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VA6336

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Posts posted by VA6336

  1. My kids and I all get bitten by mosquitoes all year long! We've tried Avon, we've tried spray with Picardin, we've tried bracelets and necklaces, we've tried Citronella of all sorts. The only thing that works for us is DEET. Hourly application of 7% works, but we usually stick with much higher percentages so I don't have to catch all three each hour. Long sleeves and leggings certainly help keep the amount of chemical down, but it's just so dang hot down here it's impractical. The bugs love us so much that they bite our eyelids. :001_huh:

     

    Baseball mom, I finally figured out to keep an extra bottle in the van just last month! Good luck bzymama23 finding what works for your child. I have heard that there are lines of outdoor clothing made with some kind of bug repellent on them and are designed for hot weather. I think it's time for me to look into them!

  2. I don't think anyone has mentioned Critical Thinking Company's various series for math and logic skills. They seem to appeal to a broad section of homeschoolers, Classical and otherwise. Having a handful of the big sellers for each subject seems like a great idea. For history, you could have SOTW, MOH, TOG and perhaps a secular title as well. As a history "resource" we love Laurie Carlson's activity guides. Don't forget Latin (I would suggest Memoria Press's Latin programs as highly popular), and modern languages. So for each subject have 4 major curricula new and then carry lots of reference books (Usborne, Kingfisher, DK, etc). I like how everyone is suggesting homeschool/parenting guides. Having a wide variety of authors (I've enjoyed Cathy Duffy, Laura Berquist, the Bluedorns, Wise and Wise-Bauer, Douglas Wilson, Maureen Wittmann, Gladys Hunt, Charlotte Mason, Maria Montessori) will ensure that there's something there to help everyone. BOB books are usually very popular and aren't common on consignment (they don't hold up to heavy use well).

     

    Good luck! Don't suppose you're near me?? We don't have a homeschool/curriculum store besides Knowledge Tree. :(

  3. You can use normal purchased white board cleaner, or you can use a spray bottle filled with rubbing alcohol. Both work great on our showerboard-turned-dry erase boards.

     

    This is random, but did you know you can wash dry erasers? I discovered that not too long ago..you just use warm water and dish soap (rubbing with your hand), then squish on a towel before letting air dry the rest of the way. My boards look much better now that I clean the erasers every few months!

  4. First, hi!

     

    Second, the stuff at the bottom of our posts is our signature. If you go to User Control Panel and then on the left side you'll find (somewhere in that list) "edit signature." That's the place to do it. Took me a while to figure that out, so I'm glad to share. :D

  5. Many of the Masters (5th-6th graders) Tutors I've spoken with say they have to come up with other ways of presenting the memory work for that age group. The littler kids usually memorize well that way, but 6th graders tend to find it cheezy. I would talk with your potential Director about it and see what she says about the Tutor your son would have. They're trained to use all sorts of memorization techniques. I tutored a class of 4K-2nd graders this year and we didn't sing more than one subject a week, because that's not how they all learned well. Some of them were visual and some were chanters, some were hands-on learners. So I tried to incorporate a variety of activities into each week so there would be something for each of my students to grasp well. My "fall-back" was always the audio cd, but I didn't use it every week.

  6. My daughter played organized sports for the first time last year and I was shocked by the snack thing. I had no idea this was happening in the world of organized sports. If she plays again this fall, I just might bring this article to the coach and ask if he'd be willing to forgo the snack schedule. I want to teach my children to eat well at mealtimes and if there's extra calorie-burning going on, then a healthy snack to recharge is perfectly fine. There's just no reason for Kool Aid at 7 PM after a soccer game (or the chocolate, or the Skittles, or the Cheetos...).

  7. We have three neutered male cats and every now and then (maybe once a year or so) one of them has an issue with their anal glands. Yep, this is kind of gross, sorry. The others let out a little at a time when they do their thing in the litter box, but this one has trouble with it and they tend to get um, stopped up. If I happen to smell him ('cuz you know I love being woken up by a cat plopping down on my chest) and notice, I'll take him to the vet, who will...express the glands. Otherwise, it'll happen naturally one day when he gets spooked or falls off something (he is sort of a klutz) and it'll stink for a day or two. It's much more common in dogs, but in my house, everyone is special. :D It really is a very distinct smell. Not horrible, but very strong and it does sort of stick in your nose.

  8. I have not seriously considered using OLVS but have seen materials from them and Seton. I'm also totally turned off by any curriculum that has "seatwork" as a subject! I want to give my children a Catholic Classical education and neither of those fits the bill. Even with that, though, I've chosen not to use Mother of Divine Grace or Kolbe Academy. I'm putting together my own, using a variety of resources. Oddly enough, one of the curriculum providers that I really love is Catholic Heritage Curriculum.

     

    I find books like Chats With God's Little Ones are usually what is referred to as "twaddle." This is totally just my opinion, so please don't be offended if your family enjoys them. I will also say that we have the coloring books that are listed in their Kindergarten set, which are the same ones that are used by Seton and they're not very well done. The facial expressions are...interesting. I haven't yet seen well-drawn Catholic coloring books, but I've heard that they're out there.

     

    In case it helps you, for our "religion" next year (with a 1st grader, K'er and an almost 3 year old) we'll be using: New St. Joseph Baltimore Catechism (two years to go through), A Year With God (a living the liturgical year guide from CHC), New Catholic Picture Bible, Devotional Stories for Little Folks, a ton of saint stories and Father Lovasik books. For coloring pages, we'll print some out from CatholicMom.com. Religion is one of those subjects that sort of infiltrates for us...we'll be using Prima Latina for Latin, learning more Latin prayers and Latin text hymns. We go to Mass as often as we can and say the rosary at home. As part of our music studies, we learn good hymns during the week. For History we'll be using Connecting With History which is written by a Catholic and includes Church history throughout the years. The more crafty, hands-on stuff will be covered by our liturgical year guide.

     

    I'm sure other moms with older children can critique the curriculum better than I can by looking at the website, but that's my two cents. Hope it helps.

  9. Catholic Heritage Curriculum uses MCP Math and you can "attend" their virtual conference: http://www.chcweb.com and see sample pages from various level MCP books. My general impression is that it's a Saxon-style (do this, do this, now do that) but not spiral and a little more thorough for those lower levels.

  10. We have CC on Tuesdays, then we do our schoolwork Wednesday-Saturday. We go to ballet on Mondays and our piano teacher comes to us on Thursdays. I use Fridays and Saturdays for field trips and once a month co-op stuff.

     

    We started at the beginning of August this last year, planning to finish by beginning of April. It hasn't worked out that way, though! I have found that about every 6 weeks we take a whole week off (usually there's some reason) so I'm going to figure that in to next year's plan. So with that in mind, we'll start beginning of August, but won't finish until end of May/beginning of June leaving us with an 8 week summer.

     

    I'm toying with the idea of going down to 3 days a week for April, May and June, taking July off completely and then starting up again with 4-5 days in August.

  11. I don't care for scripted, which is why I chose it over OPGTR. It's very thorough and easily adapted as you go along. It took a little staring for me to figure out how to use it (you pretty much just start at the beginning and read through it). For your older child you might not start at the beginning, but definitely flip through the easier pages so they can be confident when they get to the harder stuff.

     

    We do some of the pages on the white board (I just write out the words), sometimes we use it for copywork (that 2-for-1 where they write it out and have to read it as they go!). Some pages take us days to do, some pages we do two or three in 20 minutes. We supplemented with Bob books and other beginner phonics readers at first, but now we're somewhere around pg 119 and both girls are reading pretty much anything they want to.

  12. I'm in Memphis, TN and it's the first time for a Practicum here. We also have a brand new state manager for TN and we're all figuring this stuff out as we go along! I heard a rumor that there was a Go To Meeting regarding Practicums, but haven't heard anything more. Do you know when it is so I can ask my SM to get us invited to it (doesn't that sound presumptuous??)?

     

    I would love to hear what you'll be doing with your children's camps. Talking with my SM it sounds like there aren't specific activities for them just general subjects.

  13. Please have someone staffing the bookstore tables during lunch! Last year I was really interested in the morning speaker, and had tutor training in the afternoon, which left very little time for me to browse.

     

    I'm coordinating our Practicum this year (it's the first in our area-woohoo!) and am listening intently for more great ideas.:bigear:

     

    I like the idea of having pizza...do you think it would work if we had a sign-up sheet at the registration table in the mornings where people could ask for one and pay for it ahead of time? Maybe not the first day, but make an announcement that we'd do it on the second or third day.

  14. For stories that last less than 5 minutes, my kids have to wait until the end and then they can ask to their hearts' content. I'm like you, Tara the Liberator, and can't stand the interruptions! We don't generally read aloud for more than 15 minutes at a time, so I do try to stop about halfway and give them a chance to ask short questions for a minute or two. There are some questions I tell them I can't answer that right now but I will later. It definitely took a while to train them to not interrupt (and they still do occasionally) but it's been worth it.

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