mamashark
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Posts posted by mamashark
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How much class time per week? An hour?
How many students in the class?
Seems fine if he has a large class that meets for an hour a week. For a small class, that's hardly worth his time and expertise.
I was trying to think of how much I could pay for it, lol. So what would you be willing to pay?
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Look into online work. There are several places that are looking for people to teach Chinese kids English or even just talk to someone who wants to improve their English.
Can he sub on his day off?
Maybe next summer he can offer a summer camp for musicians?
He can offer camps on school holidays (if they are on his day off) or you can advertise for daycare on those days. Camp over the Christmas holiday are usually in high demand since there are so few offered.
What are your skills? Maybe you could work on his day off instead?
Subbing on his day off would bring in only a max of $400 a month.
I never thought about camp over Christmas holiday, that's an interesting thought.
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would $30 for a 6 week general music class seem like a reasonable amount to charge?
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I would say do the music lessons
Try just mentioning it to all his students at school
The music class is a great idea too. Don't know where you are , i think that matters in how much you would pay for that.
Play weddings. Seems like that would make good money
Can he tutor other subjects?
could he grade tests online for Pearson?
Could he tutor english online?
He's not legally allowed to teach lessons to his students at the school... conflict of interest the district says. We're in a rural area where the median income is 35k/year.
Thanks for the other ideas!
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Can he not find 10 students? That sounds like the perfect way to earn money to me.
I would put his music skills to work. What about playing for weddings? Offering music camps on school breaks?
He might be able to - but neither of us are great marketers... this is probably the first thing he'll try. He was toying with the idea of offering a homeschool music class too but didn't know how much anyone would be willing to pay because we'd never be able to afford something like that! lol!
What skills does he have?
He's a music teacher, with a masters in educational technology. He's handy with his hands too, and can fix just about anything that breaks in the house.
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My husband accepted a teaching job that's only 80% - but it's a job! It's tight, but we can pay the bills and make the budget work on the income.
The thing is, he LOVES the school and the coworkers and the situation is so good for him after some not-so-great situations in the past. I know he's going to feel obligated to look for a fulltime position if one came available to provide for our family, but I'd love to think of a way for him to make up that difference on the side so he wouldn't have to! He's very particular about me not working and him providing for us...
He'll have one full day off per week. But he'd need to make nearly $1000 a month to make up the difference of a fulltime job and the last part-time job he got paid only about half that for a LOT of time away from family.
He could teach music lessons but he'd have to find 10 students to make enough. He makes around $200/month already, doing freelance writing. What other ideas haven't I thought of?
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one thing I'm experimenting with is "filler foods" with dinner - I was reading a book recently about Yorkshire England and the off comments about how they would use Yorkshire pudding (and one family used rice pudding) as the first course helped to fill hungry bellies and stretch the meat further. The Yorkshire pudding recipe was easy and everyone loved it, and I didn't need seconds of the main dish to feel full (and I tend to need a lot more to eat because of a really high metabolism).
Also, write down prices of foods you spend and where you buy them - I recently figured out that 2 bags of apples at Walmart cost more than 3 bags of apples at Aldis. Makes it easier to know where to buy what foods. (We feed 6 people gluten free and partly dairy free on $600 a month)
Regarding giving/offerings - we don't give 10%, but we give something.
Regarding the "crispy" clothes - if you give the clothes a vigorous shake when you take them off the line, it can help - also try vinegar in the rinse cycle. (and if all else fails, movement from wind or a fan can help prevent the crispiness), You could also try line drying then throwing his clothes in the drier for a "fluff" (no heat) cycle to see if that helps!
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I need your creative educational gift ideas! Inexpensive ($20 and under!) ideas for "back to school" educational gifts for 1st and K. I was thinking about getting my astronomy loving 4th grader a miniature set of planets as a cool extra to go along with her science, but I can't think of something cool for the other two. We'll be doing the standard WTM 1st grade schedule...
Ideas?
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I have the Brain Training Manual and I have taken her PD course on how to implement it, which is basically just reading and applying the manual in a specific case study situation.
I used this with my oldest daughter to deal some particular issues. For her, it made all the difference. Basically, the teacher needs to assess the student in order to determine what to work on first - using the checklists included in the book. Then just follow the directions for the appropriate large muscle exercises that are outlined in the book. Dianne's book explains to do specific exercises 4 days per week, with a very specific brain training session one day per week. It took about 20 minutes per day to do this. I will be working with another child this next school year with a different set of challenges, so I am excited to see what happens. Brain Training therapy is not just for LD students, but also for the gifted kids with a learning glitch such as disgraphia. Some dyslexics have been able to improve. (I don't know how it would work in your situation) The exercises help the student to think more efficiently, using less energy. For my girl, it made a difference in how long math took, handwriting anything quicker, also in improving her communication skills such as her reaction speed in conversation.
I noticed an immediate difference even after just 2 days of the exercises. By the end of the training period, much improvement had happened.
This is not the only program that used large muscle movements to work on visual or auditory processing problems. Royal fireworks Press also has a series. I saw it at a homeschool convention. Dianne's is much cheaper if you consider the scope. RFP books were $20 each. You might find other options if you research midline therapy.
I met someone from Texas who told me about a program called "small steps" that sounded very similar.
Dianne's Right Brain Teaching DVD also addresses how to design and make visuals for teaching anything in order to make it stick for the students who have learning issues. I am working through it right now and it has been most helpful. She does have some shorter youtube samples, and she also has a series of DVD's that (I think) come in a set to give specific ideas for right brain teaching of the content areas. The right brain teaching has helped me to adapt lessons for a student with auditory processing issues, while I was waiting for a season of life with enough time to do the brain training.
What I like about Dianne's resources is that they are designed for parents to use at home, (you do not need to have a degree in special ed or nutrition to make a program work).
Interesting, thank you! I'm glad to hear how much it helped in your situation. I wonder if I could make a version of the flash cards myself for now and spend the money on the brain training manual.
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Great thoughts, I need to consider that some. My goals would be to improve learning ability... So not sight words but if sight words made reading easier, then yes sight words, if that makes sense.
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I was having a discussion with my sister-in-law (who is a public school kindergarten teacher) about my 6yo DD who has dyslexia. We've completed Barton level 1 and it was amazing - took a while to get through but she did well. I then opted to try Phonics Pathways again with AAS letter tiles after we finished instead of going on to level 2, and she's made more progress in the past month than she did in the previous year now that we have completed Barton 1.
Anyways, my sister-in-law highly recommended the sight word cards from Dianne Craft; they made a huge difference for her kindergarteners this year. They do look amazing, but I'm also noticing her brain integration therapy manual and wondering something - if the cards are like a bandaid while the brain integration therapy gets more to the root of things? That's kind of the way I'm reading the website, but at the same time I am having trouble with the idea that the therapy manual will be the amazing fix she's claiming it can be... even though it sounds like it would benefit a couple of my other kids as well based on the description.
So without finding much about it while searching, I'm wondering - if you didn't have the money for both, which would you spend the money on - the brain integration manual or the sight word cards? (Or would you not bother with either?)
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it is absolutely possible to provide a well-rounded education that is equally interest-driven. There is a diistinct difference amg different approaches:
1-boxing in subjects so that history is this history text, science is this science test, writing is assignments from this writing test
2- cross-curriculum teaching where subjects are integrated and the line between history, literature, and writing is blurred bc they are all intertwined and
3- a student only doing math and never writing bc they are math-centered and don't want to learn about history or literature, etc. (I don't think this what you meant by seeking a passion?? Definitely not an approach I would take.)
Schools tend to teach like #1. Students have a stack of textbooks covering a list of subjects and the stack of textbooks changes from yr to yr, and the course title typically corresponds to the textbook cover.
That fine line distinction between subjects is absolutely not how our homeschool functions. When Inlook at thread where people list exactly what they are using for every subject, it is next to impossible for me to post a concise list bc our subjects often weave in and out and across areas. My kids have to opportunity to help design their own courses and sel cr the books they read. Writing assignments are not generated from a writing text but are assigned across various subjects week to week.
The response I gave in the other thread is just one example of how my kids become passionate in different areas and run with those passions. I have another child who loved physics in high school. He took a some sort of physics course every yr. He took astronomy courses, self-designed a dark matter and black hole study, etc. In order to feed his passion, he took multiple sciences every yr. He also had a stron interest in philosophy and theology. His literature and history reading selections reflected those interests. He also had a course devoted to major philosophers since the 1500s. His literature selections absolutely did not reflect a typical high school reading list. But his list incorporated works like Chesterton's Everlasting Man and Orthodoxy, Walter Percy's Lost in the Cosmos, etc. He read lots of standard classics as well, but our selections were not dictated by "American Lit," "British Lit," "World Lit," etc type categories.
My kids receive a very well-rounded education, but the lines are blurred.
I totally missed this comment until this morning! But yes, option 1 is what is annoying me at the moment, option 2 is what I want and I feel like option 3 is not what I'm going for here at all. I need to allow her to have more of a hand in designing her courses and selection of books like this. And the Nasa Space math mentioned upthread is an amazing resource, I'm excited to see everything available there!
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How old are your dc? My dc started Latin at around 10 or 12, younger than that and it was just too difficult with the grammar - though there are Latin curriculum without the emphasis on grammar. I hired a tutor, because I wanted the dc to learn from someone who knew AND loved the language. After 4 years, it has been a wonderful success. The dc have a terrific grasp of Latin, and can easily pick up modern languages, especially Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, because they already have the vocabulary. The grammar of the modern languages is much simpler. They can also pick up other modern languages grammar because they understand the structure of the parts of speech, verb tenses, case, etc.
The curriculum that our Latin tutor chose to use, Cambridge, also has a lot of history included, so it was a bonus to have this.
In addition to the language knowledge, they also have vocabulary for Latin found in other fields and areas, such as Biology, Anatomy and music. And every academic person I've mentioned my dc study Latin have commented that they wish they had. So there are probably even more instances where it is helpful that they haven't encountered yet.
My DD is 9, but advanced in grammar (her retention for grammar exceeds my own sometimes). She's highly advanced and interested in sciences, so that might be my reason right there - to provide additional support for her science interests by providing the latin base.
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Memoria Press has some nice articles on the benefits on their website.
I'll check them out, thanks for the suggestion!
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So I know some of the reasons to study latin, but I am having a really hard time buying into the concept mentally because as much as I feel it's beneficial, it also feels unnecessary to a certain degree. I had it on our schedule for last year, but because I wasn't sold out to it (like, say, math or history), it was the first thing dropped and we never picked it up again.
I never took latin, neither did DH but he wishes he had... and yet he's a bit neutral about whether we do it with the kids. So someone needs to give me a reason to be convinced, otherwise I'm pretty sure that latin is just not going to ever happen!
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This has been very helpful and interesting - I feel like a lot of my fuzzy thoughts make more sense now! I think the thing that resonates most is the fact that ensuring a well-rounded education does not come at the exclusion of allowing a lot of academic time/focus on an area of talent/interest. Part of those "rounded" bits that may not fit neatly into the main interest will often provide depth and color to those other areas. Like how music trains your brain in various ways that is beneficial for all other subjects.
Thanks for helping me think it through :)
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There is no need to separate subjects - of course you can combine things, and it is often more efficient to acquire a skill in context than through isolation. I much prefer to let my children learn proper use of English language through reading and writing across the curriculum, rather than through spelling worksheets, grammar worksheets, handwriting worksheets. The important thing is the skill - how that is acquired will depend on the individual student.
For example, we taught English and history in an integrated way, and it would have been impossible to separate which activity belonged to one or the other. Especially with young children, much of learning will happen organically, without strict subject boundaries. You can read and write about science, too :)
Math is separate because most applications of mathematics in content subjects do not come until much later. They will use math in physics and chemistry, and a lot of higher math can be taught through science applications - but not arithmetic. That just needs to be there before you can do much in sciences. But you can integrate a lot of elementary math education into everyday life, through baking, cooking, sewing, arts and crafts.
So where is that line between arithmetic and higher math? Algebra? My DD9 is good at math. She is quick at picking up concepts but dislikes math as a subject. She's finished Beast 3, and finished in less time than I anticipated for the school year including many math free days for a lot of hands-on learning opportunities. But, she doesn't thrive on math like she does on science. She's been begging to study astronomy in depth ever since she did an elementary level intro to astronomy. So I bought a used copy of the Great Courses Intro to Astronomy for next year (and she's begging to start NOW when she saw me open the package). That plus a bunch of projects that I've found that are related include on first glance a lot of math. The thing is, I feel oddly unsure of myself when I consider not doing Beast 4 next year, instead teaching her the math that comes up in Astronomy. But at the same time, I feel like she would both enjoy the math more and learn more (and fight less) if she could see a direct reason for learning any random math concept that comes up. By taking away "math" as a subject, it feels like I'm breaking some unwritten rule (or rather, it's written in the state's homeschool laws, but through creative portfolio editing I can get around that).
I agree about a broad and solid base.
One thing that I do think many people mistakenly try to do, though, is ensure that levels of attainment are equal across subjects, and THAT I think is a mistake. I don't think there's anything wrong with a mathematically talented child doing a solid and rigorous on-level curriculum and not working very hard because they are just not very interested and are passionate about something else and putting all their free time and energy into that instead. Just because they're tremendously far ahead of average in, say, music and languages doesn't mean that they need to be also working four grades ahead in math and science and/or "shoring up those areas".
This is something I need to ponder more.
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For a K-12 student, I do not consider it desirable to specialize to such a degree that it requires the exclusion, or severe weakening, of other subject areas.
If my child has a strong interest in math and science and wants to study those in college, I see it even more as my responsibilty to ensure a strog humanities and language education precisely because he will not get a deep exposure in college. And if my student were passionate about literature, it would be even more important to provide a strong math and science education at home because there would be even fewer requirements for those in college.
Also, interest usually comes from exposure. A student who is not introduced to math or physics or history is unlikely to discover that he is actually interested in these areas.
There is enough time to provide strong basics across the board and specialize on top of that - it does not have to be instead.
So your opinion is that we need to provide a well-rounded base, then allow depth of study on top of that?
For the record, I agree that interest does typically come from exposure and that we need to expose our kids to all kinds of things, I guess I just wonder about requiring year-long focuses on everything from a separate course, rather than combining some things together.
Like the concept of copywork - you can teach spelling, handwriting, grammar, editing skills, etc. through copywork. So instead of having a book for handwriting practice, a book for spelling lessons, a book for grammar lessons and work on editing skills separately, you combine them all together. And then you can focus the copywork on an area of current study so that it's completely integrated into the day. So why does that concept for young children morph into science, writing, and math as separate subjects, for example? Obviously to some degree the basic foundations need to be taught before things can be combined like that, but where that separation ends and the possibility of blending subjects begins seems fuzzy to me and the typical course of study doesn't blend them much at all.
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I've been pondering the concept of when it's appropriate to focus studies and when it's beneficial to ensure a "well-rounded" education. Ebunny's post in the Ideal Humanities thread made me wonder when/how it would be possible to truly focus studies in an area of interest, rather than piece-meal subjects that touch all the "appropriate" areas of instruction.
I feel like having a list of largely unrelated subjects (math, literature, science, history, language, music, art, etc.) provides some benefit, by broadening the learning base and allowing our children to have an experience in a bunch of different areas (I am still thankful for my college philosophy class even though it about killed me to pass it and it made no impact on anything in my life), but I wonder how much that concept is actually beneficial to our children when we do it year after year. One of the benefits of homeschooling is that I don't have to pattern my kids education on the public school system, but I don't really know how to break out of that broad base of studies and allow for a more in-depth focus of study.
I recently saw a thing on my facebook feed that one of the downfalls of the modern education system is the lack of passion and focus of most graduates. And that those kids who do have passion and focus and become the world shakers and changers, averaged something like a 2.9GPA in highschool because they had trouble conforming to the broad education base required.
My DD and I have recently finished reading the 2-ebook series on the Gifted Potentials and the way they set up the course of study is two courses focused on aspects of interest/potential, a third course focusing on a weakness, but tying assignments to the other two courses, and then "intensives" once a week, focusing on something random of interest. The idea is intriguing - allowing for in-depth study in areas of strong interest/potential, focus on a relative weakness to tie it into those areas of interest, and then provide little mini-courses on a variety of "extra" areas. My problem is that I am too stuck in the box and feel like I'm going to mess my kid up by not providing the typical course of study.
I've been kicking this around in my brain for about a month now and am still foggy about the concept, and it's probably not helped by curricula available on the market, which doesn't seem to cater to this concept, at least none that I have found. Anyone else have any thoughts?
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Some tips I thought you might find useful from Temple Grandin'so website.
"NOISE SENSITIVITES
The child can wear headphones or earplugs when he/she goes in a noisy place. However, it is important to never wear the headphones or earplugs all day. This will make your child more sensitive to sound. The earphones or earplugs must be off for at least half the day.
Children with autism, sensory processing disorders, ADHD and many other disorders, will tolerate loud sounds more easily if they initiate or have control of exposure to the sound. If a child cannot tolerate being in a noisy supermarket, let him/her control the amount of time spent in the supermarket. If he/she fears the smoke alarm, take an old smoke alarm and wrap it up in a towel and let the child turn it on. Gradually he/she may be able to tolerate it with less and less towels wrapped around it. Another approach is to put the dreaded sounds on a recording device. In some cases, this may not work because some electronic audio formats are compressed and do not provide a high fidelity recording. A very high fidelity recording is needed. If a high quality recording is available, the child can turn it on all by him/herself at gradually increasing volume. It is essential that the child has control"
http://www.templegrandin.com/faq.html
I use the process of desensitization, so the times we have actually used noise canceling headphones are very few. We do not have OT yet as we are waiting on the new evals. Since you have OT, he/she is probably already working on desensitization. I just wanted to point out the caution on how long to use them, in case you were not given guidelines on that.
Many people have used them with success, but in our case, we moved to the country to avoid city sounds so canceling them out when we are in the city would not serve my kids well long term. Different situation :)
Hope all works well :)
Thanks for this information - If we choose to get the headphones they would only be used for very specific situations as needed!
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Bose, pricey but work. Where do you want to use them? Is this for APD? Fm would be common. Have you tried ADHD meds?
My husband recommended Bose too...
DD9 is 2E- gifted and adhd, although the OT disagrees and says it's not ADHD, but rather SPD. We had bad experiences with meds for the adhd and better experiences with OT and high doses of Omega 3 as prescribed by her Dr. I wonder if the headphones would be helpful when she's working on her schoolwork at home. (the OT recommended them to us)
DS4 - OT that DD sees also recommended them for him for use when we go to the store. We are awaiting evals for him so no official diagnosis.
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So I may be dense, but I recently found out that "noise canceling" headphones can mean canceling background noise without canceling all noise and after having the recommendation made for 2 of my kids, I'm trying to figure it out now as an option to help improve focus when background noise is present. Do any of you use headphones like this? Which do you like? How do they work for you?
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Never mind, I found the thread I was looking for and figured out the book recommendations!
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Book recommendations for me or my 9yo dd?
We're working with gifted/adhd/spd (although the lines blur between those three and I'm not sure what is spd and what is adhd and whether any of it is actually gifted rather than something separate, if you know what I mean).
she's starting to ask questions and verbalize her frustration with being "different" and I don't know how to help her even understand what's going on.
I feel like there was a discussion on overexcitabilities recently but I couldn't find it to see what books were recommended.
I want to help her understand how her brain works, and to accept it instead of attempting to hide who she is from the world and end up frustrated and crying in her bed because she always messes up or doesn't know how to play "correctly" or whatever. She is even starting to not be willing to do her schoolwork because she doesn't want to "learn more" than her friends.
Need creative income ideas
in The Chat Board
Posted
Oh I hadn't thought of that! That's great idea!