best. So learn what to look for that suits *you*.
You also might want to look at some kind of dressing system that talks about keeping in similar colour families, for instances some people look better in softened colours, slightly dusty-looking. Others look better in really rich colours. Others look better in pure hues...which one suits you best?