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Re: 4yo reading questions
The Marvelous Mud Washing Machine - by Patty Wolcott
and a few other books by her.... these are little books that have repeated words, but they aren't "phonics" readers. They are funny, they read in a sort of rhythm (but not in rhyme), and they have great pictures and are perfect for a 4 yo who wants to read on his own. --pam |
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4yo reading questions
Hi!
I have a question about my 4yo (in September) son who is beginning to sound out words, telling me what letters words start with, and what sounds letters make. I got him an easy reader, level one and he can read it with very little help. (Gets stuck on the word "everyone" every time!) I know that he has a great memory and and is getting some clues from the pictures in the book so I'm not sure how much he's actually reading. He loves to ask me how to spell different words and then he types them on the computer. I would sound the word out slowly and he was correctly guessing the letters that made up the word. He adores books and is constantly wanting to be read to...possibly he's trying to learn so he doesn't have to rely on someone to read to him. I guess I'm looking for any ideas to help him along or any feedback on his progress. Thanks! Amy Amy Kagey in NW Ohio <A href="> Usborne Books</A> make great Christmas gifts! (www.ubah.com/z0939) |
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fantasy gaming vs real challenges (was Re: Expensive Games)
Hi Sandra and Cindy,
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I'm sorry that I got myself off to a bad start. When I read my post after it was on the list (and too late to fix anything) I really felt like a air head. It came out all stupid somehow. I guess I was thinking conflicting things, but not putting them down right. Sorry about that. I'm so used to the face to face type of conversation. I think all the things you guys mentioned are satisfying and have lasting value because they connect ut to the real world around us. Gaming can be a connection with friends that is valuable too. I was just upset (and that's just my own problem, not anybody else's) about spending either tons of money, or money that I don't have, on specialty things that some game designer said I must have or I cannot play. That is probably what was really bothering me. A friend of mine really enjoys working with Habitat for Humanity, but that's only mentioned because he is normally a computer recluse, but he found alot of fun in the project. I will try to be more careful about how and what I post. I really don't want to stir up things with my half baked thoughts. I want to encourage and contribute, not attack or criticize. Sorry about that. I really liked the ideas of making up your own games too. We do that some. The best things in life are so very free. peace be with you Makana --- In AlwaysLearning@y..., Cindy <crma@i...> wrote:
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Re: fantasy gaming vs real challenges (was Re: Expensive Games)
Cindy
vegan4planet@... wrote:
(snip) Can't your argument against gaming be applied to reading books, listening to music, hiking in the woods, watching the sunset, etc.? By your argument none of these activities have any value because nothing lasting is accomplished. I would argue that all of these including gaming can have value. The value is just not physical. -- Cindy Ferguson crma@... |
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Re: Expensive Games
Jocelyn Vilter
You raise some interesting points here Deb... When you talk about busybodies
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and having to defend his interests, I realized that there is really *no one* like that in our lives! Are we too lucky or what? His grandparents don't really get it, but they don't criticize either. Most of our friends are other homeschooling families and they are all cool with it too. I think I made it sound like this is the only kind of game play Matthew is interested in, but he is constantly making up games on his own. He makes up what he calls "voice based games" which require nothing more than some paper for keeping track of statistics and points. He makes up games using those really cheap army guys to play at the park with his friends. He'll play almost any kind of board game at least once. When left to his own devices, and with nothing else at hand, he makes sound effects to accompany what we like to call his "rich inner life" <g>. I'm just going to have to get over the idea that I know what's best for him all the time. He obviously gets something really big out of these particular games, and as long as he can support the habit, so be it. Jocelyn From: DACunefare@... |
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Re: Expensive Games
Jocelyn Vilter
I did a google search on these Bionicles after you wrote this - I'd seen
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them but never paid too much attention to them before. I read a little on the Lego website about them - and yes, they do seem to fall into the "collectable" category, unlike the usual sort of Lego. Lucky you. Welcome to the club <eg>. I was interested to see another link for them to the Crosswalk site - some moms had written in to say that they didn't approve, that they fell into the Harry Potter family of toys that make them uncomfortable. Reactions like that always catch me off guard. Jocelyn
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fantasy gaming vs real challenges (was Re: Expensive Games)
This is way out there, but I feel like people can never get enough of
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(be satisfied by) something that isn't really satisfying. Diving into fantasy games is exciting, but hollow in the end because you have nothing real to show for it. It all is social I agree, but nothing lasting is accomplished. There's always one more set of figures, books, dice, or scenarios to buy. What if gamers took their money, brains, time and friends, and spent it building a house for Habitat for Humanity? Planting a garden in some public place? Improving the lives of others somehow in a lasting and tangible way. Wouldn't that ultimately be more satisfying than the pursuit of the next pot metal battle piece? Volunteer work could be a hobby too. It can be satisfying to build something that will last, and you can look back on the time and say you really made a difference. They won't do that because it's not easy? Because we don't do it ourselves? Because why? Not trying to attack any specific people, just thinking out loud, and wondering how so many people can have so much money to spend on something so opposite of real. What do they get from the games and pursuit of material goods, that they can't get from real action? It's just a puzzle to me. One more thing: I am not suggesting that we are the owners of our kids, or that gamers are inferior in any way. I just wish that energy, time, and money, were used for the power it could really have. The power of positive lasting change in the real world. may your life be joyous Makana --- In AlwaysLearning@y..., Jocelyn Vilter <JVilter@m...> wrote:
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Re: fantasy gaming vs real challenges (was Re: Expensive Gam...
Diving into The same can be said of playing piano, or reading novels, or cooking. -=-What do they get from the games and pursuit of material goods, that they can't get from real action?-=- They get being safe in their own home with friends at 3:00 a.m. There is other "real action" involving teenaged boys at that hour, but my kids have no desire to be a part of it, for which I'm totally grateful! There was a low-income project in my neighborhood when I was a kid. ?Partly public funding, partly volunteer, and within months all the washers and dryers had been sold, several of the doors had been kicked in, and nobody wanted to live there soon, not even poor people. ?Even real action can be unsatisfying. -=-This is way out there, but I feel like people can never get enough of (be satisfied by) something that isn't really satisfying. -=- It seems to be the nature of humans to feel unsatisfied, to want something more, better, different, and new. Sandra |
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Re: Kids and spirituality
B. A. Allen
--- In AlwaysLearning@y..., ddzimlew@j... wrote:
I am not a particularly spiritual person and neither is myhusband. It was never our intention to keep religion or spirituality fromour son . We have always tried to answer his questions in a non biased way, ( I hope we succeeded ) and ifhe had specific questions we tried to find answers.been helpful.recently lost both his grandfathers. He was close to both of them andclose to their deaths as well as they were in our care at home duringtheir final illnesses. This may have a good deal to do with hispondering's lately, I know.thing. I know my opinions have an influence on him. I'm just trying tobe a source of help and security to him while he finds answers thatmake sense to him, without unduly influencing him to my way of thinking.This must sound extremely naive but not being religious, it really neveroccurred to me he'd have more than passing questions. Children can be with death much better than adults. I remember when my son Gabriel (22 years ago) died, the kids in his Montessori school had wonderful thoughts and questions about Gabe's dying. The adults didn't like to talk about it and were very uncomfortable. Answering your son's questions, exploring together the answers is a very good thing to do. I don't know how old your son is, but you might consider letting him attend different church-based youth groups, to see the similarities/differences. There are lots out there. Just a thought. Barda |
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Re: Expensive Games
groundhoggirl
Now that's beautiful!! and that's what unschooling is all about.
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Before my husband and I were married and we had our boys, he used to play D & D for days at a time with a whole bunch of other intellectuals. I was a bit intimidated by that very nice group of people and didn't participate. But I did enjoy listening to the games while I did my needlepoint. Now, today, as a family, we too create role-playing stories which can last for a couple of hours. The boys love it. It's a lot of fun. Mimi On Monday, November 26, 2001, at 01:02 PM, KathrynJB@... wrote:
I'm so happy to be on this list! Already I'm fascinated by the
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Re: Kids and spirituality
--- In AlwaysLearning@y..., ddzimlew@j... wrote:
I am not a particularly spiritual person and neither is myhusband. It was never our intention to keep religion or spirituality fromour son and most of our family members and friends are practicing membersof some religious organization. We have always tried to answer hishad specific questions we tried to find answers.recently lost both his grandfathers. He was close to both of them and closeto their deaths as well as they were in our care at home during theirfinal illnesses. This may have a good deal to do with his pondering'slately, I know.thing. I know my opinions have an influence on him. I'm just trying tobe a source of help and security to him while he finds answers that makesense to him, without unduly influencing him to my way of thinking. Thismust sound extremely naive but not being religious, it really neveroccurred to me he'd have more than passing questions.This is SOO cool! I am a Director of Religious Education at a Unitarian Universalist church, and I'm currently writing a book about spiritual education, kind of from an unschooling perspective. Generally, I would do a few things. First, when he asks questions, ask him what he thinks (not in a way that suggests you're testing him, but let him know you're curious.) Tell him that a lot of this is new to you, and you may not have thought about it, but that you'd like to explore together. If you DO have a thought about it, certainly share it. There are lots of wonderful books to strew about, about different beliefs, people's ideas about answers to those Big Questions, etc. I would suggest lots of walks in nature. Maybe quiet times. I think unschooling really allows both children and adults a real opportunity to connect spiritually, and you're not likely to pass down a lot of dogma about what your son HAS to believe. That will allow him the freedom to find out for himself what he really DOES believe...and see that it may change over time. Kathryn Baptista |
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Re: Expensive Games
I'm so happy to be on this list! Already I'm fascinated by the
conversation! I have a twelve year old son, Julian, who is really into games, particularly Dungeons and Dragons, which we actually play as a family quite often. (I played in college a bit.) This morning he spent hours with his books, a notebook, and a calculator developing a D&D militia, where he figured out how many people and horses and other equipment he wanted, bought them a boat to bring them across water, figured out how many boats he would need (went to dictionary to determine how many pounds in a ton, since I didn't remember), figured out how much horses weighed (online, because I don't have a clue), etc. This wasn't even for a particular game...it was just play! At one point he laughed and said, "Hey, mama! I'm doing math!" Yep, among other things. Kathryn Baptista |
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Re: Expensive games
Pam Hartley
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From: AlwaysLearning@... So... we do celebrate Christmas. Up till now he has been spending his ownMy husband has expensive toys, too. :) We solve things here by giving every man, woman and child a monthly allowance to spend. If you do an allowance and it's gone, or don't want to start one, you might give capitalism a little go. ;) My mother hires the boy next door to mow her lawn every week for $10/week. Dog walking or pet sitting, eBay auctions, etc., can all be good cottage businesses for kids. Pam |
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Re: Kids and spirituality
In a message dated 11/26/2001 12:08:29 PM Pacific Standard Time, ringoalibi@... writes:
I don't know how old your son is, but you might consider letting The church my parents belonged to when I was growing up had a youth group that did a lot of visiting of other churches and other religions -- we did things like walk up the street to the Catholic Church and the priest there talked to us about their beliefs and practices. I also remember we visited a Buddhist center and a Jewish synagogue and lots of other places (I live in a place that has a lot of different religions - so it was reasonable to do this even back then in the late 50's/early 60's). ?This started me on the path of being fascinated by other religions and I continued studying them right on through high school and college and beyond - always taking every opportunity to go with friends to their own places of worship and talk to people and I even took a number of college courses such as "psychology of religion" and "sociology of religion" in addition to survey courses such as "religions of the middle east" and so on, as well as occasionally taking courses offered by the various religions themselves. After years and years of this kind of investigation, I did finally join a religion (I became a member of the Baha'i Faith about 20 years ago) and, interestingly, the same church (a United Methodist Church) that started my early interest has invited me several times to speak about the Baha'i Faith to their youth groups . Pam Sorooshian National Home Education Network ? |
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Re: Expensive Games
In a message dated 11/25/2001 10:14:35 PM Pacific Standard Time, DACunefare@... writes:
What if he was playing chess? (Play along with me here...) ?:) Uh, Jocelyn and Dan? He could be passionate about, let's just say, uh, HORSES!!!! (Like someone in my family ) When my oldest daughter got interested in clothes -- we had a period of about 6 months where I couldn't stand to take her places with me -- this realization came upon me suddenly one day and I realized that it was because she was constantly asking to buy things. We'd not had that problem before -- but suddenly she wanted a ring or earrings or a sweater or shoes or socks or a hair thing or whatever.... and I was constantly in the position of having to either hand her the money or say no -- and I'd never really felt like that before. It was obvious to me that it was very arbitrary on my part - some days to say, "Sure, buy it," and other days to say, "No, not today." I couldn't possibly buy everything she wanted - she seemed to have suddenly developed a bottomless desire for this type of stuff. But I was having to make decisions FOR HER all the time and that was what was making me miserable. How on earth could I know whether she'd rather have the ring she wanted today or the hair thing she was going to see in another shop the next day. And each of the things she wanted was pretty minimal in cost - it was NEVER true that any one of them would put us in the poor house. So the obvious solution was to work out a reasonable allowance and then let her make all her OWN decisions. She'd had a "spending money" allowance already - but this involved clothing and I'd always paid for her clothes for her. So we created a "clothing allowance" (we worked together on figuring out what we could afford and what was reasonable) and made it clear that ALL clothing and accessories were now her choice - she could spend that much money any way she wanted. So it was a HUGE relief to me to not have to feel that pressure while were in a store - not have to make split second decisions about whether to say yes or no to something she wanted. It changed our relationship WAY for the better. And I was totally able to let her spend it as she wanted - and, yep, she did have to learn the hard way. But, guess what? She eventually learned to shop at thrift stores and to save her money to spend on things she REALLY wanted more than the trinkets she'd been asking me for all the time. One last thing. In economics there is a concept of diminishing marginal utility --- this says that when you consume more and more of something you get less and less additional benefit. So if you eat one candy bar, its wonderful. But if someone gives you a second one it might still be good, but not as wonderful as the first one that you just ate. And a third might stll be good, but not as great as the second was. ?I think my daughter began to enjoy her purchases a LOT more once she had a clear budget limit -- each thing she bought became more highly valued. Partly that was because she was putting so much more thought into what she wanted. But partly that was just because she was, really, getting a lot less stuff so that the marginal value was higher - since she had to choose to buy the higher-valued items and then stop buying. Yep. We were spending 1/4 of what we'd been spending before and she was HAPPIER with the purchases. Since he has an allowance and is spending it all on the gaming stuff, what's the problem? He wants more? So - if his allowance is too small (you could afford to spend more and you do, so he asks), increase it to a reasonable amount - considering what you REALLY can afford to let him spend. If that is really it - then don't feel bad if he can't get everything he wants when he wants it. And then you can give nice gifts and the kids REALLY enjoy them. Pam Sorooshian National Home Education Network ? |
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Re: Expensive Games
I guess what bugs me so much about this stuff is that it seemsWhile I don't have experience with these games, I can certainly join in the grumbling about stuff being overpriced. Our most recent experience with this is the new Lego Bionicles. Too new to be turning up in second hand stores or yard sales, and packaged in such a way that you end up spending a small fortune to get a good set for a little builder. So you have my sympathy. A lot of good that does you. <g> Thanks for the web address. I think. Deb L |
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Re: Expensive Games
What if he was playing chess? (Play along with me here...) :)
Maybe chess wouldn't be *quite* as expensive, but it's easy for it to get pricey. Tournament fees, books, a nicely weighted set, a nice board, a travel set, a clock, more books, chess camp, another clock, classes, more books, a tutor, more books... :) People think chess players are really smart and are impressed by kids who are serious about the game. It's a very interesting phenomenon. If I tell people my kids spent all day playing games they're told they're lucky they didn't have to work all day. If I tell people my kids spent all day playing chess they're oohed and ahed over and congratulated for working so hard. It's weird. The truth is that chess is not necessarily the most valuable game they play, and good chess players are not on average any smarter than the rest of us in other areas. Perception is everything. The bad thing about your kid playing role playing games instead of chess is that you'll have to defend it more to busybodies (including the nag inside your head <g>) even though it's just as valuable in developing concentration, logic, memory, all that good stuff. The good thing about your kid playing role playing games instead of chess is that you probably won't find yourself pushing and prodding him to develop his talents at the game in spite of your best intentions. :) The most sensible parents of serious young chess players I know have settled into supporting the interest as much as they feel able while helping the kids find ways to earn money to support their habit. Deborah in IL |
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Re: Expensive Games
Jocelyn Vilter
It is his spending money, and no, we aren't in danger of losing the house
yet. I guess what bugs me so much about this stuff is that it seems so overpriced and that they keep you coming back for more with all the add-on's. Also, right now for example, he's just dying to have one of these books (I never thought I'd have a problem buying him a book). #1 - he's out of allowance money until the 1st of Dec. 1A - he's already "in debt" to us for half of his allowance because he just had to have another army. #2 - It's a $25.00 paperback. #3 - I dunno - it just bugs me. #4 - the war thing bothers me, but I realize that that is my problem to get over or just stifle. I guess I haven't worried about it. ( Until now! Thanks a lot! )Yer welcome! Here, just in case you want to look... In defense of the store, I have to say that they don't charge to participate in tournaments like Wizards of the Coast does. When he was into Magic, it was $5.00 a week to play there on Friday nights. grumpy Jocelyn From: ddzimlew@... |
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Re: Expensive Games
Well! These games sound totally cool. Where have I been?
My son spends all his money on Godzilla collectibles. We've just decided it is the way of things. Usually we all only have a limited amount of spending money and when it's gone, that's it. He sometimes budgets his money but if the thing he wants becomes available he'd spend any amount to get his hands on it. I guess I haven't worried about it. ( Until now! Thanks a lot! ) It is spending money, right? He's not blowing your house payment or anything? That's funny about the cardboard crack. We refer to the Godzilla stuff as monster crack! Deb L |
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Re: Expensive Games
Jocelyn Vilter
I'm the enabling mom of the expensive game junkie. ?I *did* just spend on the order of a couple of hundred dollars at his game store, since the pusher (I mean owner) is having a 25% off sale this weekend. An example for those who are not familiar with these particular games - it can easily cost $60.00 for a starter set of these pieces. ?That's enough to set up one kind of army but seemingly never the kind my son really wants. ?So then we end up having to buy the smaller adjunct boxed sets or blister cards. ?Yikes - it is never ending. ?You get a big fat manual when you buy the set, but then they change the rules sometimes so you have to buy what they call "codexes" to keep up with the changes. ? Is it a strange coincidence that the owner reminds me of the comic book store guy from The Simpsons? ??I thought his sort of cranky personality might be enough to make Matthew give up the games, but instead, he's learning how to be around someone like that - a good lesson, I suppose. ?He spends enough time there that he *could* work there, but it's a fairly new store, and he only has one other employee - which could go a long way towards explaining why he's so cranky. ? We've talked about how virtually everyone who plays these games (at this store, anyway) is an ADULT, with a JOB, but so far that doesn't seem to have dimmed his enthusiasm. ?Yesterday I talked about how when you pick an expensive hobby, like say, restoring a vintage car, you can't always just go out and buy the parts exactly when you need them - that sometimes you have to wait until your next paycheck. ?Granted, he's not paying rent yet or buying groceries but he has an allowance and it has to stretch the month. ?He was worried that when he started getting an allowance, that we wouldn't buy him anything any more. ?I assured him that I reserved the right to buy him stuff whenever I felt like it (which is still pretty often). ?I just can't make myself buy him this particular gaming stuff though - it seems that this is his thing and that he ought to finance it. ?It sounds a bit on re-reading this that we nag him about his interest, but we don't. ?We just talk about it when it comes up ?(which is all the time). ? I DO know that he is getting a lot out of playing these games and hanging around the store - I'm mostly just blowing off steam. ? Jocelyn |
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