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VA6336

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Everything posted by VA6336

  1. My blog's at blogspot and I've been using FF for around 6 months. Way fewer crashes in general, and no problems with the blog.
  2. There's a website from which you can download "Math Resource Studio Lite" for free...ah, here it is: http://www.schoolhousetech.com/BasicMath/Default.aspx I've downloaded it, but haven't spent the few minutes figuring out how to use it yet. It makes custom math worksheets.
  3. There are two "presentation" portions of the CC program. One is that during opening assembly (or whatever your director calls it) one family a week does a presentation (3-5 mins). My friend is in a full community in OK and they have to do one family presentation during the first 12 weeks and one during the second 12 weeks. The other presentation is an individual presentation that your child will do just in front of her class. For the 4s & 5s it's very short (1-2 mins), usually show and tell based and tends to be interactive with the tutor. Ideally, she'd do one every week in front of her class but I've heard of some communities who don't have every kid present every week. It's there to give them the opportunity practice basic public speaking skills and of course, some are terrified! Some take right to it, some won't say a word, etc. It can be hard for them, but that's why we do it-to help them become comfortable with that skill. As a first-year homeschooler, I'm so very grateful for CC! I still have the freedom to choose my own curriculum (phonics, math, history, etc) but I have some accountability for the memory work. I know I would have let that slide if it wasn't for CC.
  4. We live in Memphis. If you can get a job in the medical profession, there are tons here (from what I hear) since we have two nursing colleges and...at least four major hospitals. There is a huge (200+ families) Catholic homeschool group spread all over the area. I think we're just over your 10 hour limit from Chapel Hill. Memphis isn't um, scenic, but we're close enough to some landscape that one can survive. Chattanooga is much prettier. There are many Catholic churches in the Diocese of Memphis, which spreads from northern state line to the southern state line, bordered on the east by Jackson, TN and on the west by the MS river and Arkansas. As far as jobs are concerned, there are three major colleges (Christian Brothers University, Rhodes College and the University of Memphis) as well as numerous community colleges. We're a "major metroplitan" area and the county seat, so I know the legal community is always hiring. I'm not from here originally and honestly hope we'll get to move further north eventually, but it's a great place to homeschool and not a half bad place to live. Hope that helps! Footnote: and regarding cost of living, it's quite low. If you're not bent on living in a huge house in the suburbs, you could find a decent sized house in a decent area for $1,000 a month to rent. A gallon of milk runs around $2.35 a gallon right now, right there with gas at $2.40 a gallon.
  5. I'll join in bumping it. I'm using PP with my 4 & 5 year olds, but just as phonics since their handwriting skills aren't ready for spelling lessons yet. I think we'll just go back and I'll dictate words from each "section", moving quickly through short vowel sounds up to p. 86 or so. Then when we hit ones they're getting wrong, we'll slow down and do spelling lists for each "section" (by "section" I guess I mean each phonics rule like "-ing" words). But I don't know, since we haven't done it. So...bump!
  6. They are so, so easy (pun intended)! My mom makes one for each of my kids, getting it on sale for around $5 a yard. She has a friend with an embroidery machine who puts the kid's name on one piece of the fleece before we tie them together. My eldest's is 5 years old, slept with every night and is holding up great. My middle daughter is a chewer and occasionally we have to tie one or two strips back together. The only advice I have is don't buy the cheapest fleece. Paying a little extra for the higher quality fleece will add years onto it's lifespan.
  7. You know, it took me a second to figure out why your response was funny, Jenn in MO. Maybe that's why I need help with memorization!! :D
  8. A few weeks ago someone posted a link for a book, I think it was on lulu.com. The book was supposedly about memorization techniques. I was hoping to read it, but now I can't find the link. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? On the same subject, what books/e-books/articles do you recommend for someone looking to expand her toolbox of memorization techniques?
  9. Unless the community is full, I'm surprised that you have to sign up by January. Fees aren't usually due that early (in my experience), so again, unless it's a full group with a waiting list... I agree with everyone who has said: talk to the director! Visit! Meet some tutors! Tell them your concerns and they will be honest with you. I'm a tutor in a first-year community and I know that our director is willing to answer endless questions. The parents of our students are "all over the map" when it comes to how much CC they do at home. We present the memory work and do review previous weeks' but we haven't pushed competitiveness and try to keep the emotions at a minimum by not putting the kids in situations that would instigate them. Some of our parents spend time working with their kids, while others let CC be a supplement and don't fret about it. Some of the memory work will definitely "go in one ear and out the other" if your daughter is still working on auditory processing skills. Most of the material you can find visuals and hands-on activities to reinforce at home with. I have a 4K and a K-er in the program and they're doing fine. We don't push it too much at home, but listen to the audio cds in the van and do the online tutorials on C3. There are some pieces of memory work that are just, well, random, and have never registered with my girls. All that to say: talk to the director! She's the best person to ask. :001_smile:
  10. Yes, you could use it at home and do CC secular. If you're in a community, it would be much more difficult to avoid Christianity. CC uses Veritas Press history timeline cards which are Biblical in perspective, so you might skip that section. The History Sentences are really broad in perspective. The memory work "subjects" in the Foundations guide are Math, English Grammar, Science, Geography, Latin, History Sentence, and History Timeline. There are also sections on Fine Arts (music theory, music history, basic art instruction and art history) and Science Experiment but they are both hands-on materials and not memory work. In addition to the Foundations guide which has all the memory work written out with the essential maps, CC also produces audio cds, resource cds and online tutorials to go along with the work. I don't think we would be having nearly as much success with memory work if I hadn't had the CC materials to "show me the way." That said, I know there are materials out there that give different ways to present memory work once you've decided what that is for you...but of course, I can't find the notebook I've kept that stuff in. :glare:
  11. Classical Conversations is AWESOME for what you're describing. Even if you don't choose to join a community, you might want to invest in the Foundations Guide. It has three 24 week cycles of memory work designed for 4K-6th grade. Having a logical, written down (where somebody else did all the legwork!) plan for memory work has been the best thing we've chosen so far. It's laid out a week at a time so it's easy to see how much they should do each week. Even with CC, my daughters go through "not knowing" their MW, too. There are just some days they aren't interested in spouting off the information. I have to be sneaky and play games with them. They love doing Candyland with an extra draw pile of flashcards with MW questions on them. In order to move the way the Candyland card says they have to answer the MW question. You could do that with almost any board game. So games help, but another way is listening to it on an audio cd. They absorb it without us feeling like I'm banging it into their heads. Games and audios are our biggest helps with MW besides drill.
  12. Wow, there are a lot of really great ideas on here! We started using http://www.couponmom.com back in the spring and it has made a huge difference (but I wasn't really using coupons before that). We got a discounted Sunday newspaper subscription, so I add the $8 to our monthly grocery/household bill. I shop at Sam's Club regularly and while I'm not an organic food buyer for the most part, I have been impressed with the selection they have in addition to what I consider "normal" stuff. For things like laundry detergent, paper towels and toilet paper I'm rarely able to buy enough of it on sale at the grocery store (combined with coupons) to make it last any length of time and they are always cheaper at Sam's. If Costco was closer, we'd shop there, too. I have started substituting rags for paper towels on occasion and I've been surprised at how such a simple thing has cut down on our paper usage. For my family of 5 (small ones: a 5 yr old, a 4 yr old and a 1.5 yr old) we spend around $400 a month for grocery and household items. Not $100 a week, since I go to Sam's twice and the grocery store once or twice in a month, but it evens out by the end of the month. Good luck!
  13. I'm only a first year homeschooler, but it sure sounds to me like no matter what route you end up taking (boxed, or simplifying your current curriculum) you need to give yourself a short vacation! You need time to think, clean, organize and prepare. If you go with a boxed curriculum, will you wonder if you've taken the "easy" way out by scrapping all your other great ideas? I say take a week (or two if you need it) to make your decision carefully, get the house ready, reward everyone at the end of it with a field trip and then plunge back in.
  14. My daughter received a set for her 4th birthday. They are very easy to put together (they actually stay together) and take apart again. She was given the ones that make bug-robot looking things. She did them a few times, but now they're sitting in the corner, lonely. I think if she had two or three times the number of blocks, she might enjoy it, but with the construction toys you already have, I wouldn't waste any money on them!
  15. We had a similar cash flow problem and started to run up some cc debt, too. My father-in-law suggested that we get an auto loan on one of our paid-off vehicles. The interest rate was much lower (4.75%!!!) and we could rest easier knowing that auto debt is much less damaging than cc debt on a credit report, and we could build up our savings and remain living within our means. It worked wonderfully.
  16. You might consider that if you intend to stay in the house for three or more years that it wouldn't be worth paying down your mortgage more quickly until you're fully funding your other long-term savings. A house is the best investment you can make and with a reasonable interest rate (4.5-5.5%) on a 30 year loan, you'll make more money by funding your retirement and other savings over the length of your mortgage than if you paid off the mortgage. If you're already funding your long term savings, don't have any credit card debt and are living well within your means, then I guess your choices would be to invest in home improvements or to pay off the mortgage. Then, it's totally up to you! Dave Ramsey has good advice, but remember that everyone has a unique situation and that blanket advice doesn't apply to everyone. As an alternative and another good viewpoint, you might look at Bert Whitehead's book, Why Smart People Do Stupid Things With Money.
  17. Woo-hoo! At least now we know there's two of us. :001_smile:
  18. We're doing CC with my 4K and Kindergartners and while I had intended to do CC day + 4 school days, it's really working out to be CC + 3 school days. That fourth day we've ended up spending doing all the fun stuff that homeschoolers get to do like going to the library, zoo, nature center, etc. Maybe I'm not pushing the math as much as I should, but I'm finding that retention isn't a problem. We did start our school year about 6 weeks before CC started and we'll keep going another 6 weeks after it ends. That makes our school year about 36 weeks long with a nice long break in December. So it works out this year to August-end of November, then beginning of January-beginning of May (or something like that, don't quote my spring end date!). I guess we're "sort-of-year-rounders."
  19. I'm hoping to find other classical homeschoolers in the Memphis area. We live in East Memphis. Anyone out there? There's another thread for Tennessee, but it seems to be overwhelmingly middle to eastern Tennesseans.
  20. We're using Phonics Pathways with Starfall.com and Bob books and it's working really well. When my oldest gets tired (and cranky) reading out of the PP, we use the white board and I usually just copy out the words and sentences onto the board. I had a little trouble getting started with PP because there is SO much on one page. A good friend suggested a blank piece of paper to cover what we weren't looking at and it's been fabulous. It helps with the visual tracking and keeps both my girls from being overwhelmed. I really like that in the newest edition there are lots of games included in the text that are easy to use and flexible for many different lessons. Another friend of mine is using OPGTR and one of the differences we've noticed is that OPGTR teaches the end of three letter words, while PP teaches the beginning of them. For example, her son learned in OPGTR "-at" and "-ot" then was taught "c-at" and "c-ot." In PP, my daughters learned "ca-" and "co-" and then added ending consonants. Hope that helps!
  21. That's great to know that there's a Yahoo group for CWH, I'll look for it tonight. I didn't know there was a Catholic WTM group, either. Where do I find it? We just have volume 1, and it's my understanding that only volumes 1 & 2 are published so far. It definitely looks preparation-intensive! I don't intend to start using it until next fall with my what-will-be first grader and kindergartners. For those of you that have looked at it, do you think the reading lists are enough? Do they cover what needs to be covered or am I going to find big holes?
  22. No one?? AAHH! If no one on here has used it, surely I'm in trouble....
  23. My 5 and 4 year olds practice piano first thing in the morning while I'm setting up for our day (or doing the breakfast dishes, or changing a diaper, or running the trash down to the street before the trash truck passes us again...).
  24. I'm considering using Connecting With History as our history backbone next year and I'm hoping that some of you have some comments about it for me. Any thoughts?
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