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Everything posted by Jay3fer

  1. Oh, wow... IrishMum, that Irish Baby Names site may make things very nice and simple, plus it's Frank McCourt. I didn't even realize it was him until he was pronouncing a name and I thought, "that sounds just like Angela's Ashes!" It doesn't have all the names, but does give a good idea of how to pronounce tricky consonants, like that "m". :-) Thanks!
  2. Trying to introduce some Celtic (or Celtic-style) read-alouds to go along with our SOTW Middle Ages history readings, but I keep getting stuck on the awful unpronounceable consonant and vowel patterns in the names! Are there any guidelines anywhere for pronouncing some of the more common names? Any websites with audio so I can get a good listen? Also, since I'm curious... why am I finding these so hard when I have dealt with all manner of strange pronunciations before now, including German, French, Arabic, Chinese and more...? Does anyone else have this problem?
  3. I'll be honest; I don't love the idea of homeschooling to get kids "ready to go back to school." HSing is so much more than that! Even parents who pull kids out of school because of problems usually find so many unanticipated benefits of homeschooling. Assuming you have the support of your dh, I'd suggest keeping at it, not because you're ignoring what your kids say (you don't mention how old the kids are), but because you are the mommy and you are very capable of a) assessing where they are at, educationally, and B) continuing to teach and guide them as you all explore your new home. You could find other homeschoolers to do more structured programs with if that's the sort of thing they need. There are also, I assume, more opportunities to find like-minded youth groups and extracurricular (structured) activities in the NYC area, so they will not have to do without if that's what they want, while at the same time, continuing to reap the benefits of individualized instruction according to their own needs.
  4. Simple: Pencils (if you use them) Pens (for you and as a "treat" - buy lots, they will walk away) Gluesticks (many more than you think you'll need) Good crayons (I bought these ones from Rainbow and they have convinced this lifelong crayon-hater!) Doodle pads - just knock down a forest and pulp the whole thing now to save time. Whiteboards - a couple of small ones and a big one for you... with markers, of course
  5. We have used "Mug Readers" since we left BOB Books behind. :-) Ds5 just finished Book 1, and Dd8 is in Book 3. I like the moral tone of the reading selections, and the language is a bit tricky, which means they have to really pay attention. I try to have dd8 stand up straight and read as clearly as possible. (doesn't always happen) The reading selections are a bit old-fashioned, but in some ways, kids led more exciting lives in those days - like being allowed to play on frozen rivers and ponds without adult supervision! So in a way, this helps hold the kids' interest. I also like the fact that there are poetry selections, which give them practice reading rhythmically. These are available in the public domain, but I haven't yet found a really "useable" digital version, so I have bought them so far. They're not expensive, and you get a lot of reading practice for your money. Of course, you could just have your kids practice reading aloud from anything, and some folks like to use Great Literature or the Bible, but I'm happy with these books so far. p.s. we have the blue and brown ones as well. I bought them from Rainbow.
  6. I don't regret it, though we've only done one year of SSL. I just wanted to suggest that it doesn't have to be a huge time committment, at any stage, if that doesn't work for your family. As with other subjects, there are curricula for Latin which are "light" (relatively quick, oral) and those which are "heavy" (lots of writing, memorization, etc). Understanding that any family can take it on at any level that works for them, I think it is very worth touching on Latin and understanding the Latin roots of English (linguistically and gramatically), and I regret that this was dropped from the public school curriculum before I came along... p.s. It doesn't even need to cost money... I just took out GSWL from our local public library a couple of weeks ago, and you could probably find public-domain texts for free on Project Gutenberg. :-)
  7. Well, in fairness, the idea isn't to teach kids that "things get big" but to have them be comfortable working with (manipulating!) them as concrete reinforcement. (I'd rather use BOOKS to teach about things getting big, like Steven Kellogg's How Much is a Million, The Cat in Numberland and Anno's Mysterious Multiplying Jar.) I do realize that concrete reinforcement is downplayed in Singapore more than in other programs we've used, but still... if you're just TELLING them it's a lot of cubes, I don't think that's the same, sensorily, as holding them. And as others have pointed out, base-10 materials, rods, etc., get really unwieldy after 1000s. Whereas chips are chips, and the value is just whatever you say it is. So they are stronger in one area (abstraction of place value) but weaker in another (concretization of place value). We have big plastic 100s, and I stack all ten up to show 1000, but showing and knowing isn't enough if can't actually work with the materials. I suspect I will have to improvise something chip-like once we head into 3A, where the numbers do get bigger.
  8. The programs are meant to be used together and complement each other very nicely. Right now, we are using FLL2 and WWE2 and they sort of cover the same parts of speech, punctuation, etc, but not in a way that's too redundant or heavy. They are easily the most happy part of our schoolweek - each is practically guaranteed to be quick and easy and fun. :-)
  9. I printed some on cardstock but we both hate them. Too thin and flat to pick up easily and they're crazy hard to sort out. So I'm very interested in what others do. What I have done, in the meantime, is use Cuisenaire rods - separating out the ones into a baggie so we don't have to hunt for them every time. It goes against the philosophy of Singapore, however, which uses the discs intentionally because they are identical in every respect except colour / denomination. This parallels what's known in Montessori circles as "isolation of difficulty" - you control for everything else that could be the same so the child focuses on learning what is different. (edited to clarify: this is because a "3" looks exactly the same whether it means "3" or "30" or "300" or "3,000,000" - the only difference is in its "denomination" ie what place it's in... with rods and coins, you have many tactile differences: size, weight, material (our 100s are plastic!) confusing the issue and destroying the purity of the lesson - if you were to ask a Singapore purist, which I'm not :-)) Still - I was looking at prices on discs the other day and even though it's <$15 at Rainbow (I think), there's still shipping costs etc that would make it rather expensive for something we use for 3 minutes at the start of a lesson. Following to see what others have done!
  10. We love our "Mug readers" and have hard copies of 1-3, but I'd love to go digital for Book 4, especially since we're moving where shipping will be very expensive. I don't mind paying for a good-quality digital copy. I have been looking for a long time for a good PDF version that is essentially just a high-quality scan of the original. The free versions available on Amazon.com lack the illustrations and are missing the look / feel of the books. Any suggestions?
  11. I was just about to say the same thing. It's a $4 investment that will pay for itself as you listen to it over and over. My only beef with the Peace Hill Press store is that it's not an instant download. So don't put off buying it until you're ready to listen - buy it first, then you can listen whenever you have a chance.
  12. When we were doing Apologia, I created a very simple printable which is available free here.
  13. I like the idea of rule-based spelling, so here's how I did things with my dd as we moved through the ETC books - http://ronypony.blogspot.ca/2011/11/spelling-lessons-with-explode-code.html This system kind of fell apart in ETC8, and I haven't started it yet with my ds in ETC3, but I do plan to, once his writing is a bit better. Now that dd8 is finished ETC8, we just moved into Rod & Staff, and so far, I love it. It is list-based and rule-based, affordable with no pointless busywork, but the lists will have to be very heavily modified, because we're not Christian and it most definitely is (Word and Son are taught with capital letters, for instance!). :-o
  14. :hurray: See, FLL keeps surprising me like that. We're partway through 2 and I've said repeatedly on here that I hated FLL1 for the first 20 lessons... and then, suddenly, saw exactly what was going on, and we have loved it ever since.
  15. @JenniferLynn, I'm wondering... is there anything you get in the download that you don't have access to with the hard copy? I really dislike printing stuff off at home - to me, it's not "open and go" if I have to sit down and fiddle with the computer. Anyone else want to weigh in? I think what's turning me off is that the art looks so bad in the Nallenart (ironic name, given the poor art quality) books... Also, this authentically French-sounding person found a few egregious-sounding typos / errors in the "ecrire" level, which I found disturbing.
  16. I can't believe I'm stuck on French - here in Canada, I thought I'd have a wealth of programs to choose from, but it appears that unless I have literal wealth, ie tons of money, there aren't any fantastic programs for early grades. My first pick might be Il etait... un petite grenouille or Alex & Zoe, but it seems like with all the books and the CD, those would be well over $100 for the first level. (though I hear the Song School Latin folks are apparently going to be releasing a French program at some point in the future...) Anyway - looking for something that can be a fun extra-language supplement, not too heavy on written work. (We are already doing Latin, which is light, and Hebrew, which is heavy.) I've noticed that a lot of people here love L'art de Dire, but the look of the program totally leaves me cold: it just looks clunky and unprofessional compared to some of the slick French resources I grew up using in school. If you DO love it and want to recommend it, could you tell me specifically what you and your kids like best about it...? Maybe that would help me see the good in it. ;-)
  17. Just saw this on the We Choose Virtues facebook page and thought I'd pass it around because the family is asking for prayers... it sounds pretty serious. For those that know my wife Heather McMillan the Author and creator of We Choose Virtues. She was admitted to the hospital last night with complications due to a failing kidney... She was given a cat scan and they found a mass the size of a fist that they believe is cancerous. i am asking for your prayers at this time, as we wait for a biopsy to determine the mass. She was just this week assigned to a transplant coordinator to receive a new kidney. Her current transplanted kidney from 11 years ago is now at 10% function. Thank you Elton McMillan Thought I'd share this here because I know many parents on these forums have enjoyed her program immensely, and I hope the prayers of the families she's touched through her work will help her now in this time of need. Here's a link to the facebook thread if you want to add your kind words. Or you can get there through https://www.facebook.com/wechoosevirtues
  18. I wouldn't call it a "curriculum" at all, though it's a cute supplement. We're not really moving ahead with these, though the kids wouldn't mind if we kept it up. They thought the books were weird and funny, but we can read a lot of books for FREE from the library that are weird and funny and even a little bit math-y. (like The Cat in Numberland, Math Curse, the Sir Cumference adventures and the really fun "Math is Categorical" series by Brian Cleary) I liked reading them (we read A-C before I gave up), but found them very overpriced for what they were and I can't imagine how difficult life would be if you tried to use them as a spine for math. Others' mileage may vary, but that's my 2 cents' (Canadian!) worth.
  19. Fascinating thread! I love how some of the hates are other people's likes and vice versa. Like: JUMP Math, Singapore (only done K - essentials, 2A & B but I love the philosophy), Mathematical Reasoning Beginning 2, Miquon My only dislike so far has been: Mathematical Reasoning, Level C, which I found had a lot of busywork and "weird" practice
  20. Sadly, cheaper paper may be at least part of the answer. Computer time is at a premium here... 1 computer & 1 decrepit laptop for 6 people (indeed, while I'm on here, dd17 is chomping at the bit waiting for her turn...). And yeah, I didn't mean to say "no imagination" because I acknowledge the benefit of fanfic and the great practice she is gaining from her series of "Magic Camper" books (like "Magic Tree House" only... it's an RV ;-) ). But I also like the idea of harnessing it and having her improve some of her work. She really doesn't understand the concept of a draft yet. We do other stuff about words - vocabulary from classical roots, and FLL, and a couple of other word-type things. She loves it all, generally, so I don't know if we need to add much more. :-) Finally, a little bit more of a specific question: How do I tell her, gently, that her friends will not be interested in completing the 80 workbook pages she has created for them today??? I wish I was joking... :mellow:
  21. Her writing is making me crazy! (not quite literally) She'll grab a whole sheaf of paper and create books and books and books. We are drowning in them. This is not great literature, but I was very impressed at first. She was writing formulaic take-offs on Rainbow Fairy, Magic School Bus and Geronimo Stilton books... and then she discovered the joy of creating "workbooks" for her friends. The workbooks basically echo everything she is learning, with math practice and narration and copywork and whatnot, which is great except her friends are mainly too young to use them, and it's SOooo fast to "write" a workbook that she is going through a ton of paper. Because she's going fast, she's not using her best handwriting or any sort of imagination to create these, but I don't mind that because she does it on her own time - not school time. This sounds like a stupid thing to complain about when many 8-year-olds aren't reading or writing comfortably at all. I assure you that I'm not bragging at all... just hoping for concrete suggestions for "channelling" her writing urges into projects that will be similarly quick and rewarding, but less paper-consuming and perhaps slightly better quality. And I mean it almost literally that we're drowning. She's written 4 or 5 today alone. Trees are dying - help!
  22. Tried it for myself... it may be sound, language-wise, but I wouldn't wish it on kids. As other said, way too dry and the topics are not interesting. Rosetta Stone is also above the kids and grown-up in much of its vocabulary (ie train schedules etc), but overcomes that by being visual and interactive.
  23. On the other hand, if you're Jewish, this could mean not buying anything, or settling for a terrible secular curriculum. Okay, not hates, as in open antisemitism, but believes you and your little homeschooled disciples are doomed, believes your religion has been superseded, or believes you are a small army of pawns in another religion's plan of how the end times will go down - well, that's the majority of Christian publishers out there, even the ones that say they love the Jewish people. Nonetheless, I have been known to buy Christian curriculum, even from companies with belief systems that strongly exclude me, because there isn't much choice. The good stuff is often faith-based, so I have to make these difficult choices every day. In some cases, I appreciate companies' sensitivity (Peace Hill Press); in others, we have had to drop the curriculum (Apologia).
  24. I have no idea how to choose... there are too many curricula out there. We have never done spelling in a systematic way using anything other than ETC, but we'll be done ETC 8 in a few weeks and I'd like something we can continue on into. Therefore, phonics-based. I don't like Spelling Workout and also perhaps want something that introduces vocabulary, in a light and not necessarily roots-based way. Good repetition (ie trouble words only?), yes; busywork, no. Frequent testing / self-checks are a must, I think, given dd's inclination to haste. She's a good spelling during actual spelling lessons, with list words she's practiced, but a pretty lousy speller in her independent writing, even with concepts we've "done before" (which is as SWB says they usually are at this age)... Any thoughts on these 3 or other curricula? Must pick something SOON. We are moving over the summer and English language arts is one of the areas I want lots of continuity in, since it will no longer be their primary language once they start school...
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