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Cecropia

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Posts posted by Cecropia

    So what *can* I eat?

    in The Chat Board

    Posted

    Re: meat containing saline or other solution, check around for a local slaughterhouse or small farmer who can sell you minimally processed meat.

    Dh has major dietary restrictions and really struggles with work lunches, etc.  He has to balance the embarrassment/awkwardness of not eating normally vs. having a bad reaction in front of co-workers/clients.  He often orders a large plain salad with a drink and eats more after it's over.  At pot lucks, the dish that we bring to share is one that we know to be safe, and he'll brown bag the rest of his food.

    what kind of cake should I make?

    in The Chat Board

    Posted

    I love buttercream transfers.  If you want to help it match the mocha "background", pipe a shell or star border around the image in transition colors.  These examples I've made are on cookies with blues in the borders instead of browns, but you get the general idea of what I'm talking about.

     

     

    1436.jpg

    IMG_8024.jpg

    Do you expect your kids to work quietly?

    in The Chat Board

    Posted

    To be clear, I'm only asking them to be quiet, not sit in silence... The two older ones will get very loud together!  I'm glad that they are good friends, but it can make school complicated.  Yes, half the time they will continue work into the evening hours because of all the distractions.  I often wonder how anyone can manage a classroom of 20+ kids.

    This brings to mind 3rd grade for my oldest, when his teacher pushed hard to have him evaluated for ADHD because he kept tapping, singing, leaning over his desk...  The discipline chart was always full of "negative colors" that year.  His grades and retention of lessons were fine.

    Dh and I never believed for a second that he was anything but NT, and we refused the testing.  He's always been a kinesthetic person/learner.

    As a teen, he just doesn't realize that he's been flipping and tapping a pencil for the last 5 minutes, pacing the floor like a caged animal, or bumping into furniture until someone else points it out... I think of him as a person who "lives slapstick."  However, if an interesting assignment is put in front of him, like an art project, he will sit still with a laser-like focus for a long period of time.  I really hope the focused side will come out when it needs to.

    Do you expect your kids to work quietly?

    in The Chat Board

    Posted

    My 11yo and 14yo like to chat, hum, tap pencils etc. while they are at the table doing schoolwork.  I feel like I am constantly riding them to be quiet.  I'm a product of a public school "silent classroom," "12 inch voices" environment, strictly maintained.  I concentrate much better in silence, but this may be how I was trained.  It feels hypocritical to require the boys to be quiet, because my preschooler and toddler are constantly making noise and conversing with anyone in earshot.  I don't like discouraging my 4 yo from his normal loud-ish play and his need to be social (aka incessant prattle) so that his brothers can work.  In the end, we couldn't create a silent, distraction-free learning environment no matter how hard we try --- so why am I so bothered by the sounds my older children make?  They tell me that the public school classrooms they were part of (through 3rd and 6th grade) were *much* louder than our household and difficult for the teachers to control.

    One of my fears is that it will be hard for them to break the habit of making noise when they are finally in a classroom environment where it is expected (standardized testing, college)...

    Do you struggle with the noise level of your home environment vs your homeschool environment?

    NM

    in The Chat Board

    Posted

    I'm so grateful for Poison Control.  We've needed their advice a few times in the last couple of years.  I used to be reluctant to call, but now it almost seems habitual!

    My children's adventures include:

    - breaking a mercury thermometer over a bed (wasn't sure it was mercury at the time... but it was!)

    - breaking a cfl bulb over another bed and getting cut with a shard

    - chewing up an unidentifiable lily off a florist's bouquet

    - sucking on a AA battery

    • Like 1

    6th grader & high school student - same curricula?

    in Accelerated Learner Board

    Posted

    Since I took ds13 and ds10 out of public school a year and a half ago, they have been doing most of their schoolwork together.  I keep it somewhat simpler for ds10 -- not in terms of content, but in the amount of work that he's responsible for.  Examples: he can choose 3 of 5 comprehension questions for literature today, his essays don't have as many sentences as his older brother's, and I make his end-of-semester exams a little shorter.  I have tried to choose curricula that are not necessarily lighter in content, but perhaps presented in a more interesting way than your average textbook to help keep ds10's interest.  Lots of Ellen McHenry science with all of the accompanying activities and games, SOTW coordinated with Human Odyssey and Mapping the World with Art, LLLOTR this year with an accompanying audiobook, Life of Fred etc.

     

    Now I have a rising 9th grader, and I'm torn about what to do next year with all of the rigor that high school requires.  Do I let my rising 6th grader tag along, or do I craft his own program?  In many ways they are on the same level.  They'll both be through Algebra 1, at the same stopping point in social studies, have finished LLLOTR together, taken the same IEW writing and grammar programs...  I'm sure it helps a lot that they are playmates and generally prefer to learn together.  However, these programs I'm intending to use next year seem like a significant step up.  I'm not so worried that he can't grasp/remember the concepts, but more that they'll be presented in such a dry "adult" way that his eyes will glaze over and he'll shut down.  I'm also concerned about social studies and literature being age-appropriate (sex, violence, language...) for him.

     

    Have any of you let your younger AL tag along with your high school student?  How did it turn out?  Any advice?

    Forum Game--who wants to play yet again?

    in The Chat Board

    Posted · Edited by Cecropia

    The Tyranny of Metrics

     

    Imagine there's no angstrom
    It's easy if you try
    No area of a circle

    No reason to use pi

     

    Imagine all the people living measure-free

     

    Imagine there's no timepiece
    It isn't hard to do
    No days, hours or minutes
    And no seconds, too
    Imagine all the people living life in peace
    yoo hooo ooooo

     

    You may say I'm a dreamer
    But I'm not the only one
    I hope some day you'll join us
    And the world will be as one

    • Like 10

    s/o This Is Us -- Fire escape drills from heights

    in The Chat Board

    Posted · Edited by Cecropia

    It's also covering-their-ass situation.  The ladders are not made to the same standard as regular ladders so they say that so you don't try to use it as a regular ladder.  There is not a safety factor of 2+ and not meant to handle repeat fatigue cycles, like a regular ladder.  Ours is a pain to put back together but not impossible.

     

    ETA:  It's not like you are going to be standing there with your house on fire and be like, "Gee, I guess I'll just sit here in the fire because this ladder was opened once."  

     

    Yeah, I figured the underlying reason was something like, "Discard your child's car seat even in the case of a minor accident, because there might be invisible stress cracks"...

     

    ETA: We have a X-it ladder which is marketed as a reusable ladder.

    • Like 1

    s/o This Is Us -- Fire escape drills from heights

    in The Chat Board

    Posted

    Do you hold fire drills in your house?  If you don't live in a one-story building/first floor dwelling, does your family practice getting down from two- or three-story windows?

     

    We live in a two-story house set on a hill (basement walkout) that has all the bedrooms upstairs.  We could easily be sleeping as a fire starts downstairs, getting trapped up there like This Is Us.

     

    The master bedroom window opens to the roof, which reaches around to the back porch landing, a 7-8 foot drop, and then access to the porch stairs.  Our baby and 4yo sleep in there with us.  We have a "safety rope" in the master closet to tie to bedroom furniture and snake out the window for the first adult to get down (not a great plan). We could sling the baby, but we should buy one of those large breathable baby rescue sacks.

     

    The bedroom halfway down the hall is a guest room/storage room.  There's a two-story drop with no roof platform.  No contingency plan to escape through that window.

     

    Oldest boy has a bedroom at the end of the hall with a three-story drop to the backyard.  No contingency plan for his window, either.  However, he only has to open his door and turn right into his brother's room...

     

    Second boy has the other bedroom at the end of the hall with a two-story window (also drops straight down).  When we moved here, we bought a fold-up metal fire escape ladder which sits in his closet.

     

    I've talked many times about having a drill with the ladder in our second son's bedroom and another drill out the master bedroom window.  If we were separated by a fire in the hall, ds13 would hopefully be capable of getting the ladder set up and helping ds10 get on it.  Every time I bring it up, though... I encounter so much resistance.  I get that everyone in my family except me is afraid of heights.  House fires are uncomfortable to think about and we'd all rather ignore the possibility.  Escaping would look silly to the neighbors (plus we'd have to tell them all so they don't call 911 for us!).  We might damage the house in using the ladder.  There's a significant risk of accidents.

     

    At what age do you think a child would be old enough to participate in such a drill?  What about practicing at night as well as daytime?  As I'm typing this I realize we need a good flashlight in every bedroom, somewhere it won't get lost.

    Who's in planning mode yet for 2018-19? Want to share?

    in High School and Self-Education Board

    Posted

    I am also new to high school.  Very, very tentative plans for 9th grade:

     

    Literature: Illuminating Literature: Characters in Crisis

    Writing: IEW SICC-B followed by Elegant Essay

    Math: Holt Geometry with Prof. Burger online lectures, also looking at Derek Owens ($$ kind of an issue)

    History: ???(modern)

    Science: Kolbe Academy Honors Biology (w/lab)

    Language: Better Chinese: Discovering Chinese Pro; Chinese With Mike: Intermediate; online tutor

    Health: homegrown (a full credit is required in my state)

    I'd love to work in 1/4-1/2 credit of art as he has talent, but I'm afraid to overload him this year.

    Piano, Boy Scouts

    • Like 2

    US History in World Context

    in High School and Self-Education Board

    Posted

    Hi, I'm a high school homeschool novice with a rising 9th grader.  We have vague ideas about everything he'll do for next year, except history.  We are not on the typical history schedule.  7th grade (the first homeschooling year) was ancients through the the Middle Ages, and this year should end somewhere in the mid- 1800's.  We want to continue chronologically.  One idea is to spread out the FundaFunda US history course schedule over two years and coordinate it with... some awesome world history resources (suggestions?)..., doubling back to revisit early US history after we are through the modern period.  He might then take the APUSH as a sophomore.  Each year would count as approximately 1/2 credit US history + 1/2 credit world history.

     

    Looking for advice/validation from anyone who has done something similar... or to shake me and scream, "Are you crazy, woman?!?"  Yes, yes I am.  I have NO idea what I'm doing.

    • Like 1
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