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They said what? Good thing they're homeschooled!


zaichiki
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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

What happens when the four-year-old can read the instructions on her math page: "Mommy, this says 'Write the sums OR differences,' not 'Write the sums AND differences.' So I can pick if I want to do the adding ones or the subtracting ones!"  I explained that it really meant to do all of them, but she was adamant that the directions gave her a choice.  She picked sums, for the record. ;)

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  • 2 months later...

DD#2 said the other day, "I can't use this pencil! It was made in China!" And she picked a different pencil. She wasn't actually talking to me, so I didn't say anything, though I thought that was an odd statement for a four-year-old to make.

 

A couple days later, we were at the mall looking for shoes, and I told her to try on a particular pair. She looked at the shoes and said, "But Mommy, these shoes were made in China. I can't wear them."

 

I asked where she got that idea.

 

"It's on our toy stroller," she said. "It says not to put a child in the stroller because it was made in China. So things made in China are not for children to actually use."

 

I explained that "do not put child in stroller" and "made in China" were not actually connected ideas. But oh my goodness, the things this child comes up with!  :lol:

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DS when in 1st (and just moved to a new class exposing him to 3rd grade math) brings home his first math homework/test....a score of zero, every problem wrong!

 

While upon closer look he answered every "How long does it take to travel from a to b" type question in seconds...correctly! He said the problems were too easy when answering in days and hours...🤔..teacher insisted he retake the test again and answer in D and H...😡...so the advocating (for a couple years) and eventually homeschool journey began. ðŸ‘

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DD#2 said the other day, "I can't use this pencil! It was made in China!" And she picked a different pencil. She wasn't actually talking to me, so I didn't say anything, though I thought that was an odd statement for a four-year-old to make.

 

A couple days later, we were at the mall looking for shoes, and I told her to try on a particular pair. She looked at the shoes and said, "But Mommy, these shoes were made in China. I can't wear them."

 

I asked where she got that idea.

 

"It's on our toy stroller," she said. "It says not to put a child in the stroller because it was made in China. So things made in China are not for children to actually use."

 

I explained that "do not put child in stroller" and "made in China" were not actually connected ideas. But oh my goodness, the things this child comes up with!  :lol:

 

Oh, that reminds me of my 5yo, who has told us a couple of times that "Donald Trump" is a bad word (like a cuss word), and that we shouldn't use that word. I can't get an answer out of him though as to why he thinks that's the case though, but it's funny nonetheless.

Edited by luuknam
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Oh, that reminds me of my 5yo, who has told us a couple of times that "Donald Trump" is a bad word (like a cuss word), and that we shouldn't use that word. I can't get an answer out of him though as to why he thinks that's the case though, but it's funny nonetheless.

On Fuller House it says that it is a bad word.

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We're doing a Star Wars themed co-op this semester, and the session today is on costuming. DD just came out of her room, wearing a tank dress covered with stars and a bunch of little Lego space ships and the Lego Death Star strategically placed.

 

I think the parent leading expected a character, not a scene from the movie....

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I found DD brushing the cat, carefully extracting the fur into a collection box

 

Me "what are you doing?"

DD-"collecting samples. I haven't done an ethogram on Siphonaptera yet!"

 

sigh....

 

Hope she didn't find any!!! :)

 

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I found DD brushing the cat, carefully extracting the fur into a collection box

 

Me "what are you doing?"

DD-"collecting samples. I haven't done an ethogram on Siphonaptera yet!"

 

sigh....

 

Ha! This made me think of my daughter, who's nearing 10.

She loves the Youtube channel called 'How to Make Everything' and one series of episodes was all about making a suit from scratch, absolute scratch.

Part of this included the guy spinning thread from a range of fibres he sourced himself, such as cotton, hemp, alpaca fleece and sheep wool.

 

Anyhoo, I found my daughter cutting chunks of fur off one of our Ragdoll cats so that she could make cat wool. Sadly, we don't have a spinning wheel, so she had to do it the old-fashioned way, by rolling and rolling and rolling the small fibres.

 

She ended up with a decent length of surprisingly strong and ever-so-soft Ragdoll cat wool :001_smile:

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  • 1 month later...

Ds has begun Catcher in the Rye....

 

Ds: "The neighbors think it is inappropriate that I am reading this book."

 

Me: "Really?"

 

Ds: "Yeah, they said I should not read about a kid in a mental hospital. He is only in there because he wouldn't conform. They do realize that they think I should be in school to get socialized don't they? They basically want to assylum me so I would be made to be like everyone else....bunch of phonies...."

 

Yes, well perhaps we will be reading less outside.

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Not terribly intellectual, but my eldest had a short phase where she literally screamed "eeek" when things happened because she'd read it. Sadly, I seem to have forgotten all the gems they used to come up with. I was very sleep deprived through much of it due to my middle one having sleep problems (turns out corn syrup and a few other things trigger yelling and crying in her sleep on an off fo hours), etc.

Maybe I should consider diet changes in my baby that does this frequently? He started solids recently.

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"I got it! I got his autograph! RICHARD RUSCZYK signed my GEOMETRY BOOK!!"

She just got her schedule for this summer's program...she got into his class again! Every tween girl squeals about getting to do math with a favorite math book author, right?

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This one is part my kid and part a child I was babysitting:

 

We were at a children's museum yesterday, playing in the Native American experience room. I was looking after my dd5 and a set of boy/girl twins, newly 6. They are German, and there is a bit of a language gap. They boy asked me why 'the Indian warriors always stole the squaws and carried them off.'

I wasn't quite sure how to answer him as his family is very, very different from the answer I would give my own dd, so I asked him what the women could do that the men could not...

He thought for a moment.

"Make soup!" He shouted triumphantly!

 

My poor dd stared at him. After a moment she said, '"there is just so much wrong with that. I am going to pretend he is being facetious. Okay mom?"

 

Ironically, it's actually a pretty good answer on a six year old's level. In many traditional societies, including Native American societies, where there is rigid division of labor between the genders, an individual of either gender really cannot get along on their own. Cooking is a common skill to be culturally designated as gender-specific.

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At soccer tryouts, each child receives a t-shirt with a number. My son gets 71, and exclaims gleefully, "It's prime!"

Lol, my dd would love your son:)

 

She wants to write a series of books for kids, sort of a choose your own adventure series, but only prime numbers and prime-numbered pages and so on will be clues?!

Go for it:)

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So last night we were talking to my aunt on skype and she asks Crazypants the standard "So what are you going to do this summer?" question. He thinks for a moment and says "I'm going to be an expert." An expert? He turns to me and asks "What is that called again? P...H....D?" A PhD? "Yes, a PhD. I'm going to get a PhD in science." What kind of science? "Math!!!!" Oh, what about quantum physics? "Yes, that too!!!" My aunt just gave me a pitying look and said I had a very strange child.  :lol:

 

I'm not sure where he got the idea of getting a PhD. Or why he thought he could get one this summer.  :confused1:  Maybe I should be rethinking my plans for the Fall?

 

I had some family visit here recently, so we went down to Oxford and were having a picnic outside the Bodlein mourning the fact that none of us had student cards to rummage the stacks and making elaborate plans for one of us to get (yet another) academic degree and go to Oxford. So then I jokingly pointed out that Crazypants didn't have any degrees yet, maybe we could send him. His eyes completely lit up and he exclaimed "Could I study math here!?" Uh, sure, I think Oxford has a good math department, why not? Maybe that's where he got the PhD idea from. At least he has good goals?

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I took my 2.5 year old to the bathroom and he chooses a stall. Then he tells me matter of factly "I wanted to use the fourth one." I backed up out of the stall to look, and he was in the fourth stall! I have no idea where he even picked that up...

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  • 2 weeks later...

Not exactly a "said what", but DD quite liked one of the passages in the released ACT she did at ACT camp today. Apparently, it was on Anuran colonization of artificial ponds-and she has not only read, but cited the original publication as a source in the survey of prior research in her paper :). (She did, BTW, get the answers correct-she saved her qualifications for when they were discussing the answers....).

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  • 2 weeks later...

Broccoli recently has said out of the blue a few times that he wants to be in 1st grade next year. I've asked him why, but he doesn't have a reason (at least not one he can articulate). It's a little odd to me, since he's been working out of books clearly labeled "1st grade" all year, and just finished taking the 1st grade CAT (and did very well, though I still need to wait for the percentiles).

 

So, I asked him whether he wants to be in 1st or 2nd grade next year:

 

Broccoli: "First grade. Wait, is that with times tables?"

Me: "It could have times tables, if you wanted it to."

Broccoli: "Okay. First grade, with times tables."

 

This fall all his books are going to have "2nd grade" on the covers though (actually, his Success with Maps book will have 3rd grade on the cover, since the 2nd grade book is a repeat of the 1st grade book), but if he wants to call it 1st grade, w/e.

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My girls were running late this morning and started school an hour later than usual

Me: girls if you don't hurry up you won't have time for extra maths later on

DD(9): NO! You can't be serious, I NEED that extra time (because she is only 2 grade levels ahead...)

DD(7) with a shocked, open mouth expression and in a completely horrified voice: "Mum, how can you even say such a thing?"

I am guessing they will find the time somewhere lol

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Little girl: Everyone's a Christian.

DD(4): Oh. Mommy, are we Christian?

Me: No.
[Walks back over to little girl]
DD: It can't be that everyone's Christian, because we're not.

Little girl: No, everyone is a Christian.  My mom, me, my family.....

DD: Ahh, I see.  It's a quantifier confusion.  Everyone means all.  So if there is one counterexample, I can show your statement is false.  You might mean most or some.  I'd have to see surveys to know what was most accurate.

Little girl walks away.

 

And that is why I don't let DD listen in on the logic courses I teach.  Because no one needs a 4 year old talking about quantifier confusion.

 
 
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  • 2 weeks later...

This one is more of a groan, with a language warning....

 

We were down at the Truckee Riverwalk last night, when DD noticed a frog moving ackwardly to the water. Looking more closely, the large female Leopard frog had a much smaller male Western Toad clinging to her sides, trying frantically, desperately and futily to breed with her. The frog tried repeatedly to dislodge him, swimming into the current, and climbing on rocks out of the water (DD also surprised a few people who asked what the frogs were doing, only to get an explanation, in detail, about how frogs reproduce, from an 11 yr old).

 

On the way back in the car, DD suddenly giggled, and commented "well, I didn't get to see a Phrynosoma (horned lizard, often called a horned toad or horny toad) but I did get to see a VERY HORNY TOAD!!!"

 

 

Sigh... Pre-teen sense of humor combined with encyclopedic knowledge of reptiles and amphibians and a love of word play is a dangerous combination...

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Not something they said, but... our living room ceiling is splattered with body parts. The kids thought it was fun(ny?) to take the squishy head-to-toe* organs and push them on to the ceiling, and they're apparently sticky enough to stay there, although occasionally one will fall down (don't worry, that was just some human lungs that fell on you, lol).

 

* https://www.amazon.com/SmartLab-Toys-Totally-Squishy-Head/dp/B005LH6GM8/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

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A couple of years ago, DS8 was running forward while watching DH behind. He found a bench with his face. He was of course howling in pain. While waiting in Emergency, he wouldn't settle down. The doctor comes in and needs DS to settle to glue the lacerations.

 

Dr: DS, do you hurt or are you scared?

Ds, with all the drama and sobs: I'm bleeeeeding!!!!

Dr, while showing clean gauze: actually, it's not bleeding anymore.

DS, instantly perky: My platelets are working!

Dr: .... Homeschooled?

DH: .... Yea.

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Elizabeth, I find that telling and sad that the doc's first thought was Homeschool when an 8-year-old knew about platelets.   Quite the indictment of public schools.  

 

Like when we moved to a new small town and the librarian saw our minor stack of books (about 10" of children's books) and said, "Since you are homeschoolers your book limit is X".    I forget what the number is, but it is much higher than the minuscule 10 that other people can check out.  

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Elizabeth, I find that telling and sad that the doc's first thought was Homeschool when an 8-year-old knew about platelets.   Quite the indictment of public schools.  

 

Like when we moved to a new small town and the librarian saw our minor stack of books (about 10" of children's books) and said, "Since you are homeschoolers your book limit is X".    I forget what the number is, but it is much higher than the minuscule 10 that other people can check out.  

 

It might be that there is an "educator" category.  I know that at our library any random member can check out 25, but if you are an educator you can check out 50.  I get the 50 due to be a home school educator.

 

That being said, I have had someone in the grocery store notice that my children must be home schooled because they were both reading in the cart instead of having their heads in a video game.  Of course, if I had let them they would have been gaming, but that is beside the point. :)

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It could have been an educator category, but that wasn't what struck me.   It was Many Books, Therefore Homeschooler.   The librarian had NO way of knowing we were homeschoolers.   Her only clue was a 10" stack of books.  The relatively small size of the stack to trigger notice also had struck me.  

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Or possibly the time of day. Here almost any child above age 3 is in school of some form during the day at least a couple of days a week, so a parent showing up with a child on a day that most kids are in school practically screams "homeschooler". Even the preschool storytime has a lot of 2 yr olds and home daycare providers and au pairs/nannies, few 3-5 yr olds with parents.

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Or possibly the time of day. Here almost any child above age 3 is in school of some form during the day at least a couple of days a week, so a parent showing up with a child on a day that most kids are in school practically screams "homeschooler". Even the preschool storytime has a lot of 2 yr olds and home daycare providers and au pairs/nannies, few 3-5 yr olds with parents.

 

It was a Saturday.  

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Broccoli recently has said out of the blue a few times that he wants to be in 1st grade next year. (we did 1st grade all year this year)

 

 

I gave Broccoli and Celery one book each as an "end-of-year" present, and wrote in Celery's: "To [Celery], for successfully completing 3rd grade :001_smile: ". And then, I turned around and had to ask Broccoli what grade he just finished because I didn't have a clue what he was thinking (1st? K? ???), since apparently he'll be in "1st" grade next year. Broccoli: "nothing grade". So, Broccoli now has a book (Dog Diaries: Ginger) with "To [broccoli], for successfully completing nothing grade :001_smile: " written in it. He loved it, btw.

Edited by luuknam
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I don't formally homeschool yet, I'm just encouraging what learning that my little ones show interest in. My 21 month old focused on being verbal and speaks individual words relatively clearly for her age. She understands a bit of sign language, and signs. She starts singing parts of the alphabet, partially correctly, then says "now I know my abcs". She can almost count to 10. She can identify many letters and numbers. Around 16-18 months she told a few people "hi, you're so pretty". People are guessing her to be older by nearly a year, even people with small children of their own. I would think it's too early to say she's advanced(she is for her age), but I'm not going to stop her from learning "school" stuff just because she's not school age yet.  I almost hate telling my sister anything about my daughter's developments, because my girl is doing many of the things that her 8 month older son is just starting to do. I try to tell her that he focused more on mobility and climbing, but I notice that it does seem to bother her some.

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  • 4 weeks later...

We had a cute moment recently.  My 4.5yo got a random and sudden summer fever.  It spiked to 105.5 degF in the middle of the day, and while I was urgently wiping him down with a wet cloth, he told me, "You know, Mama, sound waves move slowly through air.  They move much faster through water."  It was welcome comic relief for me.

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The other night, just after the kids had been put in bed, we heard a wail from the four-year-old's bedroom: "OH NOOOOOO!"

 

Wondering what was causing the drama this time, I ran to see what was wrong. She continued to wail, "It was supposed to be MY TURN to have the Beast Academy book to read at bedtime, but WE FORGOT TO SWITCH THE BOOOOOOOOOK!"

 

(The girls had been required a few nights previously to work out a system for who gets the BA book each night, or I would not let either of them have it, since they were arguing over it.)

 

 

(On a related note, we are now waiting for BA 3B, 3C, and 3D to arrive in the mail. I'd say the trial run with 3A was successful.)

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I can't figure out how to copy from my phone, but K.son, I can relate to hating to share with family! My Ds is 33 months, but he is ahead of his almost 4 yr old cousin in a lot of ways. I feel like my sister is going to feel like something is wrong with her DD (there isn't). I wish there was a way to celebrate ask there kids' accomplishments without making anyone feel behind.

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DD 11 is taking an outside high school bio class/lab this fall, and did the first "study guide" (which wasn't even assigned-the instructor is leaving it up to parents to assign written work, and DD is actually using a college textbook in lieu of the high school one. However, I did buy the high school digital resource packet which included the digital textbook and the interactive stuff, and apparently she's decided she's going to do all of that as well).

 

Here are some gems. I kind of wish the instructor was going to actually grade it-and that I could be a fly on her wall at the time...

 

Main idea: Biology presents many unanswered questions.

What questions do you have about biology or scientific research? List three topics in biology that you want to learn more about. 

  9. What were dinosaurs actually like?

10. Is a winged snake possible in evolution or genetic engineering? (Not for conservation, just because winged snakes are awesome.)

11. Can reptiles feel love or is Wadjet just conning us to give her food?

 

Her answer for "Reproduction" on defining a living thing:

 

The sole purpose of any organism is to make more organisms because if you don’t keep getting more organisms into the ecosystem, the ecosystem crashes and everything suffers. In the time it took me to write this, thousands of organisms of many kinds were born. Organisms reproduce in many ways including splitting or having sex. A theory as to why sex supposedly feels good when you do it (unless you’re one of many species for whom sex hurts or is fatal) is because nature needs organisms to have sex, so making it feel good is an incentive for the organisms to do it. Although, having listened to pop music and watched a very horny toad trying to breed with a leopard frog, I’m not sure if the organisms need an incentive. Development is how organisms grow and get to the point where they, too can make more organisms.

 

A vocabulary answer:

 

8. The word biosphere is made up of two word parts: bio- and sphere. How can these two word parts help you to remember the definition of biosphere?

The planet is a kind of spheroid shape. Since there isn’t a good word root for “sphere-like ellipsoidâ€, sphere is good enough. Bio- refers to life. So, biosphere literally translates to “Life sphereâ€. This could refer to round life, but in the application we use it in, it refers to the life found on a somewhat spheroid planet.

 

In a bunch of questions about experimental design and the scientific method

 

  8. Why is it important that a scientist’s results are evaluated by other scientists?

So the other scientists can nit-pick and show all the things that are wrong with the results, so the scientific community can determine whether or not the results are useful, and so that other scientists can argue that they did the work first and sue for plagiarism.

 

And this:

 

  8. Before the invention of the microscope, people did not know about cells and bacteria. With this in mind, why do you think many questions go unanswered and unasked?

Because we don’t know that the answer to these questions or that these questions exist. There are thousands, probably millions, of organisms, ecosystems, and more we could discover but haven’t yet, including life on other planets. But before we go searching for extraterrestrial life, we should try to find and unlock our own planet’s biodiversity first.

 

Sigh

 

 

 

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DD 11 is taking an outside high school bio class/lab this fall, and did the first "study guide" (which wasn't even assigned-the instructor is leaving it up to parents to assign written work, and DD is actually using a college textbook in lieu of the high school one. However, I did buy the high school digital resource packet which included the digital textbook and the interactive stuff, and apparently she's decided she's going to do all of that as well).

 

Here are some gems. I kind of wish the instructor was going to actually grade it-and that I could be a fly on her wall at the time...

 

Main idea: Biology presents many unanswered questions.

What questions do you have about biology or scientific research? List three topics in biology that you want to learn more about. 

  9. What were dinosaurs actually like?

10. Is a winged snake possible in evolution or genetic engineering? (Not for conservation, just because winged snakes are awesome.)

11. Can reptiles feel love or is Wadjet just conning us to give her food?

 

Her answer for "Reproduction" on defining a living thing:

 

The sole purpose of any organism is to make more organisms because if you don’t keep getting more organisms into the ecosystem, the ecosystem crashes and everything suffers. In the time it took me to write this, thousands of organisms of many kinds were born. Organisms reproduce in many ways including splitting or having sex. A theory as to why sex supposedly feels good when you do it (unless you’re one of many species for whom sex hurts or is fatal) is because nature needs organisms to have sex, so making it feel good is an incentive for the organisms to do it. Although, having listened to pop music and watched a very horny toad trying to breed with a leopard frog, I’m not sure if the organisms need an incentive. Development is how organisms grow and get to the point where they, too can make more organisms.

 

A vocabulary answer:

 

8. The word biosphere is made up of two word parts: bio- and sphere. How can these two word parts help you to remember the definition of biosphere?

The planet is a kind of spheroid shape. Since there isn’t a good word root for “sphere-like ellipsoidâ€, sphere is good enough. Bio- refers to life. So, biosphere literally translates to “Life sphereâ€. This could refer to round life, but in the application we use it in, it refers to the life found on a somewhat spheroid planet.

 

In a bunch of questions about experimental design and the scientific method

 

  8. Why is it important that a scientist’s results are evaluated by other scientists?

So the other scientists can nit-pick and show all the things that are wrong with the results, so the scientific community can determine whether or not the results are useful, and so that other scientists can argue that they did the work first and sue for plagiarism.

 

And this:

 

  8. Before the invention of the microscope, people did not know about cells and bacteria. With this in mind, why do you think many questions go unanswered and unasked?

Because we don’t know that the answer to these questions or that these questions exist. There are thousands, probably millions, of organisms, ecosystems, and more we could discover but haven’t yet, including life on other planets. But before we go searching for extraterrestrial life, we should try to find and unlock our own planet’s biodiversity first.

 

Sigh

 

 

She'd make a really great teacher.

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