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Do they EVER cook from scratch? or garden?


samira_catlover

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HELP. Anybody, everybody: my kids all have four legs and purrrrrr, so not very savvy, and cable-deprived also. (And am still reeling about how they feed--or don't feed--their kids.) Just how in hell can you starve the brains of children??!??

In 57 years of living, have not met ANYONE who could afford to buy all the books/magazines they craved. Libraries are our FRIENDS. Can SOMEONE tell me how in heck you can stuff your kids full of books and ideas and Good Thingies, without having at least one librarian as your Personal BFF?

*lighting a candle in honor of Andrew Carnegie: he might have have been a soulless Robber Baron, but a nice chunk of his money went into good public libraries---we had one in my hometown, and for this, I give great thanks*

Kids---and adults---CANNOT thrive without plenty of books, IMNSHO. How can you possibly turn out reasonably aware people, without hundreds of books, thousands of books, millions and billions and trillions of books?:huh:

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14 hours ago, Alye said:

The people I know (myself included) who love reading the most as adults are often those who struggled with it in the beginning, probably because we had bad teachers who didn't know how to teach us in a way we understood then when we finally got one who either knew how to teach us in a way we understood we excelled quickly. 

I had quite bad school experiences. I was bullied the whole way through not just by students but also by some teachers, my 2nd and 3rd grade teacher regularly made me cry and my fourth grade teacher spent a year calling me an idiot in front of the whole class, by my last year I wagged more than I attended school. The whole experience left me anxiety ridden and with a massive inferiority complex. My parents never believed how bad it was. I escaped through books but I always felt stupid but then at 21 I decided to go to Uni for better job options. It was then that I finally excelled and I realised that I am actually quite intelligent but bad school experiences made my education shaky and I had to teach myself all these skills I never learnt. The anxiety and inferiority complex are still there though.

 

Actually, largely, it was likely your brain development, rather than the teachers you had. Contrary to what people tend to believe, especially when trying to create a "one size fits all" curriculum, being a certain age does not mean you'll have certain abilities or cognitive understandings. But the brain doesn't form at the same rate for everyone, and many children aren't given the help or challenges they need based on their development of their brains because it's impossible to do that while teaching to the lowest common denominator. As it stands, children who read and comprehend their reading without issues early have the corpus callosum (the area between the hemispheres) develop early (the earliest is usually 3-4, the average is 6-7 years), while children who struggle are usually just developing later (the latest is typically around 11-12 years).

The corpus callosum is in charge of a whole bunch of information relay, as well as things like eye movement (particularly when it comes to smooth tracking, smooth convergence, stable ocular dominance, and matched focusing), reading comprehension, phonological processing of visual stimuli, decoding homonyms and homophones, oral reading, and other activities that engage both hemispheres at the same time. There are many studies that link dyslexia in adults and children to the corpus collasum; in fact, a study using high speed cameras shows that people who are dyslexic are out of sync when it comes to their body movements. A dyslexic person will blink with one eye starting earlier than the other, or will move one side of their body towards a sound before the other sides. These differences are only a matter of fractions of a second, but they're not present in people who were in the control group. Another study found that you can actually teach dyslexic people how to read if you to so by engaging only one hemisphere at time (I tried to understand how they did this, but it didn't make sense to me, so I don't know how to explain it here).

Anyways, back to what I was saying. A delay in your love of learning isn't necessarily because of teachers, it's because your brain was still developing. Typically speaking, when the corpus collasum develops fully, the reader will suddenly "click" with reading and reading comprehension.

 

It's also important to note that an early ability to read does not mean they have an ability to meaningfully comprehend the words. Understanding the mechanics of the word or being able to comprehend that the story was about a boy who wrote a letter to a girl about something that was happening in his life does not mean that you have the ability to meaningfully comprehend it. Like, say you hate cars, but I hand you a book and tell you to read it. You read it, you can probably understand most of it and you can answer "reading comprehension" questions, but you aren't likely to care to read further. You may even come to resent reading if I keep making you read about cars. The same thing happens every day in schools. It's not the fault of the teacher. Teachers don't want their kids to hate learning and reading, but they're required to teach skills and they're required to teach on a schedule. Some teachers are lucky and they happen to get the right book into the right hands, but that doesn't mean they're inherently better than other teachers; just that they were able to get that kid their gateway book.

Gateway books are incredibly important. They're the books that make reading click into a hobby rather than a requirement. Not everyone finds theirs, though. And, not always through a lack of trying.

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6 hours ago, DuggarsTheEndIsNear said:

Actually, largely, it was likely your brain development, rather than the teachers you had. Contrary to what people tend to believe, especially when trying to create a "one size fits all" curriculum, being a certain age does not mean you'll have certain abilities or cognitive understandings. But the brain doesn't form at the same rate for everyone, and many children aren't given the help or challenges they need based on their development of their brains because it's impossible to do that while teaching to the lowest common denominator. As it stands, children who read and comprehend their reading without issues early have the corpus callosum (the area between the hemispheres) develop early (the earliest is usually 3-4, the average is 6-7 years), while children who struggle are usually just developing later (the latest is typically around 11-12 years).

The corpus callosum is in charge of a whole bunch of information relay, as well as things like eye movement (particularly when it comes to smooth tracking, smooth convergence, stable ocular dominance, and matched focusing), reading comprehension, phonological processing of visual stimuli, decoding homonyms and homophones, oral reading, and other activities that engage both hemispheres at the same time. There are many studies that link dyslexia in adults and children to the corpus collasum; in fact, a study using high speed cameras shows that people who are dyslexic are out of sync when it comes to their body movements. A dyslexic person will blink with one eye starting earlier than the other, or will move one side of their body towards a sound before the other sides. These differences are only a matter of fractions of a second, but they're not present in people who were in the control group. Another study found that you can actually teach dyslexic people how to read if you to so by engaging only one hemisphere at time (I tried to understand how they did this, but it didn't make sense to me, so I don't know how to explain it here).

Anyways, back to what I was saying. A delay in your love of learning isn't necessarily because of teachers, it's because your brain was still developing. Typically speaking, when the corpus collasum develops fully, the reader will suddenly "click" with reading and reading comprehension.

 

It's also important to note that an early ability to read does not mean they have an ability to meaningfully comprehend the words. Understanding the mechanics of the word or being able to comprehend that the story was about a boy who wrote a letter to a girl about something that was happening in his life does not mean that you have the ability to meaningfully comprehend it. Like, say you hate cars, but I hand you a book and tell you to read it. You read it, you can probably understand most of it and you can answer "reading comprehension" questions, but you aren't likely to care to read further. You may even come to resent reading if I keep making you read about cars. The same thing happens every day in schools. It's not the fault of the teacher. Teachers don't want their kids to hate learning and reading, but they're required to teach skills and they're required to teach on a schedule. Some teachers are lucky and they happen to get the right book into the right hands, but that doesn't mean they're inherently better than other teachers; just that they were able to get that kid their gateway book.

Gateway books are incredibly important. They're the books that make reading click into a hobby rather than a requirement. Not everyone finds theirs, though. And, not always through a lack of trying.

While I'm gathering what you're saying is true, in my case, at least, it was bad teachers. They couldn't teach me but my mother (also a primary school teacher) could. She sat down with me one school break for 10-15 minutes a day and I got it by the end of our break 2 weeks later.  As I mentioned I had quite bad school experiences. I know there are good teachers, I just never seemed to have them. We lived in a lower socio-economic area until I was 7, then a small country town until high school. Not generally places that attract good teachers. They had to take what they could get.

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There have been articles written on the importance of fathers reading to their children.  Michelle has previously mentioned JB has a learning disability.  Those children were not exposed to books probably because of this.  JB would never like for one of his children to be more knowledgeable than him.

my girls used to go to story time at the library with their stay at home Dad  (SAHD) every Friday, they would pick up books for the week then.  They were very excited to get their library cards.

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23 minutes ago, Percy said:

There have been articles written on the importance of fathers reading to their children.  Michelle has previously mentioned JB has a learning disability.  Those children were not exposed to books probably because of this.  JB would never like for one of his children to be more knowledgeable than him.

my girls used to go to story time at the library with their stay at home Dad  (SAHD) every Friday, they would pick up books for the week then.  They were very excited to get their library cards.

The first thing that annoyed me about the Duggar's homeschooling was in one of the specials it shows Meechelle teaching all of the kids about Bankruptcy. A 5 year-old should be learning to read or to count. They do not need to know about bankruptcy. It shows who their real god is- Money!

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12 minutes ago, Alye said:

The first thing that annoyed me about the Duggar's homeschooling was in one of the specials it shows Meechelle teaching all of the kids about Bankruptcy. A 5 year-old should be learning to read or to count. They do not need to know about bankruptcy. It shows who their real god is- Money!

That's a wisdom booklet. According to the other accounts I've read on ATI, wisdom booklets must be taught to the whole family at the same time, regardless of age or sex.

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The Duggar parents have never shown any recognition that children of different ages should be learning different things in different ways. Michelle is not a  teacher and didn't seem to care enough to learn. She basically put the kids at the table with the wisdom booklets from Gothard and later switched on schoolhouse. If she did more than read from the booklets every once in a while, I'd be surprised. I've got a college degree and I would never try to teach my kids or anyone else's. I know enough not to. The Duggars, however, think they know everything there is to know and don't see any need for their children to surpass them.

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2 minutes ago, jcanglin991 said:

The Duggar parents have never shown any recognition that children of different ages should be learning different things in different ways. Michelle is not a  teacher and didn't seem to care enough to learn. She basically put the kids at the table with the wisdom booklets from Gothard and later switched on schoolhouse. If she did more than read from the booklets every once in a while, I'd be surprised. I've got a college degree and I would never try to teach my kids or anyone else's. I know enough not to. The Duggars, however, think they know everything there is to know and don't see any need for their children to surpass them.

You don't have to have a degree or be a teacher to teach your own children. You just have to be willing to learn and keep learning. That's why Michelle fails where others succeed.

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10 hours ago, DuggarsTheEndIsNear said:

Actually, largely, it was likely your brain development, rather than the teachers you had. Contrary to what people tend to believe, especially when trying to create a "one size fits all" curriculum, being a certain age does not mean you'll have certain abilities or cognitive understandings. But the brain doesn't form at the same rate for everyone, and many children aren't given the help or challenges they need based on their development of their brains because it's impossible to do that while teaching to the lowest common denominator. As it stands, children who read and comprehend their reading without issues early have the corpus callosum (the area between the hemispheres) develop early (the earliest is usually 3-4, the average is 6-7 years), while children who struggle are usually just developing later (the latest is typically around 11-12 years).

 

For me, it was six years of torture.  First grade (twice) through fifth.  At which point they seemingly "gave up" and just showed us to the library.  Without the agony of being prodded and pounded, daily, I was checking out a book a day from the library. 

I was 30, and with a child in kindergarten before I discovered that there was  the possibility of meaningful method in language learning--instead of going to my kid's back to school night, I went with my neighbor to her first grader's class.  We sat at a student's desk, the pre-primers were opened to a page showing a boat, with the letters beneath.  The teacher said she'd say out loud: when two vowels are together, the second sits down (is silent)--this time the a-- and the first one says its name: o--OH.  So you have buh-oh-tuh: boat.   I literally sat there and wept.  I made sure both my kids got her as a teacher (each class was taught as that teacher wished), and my kids, just as shy as I'd been, never had a lick of trubble learning to read.

SeeSay seemed to work for the outgoing kids.  And simply punish the shy ones.  25 years after they started torturing me, the teacher in the next classroom to my son was still teaching SeeSay DickNJane in the next classroom. . . .

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We all know there are a lot of factors that influence how a kid does in school. Sometimes it's about your age and brain development. Sometimes it's about the situation at home or not getting enough to eat or enough sleep. Sometimes it's all about finding the right educator who brings you to that a-ha! moment. I'm a high school teacher so I can't really speak to early childhood education, but I can be honest with you about what I've seen. I wouldn't say there's a lot of bad teachers out there, but there are A LOT who make bad, lazy, selfish choices at their students' expense :my_cry:. The ones who would grind my gears are the ones who aren't willing to put in the energy to try to teach/explain things in more than one way, and some of them just really don't know how.

So, I may sound like a leghumper here, but I had a thought. Maybe Michelle recognizes that she sucks at it and that could be the reason she wasn't doing all the teaching and had Jessa and Tabitha take over.....

(Maybe. Or it could be what we were already thinking. Lazy.) :my_lightbulb:

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1 hour ago, LittleSpouseOnThePrairie said:

So, I may sound like a leghumper here, but I had a thought. Maybe Michelle recognizes that she sucks at it and that could be the reason she wasn't doing all the teaching and had Jessa and Tabitha take over.....

Yes! I know we're really fond of criticising Michelle for just checking out and making others raise her kids, but it is important to realize this possibility. Who knows if she made the switch in homeschool teachers with self-awareness or not, but it definitely takes some guts as a mom in the homeschool culture to admit that you are not a natural teacher and that your kids will be better served in a different educational arrangement. I've known a few moms who had those guts and I greatly respect them for it; making that choice undoubtedly benefited their children.

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14 hours ago, DuggarsTheEndIsNear said:

 Another study found that you can actually teach dyslexic people how to read if you to so by engaging only one hemisphere at time (I tried to understand how they did this, but it didn't make sense to me, so I don't know how to explain it here).

If you recall where you saw this method described, I'd love to learn more about it.

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7 hours ago, SoybeanQueen said:

If you recall where you saw this method described, I'd love to learn more about it.

I'm not sure I can find the original document, but I've seen a bunch of places talk about it since I first found it (I discovered it over the summer). I'll look.

ETA:

I THINK, and I say think cause I can't verify right now, that the study is: "A neuropsychological technique for training dyslexics" by van den Honert, Dorothy found in Journal of Learning Disabilities, Vol 10(1), Jan 1977, 15-21. I found a couple hits when I googled it, but that's the one that sounded familiar. 

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JB has a learning disability so that involves the learning of all 19 children? Oh, that is beyond sad on so many levels. All I wanted for my children was to do better than I did and to do more than I did if that is what they wanted. I can not imagine stunting their growth due to my problems.

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3 hours ago, Valerie3kids said:

JB has a learning disability so that involves the learning of all 19 children? Oh, that is beyond sad on so many levels. All I wanted for my children was to do better than I did and to do more than I did if that is what they wanted. I can not imagine stunting their growth due to my problems.

We know JB likes to be the alpha male, if his children are educated they may question his decisions with logical argument. That would make life difficult.

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Sorry, I don't buy the "oh, he has a learning disability" issue. Maybe just me, but every REAL parent I know delights to see the kids go beyond and far and explore new ground. (Maybe we're raising the next Einstein or Shakespeare or whatever, but look! our kids EXPLORE!)

My beloved father grew up on a truck farm (and they were indeed poor), and was not able to do a whole lot of Things Bookish between the needs of keeping stuff On The Farm going and managing whatever, whatever.

Mom had a HUGE free rein when it came to spending household money---and the budget got routinely juggled to allow for buying of books. LOTS of books, stories, anything that sounded good, because kids NEEDED books, as much as they needed fresh air and vitamins.  They BOTH read to dear brother and me from infancy, because children NEED books and words, and you can Make Do with mac-and-cheese, if this means more books to feed the kids.

Dad totally PRIZED our love of books, even if we wayyyyy outran him in schooly stuff, and he worked a hell of a lot of overtime to back this up. (One of my finest memories: we got a WHOLE World Book set of encyclopedia one Christmas, PLUS a complete ChildCraft set, AND a dictionary, AND a world atlas, AND an Encyclo-Reader to help us learn!  Mom and Dad couldn't understand why we hunkered under the Christmas tree, ignoring the other gifts, to read and read and read about space travel and dogs and the human body and colonial days---with neat overleafs, yet!)

Honoring my parents here, but of all the things-----I think I really love the fact that they'd back books for us, no matter what the cost.  I miss them so....

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@PennySycamoreDid you get totally LOST in looking up one thing, but then there was ANOTHER thing that needed a lookup, and next thing you knew, three hours were gone? Because there were lots of things and it was so EASY to get sidetracked? *droooooools over scoping over old encyclopedia/dictionary stuff*

You're maybe my sister by another mother?

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3 minutes ago, samira_catlover said:

@PennySycamoreDid you get totally LOST in looking up one thing, but then there was ANOTHER thing that needed a lookup, and next thing you knew, three hours were gone? Because there were lots of things and it was so EASY to get sidetracked? *droooooools over scoping over old encyclopedia/dictionary stuff*

You're maybe my sister by another mother?

I still do that. I have about 4 windows and 1000 tabs open right now..... I forget why I opened the first page.... Or even which window the first page is on....

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On 13/02/2016 at 8:30 PM, zebra #13 said:

  The teacher said she'd say out loud: when two vowels are together, the second sits down (is silent)--this time the a-- and the first one says its name: o--OH.  So you have buh-oh-tuh: boat.   

Oh, that just takes me back to my Grade1-3 teacher (who I adored) .   She used the phonics method too.  The way she phrased the rule you described was, "When two vowels go walking, (ie are together) the first one does the talking. "   I can still picture the little poster she had on the wall of that!

Unfortunately, the phonics method has come in and out of fashion in education many times over the years.  It made sense to me as a child, and clearly to you as an adult, but some people do respond better to other methods.  Personally I think a combination of methods to suit the needs of the learner makes the most sense. 

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39 minutes ago, PreciousPantsofDoom said:

Oh, that just takes me back to my Grade1-3 teacher (who I adored) .   She used the phonics method too.  The way she phrased the rule you described was, "When two vowels go walking, (ie are together) the first one does the talking. "   I can still picture the little poster she had on the wall of that!

Unfortunately, the phonics method has come in and out of fashion in education many times over the years.  It made sense to me as a child, and clearly to you as an adult, but some people do respond better to other methods.  Personally I think a combination of methods to suit the needs of the learner makes the most sense. 

I was taught a vowel song. I can't remember all of it, but I used to sing it ALL THE TIME. Like until I was 20-ish. 

One of the versus was:

when two vowels go walking

hand in hand

the first one says its name 

isnt that just grand 

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5 hours ago, samira_catlover said:

Sorry, I don't buy the "oh, he has a learning disability" issue. Maybe just me, but every REAL parent I know delights to see the kids go beyond and far and explore new ground. (Maybe we're raising the next Einstein or Shakespeare or whatever, but look! our kids EXPLORE!)

My beloved father grew up on a truck farm (and they were indeed poor), and was not able to do a whole lot of Things Bookish between the needs of keeping stuff On The Farm going and managing whatever, whatever.

Mom had a HUGE free rein when it came to spending household money---and the budget got routinely juggled to allow for buying of books. LOTS of books, stories, anything that sounded good, because kids NEEDED books, as much as they needed fresh air and vitamins.  They BOTH read to dear brother and me from infancy, because children NEED books and words, and you can Make Do with mac-and-cheese, if this means more books to feed the kids.

Dad totally PRIZED our love of books, even if we wayyyyy outran him in schooly stuff, and he worked a hell of a lot of overtime to back this up. (One of my finest memories: we got a WHOLE World Book set of encyclopedia one Christmas, PLUS a complete ChildCraft set, AND a dictionary, AND a world atlas, AND an Encyclo-Reader to help us learn!  Mom and Dad couldn't understand why we hunkered under the Christmas tree, ignoring the other gifts, to read and read and read about space travel and dogs and the human body and colonial days---with neat overleafs, yet!)

Honoring my parents here, but of all the things-----I think I really love the fact that they'd back books for us, no matter what the cost.  I miss them so....

Your parents are awesome.

Mine were also really, really big on encouraging me and my sister to read. When I was little, my dad would read to me every night. He'd try to keep it mostly age-appropriate, but we were doing chapter books together by the time I was five. We also put shelving units in the bathrooms so we could keep books there (hey, you have plenty of time in there...). My parents would play trivia games or read to us at the dinner table, and when we got the internet, I remember going on all sorts of websites just to read about lots of different topics. The CIA World Factbook was my favorite. Of course, there was the time I tried to find a Disney Princess game and ended up learning what Japanese tentacle porn was, but that's another story.

Of course, things got a little complicated with my younger sister. She has dyslexia, but it took a little while for her to be properly diagnosed. I have very sad memories of sitting in my room reading while my mom yelled "Your sister could read this when she was FIVE! What's wrong with you?!?" My mom loves my sister a lot, but I think at that moment, she just snapped because of her fear that something was wrong with her child, that she was teaching her wrong, and her frustration over having one "normal" kid who could plow through chapter books like a pro, and now one kid who can barely get through a sentence. Once my sister got diagnosed and my parents learned better methods for teaching her to read and about technology/other methods to help her, she became just as avid a reader as me. Now she's finishing up her third year of college.

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10 hours ago, samira_catlover said:

@PennySycamoreDid you get totally LOST in looking up one thing, but then there was ANOTHER thing that needed a lookup, and next thing you knew, three hours were gone? Because there were lots of things and it was so EASY to get sidetracked? *droooooools over scoping over old encyclopedia/dictionary stuff*

You're maybe my sister by another mother?

That describes me perfectly!

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As a public library employee I have to admit I'm really enjoying all the love for books and reading and libraries.  Many thanks to all of you for sharing your stories.:my_smile:

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11 hours ago, somanybooks said:

As a public library employee I have to admit I'm really enjoying all the love for books and reading and libraries.  Many thanks to all of you for sharing your stories.:my_smile:

I am so grateful to the public library for making it possible for me to completely indulge my love for books.  If I had to buy all the books I read, I would be flat broke.  And the librarians at my local branch are fantastic. I always take a look at the section they have called "Librarian's Choice."  It is full of fiction /and non fiction favourites of the librarians.  I have discovered so many new books that way  and read fascinating books on topics I never would have thought I'd be interested in. So thank you right back, Public Library Employee!

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