eternallytired
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Posts posted by eternallytired
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Huh. I didn't realize that frogs could be terrestrial breeders. My education on frogs began and ended in about 4th grade... I guess we'll keep the pond through the summer and see if anything ever utilizes it. And maybe do some more learning about frogs. (Perhaps even attempting to peek under the pond!)
As for the lizards... Well, we've got some bright green little guys, and some browny-green ones (though maybe they're male and female of the same species, because DS found a bright green atop a browny-green). And then there are some bigger ones that are kinda spiky and brownish... LOL--really helpful, right? Okay, after a bit of searching, I think we see mostly green anoles and a few Texas spiny lizards. :-)
ETA--Your PDF link is a dud; if I knew what you were trying to link to I could try to hunt for its new location, but I can't figure it out from the link name.
If they're Balcones frogs, they're terrestrial breeders, so they wouldn't lay eggs in a pond anyway. They breed on land and lay eggs in moist areas, which may mean that they've laid eggs UNDER your pond! They're neat little amphibians.
Central Texas is considered to have four breeding runs, going as late as October. TX, as a whole, is like FL, where there is probably some breeding all year round, but that's going to mostly be in the Southern, wet parts of the state.
This may be interesting or useful (and the forms may be be helpful outside of TX https://tpwd.texas.gov/publications/pwdpubs/media/pwd_bk_w7000_0493.pdf)
What kind of lizards? DD does record other animal sightings in areas as well. So far, we've had a cute little ground skink, plus our usual frogs, toads, and earth snakes. -
I think we're duds, too. I've had the "pond" set up for several months and we hear our little froggy friends chirping outside (teeny, skittish little fellas that like staying under the leaves or under the garbage can and chirp almost like crickets--DH thinks Balcones frogs, but I'm not sure), but we've collected nothing but leaves in our water. I even put the pond by the bushes at the side of the house where I often hear them. I know last year we found tadpoles in a drainage ditch in late June, though, so maybe we'll still be in luck? I just figured that in central TX the frogs would get an earlier start.
If you want lizard pictures, though, we've got lots of those. A few days ago DS4 found a pair of mating lizards in our fort and was all upset that they wouldn't move--he didn't want to walk past them to come out. I took a picture of the lizards before rescuing DS through the window. I wonder where our lizard friends lay eggs...
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We do our work every day DH goes to work (though some days our extracurriculars take up our work time or we go on a field trip). Activities come and go, but we keep working. We do cycle through and change things up every six weeks to keep things fresh, though. Our vacations happen in summer, but that's because we're either going to a cottage on a lake which would be frigid at any other time or we're meeting my family for a big reunion and my siblings have kids in school.
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There's a one-day-a-week school around here for homeschoolers that offers Spanish, music, PE, art, and communications classes. I think that would be awesome because it would cover all those extras that I never feel like I'm doing well enough (or that are hard to do with just three kids or that I don't know enough about). We also know several families who send their kids there and love it, so it has a good reputation and the opportunity for the kids to make friends (a current struggle). Buuut the cost ends up being a little more than we can spend comfortably--even moreso since DD would still want to do dance and ODS would never want to give up guitar.
If we're really dreaming big then I'll add a housekeeper and quite a bit of travel. And a house with some land--ideally with a creek and a house for my parents.
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My kids are always awake before I am. I usually wake up to the sounds of them playing quietly in their rooms. None of them come out of their rooms (except to use the bathroom) before I come for them. When they were really little, it usually took me 15-20 minutes of listening to them talk and play before I fully booted up. Now I will sometimes learn that they have been awake and reading for an hour or more before I come for them! (Serves them right for being so gloriously quiet! And it doesn't hurt that in this house my bedroom is across the house instead of just across the hall.) They're about the age at which I could tell them they may come out and get themselves breakfast (oldest is 7), but this is still working for us. Instead of preparing things in the morning while they're still asleep, I work after they're in bed. I'm a night person, so I do better getting everything laid out before I go to bed. My mornings are then spent trying to wake up and ideally doing a little cleaning before we start work.
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After beginning our year with MM4 as our primary math program and BA3 as a supplement, we recognized that DS thrived on the level of challenge offered by the more difficult BA program, which is a math program designed to prepare gifted mathematics students for a rigorous pre-algebra course after 5th grade. Maybe? I always have trouble paring down my writing, so I can sympathize.
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I want my kids to have a range of experiences and started out pulling from a wide variety of activities, but since we learned that we burn out with too many extracurriculars (like the spring we were in choir, gymnastics, soccer, and Bible study) and since money isn't unlimited, I've started limiting each kid to two extracurriculars of their choice. My current goal is for their extracurriculars to provide them with a hobby that they can pursue at least into college if not adulthood--particularly for the community aspect mentioned by a PP. I've tried to consciously provide instruction and experiences at home to shore up weak areas and fill out their experiences.
Everyone will be required to learn to read music at a basic level; whether that's through sustained choir or music lessons or my tutoring will depend on the child. Everyone is required to have some basic sports knowledge/skills--but since soccer ate us alive (two weekly evening practices plus an hour-long weekend game per kid = a LOT time commitment) and their favorite aspect of it was the post-game snack, I'm content to play soccer or volleyball or basketball or catch or do cartwheels and handstands in the yard. Oh, and DH insists that everyone learn to swim well--not just surviving in the water like I do--so they take lessons every summer (but that works out well, since pretty much everything else is on summer break).
ODS is currently pursuing his passion for music with guitar lessons and choir. DD is debating if she's going to continue choir and dance or switch one of those for gymnastics. YDS is in choir and has no desire to add anything else at the moment.
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Sounds like one of my boys. Learned to blend at early 4, BEFORE he could recognize most letters. Slowly, painstakingly slowly, he learned the rest of his letters by 5.5. But could consistently sound words out as each new letter was mastered.
But "sight words"? He's 6.5 now and STILL struggles manfully with the word "the" Every. Single. Time. Basically every shwa sound is killer because it plain breaks the rules. He just has very poor visual memory.
I've taught a good handful of kids to read, lol, but no one makes me bang my head on a wall like this one.
This is what I'm afraid of. He seems to expect every word to behave the same. After one of the reading games introduced the word "me", he spent the next week sounding out every E with the long sound. I think he that "the" was a complete mystery to him. So far I'm hoping and praying that a bit more time will turn on the light. If not, I'll know where to turn for a sympathetic ear!
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**Snip**
With that much confidence, I decided to take my next dd and have her start Kindy at the age of four. Worst. decision. EVER. We struggled, fought, switched curricula, waited and played games......everything, but hardly any progress. She hated her lessons and she didn't actually learn to read fluently until she was almost 8 years old. I'm obviously not an advocate for teaching babies to read but maybe your little guy just isn't ready or interested. Boys tend to mature later than girls and need more time to play and develop.
All that other testing and so on may be needed but you might just find out that your little one just needs more time to play and explore.
This is exactly why this child has zero requirements as of yet. My older kids keep complaining that he doesn't have to work, but I remind them that they didn't have any work to do until they turned 5--and at that point it was 10-15 minutes of handwriting practice.
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Normal. You can use my sound cards to make reading snd spelling words more fun and my phonics concentration game for fun practice.
I already use your phonics concentration game for fun with my older kids! I actually have some little cars with letters taped to the top; earlier in the week he was asking for "work" to do and I remembered the older kids LOVED practicing spelling and sounding out words by parking letter-topped cars, so I thought I'd get some ready for the next time he's interested.
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My kids have had the most fun with random props I've left out back. I have some odd lengths of 2x4 and 4x4, some pieces of PVC, a couple rubber stepping stones, etc. that they drag all over and create all sorts of things with. They make roads, balance beams, obstacle courses, forts, bridges, teeter-totters, ramps, walls... DH says our back yard looks like a junkyard, but the kids have a blast.
They also love to dig holes, whether they're collecting dirt for mudpies, imagining that they're searching for treasure, digging a hole to China, or whatever. DH is much happier now that we've established a certain area for digging and made the rest of his beloved lawn off-limits for that variety of destruction. (Our sand table gets decent use, but somehow digging in the yard had a separate appeal.)
Water play is a perpertual hit. We have a big inflatable pool we put out on hot days, and they have a glorious time floating and splashing and imagining. When they get bored of that, I hand them some squirt toys and they write on the fence, try to squirt the roof, make the slide a slippery waterslide, chase each other around the yard, and generally run off loads of energy.
If you have a patio, you could consider hard-surface fun like sidewalk chalk, Skip-It, jump rope, skates, scooters, etc. For us those end up being driveway toys.
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Has he tried weaving? You can go the cheap potholder-loom route or get a larger loom for bigger projects. Finger weaving is also an option. My kids also enjoy projects with perler beads--they enjoy making Christmas ornaments or window decorations. Does he do Rainbow Loom? My kids want to, but they don't have the dexterity yet. You can make not only bracelets, but also animal shapes and other projects. If he enjoys that sort of thing, there are also kits for creating bracelets with different patterns. You could also throw in there some fabric scraps and he could design his own hand-sewn project (my DS recently made a little bag so he could carry things on his bike).
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At 4, I think you have nothing to worry about, but here are a couple of things you might want to check...BTDT with finding out my kids have problems later down the road. (You may have done these things already.)
Get his eyes checked--not the pediatrician's screening. Find someone good with kids. I HIGHLY recommend establishing a relationship with a developmental optometrist (COVD optometrist) and one that is involved in the InfantSee program (http://www.infantsee.org/). We have one child with horrible vision that was not caught as early as it could have been because I'd never heard of infant eye screenings, and we didn't really see obvious signs of vision issues. He got glasses at 4, and by that time, he basically had incomplete visual development and ocular motor issues (therapy for these things has been life-changing). Our other child has 20/20 vision, but he also has ocular motor issues. These issues are usually brain-based and respond very well to therapy, and the therapy often "fixes" other quirks.
Some of what you talked about sounds like it could be vision-related. It could be a problem, or it could be that his stamina is age-appropriate. Given the skills he has (which are advanced ones) and the trajectory of your older kids, I would find out if his visual acuity, visual/ocular motor skills, etc. are age-appropriate. Even teeny-tiny issues can fatigue a child, especially at that age.
If he gets the all-clear (which might not be 20/20 vision at that age), you might find that he simply needs much larger fonts, or that he needs a lot less text presented at one time. My younger son (the one with the bigger vision issues), liked things written on 3x5 cards. We'd build or sound out single words, and then we'd play games with the cards, one word per card. We might rearrange them and build sentences with them and things like that.
From what you've said, my guess is that he's working hard to hold things in his short-term memory--that could be from poor working memory, poor visual memory, a combination of little glitches, or just being 4. But if he's trying to write with sidewalk chalk and things like that, my bet is there is a small glitch somewhere that is making this task a little fatiguing. That glitch could be a difficulty, or it could be a normal visual fatigue based on age.
Best wishes!
Hmm... DH received therapy for eye-tracking issues in 1st grade, so it would probably be good to check his eyes. Thanks for that reminder!
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Random other question--should I worry if Prodigy has him working way ahead of Beast? In Prodigy he's done quite a bit with long multiplication/division, converting/comparing/multiplying/dividing fractions, etc. that we haven't formally gotten to; I'm vaguely worried that he's figuring out how to do the problems without truly understanding what he's doing, and maybe that will ruin him forever. (Do you notice a theme here? Basically I'm convinced that something I do/don't do will mess my kids up for life; I'm just waiting to discover what that something is.)
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Funny, I was planning on mixing and matching and hopping around with DD this fall, but I don't feel like I can/should do that with DS; the only reason I plan to with DD is because she is so easily daunted and I'd like to pick things she'll enjoy that will also be slightly challenging to build up her tolerance for frustration. DS enjoys math and I'm not supplementing (unless you count Prodigy), so I feel like he ought to do it all.
Do you insist that every problem be completed? I'm afraid if I turn him loose to pick and choose, he'll go through the entire book doing every problem type he likes, and then he's stuck with all the ones that don't look interesting. (Like he does with dinner--and you know how long that one serving of whatever-he-doesn't-like can take...how much moreso for sixteen pages of undesirable problems for a kid with ADHD!?) Having him go in order is the way I can ensure that he mixes problems he likes with those he doesn't like, so it's not feast-or-famine. Maybe combining units would work for him, though, even though it totally doesn't work for me. He happily reads chapters from two books each night, where that would drive me insane...
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I had a friend in college who always loved working with textiles, creating costumes, historical garb, etc. She was aiming to work at a museum either recreating period pieces or restoring existing samples of clothing and textiles. While she pursued her degrees, she worked as a milliner's apprentice at a Renaissance Festival and did costuming for small theater productions. If those area's don't appeal, there's always a market for dressmaking and alterations. Actually, your DD could probably even start an Etsy shop for her creations now already, if that's something she finds enjoyable.
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Do any of you have a kid who enjoys Beast but wishes it moved more quickly or jumped around more?
I started DS7 on BA3 at the end of last summer. He made it halfway through C by Christmas, but he was dragging. This spring we've been scheduling a handful of subjects at a time in six-week blocks; we've finally gotten back to Beast, and he's got mixed feelings. He thinks it's fun, but he prefers the problems with visuals (or even a page full of straight-out number problems) and really groans at the full pages of word problems. The other issue is that, since the problems are often challenging/time consuming, we get through only a couple pages a day (usually two single sides)...but then we're working on the same topic for two or three weeks (since we only school 3x per week), and he's tired of that topic and ready to move on after the first week. Measurement hasn't been too bad because there are so many different forms of measurement, but he really got sick of division. (I think that's why he likes Prodigy--it keeps moving to a new topic as soon as he's mastered the one he's on.) He's super eager for me to order BA4, but he's always chomping at the bit for the next thing (in guitar, too, he NEEDS a new piece each week or he gets really discouraged/unenthusiastic; he'll gladly continue to work on the old song as long as he also has something new), and I'm not sure if his patience will hold out well for BA4 unless I skip portions (which I've taken to doing lately--let him pick half of the page to do--but then I worry he's not getting the benefit of the program). I guess I could try to jump around in the chapters, but I'm worried that's going to confuse me if not him.
Any suggestions/insights from those more experienced than I?
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I can't tell how old he is, so I can't tell if it's developmental. :-)
My go-to for teaching children to read and spell is Spalding. Although some children learn to read seemingly by osmosis, most children benefit by specific instruction, and your little guy might be that person.
He's only four. ODS was reading solidly by 4.5 and DD by 3.5 (both having started sounding things out 6 mos prior), so I thought his starting to read last year was not completely out-of-the-blue. Give his age, I'm not super concerned about his lack of progress yet--but DH is. I just find his progression odd since it looks nothing like the progression of my older two, and I thought if others have had similar learn-to-read journeys it might help DH relax a little.
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I'm completely puzzled by just about everything about my youngest, and his learning process is no different. For my older two, they learned their letter sounds a good year or more before they started blending. Then, once they started blending sounds into words, they gradually increased fluency over the next six months, at which point they started reading short books on their own.
Not so with this one. He surprised me by spontaneously building a word last summer, sounding it out as he did so. This was surprising because he only knew about a third of his letter sounds at the time (if I'm being generous--he's been MUCH slower and later at this than the older two), so I didn't think he'd be ready for spelling/blending yet. Since then, he has learned pretty much all of his letter sounds, though some of them still confuse him (even n, which is in his name). Over the past year, he has continued to sound out 3-5 letter, phonetically-regular words--but only one at a time (more than one word makes him angsty), and not increasing in fluency at all. Even short words like "in" and "it" he approaches as novelties each time he sees them. And somewhere over this past year, he's picked up the letter names, which have made it harder for him to sound things out because he can't decide whether to sound out using the name or the sound anymore.
He enjoyed some of the Progressive Phonics Alphabetti readers, but none of the words became automatic even after we read a book a few times through. (He might recognize a word by the time we got through the book, but the next time we read it, he experienced each word anew and improved at them at the same rate as before--so progress made one time did not last in any way until the next time.) I let him try Teach Your Monster To Read and Reading Eggs because he wanted computer games like the bigger kids, but in both instances he got stuck when they tried to have him learn sight words. He could pick the word that visually matched the sight word, but once they progressed to only oral cues ("Click on THE.") he couldn't figure out which one was right. But this same child is drawing cute little buildings with sidewalk chalk and writing "Pet Str" on them, which my other kids didn't do until later in their reading journeys.
It's now been a year since he started sounding words out. I've heard of lots of people whose kids couldn't get blending, but I haven't heard of others whose kids can blend but haven't progressed beyond that. I expected slow progress with some plateaus, but this seems more like a dead stop. Has anyone else had a kid who did this? Do you think it's merely developmental?
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You're allowed to redefine "ought". :)
Ought could be relegated to every other year.
Ought could be something that so pinches something else that it NOT OUGHT to pinch that it becomes a drop.
Ought could turn into good enough when accomplished in a sneaky way through another subject.
If your ought list and wish we could list are too close, that might be the problem. Or maybe drop the guilt trip of ought entirely and go to MUST vs. would like. Musts are usually pretty short. Like we must comply with the law, we must do some math, we must read something, we must write something, we must eat.
I usually start with a GOAL. Once I know the major, over-arching goal for the year for the child, then I ask how each thing I'm considering feeds into the goal. So for my ds this coming year it's shaping up to be social thinking. Then ask how our history, how our literature, how our extra-currics, etc., work toward our goal of improving his social thinking. We might decide something else that would otherwise be GOOD should be a bit LESS to make room for this goal. I try to make goal-driven decisions and sacrifices like that. I think we have to do that.
I think puberty could create that slowing down of the pace you're wanting. My dd sort of lost her brain for a few years there, lol.
I definitely think you're on the right track bringing in more hands-on. If you can keep yourself chilled about it, it can be a really good thing. My dd remembers EVERYTHING hands-on we did over the years. Do it!
As far as "enough"? That's always hard. You can decide time limits for each subject and just be brutal. That's one thing I did over the years. You can decide one of each thing is enough, so not 3 math programs and 3 LA things and 2 sciences and history plus history co-op... I don't know what you do, but that's another way. I think ultimately you get comfortable with ENOUGH when you realize there was HIDDEN academic value in the not so overtly academic things they were doing. When they start sewing and then they say hey I want to read about this and oh can we blog this and can we make a photobook... you see they're getting in research skills, writing, art and photo editing... It was all there, hidden. So it can be really good to say I'm going to do *just enough* of the LA and whatnot to squeak by so we have more TIME to do this more encompassing projects. It can be good! They do it in school!! Why is it that we as homeschoolers go oh no, must be separate, must be rigorous, must be rough and involve pencil and paper, or it's NOT GOOD ENOUGH.
I just wanted to chip in that this (particularly the portions I highlighted) was exactly what I needed to hear right now. I keep reading about X, Y, and Z awesome summer camps and A, B, and C fieldtrip opportunities and a gazillion classes and co-ops, and I feel bad that we don't have enough time and money to provide it all. Since reading this a week or so ago, it keeps flitting into my head every time I see some shiny new opportunity that makes me feel pulled to add one more thing to our lives. We don't have it all, but we have ENOUGH, and ENOUGH is just what we need.
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I've had my kids try both RE and MS, and all three of my kids have liked Math Seeds way better than Reading Eggs. It may be that the animation is much higher quality (larger seems to matter, too--YDS kept complaining that RE looked so small on the computer screen) and the narrative/characters introducing concepts in MS are more engaging. After the trial, I didn't bother subscribing to RE because no one wanted to do it.
For the older kids I had a six-month subscription to MS. They played it hardcore for the first few months and then tapered off, but they were still referring back to things they had learned for the next year, at least. YDS is 4 and I just got him a yearlong subscription. He was obsessed for a little while and then waned. Thankfully, the subscription has lots of time, and I'm sure he'll get more use out of it before it's done. The older two were so excited to see MathSeeds again that I felt bad that I wasn't getting them a subscription, but ODS finished the content during his original stint (part of the reason his interest waned--he could only repeat lessons or play games until they finally added a new map, which he quickly finished and was back in a holding pattern again). So the older two watch nostalgically and then run off to play Prodigy.
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My son started at 6.5. I've never heard of the Suzuki guitar program, but he's working with Childbloom, which offers lessons for 5+ and has locations around the country. Having done Suzuki violin as a kid, I see a lot of similarity. Childbloom recommends half-hour lessons in a group of 2-4, with 3 being the ideal number. (And while I was skeptical of group lessons, it is more fun to go and see friends each week and it's fulfilling to learn early on how to play in an ensemble and adjust to other people's pacing.) They start by learning proper technique through playing pieces that are noted by string number and fret number, and then once their technique is solid they move to learning to read music a few notes at a time. It's a classical program, which DS likes a lot because you play the melody--not just random chords that don't really sound that much like the song you wanted to learn. That said, after learning to read music, they do learn standard chords, as well.
We got a 1/4 size Cordoba Protege, which was recommended to us by Childbloom as being a reasonably-priced but well-made option.
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I got exhausted trying to plan and schedule all the subjects I wanted to cover all at the same time (even if I did alternate what we did on what day, it was still overwhelming to juggle), so I have switched completely to six-week block scheduling. We generally do 4-6 subjects at a time, depending how much time they each require for planning and execution--BUT one of our "subjects" is a Mom-mandated rotating review session, so each day we cover one of the topics I don't want them to forget. We manage to review each pertinent subject area 1-2 times each week. It may not be perfect, but I'm really enjoying it!
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Educationally, I like the idea of year round school if it works for the family.
I think shorter school days, with more time for exploration, play, hobbies, etc., day in and out with consistent academics for parts of those days, makes more sense developmentally than longer school days and a summer off.
So I've selected year round school with shorter days. We haven't yet burned out. I've never had a problem taking time off when we want or need it though.
This is essentially our model. Our general rule is that we work when Daddy works and take off when he's off. We school year-round, but from Sept-Dec and Jan-early May we have two days a week that we don't do regular work because we are in outside activities. In the summer, we school four days but keep them short. There's always time in the afternoon year-round for excursions, creativity, exercise, hobbies. Additionally, this year we've been limiting ourselves to 4-6 subjects at a time (depending how time-consuming they are) in six-week rotations; that really has worked to keep us fresh and engaged. It's hard to get burnt out when something new is always just beginning or right around the corner!
This works for our personalities and lifestyle, but a majority of people I know do take off in the summer and really look forward to that. As with everything related to parenting and homeschooling, do what works for your family!
Do you track the books your kids read? What systems do you use?
in K-8 Curriculum Board
Posted
I went with Biblionasium accounts to avoid the possible Goodreads issues that you described. (I don't want to log their reading on my account because I want my account to track MY reading!) Biblionasium allows them to add books to their shelf by doing a title search. They can log minutes or pages for each day if desired, and the account keeps track of their totals. If a book isn't already in the system, you can add it yourself--but I've had very few instances of that.
My one complaint about Biblionasium is that kids can't record a book as being read twice. It's not a huge deal, but it's frustrating for them if they have a favorite chapter book and take the time to read it a second time but don't get "credit" for it on their account.