nitascool
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Posts posted by nitascool
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This is an example of what he can do now. The exercise took him 45 minutes to complete. I don't really know if he's where he "should be" at his age. He does have writing (penmanship) issues that slow him down significantly so we don't do rewriting with him at this point. I couldn't say if this is typical of an average 9yo.
He's had some grammar instruction using First Language Lessons 1&2. We did some creative writing lessons last year using Write Source. We just started using MCT's Grammar Island two weeks ago. I hope to see some improvement in his writing skills as the rest of the year progresses.
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Science Story: Bee 2 by 9 year old boy
My 9 year old son wrote this story after being asked to write a Gymnosperm Mini-book about Trees. He was to use the knowledge he had learned in Lesson 10 of Exploring Creation with Botany. This is entirely his work. The Mini-book didn't lend to paragraphing.
One quiet night there was a little seed. It was light like any seed. But this seed wasn't any ordinary seed. It was a Red Wood seed. And it was very small, like I said. It wasn't an ordinary Red Wood. This was the time of the flood. Sence the seed was so small it was obvious that this was the tree named after someone in the Bible but first it has to go through many stages for it to grow into a full tree. First it gets its roots. Then the roots reach the top. The tree begins to grow as a small seedling. After a while it gets taller, It turns a bright red and starts to look like wood. It starts getting leaves, like three feet long. Like I said in my last book leaves can grow maybe an inch taller then that. Then finally it is a fully grown tree. Now you can see that it has branches 100 feet Leaves fall in autumn. In winter nothing changes, in spring it finally grows it's leaves back and it is the finest tree you've ever seen.
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My 10 year old son wrote this story after being asked to write a Gymnosperm Mini-book about Trees. He was to use the knowledge he had learned in Lesson 10 of Exploring Creation with Botany. This is entirely his work. The Mini-book didn't lend to paragraphing.
I't was the first day of summer I was running to the beach When I Ran in to a small tree I had made a HUGE! dent in the tree I vowed that I would nurse that tree back to health It had been a month the tree had grown! It grew outward upward and side to side but I still took care of that little tree because I had ran into it I asked my mom what type of tree it was she said it was a maple tree I asked the tree if I could have some syrup but the tree said I need that sap (syrup) to live and I need water and rich soil to however I will give you some when my phloem and xylem is rich enogh then by halloween his leaves were red and yellow I asked what was wrong he said he would be asleep until next spring.
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I Spend about 10 hours per child in Sept. and another 10 hours or so mid-year (tax time) preparing the next years materials lists, library lists, weekly schedules, etc. During the year I spend between 10 and 20 min. per week adjusting and checking to be sure I have what is needed each week. Of course, that's not including library trips and reprinting misplaced work. My younger two have more printables then the older two. Having things loosely laid out works best for us. It helps us to move things around a bit when needed.
During school time I'm the elastic woman spread out between 4 overly dependent little munchkins so there isn't much time for me to be printing things off and flying by the seat of my pants. :lol::lol:
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Do you read the weekly reading for AO2 with your 2nd grader or do you have them read the materials independently? :confused:
For instance week 1's list of reading includes...
The Bible
An Island Story ch 22 Harold
Trial and Triumph 10. Charlemagne Protector of the Church (742-814 AD)
The Little Duke - first half of chapter 1
Tree in the Trail chapter 1
Burgess Animal Book I Jenny Wren Gives Peter Rabbit an Idea, II Peter and Jumper Go To School
Poetry of Walter de la Mare
Lamb's or Nesbit's Shakespeare: The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Pilgrim's Progress: about 800 words every week
.... Would this be what an average 6-7 year old can read independently or is this read aloud?
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thanks for your responses ladies. :)
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My three year old has memorized all the lyrics to several REM songs. Her new favorite group is the Ramones. She and daddy have a great time singing to his old favorites. :lol:
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I don't know enough about logic to really give you any ideas. We start Formal Logic next year. I never learned Logic in school so am looking forward to learning along with my oldest. The scope of my knowledge in logic extends only to this years reads: The Thinking Tool Box, Fallacy Detectives and watching Logic in 100 Minutes. Side note: I highly recommend the Video to any parents who have kids who want all the "latest coolest" toys. How it has cut down on the "I just have to have x,y,z".
That said, my sons 9 & 10, husband and I loved Inception. We've watched it several times since it first came out. It's a bit more violent then we usually let the boys see... but it was such a brain teaser, that we had to share it with the older two boys.
When we watched it with the in-laws my 9 year old kept having to tell them what was going on. "Okay this is the dream within the dream... now this one is three dreams deep, or four if you think his reality is a dream". To which my in-laws, smart as they are said, "huh". :lol:
If you do come up with something, I would be very interesting in it.
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Sequential Spelling is a great fit for kids who struggle with word patterns in spelling. It starts basic and builds. I think a child should be able to spell cvc and 4 letter words (the good kind :lol:) before diving into level one. If your child can consistently spell words such as: duck, sick, look, etc. correctly she's ready for SS1. If she is not then I'd go back and review phonics. My favorite remedial phonics program is Phonics Pathways. Spelling improves immensely when you know the phonetic rules behind the English language.
I have to admit that it is a bit repetitious for some kids, but good for the late bloomer. We use it because we can do spelling in only 5 minutes a day (10 on the really bad days). There isn't a lot of "busy work", which we all really dislike around here.
Best of luck in your quest for the right fit for your dd.
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Has anyone use the New Starfall More Kindergarten Curriculum? Do you think that it is a "full" K Curr. or would you supplement?
My dd wanted to do K this year. We've been doing a lot of free stuff online and she's learning to read with Phonics Pathways (she just started blending 3 letter words)... which is going great. She can read Zac The Rat without help and is excited to read more. She's writing okay, tracing really with the occasional letter written without help.
She can count to 50 and skip count by 2's to 20. She can add and subtract numbers within 10 but we haven't done any real addition/subtraction work yet.
She knows the colors of the rainbow: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. She also knows Black, Brown, White and of course Pink. She's got the basic shapes down too.
I'm wondering if the K Curr. will be enough for the rest of the year (May-June)?
What do you think? Starfall K Curr.
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of the 5th day?
Has anyone used the Journals that you can purchase? Thoughts?
Has anyone used the lapbook you can purchase to go along with it? Thoughts?
Would you get both?
Thanks,
Dawn
We use the Journals. I find that they are enough for a rising Kinder with decent writing skills... though she does have a Jr. version that might be a better fit for younger elementary K-3rd (fewer writing portions). My not so good at writing 3rd grader can do most of the pages without help (though I may be the only one besides him who can read that chicken scratch). It is also "enough" for my advanced 5th grader. Though he does read extra materials on each subject.
I would expect that an 11 and 12 year old could go through this material in much less time then a younger child.
I think that the lapbooks are mostly busy work and my kids tend not to retain as much with them. You really don't need both. Though they do work well for some families. I wouldn't buy both.
Oh, and the spiral bound notebooks have a lot more pages then the free one. In the end the "free" notebooks will cost between $10-$15, with cost of paper and ink (another $5 if you have it bound). You can get the notebooks for $18.50 @ rainbowresource. To buy the Jr. Journals you have to go to her website. They aren't out yet as of 1/30/11.
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I asked my 3yo daughter what color her eyes were and she said, "White of course."
:lol:
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I honestly believe that the person that invented velcro sneakers was a boy! :lol:
George de Mestral was a Swiss Electrical Engineer who is credited with the invention of Velcro, which happened in 1941. He came up with the idea after studying burrs that got caught on his dogs fur.
Elias Howe, who invented the sewing machine, received a patent in 1851 for an "Automatic, Continuous Clothing Closure" (most commonly known as the zipper).
So yes, boys invented both velcro and zippers.
Oh, my 10yo, 9yo and 6yo boys still struggle with tying, while my 3yo girl has almost got it.
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State of Utah Fluency Benchmark Standards This might be what your looking for. Or at least it will give you a ballpark figure.
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:party: congrats!
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As an escort to 4 little trick or treaters last night I think I was most annoyed at the hoards of Teen treaters. They crowded the younger kids. Twice I watched them push younger kids aside on the sidewalk to get to a house ahead of them. And their conversation was not appropriate for the younger kids.
I did hear several people saying no costume, no candy to the teens. And one woman told a group of rather rude girls that she would call the police if they didn't leave her property. They stood on the sidewalk trying to scare the little ones after that.
My oldest counted 15 younger kids treating w/o costume...which was surprising to me.
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What should I do?
My ds is on his second cycle with WTM. This year we decided to use Apologia Creation series (which he has really enjoyed). Next year in WTM he would be doing Chemistry but Apologia has several books (General, Physical, & Biology) before entering into Chemistry (a high school course). We used WTM suggestions for Jr. High the first time around (and didn't really like it). So should I use a another Jr. High Chem. ??? or go into General with my ds?
He'll be going into MUS Zeta (decimals, percentage, etc.). So he doesn't yet have the math skills to tackle high school Chem.
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I saw the SOTW thread, and I have a planner with nature notebooking pages. But I've never done notebooking, and don't really understand what it's for...
Thanks :blushing:
We do our notebooking a little differently. I find lapbooking materials that go with our area of study online and print those out. Then we glue them to card stock and use those as our notebook pages. They'll (1st & 3rd) do a narrative or dictation page from each chapter as well. My oldest (5th) does a summary instead. For us it's just a way to make it more fun and to have a record of what we've studied. There are lots of different ways to do notebooking and I'd guess that every one will give you different approaches.
Hope that helps. :001_smile:
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Here are ours.
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My three year old can tell left from right but none of the boys can... consistently tell me. I have to look at my hands to remember myself. They can't tie their shoes either.
My ten year old began learning the alphabet only this last year because it was required for dictionary skills. I had tried to teach him this several times before hand but he couldn't see any use in it until it came up in his school work.
My oldest can do some pretty advanced math concepts in his head but can't seem to recall what 3+7= if not in a "math" mind set. My 8yo can't seem to write anything above 1st grade level but can read at a 8th grade level.
So yeah we've got lots of gaps and odd confusions around here too. We do a lot of left right games now days. Doesn't seem be working really but they are fun anyway so we're not missing too much by practicing them.
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Are there kids and families that profit from an evaluation? Yes, of course, but unless you've noticed actual pathology of behavior and thought which without a shade of doubt points to something essentially different in your child, you're better off just relating to your child without any labels. Any normal adult person related anyway to their child, not to their gifted child. There's nothing essentially different about children within the range of standard deviations from the "grade level performation" that would bend itself to radically different teaching or require a radically different upbringing approach whatsoever. Most parents can just continue to peacefully sleep with no tests whatsoever, and continue to relate to their children and meet their needs where they are, and labels are totally unimportant for those cases.
:rant:
Did you not read the OP's comments. Obviously something is very different about this child. Most kids don't go to therapy unless there is an issue of some kind beyond normal childhood. Her child is having behavioral issues that she (or rather her therapist) suspects are related to a higher then average intellect. Not all gifted, even highly gifted, children are preforming significantly out of grade level. Especially when there are underlying issues, weather behavioral or undiagnosed learning delays.
Some of our kids are so out of the box that we do need a "label". And some of us do parent our gifted children differently, very differently then an average child.
I would say that we (my husband and I) are bringing up our children radically different then that of so many other children we know. This due to labels that were very useful for us. We have seen marked improvement in behavior and skill level since changing our parenting approaches in the last two and a half years. All because we dared to "label" our children and find a better way to do things. The "labeling" was only a step in the process, but for us it was a necessary step. It is not, of course, necessary for all parents to take that step, but for some, it is very helpful.
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I think that if you're just looking at "is she gifted" then I don't know if testing will matter much. But it did help for our situation. We were looking at our boys asynchronous development and thinking some learning delays were going on. Not really looking at what was advanced, but rather what was behind.
We were also looking at behavior issues. And yes, I think that how you deal with a child's bad behaviors does depend on why they are having them. For example, we learned that the reason our second son was always jumping off furniture and running headlong into walls was due to Sensory Processing Disorder. So our approach to dealing with this behavior changed because of the knowledge we gained from the testing (actually further testing after the IQ testing).
So schooling wise... I'm guessing that it won't be worth much, but it may be worth it in the long run if there are underlying issues going on. IQ testing is a good place to begin, if you can afford it.
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We have a history basket, a literature basket, and a basket with all the rest. My preschooler has her own basket. I require that my scholars read one from each basket every day. But they can chose from about 40 or so books each week. I pick library books from easy readers all the way up to young adult readers. They seem to enjoy browsing the baskets.
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Once upon a time I only homeschooled one. We did about 3 hours when we did 3rd grade work. 30 min. each of the basics; math, science, history, and language arts. And another hour for all the others (not including projects). But by 4th grade level he was doing closer to an hour in each of the basics. But that was with 15 min. breaks here and there and lots of art and physical activities in between. Now with three homeschooling our school day begins at 8 and ends around 3ish with few breaks for the teacher (though plenty for the students).
Hope that helps.
Science Story: My Tree by 10 year old boy
in K-8 Writing Workshop
Posted
This is an example of what he can do now. The exercise took him 25 minutes to complete. I don't really know if he is where he "should be" at his age. I don't know if this is typical of an average 10yo.
He has had some grammar instruction using First Language Lessons 1&2. Language 3, and Step By Step Grammar. He also completed Writing Strands I and II and Write Source: Write on Track.
We just started using MCT's Grammar Town two weeks ago. I hope to see some improvement in his writing skills as the rest of the year progresses.