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Adrianne

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Posts posted by Adrianne

  1. The trip to Grand Canyon from here is about 1600 miles. I'm thinking a 6 hour driving day is enough. That's approx. 450 miles. WDYD?

     

    We just drove to Florida over Thanksgiving week and did about 7 hours a day. We made stops a long the way to sleep and did some sight seeing. We brought a lot of books on tape, Madlibs, toys, and a portable DVD player. The DVD player came out when we hit traffic or just needed to go a bit longer.

     

    The Grand Canyon sounds like a fun trip!!

  2. I should also ask: what can you generally see with the different lenses?

     

    Like with a 20x, what would you look at?

     

    Or a 100x?

     

    Or a 400x?

     

    Can you look at spit or blood, or see things in pond water, or what? I am so clueless, sorry!

     

    We use the 5x eye piece and 4x and 10x lenses the most. We looked at slides of monocots, dicots (plant cells) pond water, tadpoles, butterfly wings etc with and did pretty well. I occasionally used the 10x eye piece with the 10x lens (100x total) to see detail but for the kids it was not necessary.

     

    The Brock is a great microscope!

  3. Good for you Lisa for dealing with this. :grouphug: to you. Disciplining your child is very hard. Keep it up! It may take a while but it will work and she will be better for it.

     

    Here we do time outs sometimes but for willful disobedience we spank. For screaming like that - I would spank her and put her in her room. Give her a hug, tell her you love her and want whats best for her but she cannot act this way. Don't spank when your angry, it must be controlled discipline.

  4. My 6.5 yr old is a lefty and a boy. So I try not to set the bar too high ;) But his writing drives me nuts. I have actually gone back to copying letters each day and only do copywork twice a week to try to improve it. When he is ONLY writing letters, he can make them look nice...it's not that he CAN'T, it's that he's a little boy in a hurry to get done and doesn't care if its sloppy. Specifically, (unless I am at his shoulder correcting every letter) he forgets to put spaces between words, letters can end up just about any size and located anywhere at all between the lines he feels like at the moment, and some of them just look horrible. What do you guys do to make them care about their work?!?! :confused: Is this normal end-of-first-grade writing? The only people I have to compare with have little girls who LOVE making pretty letters (so in other words--there's no comparing). I'm going crazy. :tongue_smilie:

    and concentrate on the quality.

     

    What you are experiencing is pretty normal here. My ds 10 grew out of it. My ds6 is still there but I am confident he will grow out of it. As the fine motor skills improve so will the handwriting.

     

    I would just make sure he can form the letters, keep up the practice -not too much, we do one handwriting sheet a day, no copy work yet - and have patience. He will get it.

     

    Just keep him working to his ability.

  5. but when that crystal dissolves in water, the electrified atoms are pulled away from each other as the water molecules surround them, and they float through the water separately.

     

    Not quite

    The sodium and chloride ions are actually attracted to the positively and negatively charged parts of the water molecule and become attached to it. The O end of the water is negatively charged attracting NA+ ions, and the H portion is positively charged attracting Cl- ions.

     

    Another thing to keep in mind is that these molecules all have thermal energy and are constantly moving (solids less than liquids less than gases) as are their electrons. Weak bonds can break and reform. The reactions can go back and forth. They look very final on paper but are not in the salt water.

     

    Smart son to be asking that question! Keep up the good work!

  6. Does he do anything physically active? With my teen boy I can tell when his body has been dormat for a while, a good lawn mowing, pool cleaning, car washing or ivy cutting helps A LOT.

     

    Reward anything good you see. A little atta boy goes a long way with teens.

     

    When my older teen was growing up, I'd be known to put I love you notes under her pillow now & then. She never said anything to me about them, but recently 4 years later- I saw them all in a box in her desk.

     

    Hang in there mom. He will come back to you over time, until then just count the days until you can smile when he comes to you with parenting issues of his own!!

     

    :iagree:

    This sounds like great advice!

  7. I have a 10yob and 7yob (first and 4th) and we are finishing up SOTW 4. It has been a good year for us. Yes it is a lot about wars..isn't all of history?, but my boys love war so they have loved this year. The chapters do have more detail that sometimes have gone over my 1st grader, but I did not think that was a problem. We did spend extensive time in the civil war, so even though we were learning other chapters in SOTW, we were doing civil war projects for almost 2 months. We made costumes and would have done homeschool in the woods CD on the civil war, but it came out too late..next time. Then second semester we have spent extensive time doing WW2 crafts while going through the other chapters. My boys really got into learning about the different planes and we have watched the History Channel series on Dogfights. This has been great as well. We made origami model airplanes. I am glad we did it for what it is worth. Let me know if you have any more questions, as it is pretty fresh right now..we are on Chp. 34 heading into the home stretch.

     

    Blessings,

     

    Angie (home4fun)

     

    This sounds exactly like us. We plan on spending a lot of time on those two wars. What is Homeschool in the woods?

  8. Thank you. I am very afraid that I seem emotionally unstable when I'm challenged this way. My dh reacts much better, and is more of a rock kind of person. I have a role in this and I want to change my role to more of a rock. I know my son understands what upsets me and he does use that edge. He knows I will melt if he says something mean, and then I know he's mad ar himself for it afterwards. He doesn't show much self control, but he's 15 not 40 something, and I need to model more of it.

     

     

    I must be hard for you. It is not easy when someone is being nasty to you, especially someone you love very much. It must hurt a great deal. In a way he does deserve some of what you are saying to him. But like you said, he is 15, you are 40 something....

     

    Just remind yourself, you are his mother, you love him and are doing what is best for him and try to leave the room or bite your knuckle when he gets this way. (and you can use it against him when he is older, he-he) But again don't tolerate disrespect or rule breaking.

     

    FWIW, when my kids gets emotionally crazy, (in a 6yo way), I hug him and tell him that I love him very much. I also find that spending one on one time with them doing things we both enjoy helps discipline problems. In our family it is usually video games but we also like to roller blade. Even sharing a liked book and discussing it makes a difference. Finding that common ground can be hard but it is well worth it.

  9. We used this in a co-op we belong to years ago. I think the ages were 7 and 8. The kids loved it and learned a lot. Every mom took a different country each week. the book had great project ideas and suggestions.

     

     

    It was great in a co-op setting because we could do a lot with our one country. I don't know how it would work for home use.

     

    Great program though!

  10. Has anyone done SOTW with multiple children, esp younger ones?

     

    After trying to teach history separately, I have learned we need to do it together. This year ds10 is starting the modern age, so by default, ds 6 is also. Ds 6 is very thoughtful and can follow along and comprehend the material on his level. (he just can't write for himself).

     

    After reading the beginning of the activity guide and SWB warning not to teach SOTW to kids younger than 4th, I have decided to proceed anyway.

     

    Has anyone done this? Do you have any recommendations? Things you would do differently? Things that worked?

     

    Thanks!

  11. I just thought I'd let you all know that the April issue of National Geographic has Hatshepsut on the cover and a very interesting article on her inside.

     

    I saw it on my way out of B&N and had to grab it. Becca didn't recognize the statue on the front, but was appropriately excited when I told her who it was. :D

     

    I was excited by this also when my issue arrived in the mail a few weeks ago. My ds 10 actually remembered her name! Go SOTW!! Thank you SWB!

  12. ((Laurie))

     

    I don't have teens but I seen my friends going through similar things. I have observed though and start to see with my 10yo ds, that the teenage years are similar to the young ages. They are emotionally unstable and EVERYTHING is a big deal.

     

    I was chuckling to myself when reading your paragraph about how he hates everything you make and weekly it changes. I was thinking, he sounds a lot like my ds, now 6, when he was around 4 or 5. Every week it was a different food he hated, usually followed with, "Oh mom, I hate ---- didn't you know that?"

     

    When I was in that tumultuous age my dad was very stable,he would listen and give his advice. My mom very unstable - emotionally reacting to everything I did. I still have issues with my mom. My dad and I get along great, in fact my dad lives with dh and I. (or we live with him?)

     

    I think you should just be there for your son, be his rock. Don't react emotionally to his reacting emotionally. Like, you dh, don't tolerate disrespect or rule breaking. Remember he is your son and you love him. Right now he needs to know that most of all.

     

    HTH!

  13.  

    Keeping their food inside their "box" does keep the other flock-members away from the chick food.

     

    Bill

     

     

    Hmmm... In the past when we have purchased babies, we had to keep them in a box with a mesh lid to keep the larger chickens out (we have about 25 full size RRR). The larger chickens would go in the box and eat the baby food otherwise. (knock over the containers etc)

     

    If we put the mother and the babes in this box, then they cannot get out unless we let them. I don't want to restrict the mother hen or mother nature. I was hoping she would do her thing and care for the babies.

    The food seems to be an issue.

  14. When our bantams have hatched out chicks they have alway done so in hanging nest boxes. We have waited till the chicks have hatched to move them. And then have set up a cardboard box with shavings (about the same size as the nest box) in the coop.

     

    We have never had problems, or a need to segregate our chicks from the other hens and the rooster (in fact the others in the flock have only been helpful). I'm not sure if this amiable behavior is breed dependent. We have Rhode Island Red bantams, which are a very easy-going variety. I believe I've read pecking can be a problem, but we have never experienced such a thing.

     

    Bill (city-slicker, of limited experience)

     

    How did you feed them?

     

    Thanks Bill!

  15. We have a banty hen setting on eggs right now. We think she will hatch them at the end of this week.

     

    She is setting in a nesting box that is hanging on the wall. Dh and I are afraid that when they hatch they will injury themselves jumping from the box to the ground, about a 1 to 2 ft jump. Should we try to move her? Can we move her to a nesting box we have on the ground?

     

    Also, once they hatch should we separate them from the rest of the chickens?

     

    We are very excited about the prospect of baby chicks! Any advice is appreciated.

     

    Adrianne

  16.  

    Physical exercise. Something strenuous can help work out those emotions. Sometimes I engage my son in a "standing sumo" contest. We face eachother, lock hands and push hard to try to knock the other person over - no sudden moves, just strength. He will fight hard. Eventually, after several minutes (and some sweating on my part), we both erupt into laughter. This may not last long because he is 15 and getting stronger every day. Afterwards, I usually send him out for a walk if possible. I am thinking of putting up a punching bag in the garage for my boys to use when they need to get out some aggression. My dad had one for my older brothers. Now I see why:).

     

     

     

    I like these ideas. We are going to try them here!

     

    I know how you feel. I constantly feel like I am talking ds10 down from ledges some days. So far physical activity, patience and lots of hugs are working here.

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