Transitions are tough...new school situation for my girls. - Page 2 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
So it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our long-running forums. They came online in 2000 and brought together so many wonderful Disney fans. We had friendships form, careers launch, couples marry, children born ... all because of this amazing community.
Thank you to each of you who were a part of this community. You made it possible.
And a very special thank you to our Guides (moderators), past and present, who kept our forums a happy place to be. You are the glue that held everything together, and we are forever grateful to you. Thank you aliceinwdw, Caldercup, MrsM, WillCAD, Fortissimo, GingerJ, HiddenMickey, CRCrazy, Eeyoresmom, disneyknut, disneydani, Cam22, chezp, WDWfan, Luvsun, KMB733, rescuesk, OhToodles!, Colexis Mom, lfredsbo, HiddenMickey, DrDolphin, DopeyGirl, duck addict, Disneybine, PixieMichele, Sandra Bostwick, Eeyore Tattoo, DyanKJ130, Suzy Q'Disney, LilMarcieMouse, AllisonG, Belle*, Chrissi, Brant, DawnDenise, Crystalloubear, Disneymom9092, FanOfMickey, Goofy4Goofy, GoofyMom, Home4us123, iamgrumpy, ilovedisney247, Jennifer2003, Jenny Pooh, KrisLuvsDisney, Ladyt, Laughaholic88, LauraBelle Hime, Lilianna, LizardCop, Loobyoxlip, lukeandbrooksmom, marisag, michnash, MickeyMAC, OffKilter_Lynn, PamelaK, Poor_Eeyore, ripkensnana, RobDVC, SHEANA1226, Shell of the South, snoozin, Statelady01, Tara O'Hara, tigger22, Tink and Co., Tinkerbelz, WDWJAMBA, wdwlovers, Wendyismyname, whoSEZ, WildforWD, and WvuGrrrl. You made the magic.
We want to personally thank Sara Varney, who coordinated our community for many years (among so many other things she did for us), and Cheryl Pendry, our Message Board Manager who helped train our Guides, and Ginger Jabour, who helped us with the PassPorter-specific forums and Live! Guides. Thank you for your time, energy, and enthusiasm. You made it all happen.
There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
We go on to discover new frontiers
Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
Moving forward now as one
Moving on with a spirit born to run
Ever on with each rising sun.
To a new day, we go on.
It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
And we are no longer charging for the Live Guides. If you have a subscription, it's yours to keep for the lifetime of the Live Guides at no additional cost. The Live Guides will stay online, barring server issues and technical problems, for all of 2019.
That said, PassPorter is not going away. Most of the resources will remain online for as long as we can support them, and after that we will find ways to make whatever we can available. PassPorter means a great deal to us, and to many of you, and we will do our best to keep it alive in whatever way we can. Our server costs are high, and they'll need to come out of our pockets, so in the future you can expect some changes so we can bring those costs down.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your amazing support over the years. Without you, there's no way us little guys could have made something like this happen and given the "big guys" a run for their money. PassPorter was consistently the #3 guidebook after the Unofficial and Official guides, which was really unheard of for such a small company to do. We ROCKED it thanks to you and your support and love!
If you miss us, you can still find some of us online. Sara started a new blog at DisneyParkPrincess.com -- I strongly urge you to visit and get on her mailing list. She IS the Disney park princess and knows Disney backward and forward. And I am blogging as well at JenniferMaker.com, which is a little craft blog I started a couple of years ago to make ends meet. You can see and hear me in my craft show at https://www.youtube.com/c/jennifermaker . Many PassPorter readers and fans are on Facebook, in groups they formed like the PassPorter Trip Reports and PassPorter Crafting Challenge (if you join, just let them know you read about it in the newsletter). And some of our most devoted community members started a forum of their own at Pixie Dust Lane and all are invited over.
So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
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I was also going to suggest Handwriting without Tears. It is a great program (for 4 year olds and up) and does make it easy to transition from printing to cursive. I will see if I can find the web site for you.
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ive also considered home schooling.....but its just not an option for us right now... and DD loves her teachers ,,,
so far so good
An e-school is a virtual charter school. Ours is a public school, publicly funded, we have to meet all the requirements of kids in brick and mortar schools, only we complete our curriculum at home. They give us a computer, the curriculum, and full services. Each DD has her own teacher, then they share a Special Ed teacher. We have weekly phone conferences, online "classes" for DDs, field trips with other families in our area, etc. While I present them with the curriculum, they are monitored by certified teachers. They maintain a transcript and would receive a diploma if they graduate from an e-school high school. It really is a good situation for someone stepping out of brick and mortar into homeschooling. It's also nice b/c it's free.
With our current schedule, though, we are having difficulty meeting some of the PS requirements within an e-school environment. Also, our new governor does NOT want charter schools at all, so he is trying to get legislation passed buried in the budget that would effectively wipe them out. Sadly, there are lots out there that deserve that end, but the one we use does not; they are excellent at what they do, it's just not the right fit for us right now.
The views and opinions expressed on this post are mine and do not necessarily represent or reflect those of The Walt Disney Company and Affiliated Companies
My DD 8 has been using the Handwriting w/o tears program for about a month now, and I have noticed a difference. She too was writing everything backwards, sometimes you could almost read it better in a mirror. Another thing I found that has helped her is that I took her to an eye doctor who specializes in Vission Therapy. It was found that while she has 20/20 vission she has what is called Convergence Insufficency which means that her eye muscles are weak and don't allow her to focus properly resulting in headaches, loss of concentration, blurred and double vission, because one eye basically shuts down to compensate for the lack of muscle cordination. You can learn more about this at www.Convergence Insufficiency.org
We now use a computer program at home called HTS to strenghten her eye muscles, and she has glasses with prisms in them as well.
Good luck with Home Schooling! And do look into getting just Speical Education help for your daughter, I know of a few kids in our school system who do this. Another good program to help with reading if she is struggling with this as well as the handwriting is the Wilson Reading Method. Tutors are expensive using this method, but if you can find a Wilson Institute locally, the people who are being trained have to do so many hours of tutoring to get their license, and this is how my daughter is getting 15 hours of tutoring a week this summer for free!
for you DD's and for you.