fralala
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Posts posted by fralala
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I would definitely x-post on learning challenges. The specific examples you mention (not being able to remember or at least come up with her +2 facts mentally, not getting "counting on") would make me look into materials for dyscalculia.
This is NOT being bad at math. This is not about "math just isn't her strength, and her sister is a natural." How does she do with math that is NOT arithmetic-- spatial reasoning and logic puzzles? She may struggle more with number sense, but there may be aspects of math that her sister will one day struggle with. (A comparison I'd make would be a kid who thinks she's a terrible writer because she can't spell.)
But man, is it hard to work with a kid who struggles with math when YOU always just got it...I hate to say it, but naturally mathy people can sometimes be the most impatient, unimaginative teachers. (Or do I only speak for myself here? :blushing: )
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7 years old has pretty much been the most anxious age for my anxious child, FWIW. I mean, I don't know if it helps, but it's like the lack of self-control and immediate self recriminations peaked at 7.
I know this is not what you're asking for-- you want to help your daughter!-- but for me, the most helpful thing for improving the happiness of our household has been pretty much to accept that my oldest DD has anxiety over many things and it is beyond my ability to make her NOT feel this. Her anxiety is out of proportion to what we would wish for her, but there it is. She feels it. We all love her so much and are there for her (and this takes extreme patience sometimes) but some things are going to be hard for her, and they're going to still be hard for her even if we do everything right. She isn't going to just get over it because we engineer the environment, or comfort her, or listen to her...it's still going to be there.
I will say that my attitude about this partially comes from having a family history of this-- I would say that having a mother who constantly rearranges everybody's lives around the reactions of the most explosive child is neither helpful to that child or to her other kids. I do think that having a parent who helps you with avoidance to prevent you from feeling anxious is quite a scary thing, when it comes down to it. I guess my inclination is to just spend some extra 1:1 time with that kid (if possible) listening and observing non-judgmentally. Often they have a LOT they have to get off their chests, and reassurances make them feel like you just don't really get them at all and if you DID get them, you would understand how DIRE things are. (And often the fears are symptoms of something much bigger...such as when my daughter kept asking, "Have I been good? Have I been good?" The real problem wasn't the potential of coal in her stocking, but her extreme guilt about some of her behavior and, frankly, her parents' -- our-- reaction to it.)
P.S. The scream in her brother's face sounds hard to handle with aplomb. ARGH! And after you'd done everything right and tried to include her, too. Blah. Totally BTDT and if you conducted yourself better than I have, hats off to you. I tell myself that my daughter's overreactions have been a gift to teach me to hold onto my composure even when I'm overtired, exhausted, and frustrated beyond belief. So, there's one kind of present. Probably not the kind your daughter is worried about.
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So:
"Board members on Dec. 14 added a provision to their 2018 legislative-priorities package calling on the legislature to require parents, [comma sic] who claim religious exemptions from their children attending schools, to seek the exemption on an annual basis. Currently, parents can receive exemptions in perpetuity."
This does not seem unreasonable to me. I homeschool for philosophical reasons and submit a brief letter to the district annually.
I also wouldn't mind if they got rid of the religious exemption entirely. What other laws do we exempt people from based upon their purported religious beliefs?
(No, I guess I'm not one of those homeschoolers who believes that every law placing limits on our parental freedoms is the start of a slippery slope.)
eta to add a self-righteous sic.
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Spaceman, how old is your son? I agree with the above poster that the best way I've demonstrated these techniques to my kid as a parent is by following a lot of Faber and Mazlish's advice (along with the more recent book by Joanna Faber). There's nothing more memorable and hands-on than actually applying these techniques to the actual conflicts that arise organically in any household.
If you have a teenager maybe it would also provide fruitful to look at some resources for peer mediation? I became a peer mediator when I was in high school, and those methods are very similar as I recall. (I'm kind of old, though, so sorry the details are too fuzzy to point to specific resources.)
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I love my rolling cart with wire baskets. Mine is four tiered and has hooks on the side
However, I did want to say this is not the best storage solution if you have little kids who might theoretically be attracted to anything lightweight on wheels that could become their own personal shopping cart/dump truck/wagon. I currently have transferred all my important supplies back to the kitchen counter and keep only the things I don't mind getting pushed around the house and deposited in different locations on the rolling cart.
Our homeschooling space is the kitchen. That's essentially where we live, too. If I were really motivated I would clean out a few of the cabinets and store things there-- I need high shelving to keep my supplies out of curious and destructive little hands. But for now my major supply station is the counter next to the toaster oven, until I get my rolling cart back!
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The Montessori rods I've seen have a significant flaw, in my opinion: each number isn't associated with a unique color.
The advantage of the c-rods is that even a very young child can quickly learn-- through play-- that a red rod and a yellow rod are equivalent in length to a black rod. A kid doesn't have to count. Once she discovers the number equivalent of each rod (and this is also something that comes about through play), a whole world of early arithmetic is mastered through her own ability to visualize and recall the rods.
I highly recommend the rods, and also that you sit and play around with them for awhile as well. They're fun!
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Well, if he's enjoying it, it's not busy work, it's practice, right? He's getting something of value of it. Busywork is in the eye of the beholder, and it feels to me like maybe we shouldn't refer to something that your son likes doing and is learning from as if it is without merit-- the attention he's giving it, and the fact that he takes pleasure in it, is what makes it not mere busywork for him. It may be part of his learning style. It may be a phase. But sometimes thinking of things in categories as "busywork" or "meaningful work" can blind us to the fact that learning and growing is about the person doing the work, and what they're getting out of it, not a magic that only some materials possess.
If you do gravitate to a curriculum that doesn't include much of this kind of stuff, googling printables for the topics you're studying will likely turn up a ton of free options (if you have a printer). Dover also has some good books that can accompany science or history studies, although you may not be there yet age-wise. Inexpensive workbooks and activity books abound, and would make a fine supplement to any curriculum for a kid who finds them fun and engaging. Some kids do enjoy them a lot, and my kids have gone through stages where they would do them in spurts depending on their moods.
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Just as long as you don't sign it "The Mlktwinserson's."
I withhold judgment based upon the absence or presence of the Oxford comma, but can there really be a style guide out there that recommends using an apostrophe when making a surname plural? A number of people who write to us seem to think so. (And snark aside, I do appreciate the holiday greeting's.) ;)
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Set it aside. Exchange it for toys. (This is really what manipulatives are, anyway, when used with a math-positive attitude!) And games. Trucky3, CandyLand, Chutes & Ladders, and Feed the Kitty are fun ones for this age.
At this age, I would very much regret skipping over what I consider the ideal math curriculum, however, tested by time and able to lodge itself permanently into a person's memory: songs and nursery rhymes. One, two, buckle my shoe. The three little kittens lost their mittens. Five little monkeys jumping on the bed. Five little ducks went out one day. If you have any little toys or puppets that can act these out dramatically, all the better.
Repeated exposure absolutely does have an effect, but the effect isn't always positive. (In this case, is the repeated exposure going to make you both frustrated, resentful, bored, negative toward math/school, etc. before it helps him understand and enjoy working with numbers?)
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Whether or not you are strict after the fact, I think at this stage it wouldn't go awry to remind him before his test "Listen, don't forget those units! If you don't give me the correct unit, the answer isn't correct even if the number is."
Yep. Not to mention, on daily math practice, I write little reminders like, "Stop and think before you start to work!" and "Circle your answer!" or "Does this one require units?" or "Check your zeros!" or "Does it make sense?" and whatever little things I know my kids neglect to do in their haste to finish.
If something is actually a test, which it rarely is, that is my opportunity to see what they can't do without any help or reminders. Since it's just for me, I don't grade it, but they may actually wish I did-- rather than get a C, they will get lots of extra opportunities to practice what they missed.
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Thank you! Worked for me.
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I'm not sure this will be helpful-- I don't have kids this age yet-- but my sister did pay all three of her kids for good grades when they were in high school. Her girls went on to graduate and get college degrees (without cash incentives), but her son still dropped out at age 16. With that said, perhaps part of the problem was the unfairness of being paid for good grades when he might have to work a lot harder for that goal than they would? Who knows.
By the way, he is now a pretty successful and happy guy-- owns a home and has a job and is a nice guy (although I think the thing that suffered in his lack of education is his political views, but I could very well be biased!). He just had to get past that stage in his life. And it was a good thing he had the safety net of a supportive family.
I also had a rough time early on in high school-- slightly different but also hung with the Wrong Crowd and I accrued so many absences I was in serious trouble. However, one of my teachers (also my cross country coach) made lots of exceptions for me and did many things that definitely weren't "loving and logical"-- he didn't allow me to suffer the consequences of my Bad Teenage Decisions, and as a result, I was able to reach senior year and actually do well academically.
Like I said, my kids aren't in high school yet and I have no idea what I'd do in your situation (beyond worry and fret and suffer sleepless nights and ask for advice). But I did want to say that it is support from caring adults that helped me through my tough days, and as long as your son is still talking to you (as it sounds he is), you're already giving him something extremely valuable. It is good to know there is someone on your team when all those hormones are sometimes making you feel like sometimes you aren't even on your team and have no idea why you're making the dumb choices you regret as soon as they're done.
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Aww, very sweet. The letter reversals really add an adorable touch, don't they?
As I say to my perfectionist oldest, who is always correcting her younger siblings, there is a time for academic perfection and there is a time for warm happy memories of a fleeting time in a child's life. (Yes, I am one of those horrible moms who was like, "Hmm, how long can we delay speech therapy, because the way my preschooler talks is absolutely precious and I like it!")
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Depends on my kids and reason for leaving school (and leaving homeschool)-- but given my personality as a parent, I'm guessing I'd lean toward bringing on the fun things that homeschool does so well: the unit studies centered around my kids' interests, a minimum of formal curriculum (although they do love SOTW as a read-aloud), lots of field trips and library books and games and hot cocoa.
(I've never aligned SOTW with a formal school year, fwiw, or our use of curricula with the accompanying school year, so I am biased towards not attending so much to how much time things take and trying to fit our learning into a pre-planned amount of time.)
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I usually ask for art supplies, since my kids go through them so quickly. We can never have enough paper-- construction paper, paper of all sizes and weights, looseleaf and pads.
Crayons (I like the chunky beeswax ones for the youngest kids), highly washable paint and markers, pom poms, glitter glue, googly eyes, stickers (the puffy ones especially), paint brushes, water color pads, glue, craft sticks...
these are all things we would use, use up, and not have to worry about adding to the toy collection! And great for preschool fine motor, creativity, and fun!
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I would take a gift away from each of my other kids' piles and stash it in the "Next Gifting Occasion" closet over giving one kid fewer presents than all the siblings.
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On the way home, I said how glad I was he said something and got a ride with a sober driver. He said, “Mom, I’m drunk. I’m not a MORON.â€
Lots of smart people become morons when they're drunk, though! I certainly do. Good for your son!
I think planning ahead is an honest response to a legitimate problem-- that many people make decisions, while drinking alcohol, that they would not make while sober. (Like the decision to have just another drink, for instance.) Easier just to make the decisions when you're totally clear-headed!
I will say as the child of an alcoholic that often, it is the person whose tolerance is very, very high who is most in danger of making bad decisions and getting away with them because they can mask the symptoms of their inebriation-- no stumbling or slurring even after many, many drinks. The mom who goes a little crazy and has one drink too many at a holiday party with the gals is the one who isn't going to possess that arrogance of "Look how well I can hold my liquor." I don't think it sends a bad message to be frank about how alcohol affects people.
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I have considered doing this, except that Im not sure if DD is ready for the amount of writing involved. I would almost like to spend the next few months solidifying what she's already learned in a fun, quick way each day. I'm also teaching a 1st grader this year and I'm not sure if I have time to teach another full-blown math curriculum.
What I'm doing right now with my K-er, which is cheap, quick, enjoyable, and requires almost no prep is a combination of using the rods along with Gattegno's free math textbook. This seems to me a good alternative to Miquon if you like the idea of working with the rods (they're awesome!) but don't want to invest time/energy in another curriculum. My 5 year old spends about 5 minutes a day on one of these exercises, and then...we play a game!
I keep a game shelf just for her that she can choose from. Any game with dice, counting spaces, playing cards, dominoes, Rush Hour, checkers, and a few more obviously mathy games like Money Bags and I Sea Ten. I'd say any of these, along with living math books (like in the MathStart series) would be a good way to solidify what's she learned, have fun, and promote the idea that math is not just filling in workbook pages!
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These may not fit into what you mean by "really good" books. But some recommendations from my experience with a similar kid who is just not at all motivated to read the kinds of books you would find on official lists of Good Books. (She listens to them happily, though.)
For solo reading, my daughter really loved the Alvin Ho books (Lenore Look). Couldn't get into the series the same author wrote about a girl, though.
She liked the Shredderman series a lot (by Wendelin van Draanen). But not the books that come after Shredderman (Gecko & Sticky).
But really graphic novels are the ones I can really count on her reading. And picture books that she can read in one sitting. (Which is actually fine with me-- there are a lot of high quality picture books that work well for her reading level.) And nonfiction books about poop and the history of sanitation. Many of the books listed in this thread are ones she has really enjoyed as read-alouds but would probably not quite do on her own-- the only Roald Dahl book she has read on her own, for instance, is Fantastic Mr. Fox.
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Thamks. I *think* I have next year planned. :lol: Early I know, but I didn't want curriculum planning and new baby to be happrning at the same time.
Hands down, my young kids' VERY favorite science was the informal stuff we did surrounding pregnancy, birth, and early infancy. Just getting lots of books, including them in the office visits, and discussing all their questions was so fascinating for them...because it was really about them, too, and how they came to be. It was awesome. If all else fails, you've got that!
One of my kids is now set on becoming a pediatrician and is perhaps the world's second grade expert on vaccination.
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I like the idea of creating these shelves (although maintaining them would be a struggle in my house-- books tend to like to go walking off to children's bedrooms, or riding in the car).
I see no need to hurry through SOTW just so your kids get the proper chronology. I think this is probably more of a need on our part than our children's-- although even I can easily forget what was gong on two chapters ago unless we spend some time letting it marinate.
Also, if you have a good library, it can be very satisfying to request heaps of library books on each topic and then rotate out those books that just don't seem like they've earned a permanent place on your shelves, while purchasing the books that have.
At the age of your kids, often playing or doing projects around history is more memorable to them than reading extra books.
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Oh, I'm sorry. This is no fun.
I have found that when mine get like this, the opposite tactic is actually more successful. This is just what works for us, and my oldest is the girl, and the "pest" the boy, and they are different people from your kids, so disregard all this if it doesn't sound relevant.
But what I mean by 'the opposite tactic' is this: laying off most school work for a few weeks and spending MORE time together doing enjoyable things together that remind us of what we like about each other. Random surprise excursions, games (preferably not highly competitive ones), going out for donuts in our pajamas, whatever. Also: anything that makes me the bad guy and puts them on a team. Just making the relationship work a priority over schoolwork. Especially when it's possible that increased schoolwork compared to a younger sibling is part of the problem.
This doesn't mean not valuing your son's need to be an independent, mature person who is growing up. He needs to have experiences that challenge that part of him and force him to prove himself. But growing up includes learning to hold one's temper and find positive outlets for one's anger and strength, and I wouldn't expect any young person to be able to do this without a lot of guidance, mentoring, and positive examples. It's a lifelong practice!
Hatred and love are both strong emotions, and it's normal to entertain strong emotions for people one loves. This applies both to our children and to ourselves trying to deal with them!
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FWIW, I remember clearly, clearly, and with great fondness the books my fifth grade teacher read aloud to us after lunch.
I don't remember reading The Secret Garden (until I was an adult). I remember having it read to me, before we all went to see the musical. Wonderful memory. I loved reading it to my kids as an adult. It begs to be read aloud. The dialogue is so true it begs for accents!
I like trying different things-- like reading side by side with mugs of hot cocoa and having my daughter read just one person's dialogue, or having her read aloud to me every other page, or asking her to help me record a challenging book as an audiobook for her younger siblings. I think it's totally normal to prefer books with modern, familiar language, but I also think it can be a fun exercise to ask, "What is strange or difficult about this particular passage? How would we say this nowadays?"
I guess what I ultimately would ask is what you want your child to get from reading this book, and how she can best get that in the home environment-- a lot of us feel we didn't get a whole lot from assigned reading in school, especially when the book was assigned before we were ready to truly appreciate its beauty. At home, for example, I find doing book club or writing Amazon reviews together is a lot more fun than book reports, and has a more productive effect.
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I like a combination of the everyday (or, rather, the every week)-- the supermarket, the library, the post office-- approached with the eye of a child and the intent to experience rather than rush through it, which feels like a luxury for all of us.
If you're fortunate enough to live in an area that has performances specially targeted to a young audience, as I am, some of my favorite and most memorable activities with my kids around that age have been going to the ballet/opera/concerts/theater. Our local high school and a nearby university are great for these. They're expensive for us and a special occasion field trip, but we can make them last by listening to recordings of performances and talking about the stories again and again.
During the week, anywhere they can be outside and have some measure of freedom is what I gravitate to. Places where they can both spend a little time inside a nature center and ample time exploring outside are ideal. Farms, too. Farms are great at this age, if you don't already live on one! I guess the best educational field trips ultimately really depend on making the best of whatever resources you have in your area, and finding out what kind of stuff they have for kids that age. (Treasure hunts at historic sites or state parks? A special Please Touch room in the museum? An opportunity to milk a cow? Library meet an author events? Etc.)
Interesting article "How I made sure all 12 of my kids could pay for college themselves"
in The Chat Board
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Wow, he's really taking all the credit for the way his kids turned out, isn't he?
I think, for me, when I think about the #1 thing that will make me feel like I did a good job parenting, it's not that my kids earn lots of money, or even are hard and diligent workers, or that they are slender (that's an easy one to eliminate), or even that they possess any of the life skills or morals that I hope they will learn growing up with me...
The absolute first thing that will tell me that I was a good parent is that they want to spend time with me even when they no longer have to.
We do our best with all of the other stuff, but in the end, the credit for those accomplishments go to our children. The work they require, the true work of growing up, belongs to our children.
Being a friend and a parent are not mutually exclusive, after all.
FWIW, I saw my parents scrimp, slave, and save to pay every bit of money they could for my college education (and private school before-- we never went on a single vacation, and lived in a 3-room house I was ashamed to bring friends home to, and that was on scholarship). You know what it made me? Grateful. Willing to do the same for my own kids. Willing to show by my actions the priority I give education over all else, including some pretty basic needs. (My spouse grew up the same way, on the other side of the globe.) This "I'm a good parent because I made my kids work for their education" is an extremely privileged way to think.
(Also, thank you, Mom, for always giving me a pleasant alternative at mealtime. That was nice. We both know that as it turns out, I am the least picky adult and will eat anything, including insects, raw meat and fish, and the spiciest of foods, if it's served to me by well-meaning friends. And it's nice to know that the sibling I had who didn't get to live to enjoy adulthood, or adult tastes, never had to see a reheated plate of rejected food served to her again and again. Those pb&j sandwiches you made were more than worth it.)