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Back to baby basics
National Post ^ | 2008-05-10 | Anne Marie Owens

Posted on 05/10/2008 4:38:17 PM PDT by Clive

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To: luckystarmom

We found homeschool the only way out of the swamp. Our kids love it and have plenty of time to do fun, social things.

And the best part is when the school day is done, so is the schoolwork.


21 posted on 05/10/2008 6:35:28 PM PDT by fightinJAG (RUSH: McCain was in the Hanoi Hilton longer than we've been in Iraq, and never gave up.)
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To: silverleaf

The flexibility homeschooling gives is one of its greatest benefits!

We go to the beach during the week, never on weekends. We go to the cheap matinees at the movies during the week. We travel in the off-season, even sometimes taking school with us.

We also love the flexibility with school. The kids truly go at their best pace.


22 posted on 05/10/2008 6:38:24 PM PDT by fightinJAG (RUSH: McCain was in the Hanoi Hilton longer than we've been in Iraq, and never gave up.)
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To: Huntress
That said, this approach probably wouldn’t work with younger or more marginal students. Some benefit from extra practice and drills. For others it’s just busy work.

The problem is the public schools treat everyone alike. I could make excellent test scores without doing any of the homework.

23 posted on 05/10/2008 6:50:04 PM PDT by Paleo Conservative
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To: Popman

This whole self-esteem movement has done more harm than good. It is tied with the self-help movement, ilks like Dr. Phil. The self-help industry is a multi-billion dollar industry and their profits are huge, a lot larger in terms of percentage when compared to the petroleum industry. No one decries the self-help industrial complex.


24 posted on 05/10/2008 6:50:07 PM PDT by Ptarmigan (Bunnies=Sodomites)
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To: Clive

**Could this be the end of hyper-parenting? **

Hopefully. As more children are born, parents will realize they don’t have to be so perfect.


25 posted on 05/10/2008 7:04:06 PM PDT by Salvation (†With God all things are possible.†)
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To: luckystarmom

infobahn = internet. sorry it took a while to respond. i had to walk the dogs.


26 posted on 05/10/2008 7:39:59 PM PDT by robomatik ((wine plug: renascentvineyards.com cabernet sauvignon, riesling, and merlot))
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To: luckystarmom

If your special needs daughter is on an IEP or a 504 and you do not think she needs more writing practice at home, have her use the computer to type her spelling words. or if typeing is a problem to maybe use a voice recognition type of thing to type them. This would fall under a resonable accomodation. (also look around on share ware sites to see if you can find some type of spelling game that allows you to put your own spelling list into it, I found one 10 yrs ago and I even thought it was fun)


27 posted on 05/10/2008 8:03:24 PM PDT by tickles
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To: luckystarmom
luckystarmom wrote:
"What is infobahn????"

luckystarmom replied:
"infobahn = internet. ..."

Further explanation:
It is a play on the once popular term "information superhighway"
The German word for "superhighway" is "autobahn", hence the internet becomes the infobahn.

Using all lower case became a shortcut way of typing, especially in Unix/Linux systems in which the default usage is lower case and upper case is considered to be "shouting" and changing case for style purposes, such as capitalizing proper nouns and sentence beginnings was inefficient when just talking between geeks or writing code comments.

The earlier teletype usage formerly used by wire services was all upper case. Note that, for instance, the NOAA hurricane centre still uses all upper case for its bulletins.

The internet is Unix based.

28 posted on 05/10/2008 8:57:18 PM PDT by Clive
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To: Clive

I have a degree in Computer Science, and I never heard of infobahn. I haven’t worked in 10 years, so maybe it’s a newer term.

I hated when software engineers would not use proper English when writing comments for code. It’s a pet peeve of mine. I don’t like the shortcuts because it makes it more difficult to read.

My code was always well commented, and easy to debug or alter. Other people who had to use my code (mainly hardware engineers) always liked it. In fact several hardware engineers requested me writing their code because they could always understand what I wrote.

(This is very off topic. Just a rant.)


29 posted on 05/10/2008 10:36:40 PM PDT by luckystarmom
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To: fightinJAG

I was talking to my special needs daughter about homeschooling, but she doesn’t want to. We switched my daughters out of public school a few years ago, and put them in a private Christian school. The teachers in the private school are pretty accomodating of my special needs daughter, and she loves it there. She’s making lots of friends, her social skills are lacking, so that’s a big deal for her.

She’s going into middle school next year. We’ll see if she can keep up. If not, I’ll just homeschool her.

Each year is different with her. At least there are some options, and homeschooling is something we’ve thought about for a long time.


30 posted on 05/10/2008 10:43:40 PM PDT by luckystarmom
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To: tickles

She’s actually in a private school now, and they don’t make her write it out 3 times each in that school. She did in public school. Her twin sister still has to, and her brother had to when he was in elementary school.


31 posted on 05/10/2008 10:47:47 PM PDT by luckystarmom
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To: VermiciousKnid

My special needs daughter gets around 15 spelling words. Her language arts school work is modified.

Her twin sister gets around 25 words. She has to write something like 15 sentences each week. She has to write a story using most of her spelling words each week. She has to write the words 3 times each. The last one is separating the words in to syllables.

They’ll give my daughter a pretest at the beginning of the week. She’ll maybe get 1 wrong. I’d rather her write that out a number of times instead of writing words that she already knows.


32 posted on 05/10/2008 10:52:52 PM PDT by luckystarmom
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To: luckystarmom

I agree with you on the spelling words, luckystarmom, though I must tell you that I left out a key element of my story: that spelling assignment and the multiplication tables were often the ONLY homework we got. If there was any more, it was a VERY short assignment, like current events. (Cut out an article from the paper and be prepared to talk about it — that sort of thing.)

I’m amazed at the amount of homework some of the younger kids get; my older boy (6th grade) gets FAR less homework than my younger (4th). Should be the other way around, IMO.

Anyway, gotta fly off to church. Happy Mothers Day!

Regards,


33 posted on 05/11/2008 4:43:59 AM PDT by VermiciousKnid
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To: fightinJAG
We travel in the off-season, even sometimes taking school with us.

In many cases there's no need to take the school because the trip IS the school. I learned a LOT of Canadian history when my parents took me to visit some relatives in Nova Scotia. Depending on where to go you can find stuff to reinforce just about any subject under the sun.

34 posted on 05/11/2008 5:05:15 AM PDT by Squawk 8888 (TSA and DHS are jobs programs for people who are not smart enough to flip burgers)
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To: luckystarmom

My pet peeve is coders who act as though variable names are still limited to just a few characters. There’s nothing worse than debugging 10,000 lines where the variable names are meaningless. If you’re calculating the number of days in a billing cycle, don’t use DIBC, use DaysInBillingCycle so I know what it means!


35 posted on 05/11/2008 5:09:50 AM PDT by Squawk 8888 (TSA and DHS are jobs programs for people who are not smart enough to flip burgers)
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To: luckystarmom
Pages sent home to color in the 1st grade? I wish that was the norm at my son's school.

He's in kindergarten and he has “math” and “English” homework every night of the week but Friday.

He's expected to read, write sentences, graph charts and solve abstract problems.

I fully expect him to be studying the time/space continuum and Beowulf (from the original olde English text) next year. I'm almost kidding.

Of course I help him, but

36 posted on 05/11/2008 9:50:48 AM PDT by Scarpetta (e pluribus victim)
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To: Gabz

Ping!

Who knew that my child rearing methods were “chic”? :)


37 posted on 05/11/2008 9:56:17 AM PDT by Politicalmom (Better a leftist Dem with energized GOP opposition, than a leftist "Republican" with no opposition.)
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To: VermiciousKnid

What’s VI times IX?

:p


38 posted on 05/11/2008 9:59:55 AM PDT by Politicalmom (Better a leftist Dem with energized GOP opposition, than a leftist "Republican" with no opposition.)
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To: Squawk 8888

Absolutely!


39 posted on 05/11/2008 11:10:24 AM PDT by fightinJAG (RUSH: McCain was in the Hanoi Hilton longer than we've been in Iraq, and never gave up.)
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To: luckystarmom

I agree that there s no one solution, either for each child or for their entire education.

Another thing to consider is that all your children would not have to be homeschooled. I find a lot of people who assume it has to be all or none.

I think in the case of your daughter with special needs social skills are even more important, and, sometimes, more difficult to acquire. So if she’s doing great in that area, that’s wonderful!


40 posted on 05/11/2008 11:13:34 AM PDT by fightinJAG (RUSH: McCain was in the Hanoi Hilton longer than we've been in Iraq, and never gave up.)
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