VA6336
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Posts posted by VA6336
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It's mid 90s here in West Tennessee, and the leaves are already turning colors and falling. It's very confusing. :glare: The calendar and the trees realize it's September, but apparently the weathermen didn't get the memo!
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If you're involved in any local homeschool groups, ask to borrow nonconsumable texts just to get started. If someone used SOTW volume 1 last year, they might let you borrow the text and activity guide for the year (just make sure you take really good care of it!!) because they've moved on to volume 2. Science texts, some phonics texts (like OPGTR or Phonics Pathways), Saxon or Singapore math texts, too. That way you could just buy consumable stuff and save some of the text purchases for 6 months from now.
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I'm rebelling!! They just sent out the micro soccer game schedule and told us to sign up to bring snacks & drinks. AAAARRRGGHH.
So I'm rebelling. I responded with "The VA6336s will bring snacks on 10/16. They will not bring extra drinks, assuming that the kids will already have water on hand."
Not a very strong rebellion, but I'm putting my foot down about gatorade/caprisun/sunny D that we don't even purchase for ourselves. Anyone else want to join me in my "drink rebellion??" Next year maybe I'll put my foot down on the snacks, too.
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My older two are 18 months apart, one grade apart. For the eldest's kindergarten, I did exactly what you're doing. This year, with the elder in 1st grade and the younger in kindergarten, we've started formal history. Science is still based on CC's memory work so we're not doing a structured study and literature is (with them both reading independently) still very light (heavier on read alouds). I'm insisting that the elder do more copywork/handwriting and they're in different levels of math. We definitely combine for history, science, literature, Latin. I explain it all a few posts back in my blog.
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Oh, I could definitely use this today!
The most interesting thing that has happened is that our local gas/light/water company has spent the day digging up our street looking for a gas leak. :001_huh:
The kids had apples for a snack and I snuck a Snickers while they were in their room. :D
I would like to give kudos to my husband who got up early to take his truck in to the shop for something that should have taken 30 minutes, but which took an hour and a half and then he had a full day of work ahead of him only to come home an hour from now so I can leave the house for shopping and a rehearsal (it's my night out). If he pulls all that off and is still smiling when I come home, he'll deserve more than kudos. ;)
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For Foundations, yes, you can get and use all the materials at home. For Essentials you cannot purchase the EEL Guide (which is the English grammar component) without being a community member, the IEW books are available anywhere. In Challenge, you cannot get the Challenge guide (the syllabus/lesson plans/tells you what to do) without being in a community.
Hope that helps.
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We use this in CC and I love it. Doesn't really give pictures to imitate, like pp said we use library books or art books from home to show the artist's work. The instructions are easy to follow. This book would do exactly what you described as wanting. I have never seen the other book you asked about, maybe someone else can compare them.
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It's my understanding that they are different. CC memorizes the VP history cards in a different order than VP does, so the VP song flat out doesn't work. Our history sentences are set to tunes that you can get only from CC.
Hope that helps.
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Yesterday we made chicken wings in the CrockPot. Night before I made some hoisin sauce (you could make just about any kind of sauce-took about 5 minutes) and that morning I dumped the 4.5 lb bag of frozen chicken wings and the roughly 1/2 cup of sauce into the Crock, cooked on low for 7 hours, high for 30 minutes and voila: chicken wings. :)
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Who has stopped trying to make everything fun?
Me! Now go scrub the tile in the bathroom while you recite your math facts. I can't hear those times tables!! :bigear:
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We're in 1B as well, and it was only yesterday that my daughter figured out it was easier and faster to simply count tens + ones. She counted out every.single.thing before this. I'm sure she'll revert to it for a while. Very frustrating for me, because she KNEW how to count tens + ones, she just didn't want to. So I let her do it her way for the workbook and she finally "caught on." I say just stick with showing her the "proper" way during lesson time and let her do her workbook her way, not letting wrong answers slide by. Having an unbreakable stick of 10 will help if you insist on her using manipulatives. We do use the cuisinaire rods occasionally, which she can't "count" individually. You could just use a piece of colored paper if you don't want to invest in another manipulative.
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I met one back in the spring, but for the life of me can't remember her screen name (or her real-life name either). :glare: I was scouring the for sale boards one last time before hitting the local curriculum sales and saw her for sale "posting one last time before hitting the local curriculum sales" and then saw her the next day!
ETA: I have met musicmousetn, she came to an open house of our Classical Conversations group. I had forgotten until just now!
I know there are others in West TN and would love to meet them.
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*sigh*
I am 4' 10.5" and have been since early high school. I always tell doctor's offices to "round at will." Find someone who can alter pants-she's going to need them! Shirts she should be fine in the junior's departments of most stores. Even after having kids (I'm a C cup, D if I'm nursing) I still get most of my shirts in juniors/misses. Old Navy and Gap tend to fit well and easy to find modest clothing at. I was thin until kids (92-96 pounds) and am now a little more rounded at the corners (but less than 115). :D I still shop Old Navy and Gap. Target clothing rarely fits.
When driving, a lot depends on the car. Electric seats (8 way) are MUCH better (manual slides are horrible for me) and generally I'm fine driving those vehicles. If I must drive a low sedan with a manual seat, I find something like one of these: Amazon link to padded cushions for cars. My stepdad had an early 90s manual transmission, no bells & whistles 2 door sedan that was nearly impossible for me to drive because I just couldn't see no matter how many cushions I had. I've since owned/driven regularly Toyotas, Hondas, a Plymouth, a Saab and occasionally have to use a cushion but otherwise I'm fine. When in the passenger seat of my husband's pickup truck we do turn the airbag off, though because the owner's manual states that if the person is less than 4' 11" you should. So maybe it's that way with other vehicles?
Anyway, hope this helps and let her know she's definitely NOT alone!
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Just start at the beginning....and work your way through. Try setting a time limit of "we'll do 10 minutes of phonics today" and just do as much as you can (not racing, be deliberate). If something isn't quite "clicking" when you get to the review pages, use the games. We played games at least once a week, spending 20-30 minutes. The first time through the book, we did not use any of the spelling. Just phonics. This year, we're going back through it for phonics review and doing formal spelling.
At first it may be easy, but might work well for your daughter by building her confidence. If the 10 minutes a day is super easy for the first week, she won't hesitate when it starts to get harder. Just read it aloud at first, maybe have her copy a few words here and there. I did a lot of writing on the white board (simply copying what was in the book). Oh, and using a blank sheet of white paper!! That was huge for us! Cover up all but the line/group you're reading so it's not overwhelming (there can be a lot of words on a page) and let her slide it down as she reads aloud.
Hope that helps.
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The Core by Leigh Bortins.
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East Tennessee fits all of those requirements except for they do get occasional snowfall, but not much. Homeschooling is very easy in TN, too. School system good/bad will depend entirely on which county you're in. The elections this fall will cement our conservative status for years to come.
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There is no charge made by a priest or a RC Church if you ask them to say Masses for anyone or anything. You just call up the parish secretary and say you'd like to have a Mass said for so-and-so, could she help you? She'll check her calendar and let you know what date and time the Mass will be said (might be months from now) and she'll record the intention. You are certainly free to make a donation if you choose, and again the parish secretary can tell you what might be customary, but there is NO charge for it. Their intention will be said at a regularly scheduled parish Mass.
If what you're talking about is a funeral Mass (in conjunction with a recent death, there's a body involved, trip to the cemetery, etc) then the parish priest will let the family know if there is a charge/requested donation. Usually there is. It varies according to the local cost of living. But if money is an issue, no family will be turned away for inability to make a donation if the deceased regularly attended that parish. Most parishes have a process in place for that situation. Talk to the priest that is handling the funeral.
If you are asking about a Memorial Mass, one that is attended by the family (but without the deceased's body present, such as in the case of cremation or out-of-town death and now they're doing a memorial in the person's hometown or something) then that's treated a little more like a funeral Mass where the family has input into the liturgy and it's done at a time when there isn't a regularly scheduled Mass. The charge/requested donation would match that of a funeral Mass.
Hope that helps.
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My Memphis-born-raised-lived-there-for-55-years mother in law moved to Alabama and sent us a letter from her address in (and this is what she wrote on the return address of the envelope): "Muntagermery."
Did I mention that she's a self-described "educator" in Catholic and public middle schools for 30 years?
I couldn't possibly post something like this anywhere else, so please forgive my smirking. That said, we're doing spelling this year and I have discovered that my 6 year old can't distinguish between short i and short e sounds. Constantly mixes them up when spelling. I'm sure we sound much more Southern than I'd like to think we do here at home.
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We have four cats in a teeny tiny house and people don't realize it until either I say something or a cat ventures out to greet them. We also have two litter boxes.
Wood floors help immensely but what has made the biggest difference is NOT using clay litter. First, we sprinkle baking soda lightly in the empty box. We then place plastic trash bags (slit down one side to fit) in our boxes, and rip up old newspaper (approx. 2" strips) to fill the box about halfway. I change it twice a week, sometimes more if someone's done something particularly, um, stinky. :thumbdown: Takes me 5 minutes, total. Our cats are also entirely indoor cats, which probably helps the stink factor. We only get the Sunday paper, but our neighbor gets the daily and once a week I pick up his old papers from the recycle bin (he knows I do this, I asked him first and he actually separates the shiny paper from the dull newsprint into a different bag for me-shiny ads don't absorb).
Good luck, we love our kitties.
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A Year With God is the living the liturgical year guide that Catholic Heritage Curricula uses. We just got it and plan to use it. So, I can't tell you if I like it yet other than the activities are really flexible and organized by subject, calendar and title, which makes it all really easy to find something I'm looking for.
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Friends of mine found themselves in the same situation: they had larger than average 4 & 5 year olds in backless boosters, a 2 year old in a full five-point harness and needed to put in two rear-facing infant seats. All in a 7 passenger Honda Odyssey. Let's just say it's been a tight fit. Parents are both tall, making it impossible to put the rear-facing behind front seats. This is what they did:
BACK ROW (from passenger side to driver side):
5 pt Cosco (2 year old)--rear-facing Britax (stay in the car kind)--backless Graco booster (oldest boy has to wiggle to snap his seatbelt, but it works)
MIDDLE CAPTAIN'S SEATS (slid together on driver side)
rear-facing Britax--5 pt Cosco (4 year old who probably should have been in the 5 point the whole time, but not my call :001_smile:)
Hope that helps. The only way they got three in the back row was to put the infant seat in the middle. And it couldn't be a snap-in carrier, they tried, believe me! Had to be a slim stay in the van Britax (they tried a couple of brands).
There's lots of climbing involved for those that can.
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If you paid off your mortgage, owned your house free and clear, had credit card debt, a car payment and little to no savings and the breadwinner lost their job, you wouldn't be able to pay the taxes on your house. Or the electricity, or the water, etc. And you'd have to sell.
If you have no consumer debt, no auto debt, have reasonable retirement plans, emergency savings, short-term savings (like for that new furnace for when the 10 year old one dies unexpectedly) and have enough left to live on comfortably (whatever comfortable is for you), then sure, pay off your mortgage. Primary home ownership is one of the most sound, sure investments an American can make and one of the very, very few major investments one can actually enjoy on a day-to-day basis. As long as you have reasonable terms on a standard mortgage, don't owe more than 80% on your home, it's a great investment and worth having a mortgage on.
Having a mortgage affects your taxes and there's more to it than just having extra money in your pocket at the end of the paycheck. Call a fee-only financial advisor (http://www.napfa.org or http://www.acaplanners.org) and they'll tell you the same thing, only better than I can. :) They don't want to sell you anything other than the best advice they can give you for your personal situation. Most of them are qualified tax advisors, too, so they can look at your entire financial picture taking everything in to account.
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Using a coupon (they always have some around) I found one at Bed, Bath & Beyond. It is machine washable, just a pain in the rear to get on and off the mattress. I keep a blanket thrown over it and wash that often (I have cats, kids and a husband) and wash the actual cover maybe 4 times a year. Like I said, it's a huge pain to get the cover on and off. It's in our living room and we do use it for guests (that's usually when I wash the cover!) even though we use regular full-size linens for guests. It has held up well. Most spills I can spot clean.
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Can you go to an information meeting? Sometimes it helps to see the material and have someone explain it in person. Then you can ask questions about your particular situation and really see if it's a good fit.
Am I being completely unreasonable?
in General Education Discussion Board
Posted
I agree with insisting that your kids come back and ask before going into backyards. The first few times they want to go into a backyard you haven't been in, go with them. Hang out, supervise and get to know the family and how the kids play in the yard. Then after that stick with the "you just have to come home and ask first" approach. I wouldn't allow my kids to call me from someone else's phone-puts them in an awkward situation if you tell them no, they'd have to explain it to that mom. Not cool for the kid. If they come back and ask, you say no, YOU call down the street and say "hey, X can't play in the backyard today, but ya'll are welcome to come down here" or whatever.
I don't think you're being unreasonable at all!