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About HomeAgain

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  1. Ah, feel free. I wish it was more insightful. 😄 I only took thoughts from upthread and rewrote them.
  2. I thought an interesting take on it was Black Horses For The King, which my oldest read when he was about 11, but ds (age 9) likes a plain book of Tales Of King Arthur by Usborne.
  3. Oh, those are very close to what we decided on, @moonflower! Ds does have narrow feet, but we found Teva(? Maybe Keens?) at L.L.Bean for half off, but they didn't have his size. The store I went to today, also an L.L. Bean but not an outlet, only had the closed toe version for $50. DH ended up ordering them on Amazon for less than their price and they should be here this week. We're a little short on shoe stores here. Our mall has one that is terrible, along with a Macy's that had no boys' sandals, and a Marshall's that only had thongs. Target didn't have much when I got over to it a week ago. That's about it. And since nobody carried a consistent sizing it was maddening trying them all on him and having them fit weird. I swear I can't wait until he grows just a little more. I feel like he's been wearing a size 13 / 1 for two years now.
  4. I'm honestly not worried near as much about the thongs as the play sandals. I can buy a few cheap pairs of those so if ds loses one at summer camp it's all good. But he needs something adequate to run and play in. It has to hold up to water, basic trail hikes, and running around up and down hills and going to the park. He can't do that in thongs.
  5. Bushy & Cheddar went okay. He was very familiar with similar stories. Julie & her horse? Nope. No interest. I wish there was a magic cure for the copywork! Ds doesn't mind, but I do have it sandwiched in so that the grammar portion is more fun and exciting.
  6. It looks obvious now, but that's an interesting perspective I didn't think about before. But you're right.
  7. It depends on the type of dictation, but: -memory. Learning how to take notes by holding a larger amount of information in the brain at a time. -constant practice in using punctuation and proper grammar. DS has to listen for commas, quotation marks, etc. -spelling (our cold dictation program rotates through spelling words) -exposure and practice with well-written pieces and larger vocabulary, to strengthen their own writing by giving them more ideas on how to word things. This is one area where I don't go bumbling through. Having a clear plan and just saying "we're going to do this for 5 minutes a day" makes it a bit like brushing teeth. A kid may not care now, but constant diligence will get them where they want to be later.
  8. FWIW, the lessons in TC went much easier and more exciting when I typed out portions from an Usborne Illustrated Norse Myths book. Same exact lesson, but a different worksheet to go with. We went back and forth, using stories from both the book and the program, alternating.
  9. I found the quickest way to get my family to eat watermelon was to serve it up at dinner. 😄 If it's a choice between that and a side of peas, most of us will eat the watermelon. Our summer library programs don't start until next week. We had the end-of-year activity yesterday, releasing the foster turtles (the children's room takes 3 rescue babies each year to take care of through the winter). My kid didn't want to go - and he has been so interested in these turtles for months! Frugal win yesterday: I found the last book for oldest's collection and a Horrible Histories holiday compilation for the youngest at the library book sale. $1 each, and I'm saving the HH one for Christmas. It's in pristine condition. Frugal fail yesterday: My kid has weird feet. Or shoe companies can't figure out sizing. Or how to make boys' sandals. We have meager options here in the land of surf and sun. Go figure. What we have found doesn't fit ds (and he has tried on everything from a 12 to a 2) or is made terribly. He needs two pairs: thongs for shower shoes and strappy ones for running and playing. I'm trying one last place today, much as I don't want to pay their prices. If no, we're ordering the one pair we did find that we liked but they didn't have the right size in.
  10. For c-rods, these books are amazing. They're free online and there are demonstration videos on youtube. My son had finished Right Start D and we still started with book one, "The Study Of Numbers From 1 To 20". Education Unboxed can be a great help, but if you need something more and want to go back to the original, these are it. Vertical notation isn't formally taught until book 2, just to make sure kids have a very firm grasp of linear blocks first.
  11. I think here is a minute detail - the language isn't even named. It's "African". It's not being attributed to its culture and people or giving the children understanding. It is removing it to a status that does emphasize nothing more than its exoticness and weirdness.
  12. I don't know if she would be interested, but one other thing we do here is watch old movies/shows. I used to casually announce that I knew this show was made in 1953 or whatever and then point out that I just read the Roman numerals at the bottom of the title screen.
  13. I did all my things! I think that's a first for me. 😄 Dinner plans changed, but I still picked up the bread. We'll have it tomorrow.
  14. When we lived outside the states the things I missed were silly: -a good hamburger -Arby's beef n' cheddar -cheese steaks ........and I'm starting to see a running theme in the foods I missed. 😄 But really, everything else I was good with back in our other countries.
  15. It reminds me of the old Videoscope movies TCM is playing lately. Short clips, each focusing on a different part of the world. The 1946 one on Australia had such lines as "look at how the whites have civilized this continent." I'm sure it read fine at the time to their American company, but it seems rather tone deaf, doesn't it? They were not teaching anything about African languages in this program. They were pretending, but not really. Let's rewrite their statement for North America: You've had fun learning aboout animals you might see in North America and even discovering some of the cool people who live in North America, too. People in different countries in North America speak a lot of different languages. But one amazing thing you might hear if you visited a certain area in North America would be people talking with words ending in -o in their language. Lead kids in saying -o for a few seconds. Then show them the "-o Language" video. Make your name including an -o at the end, and "introduce" yourself to kids using your new name. Imagine your name ends in an o. Introduce yourself to your Crew with your new "-o language" name. Play music while Crews talk, then turn off the music and allow a few kids to share their new names. Do you see how silly and tone deaf it sounds? How it mocks a culture by focusing on one aspect of a language to characterize it and the people? How it gives absolutely no background and the kids walk away without learning anything except other languages sound silly to their untrained ears? No?
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