Category: Uncategorized

And because the internet is still up: Homeschooling Paradise with “humorous” math. It does make Leilani beg for more math… the humor is exactly on target for the audience. I learned about the site because a teacher was fired over using the materials.

Free Math Word Problems – Challenging Singapore First Grade Math

Example? Wally the Killer Whale caught some jellyfish. He ate 5 of them and gave 7 to his daughter for acing her First Grade Math Worksheet. If Wally had 6 jellyfish in the end, how many did he catch in the beginning? (She solved that one)
Really bad example? Goomba Gorilla loved to collect bird droppings because his wife made delicious pies with them. He collected some and put them in 3 boxes. He put 4 bird droppings in box A. In Box B, he put 3 more than in Box A. And finally, he put 8 in Box C. How many bird droppings did hungry Goomba collect?
And there are worse, but I read them aloud, so I edit on the fly :-)

Update: Sadly, the owner of the website took it down because he was so distraught about the teacher getting fired. It angers me. I feel for the teacher, I oppose the system, but still, the teacher had no common sense. He used the 3rd grade worksheets, and their humor is even darker and geared to that age group. He or she should have known better, American schools want to sterilize content, (but Hollywood and Toys’R’Us produces so much worse and markets it to kids and then it’s OK) and there is always one parent who is offended…

Another update: I wrote an answer to the owner of the website.

Hi Kris,

I totally disagree with the taking down of the website. If you close it, you will be punishing 1000 kids, whose parents have been using your site in the past, plus a few new ones like me, in order to show support to the teacher. I am sorry for the teacher. I wish it was not so. If you want my ideas on how to support him/her in a more efficient way email me.

But your closing of the website will not help him/her. This teacher has made a choice – teach within the American school system. He/she should have known what the system expects, and that at least one parent is always offended (by potty humor, hunting, blood, using the name of a race, nation…). There are lots of super religious people in the US, and to them anything Harry Potter, Vampires… is of the devil. If the teacher has been teaching for a while he/she knew that. Using your worksheets is a poor choice to make, for someone working within and depending on that system. Most homeschoolers are different. I don’t care what the parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles of 35 classmates think. Your worksheets make my daughter laugh, and make her like math. That’s why I use them privately. Would I if I was teaching my friends kids? I’d show my friend first and ask. Would I if I was teaching a dozen or more kids? Absolutely not.

I just wish I had downloaded all the worksheets while I had a chance…

Anyway, however you decide, I’m grateful that you created the sheets, that the website was up for as long as it was, that I found it (and yes, I only found it because the teacher was fired) and that my daughter had 2 math lessons that were a lot more fun than her usual.

Thanks

Sonja

In other news: We did not drown when it rained 12 inches, but we caught a gallon worth of roof leak water…

By By Randy Dotinga
HealthDay Reporter | HealthDay

MONDAY, March 5 (HealthDay News) — A new Canadian study provides more evidence that too many young kids may be diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, simply because they’re younger than their peers in the same classrooms.

Researchers found that nearly 7 percent of boys aged 6 to 12 were diagnosed with ADHD overall, but the percentage ranged from 5.7 percent for those who were the oldest in their grade levels to 7.4 percent for the youngest. There was a similar gap for girls, although they’re much less likely to be diagnosed.

The findings, which are similar to those from U.S. studies, don’t prove definitively that any kids are being wrongly diagnosed with ADHD or being diagnosed purely because they’re younger than their peers.

Still, “it’s good for parents to know about this,” said study author Richard Morrow, a health research analyst at the University of British Columbia. “In general, the younger you are within your grade, the more likely you are to receive this diagnosis and get treatment.”

ADHD is a controversial developmental disorder, and there’s been debate about whether it is overdiagnosed. The researchers launched the study to determine whether a student’s age in relation to his or her peers may have something to do with the likelihood of diagnosis.

The study authors examined the records of over 930,000 kids in British Columbia who were between the ages of 6 and 12, during the time period from 1997 to 2008. They focused on differences between kids born in January (who’d typically be the oldest in their classes) and December (who’d typically be the youngest due to cut-off dates for school enrollment).

The level of ADHD diagnosis was lowest for kids born early in the year — the oldest ones in their classes — and highest for those born later in the year. Kids born in January and December had the lowest and highest rates, respectively: 5.7 percent of boys and 1.6 percent of girls for those born in January, and 7.4 percent of boys and 2.7 percent of girls among those born in December.

Boys born in December were 30 percent more likely to be diagnosed and 41 percent more likely to be treated with ADHD medications than boys born in January were, while the youngest girls were 70 percent more likely to be diagnosed and 77 percent more likely to be treated with medications than the oldest girls were, the study found.

“There is no reason for them to have this kind of difference in their diagnosis,” Morrow said. “The way we would interpret that is that there are differences in maturity that are coming into play.”

In other words, physicians and teachers may think kids have ADHD when they’re actually just younger and less mature than their peers.

Richard Milich, a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky who studies ADHD, said the findings make sense considering that the disorder is difficult to diagnose, especially at younger ages.

When ADHD becomes an issue, Milich said, parents should be aware of this kind of research and bring it up with their pediatrician or whomever else is appropriate. However, “I hope it doesn’t get to the point that people say it’s not a valid disorder,” he said.

Kids with ADHD “do poorer in school, they’re more likely to be left behind and more likely to drop out of school early. Across the board, they are impaired,” Milich said. “Whether you want to call it a disorder or not, we know that’s what they’re at risk for.”

The study appears in the March 5 issue of the CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

More information

For more about ADHD, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

Thanks Andy for writing this on your blog. Sorry for shortening it. Read the full article here.

The strange weather continues: after a week of rain off and on, Sonja spotted this small funnel cloud over Wailua on Saturday morning (March 3) around sunrise (7am):

With the backlight from the sunrise, you could see the hollow tube shape:

Here is a closeup of the funnel cloud, at its thickest:

I did some searching on the internet, and funnel clouds are fairly unusual in Hawaii.

The odd thing is that this happened the day after deadly tornadoes and storms hit the midwest United States, so we had storms and tornadoes on our minds. While we were fortunate to be spared such extreme weather, it was another rainy weekend with over 13 inches (330 mm) in one day at Hanalei (the bridge was closed again), and 17 inches (430 mm) at the summit of Wai’ale’ale. Here on the east side, we got over 9 inches (230 mm), and it’s again raining hard tonight.

The last 3 crafts afternoons we worked on puppets and the puppet stage. I think everything turned out great.

I found these photos, of older puppets that Leilani made:

Used with permission from great-hikes.com
Thanks Andy :-)

The sound of the pouring rain woke me up this morning. It was barely light, but instead of lulling me back to sleep, the rain had me worried. This was the kind of rain that overflowed the gutters, saturated the ground, flowed around the house, and sometimes into the garage. I tried to go back to sleep, thinking the house was fine, it weathers these storms 2 or 3 times each year, but then I saw it was almost 8 am—the rainclouds were so thick they blotted out the light.

So I got out of bed, got out the umbrella and checked around the house. Sure enough, the gutters were overflowing, the back yard was saturated and covered deep puddles, and the garage was wet. There was also a mini waterfall down the neighbor’s hillside stairs. But other than some potted plants getting too much water and some erosion in the bare dirt of the garden, everything was fine.

It was also cold, so I put on socks and sweater and settled into a warm oatmeal breakfast with hot tea. The rain came and went, and came again. The heavy rain turned into a thunderstorm, with lightning and thunder off and on. The closest was a 3-one-thousand (3000 feet or 1km). The poor birds outside looked miserable:

Zebra Dove Java Sparrow

I checked the NOAA website with rain gauge information, thinking it would be worse on Wai’ale’ale:

Source: NOAA/National Weather Service

But no, the east side where I live was the rainiest, with Anahola getting over 5 inches (125mm) in just 3 hours. We couldn’t be too far behind, maybe 3.5-4 inches (88-100mm). Then I thought to check the stream gauge data for the Wailua river. This is tonight’s graph, with today’s peak data oddly missing (gauge overflow?). But what I saw in the morning was the continuous rise that could easily dwarf Friday’s peak.

Source: USGS realtime stream gauge data

So I talked the family into going to see the east-side waterfalls, so we went for a Sunday drive in the country. And we were not disappointed. First was Opaeka’a falls:

Across the road, the Wailua river was running brown and looking like it was going to overflow its banks. The Kamokila village down there was closed (but maybe it’s not open on Sunday):

Then we drove to Wailua falls. Everthing along the road was soaked, and the ditches by the golf course were full. But there didn’t seem to be any flooding, so the county’s work on clearing the vegetation out of the drainage ditches has paid off. Even the Kaua’i roosters were soaked, their feathers dull and their tails drooping.

Wailua falls was even more impressive, with the full flow of the South Fork plunging over. I estimate there was 2-3 feet of water going over the full width of the waterfall—except the one place on the left where a tree was still clinging to the edge:

We stood there for over 15 minutes with our umbrellas, fascinated at the wall of water tumbling down. The brown water flowed over in a solid sheet, then it separated into streams and finally separated into white water drops in very intricate and ever-changing patterns. I tried to get a photo of the effect, but my camera is not good enough, so this is just an enlargement of the previous photo:

Almost as impressive was the massive cloud of spray that was blowing the trees like a strong wind. We did see two tropic birds flying around, wondering why they were flying in the mist and what the view was like from there. And with all that water, the round pool at the bottom was gone, all the rocks and vegetation covered by the outflow.

On the way home, I pulled over at Wailua beach and walked on the bike path back across the new bridge. The river mouth was spread out wider than the length of the bridge:

The rains finally stopped in the afternoon, and there were even some nice sunset colors. Tonight, I looked up the total rain for the past 24 hours. Different parts of the island received rain at different times last night and today, but the overall totals are all above 3 inches (75 mm), with an average of 5.6 inches (142mm) across the entire island.

Source: NOAA/National Weather Service