I have to agree. The Duggars have placed their children in as close to an institutional setting as is possible and still call it "home." IMHO, having a wonderful family is about quality, not quantity. I can't, in my heart of hearts, believe for one second that the need of those children to have individual, undivided attention from their mother is even remotely met. I know how much individual attention a small child needs, and being handed off to a sibling that should be doing kid things instead of raising her mother's children is not how to do it. Just my opinion.

Call the Orkin man?

Please. For $50,000 an episode, you'd manage.

:drool:

Thank you for so many wise words. I particularly appreciate the different perspectives. I'd love to hear more opinions. Thanks so much for your counsel.

You have to wonder how a woman with 20 kids can give any of them the attention they need. It seems like the older kids are raising their younger sibs while mom preens for the camera. Just my humble opinion -- I don't watch their show.

We've had a hand-crank, and I have to say it was fun exactly one time. After the novelty wore off, nobody wanted to stand there and crank for half an hour or 40 minutes. :(

1 bag of frozen mixed berries 3/4 cup sugar 2 cups half-and-half 1. Put the frozen berries in a glass bowl, sprinkle them with sugar, and nuke for 3 or 4 minutes until they're thawed. Use a spoon to mix in the sugar as much as possible. 2. Put the thawed sweetened berries in a food mill with a small mesh to sort out the seeds. (I very often make two or three times as much as I need and freeze the one or two extra portions of fruit puree -- no point in washing out my food mill twice.) 3. Add the half and half, stir and put back in the freezer for 10 minutes to make it real cold. 4. When it's nice and chilled, pour into the ice cream machine and stand back! Yum! I often do steps 1 and 2 a day or two in advance. In fact, I have sweetened berry puree in my freezer now, so all I have to do is thaw a few minutes on the counter, mix with half and half, and voila! Ice cream in three minutes. Enjoy.

Call your PM. Call every day until someone calls you back. They depend on your vote to keep their lousy jobs. :grouphug:

We had a small party (six children ages 9-11) at my house last night. The kids played legos, ate pizza, spent a couple of hours in the pool, and played war games -- both boys and girls. This afternoon I got an email from a good friend who was appalled that the kids had pointed a (plastic) gun at her son. She vented for five or six rambling paragraphs about how she loathes guns and how her son had nightmares for days after last time they played here. In the middle of all of this, her son had a meltdown while everyone else was in the pool. He did not want to go in the pool. Her son is atypical -- on the Asperger spectrum, but not autistic. He has to be prompted to greet people and to look at them when he greets or speaks to them. He did not go in the pool with the children -- all he wanted to do was play with his DS and when his mother forbade it he had a giant meltdown. She hovers over him constantly and feeds his anxiety. She constantly mediates his environment, which I consider crippling, but I've never had to deal with an atypical child like this. The constant hovering and mediating is annoying to say the least -- it's everyone else's fault when her son is upset. She now wants us to draw up "rules" for joint activities that forbid the children to play war games when they meet. She is afraid that the children will not be able to tell play time from real time and that they will actually kill each other or someone else. I have to disagree. My ds is 10 -- has been playing with toy guns since he was 6 or 7 and had never attempted to murder anyone. He is sweet, nurturing, and compassionate. He adores his dogs, treats them like his babies. And he likes to put on camo and go in the bushes with a plastic gun and a couple of buddies. How would you handle this? I'm not going to have a "no war games" rule in my house. Nobody else was upset except her child. All the other children were running around the back yard screeching with happiness. I love my friend and I understand that she is dealing with limitations and circumstances I never have had to deal with. At the same time, I'm not planning to make my son and everyone else's kids conform to a set of rules designed to accommodate her son. Please help. Give me some insights. I can use your advise. Thanks.

Amazon is cheaper. Once a year I buy the shipping package for $25. For the rest of the year, I buy books in ones and twos (no $25 minimum) and don't pay shipping or tax. You can't beat Amazon prices with a stick.

We bought the whole package - CD's, Textbook, Answer Key. It turns out all we use is the CD's. Ds sits at his computer, works through each problem, and if he needs to jot it down to work through, he just uses scrap paper, and types in his answer.

Uploaded the rest this morning.

I'm creating resources as I go along -- we're up to Chapter 2 now. There are my notes on all the resources I'm using for each chapter, penmanship worksheets with chapter vocabulary, and a test for each chapter. The test is similar to the one on the publisher's website, but I added one or two things that I felt were needed. If you can't click through, you can download everything at http://theexaminedlife.org/enrichment/downloads.html Enjoy. Chapter 1 Notes Mnemonic for Classifications Chapter 1 Penmanship Worksheet Chapter 1 Test Chapter 2 Notes Chapter 2 Cursive Worksheet Chapter 2 Manuscript Worksheet Chapter 2 Test

We used YSC kits last year with Noeo Science. We found the kits to be of very poor quality. In one instance, a kit was supposed to bring a magnifying lens to tuck into a tube and make a scope. The kit came a cheap magnifying glass with a handle! Did no one read the instructions before they put the kit together? Obviously, there was no way to tuck it into the tube. Eventually we worked around it by just holding the lens. It was cheap and you couldn't see anything out of it. That and other small annoyances made us switch. We won't be using them again.

I'm teaching a small group of 4-6th graders about plant and animal cells. I'd like to come up with a tactile way for them to understand cells--build a 3-d model of each somehow. :bigear: I need ideas, please. :bigear: Many thanks.

Wow, thank you! As it happens, we're using the Mike Venezia books for art history and the presidents this year. This stuff will come in very handy. I'll pass it on to my co-op. We're all using this stuff this year. :party:

This is my fifth year homeschooling ds. I still love it. I gave up a lucrative and exciting career to stay home with my son. All my friends said I was bat-crazy. They said in two years tops I'd be back in the work force. You know what? They were wrong. This is the best job I've ever had. This is much higher stakes than my old job. There is nothing else in the world I would want to be doing. This was the right choice for our family and we are much, much better for it. I'll stop homeschooling when ds goes to college.

Your schedule seems fine to me. I don't see anything missing. I have a couple of observations: Math seems a bit long. At that age, we were doing math for 30 minutes. If 45 minutes works well for your kids, then that's fine. It would not have gone down well here. :) The other observation I have is that 2-3 hours of reading aloud sounds nice, but who has three hours? I check out audio books from my library and we listen to them in the car, during quiet time, while ds plays legos, any time he feels like it, really. I do still read to him every day, but the bulk of his read-aloud time is in the form of audio books. I think you're doing a great job. Congratulations on bringing your little one home to learn.

My son slants his paper only slightly when he writes. He seems comfortable writing that way, and I don't really care as long as he writes correctly and comfortably. I do care about the way he forms his letters, and correct him if necessary. He's pretty good about it, and is proud of his great handwriting.

We started with Saxon Math in first grade. Within one week, ds was in tears when he saw the books. The relentless, mindless repetition made him hate it. I stuck it out for a month (which in retrospect was a huge error) and ended up having to drop math altogether for several months while ds got over his visceral hatred of the subject. Once ds was decompressed, we started with Singapore Math. That made all the difference in the world. DS loves it. We supplement with Teaching Textbooks which ds considers a "game." IMHO, two hours spent on math every day is way too much unless your kids are loving it. Hope you find a system/schedule that works out.

http://www.cybershala.com/ I contacted them a few weeks ago for a free trial. The guys is really nice and he called back to make arrangements. In the end I decided to go with TeachingTextbooks, but I didn't evaluate the Cybershala program. It looks like it's worth looking at.

Not so much. We've been using binders here for five years and it's still "click, click, click!" every day. :)

I wouldn't cut off a piece of my son's body to "pre-empt" a disease. That's what condoms and good sense are for. By that standard, I would also have to have his appendix and wisdom teeth removed just in case they ever give him trouble in the future. Oh, and we should also remove the gall bladder -- you know how that can go bad. As to AIDS, try using circumcision as your mode of protection. And last, my favorite argument: "But they won't remember the pain." Bullsh*t. If you rationalize it that way, then we should conduct all surgery on Alzaheimer's patients without anesthesia. After all, they won't remember the pain. Please -- ritual mutilation of children is sooooooo last millennium. By boy was born perfect. I did not feel compelled to amputate any part of him.

Yes, of course! Why would we conduct our business in the evening or weekends? We're out during the day all the time. Evenings and weekends are for family time and fun. Go out. Go to the beach. Have a good time!