Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Not-really-brag-so-much-as-quirky- anecdote thread

hee - got a new one from last night - again, about the transition to homeschooling.

DD5: homeschooling is different than i thought it would be.
Me: oh? in what way?
DD5: well, i THOUGHT it would be more about MASTERY - i mean, most of the work is new and i like that a lot - but think i'm really only scratching the surface here.

so... 3 days into a triple-grade skip, all she can think about is how much more depth she actually needs. i mean, she's right - but it's kind of freaking me out!

ROFL!!

I have one that is a bit related...

DD14, in looking at the newspaper headline, in which the NCLB report card from the past year was reported... (You know, the year in which apparently some 40% of high school juniors can't write a coherent essay well enough to PASS the test, and that's really saying something, given what evidently constitutes a "passing" performance):


"Whoa.... do you hear that WHISTLING noise??

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEE....


It's-- it's-- it's our state's literacy rate, hitting terminal velocity!!"

She reads:
"Nancy Golden, Oregon's interim chief education officer who was superintendent of Springfield schools until June, said years of flat or diminished school funding took a toll. Districts clipped days off the school year, cut teaching positions and delayed buying new teaching materials.

"When you take furlough days, significant amounts of them, and bigger class sizes, that can definitely have an impact on learning," she said.

Oregon schools chief Rob Saxton said the broad decline in passing rates may primarily reflect that students took state tests fewer times, not that schools taught them less. "



And then snarkily adds;

"Well, I'm sure that investing in iPads will fix those problems. Let's hope that the state administrators acquire better grammar and usage, too. I'm not sure we can really do much about the inability to distinguish fantasy and reality, unfortunately."

Dd4 prefaced the question with," I am a science girl so I have lots of science questions. Here is one you may not know the answer to." Then went on to ask," is the cloud heavier than gravity?" When I said I didn't think so she continued," then how does it stay up in the sky? Why can't gravity pull it down?" She was right I do not know the answer.

This isn't exactly anecdotal, but I do have an off-the-wall request. Dd asked to see a picture of a persons mouth and a video that shows how you swallow. How in depth should I seek for her?

We watched one showing exactly this last week at the speech therapist's office. The videos do exist!

Thanks, geofizz! I will google this afternoon to see what I can find.

I especially like the "I am a science girl" part.

Quirky- ds 7 refused to wear shorts at the end of school because we hadn't yet reached the summer solstice.

Love that.

ha - this brings back sweet memories. when DD was 2/3/4... all she wanted to do was watch surgery on YouTube. literally hours of transplants and cancer surgeries on things like eyeballs. this fascination lasted for years - to the point where she could literally talk through the steps of many surgeries. hope you found a fun video - it may be the first of many!!