The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall was a fun one. There were children older than mine listening, too.

I really like http://www.catholicmom.com for coloring pages and activities that relate to that Sunday's liturgy. It's a simple way to start incorporating what happens on Sundays into the rest of your week. I posted this on some other thread today, but the new St. Joseph Baltimore Catechism is what we use as a religion "spine." The lessons are on everything a Catholic child would need exposure to and it's really easy to add extra crafts and projects to reinforce the subject matter. If you're not well grounded in the specifics of the Catholic faith (like me) then the Catechism would be a great thing for you to plod through before your children get much older. I'm having to stay a few steps ahead of them so that when we start getting into the questions about airplanes and flying and the sky and where is heaven and where do the angels sleep (you see the progression there? :001_huh: That's a 4 year old for you!), I'm prepared with at least a semi-accurate answer. And on this forum, if you go into Social Groups, there is a Catholic homeschoolers group. I bet they'd be able to provide specific suggestions on various curriculums and guides for you to look at.

There are some great guides out there for living the liturgical year as a family... the von Trapps have some, Inos Biffi has some, but of course I can't find the links right now. As our religion "spine" we use the new St. Joseph Baltimore Catechism. It fits right in with a Classical model, for it's in question and answer format. We do approximately one lesson for every two weeks of school, adding in some hands-on activities like crafts, plays and other projects that have something to do with the subject of the lesson. I do require that they memorize the answers during the time we're on the lesson, but I haven't reinforced them after that. We read saint stories to correlate approximately with their feast days. I don't know that my children have the gift of faith just yet, but I do know that they accept what we tell them as fact (for the most part). Any kid would get tired of reading a lot of the dumbed down religious-themed stuff that's out there, so we try to give them the meaty stuff and don't worry much about whether or not they fully understand it yet. Trite and sappy doesn't work with my kids. :) The families that I know whose children really seem to have a good grasp of their faith are the ones that live it, day in and day out. It's just a part of daily life for them, not something that they fight about, not something their parents constantly push them about. They talk about issues at the dinner table, they discuss their favorite saints at lunch. Hope that helps.

We just moved the almost-two year old boy out of our room and into his sisters' room. We live in a two bedroom, so our choices are a bit limited! So what we have is a almost-6 year old girl sleeping on a loft twin bed, with a 4 year old girl on a toddler bed (she's really small for her age) and an almost-two year old boy on a toddler bed. The toddler beds fit very nicely under the loft bed. The girls have shared a room for a few years and are used to it, but it's been a big adjustment for "the baby." They're all still excited about the change and a week later are still having trouble settling down at night to sleep. We have strict lights-out policies at bedtime and don't allow reading or playing after we tuck them in. We tried letting them have a short window for quiet reading/talking/etc time after putting them in bed but that gets them more riled up rather than settling them down. So expect some time for adjustment! We thought about having the girls share a bed, but don't want to deal with the adjustment time it would take them to start really sleeping. Their private space is their bed, not really necessary for the 2-4 year olds, but the almost 6 is really glad to finally have her own "space" up on the loft bed. She's ready to start taking responsibility for her own "stuff" so this works out nicely that there's a place for her to do that. When we were looking for a loft bed, I did see that there are loft bed "systems" with two twin beds lofted and space for two twins underneath. That way you might be able to keep some of their stuff in the bedroom.

After lurking around here for a while, I discovered that there is a Yahoo group for Catholic Well-Trained Mind homeschoolers...it's a great place for information on how to use WTM with Catholic sources and perspective, etc. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/catholicwelltrainedminds/ That's the link!

Seafood nachos from a restaurant called the Half Shell: tortilla chips, white cheese dip melted all over, shrimp, lobster, crab, jalepenos, green onions, comes with sour cream and tomatoes (but I ask for it without)....oh, so very, very good!

We've used Alibris a number of times and not had a problem. I should clarify: we've bought from Alibris, but never sold to them. Hope that helps!

MusicMouseTN, I'm in your town! We participate in Foundations, so I'm going to PM you!

It was one of the books on the homeschooling shelf at our library and I picked it up. Because I was just starting out (still am!) it was an interesting read because it gave me a good long-term picture of homeschooling. Their lifestyle, however, is so very different than ours will ever be that occasionally it took a lot of imagination to apply it to our family. On the whole, it was a good read and I'll read it again when it comes time for high school/college admissions.

I wish they were cheaper, too. *sigh* I know my middle daughter would LOVE gymnastics, but I can't find a program we can afford. So, you're not alone out there...

I've been lucky enough to only work very flexible whenever I want to part time hours, but I know a few moms who do homeschool and work 30+ hours a week. The one thing they all seem to do is to have a dedicated all-day "work" day where they hire a homeschooled teenager to come and keep the kids at home the whole day while they work from home (or go to the office). They just do a four day school week and leave lots of arts/crafts/outdoor projects for the kids to do on that fifth day. Their jobs are all very different, but that one day of at-home babysitter seems to be the common thread.

It would take WAY too long to sit with each receipt, so we lump together. I actually use three labels for expenses: grocery, household and grocery/household. In our budget there's just one category "grocery/household" but it helps me to keep track in the checkbook if there were extra household purchases, etc that pushed our numbers up. Occasionally we'll have a Home Depot receipt that's obviously not grocery, so that's how we reconcile them.

The University of the South (Sewanee) near Chattanooga, TN hosts a summer music camp that is wonderful. My kids have obviously never attended (:)), but I have friends who did in high school. http://www2.sewanee.edu/ssmf/festival_about Interlochen is fabulous!! It's up in Michigan and a former choral professor of ours is there now, so I highly recommend it. I wish I had been able to go! http://www.interlochen.org/ Good luck to your son!

...I highly recommend laminating them. They're expensive cards and while the lamination adds to the price (unless you can borrow someone's laminator and do it yourself), it'll be worth it in the end.

...and I track 180 school days and what subjects we did, but not how many hours. Seatwork definitely doesn't take 4 hours a day, but if I were to add up all the "educational" activities my 5K-er does during the day it would easily reach 4 hours +. At least, most days it would! ;) We use HomeLife Academy and they ask you for days, not hours. I can't speak for Gateway or the other possible umbrella schools. We report grades twice a year (I get to do that for the first time next week). I was given the advice by other TN homeschoolers that while no, you don't have to register until 6 years old, it's a good idea to go ahead and register them for kindergarten. The reason being that while we think we're going to homeschool forever, there's no way to be sure just like you didn't know you'd be in TN four months ago! So even if you don't do formal curriculum with her, it might be wise to register for K so that down the road you don't have to "prove" that she went to K or do additional testing, reporting, etc etc etc.

I thought there was a thread comparing the US edition vs. Standards and now I can't find it. I'm looking into Singapore to use tandem with Miquon. Does it matter which edition we use? Their website makes it seem like it won't really matter.

Thanks for clearing that up. I was a little worried for a minute. :glare:

We, too, are part of a CC group and learn 8 a week for 20 weeks. This is our first year doing it and my kids are just beginning to read so they're memorizing the pictures. The greatest thing ever: hand motions! Without the hand motions, we'd be lost. My kids won't have them truly memorized at the end of this year, but next year I expect they'll be able to recite most of them in order, from memory. You can look on YouTube, there are plenty of groups that post videos of them doing the hand motions. We did all of them every week for the first 12 weeks, but when we start back in January we'll just focus on 6 weeks at a time. Typing them up to read in order has helped us, too. We play games with the VP cards like Go Fish (instead of pairs they ask for a chronological card-like a "match" for Tower of Babel would be either The Flood or Unification...). We do races to see who can put a small stack in order fastest. I also put out a handful of cards in order and they have to figure out what's missing. I'm trying to think of a way to record an mp3 of someone saying all the cards to put on a cd to listen to in the van when we're going hither, thither and yon.

Since they're attending the University, you could get them a gift card to either the campus coffee shop (might be a Starbucks!) or a gift card to the University bookshop. If they live locally, then a card to the closest music store would be totally appropriate. If you're looking for a "thing" to give, mechanical pencils (music themed, if you can find them at a music store) or books of staff paper. No music major ever had enough staff paper. :D

70 during the day (with the occasional bump up to 72 when my blood is running cold), 68 at night when we're supposed to be in bed. I'd turn it down lower at night, but my husband won't hear of it. He's the wimp!

...but did he eat spaghetti? Straight from the mouth of my 5.5 year old. Anyone know the answer? :lol:

We've had similar experiences of dropping off the weight chart. I won't go into it here. My advice is to not stop nursing right away, but definitely encourage high quality high calorie foods. Do the tests your pediatrician wants you to to ensure that your child is indeed getting appropriate nutrition (malnutrition can show up on a blood test). There may be a reason that she's not absorbing what she needs (like others have said, sensitivities, etc). Appropriate "tests" would be QBCs, a urinalysis, a consultation with a pediatric GI (who hopefully won't be a complete jerk like ours was) and a hand x-ray (to determine if her bones are developing appropriately for her age). It's scary to think about, but worth it. My daughters are TINY: one is 32 pounds at 5.5 years old and the other is 28 pounds at 4 years. My son (who had the most difficulty growing as an infant) is 26 pounds at 22 months...so every kid is different! Keep calm, think clearly and keep loving them so much that you'd endure posts from us strangers!

We might do the honey...in warm water, maybe? She can't have the ibuprofen, since she has an NSAID allergy. Maybe acetamenophin would reduce the swelling, too? We know she has spring allergies (for which she gets doped up with Claritin for a few months), but what could be causing them during the winter? Did the doctor say what those allergies could be, Lauren?

I never, ever would have thought to do that! My husband wouldn't let me give her the inhaler last night (and so we were up until after midnight until she finally quit coughing!). He worries a lot about drug interaction (we had given her the useless Delsym). So I called the pediatrician this morning and their thought is croup, and they said put the humidifier in her room, give her Mucinex during the day and the inhaler every 4-6 hours at night as she needs it. I'm intrigued by the idea of a reactive airway that isn't quite asthma. This kind of stuff happens a lot with my daughter and while she doesn't seem to have the definition of asthma, a weakened airway would explain it. I don't necessarily want to get a diagnosis, I just want her to sleep!! We've been to the pediatrician three times already this month for my son and I'm sure we've been exposed to every bug under the sun...here's hoping the inhaler works tonight and we can stay out of the doctor's office. Thank you for the great advice and ideas to think about!

By "inhaler" do you mean the albuterol inhaler that I have leftover from her summer pneumonia experience? :auto: to look in the medicine cabinet! Sounds like I need to call the pediatrician (again!) and talk to him about her cough. I'll tell him the Hive told me to. :D