supprazz
Sitting For The Newtons
Posts: 2,106
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Post by supprazz on Sept 8, 2013 23:56:14 GMT -5
I wish I knew what Sam, Charlie and the rest gave. I thought of Karen's in Love and his gag gifts, he should have given Karen a jack in the box with a gorilla!
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Post by wenonah4th on Dec 17, 2013 19:07:54 GMT -5
Now what an idea!
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Post by zoar3 on Jan 23, 2014 13:26:42 GMT -5
I just reread this because birthdays are on my brain even though lol my own isn't for months. Friends, family, and even my dad soon, having or just had recent birthday and IIRC (from past birthday card trades) some of you will be having a 1/2 birthday soon. I still feel the way I did from above. I actually thought of something that made this "worse." As we know Karen is 7 forever. Depending on the book, she either had gone into 2nd grade after completing only half a year of K or did likewise with first grade. Based on that, this birthday should have been her 6th and her "half" 6 1/2. I think that would have also shown us a more of a real age difference between Karen and her 7 going on 8 classmates in Ms. Colman's class. Regardless of her age, I will always feel just awful for Karen in this story. I had just read "Karen's Big Job," too where she makes Elizabeth a collage of all the big house family members as a birthday gift. Sometimes Karen can come across as a too much and not always in a good way, to me, like the spelling bee books but at heart she is a little girl who knows how important family is. I will always love that about her, she didn't want either of her parents to have a party all she wanted was to celebrate her two families spending some time together. At McDonald's, a park, Carle or SES Playground (if allowed) Watson and Elizabeth could have done that for her. More than that, both of them should have wanted to listen to Karen. I did cheer again when Elizabeth and Seth came into the big house the Sunday after Karen's birthday and smiled when Hannie gave Karen a stuffed elephant that Karen named Babar. Oh I also enjoyed remembering that Watson was a circus fan. We don't get to see him always spend as much time with his kids so it was really nice that he was excited about Happy Time Circus, too.
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Post by sparklymouse on Jan 23, 2014 17:44:52 GMT -5
^I think Karen's age works. I turned 7 in 1st grade, so if I had skipped K or 1st I would have turned 7 in 2nd. It's the rest of the class that doesn't match up. They should have been turning 8, but nobody ever had birthdays. (Except Pamela, who should have turned 8, but I don't think her age was ever mentioned.)
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Post by zoar3 on Jan 23, 2014 17:49:27 GMT -5
I always thought that a kid turned 7 after finishing first grade. I got the 6 based on this thinking: Karen started K at 5 and skipped into first grade at 5 1/2. She turned 6 by the end of that year. And was 6 going on 7 in second grade. Even if she skipped first grade altogether (I think) she'd have been the same ages. I also realize this is Stoneybrook and like time, ages, can also have no usual meaning or way of working.
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Post by sparklymouse on Jan 23, 2014 18:44:26 GMT -5
I guess it could be a regional thing. (When kids start school, I mean.) Around here kindergarten starts at 5 1/2, so you will turn 6 during the school year (or the summer after if you have a late birthday). But pretty much everyone is 6 at the start of 1st, 7 at 2nd, etc.
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Post by zoar3 on Jan 23, 2014 19:57:40 GMT -5
^That is a great point, Sparklymouse. I remember at my last teaching job, there was a new rule/law, not sure what here in CA that all kids starting K had to already be 5. If a child had a birthday after (I think) September 1st they had to either spend a year in Transitional or Developmental K or just stay in preschool one more year. I didn't agree with that way of thinking because every child is different but then these days public schools are not something I'm always too big a fan of anyway. I know that is another story.
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scrounge
Sitter-In-Training
Boo and bullfrogs!
Posts: 414
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Post by scrounge on Jan 23, 2014 22:35:20 GMT -5
I have an August birthday and was always the youngest in my class. (September 1 was the cutoff for birthdates but a lof of people would hold August babies back a year, especially boys.) I turned 5 a month before starting school and didn't turn 18 until I had already graduated high school, but other kids in my class had been 18 for months or even a full year. I always thought Stoneybrook was weird because every single kid in 8th grade was 13. Every single kid in 7th grade was 12 (except for Claudia and Mark Jaffee.) Really there should have been more of a spread of ages, with some kids being 14 or even almost 15 already in 8th grade and others having just turned 13 (like Mary Anne, who started 8th grade at 12 years old the first time through.)
So, if I had skipped first grade, I would have been six years old through all of second grade, but had most of my classmates skipped, they would have turned 7 during or just before second grade.
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Post by greer on Jan 24, 2014 4:55:50 GMT -5
I have an August birthday and was always the youngest in my class. (September 1 was the cutoff for birthdates but a lof of people would hold August babies back a year, especially boys.) I turned 5 a month before starting school and didn't turn 18 until I had already graduated high school, but other kids in my class had been 18 for months or even a full year. I always thought Stoneybrook was weird because every single kid in 8th grade was 13. Every single kid in 7th grade was 12 (except for Claudia and Mark Jaffee.) Really there should have been more of a spread of ages, with some kids being 14 or even almost 15 already in 8th grade and others having just turned 13 (like Mary Anne, who started 8th grade at 12 years old the first time through.) So, if I had skipped first grade, I would have been six years old through all of second grade, but had most of my classmates skipped, they would have turned 7 during or just before second grade. Yeah, I was born in late July and was the youngest in my class throughout all of elementary school. Many kids were a full year older than me. My school suggested I do an extra year of preschool, but my parents wanted me to start kindergarten because I was already reading independently and hitting all of the motor skills benchmarks, etc. and they thought I would be bored. I think I would have been better at math had I waited a year, since I did sometimes feel like some things I just wasn't ready for, but I definitely would have been bored in terms of language arts if I had waited a year, since as it was it was too easy for me. I think most private schools do encourage kids to wait a year if they are summer babies. When I switched schools to a more academically-prestigious school in 5th grade, all of the other kids born in July or August were a full year older than me. I wouldn't be surprised if SA was the same way. Does it mention what month Karen was born in?
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supprazz
Sitting For The Newtons
Posts: 2,106
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Post by supprazz on Jan 24, 2014 10:27:50 GMT -5
Over here, junior kindergarten starts in the year you are turning 4, then there's senior kindergarten for age 5 and so on. Some regions with their school districts just have kindergarten from age 5 though. I'd never gone to preschool, but was reading fluently way before kindergarten and knew some arithmetic. I wish my parents put me in private school from the start while I was on a roll, putting me in public school made me lazy so by the time I tried private for awhile, I couldn't adjust though I liked what I was learning, it was too fast-paced for me. If I have kids, I will absolutely put them in private school and make sure they develop their literacy skills from an early age as well.
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msstock87
Sitting For The Braddocks
Here Comes The Bride!
Created by Rie.
Posts: 3,618
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Post by msstock87 on Jan 24, 2014 21:54:01 GMT -5
I have an August birthday and was always one of the youngest in my class too. A lot of kids were a year older than me during the school year.
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Post by Honeybee on Jan 25, 2014 2:47:23 GMT -5
I have August Birthday. No, I wasn't the youngest in my classroom. We had two grades in the same classroom. For example. 1st grade and 2nd grade, and so on. I repeat 1st grade twice. Being at this Christian school. The only grade, who were by themselves were Kindergarteners. Sometimes, 9th grade and 10 grade, were not in the same classroom. They were in separate classrooms. Cause, their were so many kids, in each grade. Their weren't enough room, for all of them fit in one classroom.
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Post by anzuhana on Jan 25, 2014 9:26:04 GMT -5
The youngest person that I went to class with that I know of was born in December the same year that I born (students in the school district I went to were in the same grade if they were born from January 1 - December 31 of the same year).
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Post by virgoscorpio on Jan 25, 2014 18:15:13 GMT -5
July as the youngest kid in the class? That's 5 months not represented. Crazy!
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Post by greer on Jan 25, 2014 18:25:10 GMT -5
July as the youngest kid in the class? That's 5 months not represented. Crazy! No, the kids born in the fall were born the preceding year. Like my sister is in eighth grade and turned 14 in October.
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