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dcurry

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About dcurry

  • Birthday 03/15/1969

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  • Biography
    I am a Christian, homeschooling Mom to 5 children ages 15, 13, 9, 7, & 5. (4 boys & a girl).
  • Location
    Southern California
  • Interests
    teaching, scrapbooking, games, sudoku, reading
  • Occupation
    SAHM
  1. We use a Panasonic auto-stop electric pencil sharpener, and it's the best I've ever used. It plugs in, no batteries. Before this one was given to me (used), we didn't have a decent one and I thought I had tried them all. I didn't see it on Amazon- it's small & rectangular (grey/black) I don't see a model number or I'd post one. I wish I could be of more help. I would trust Panasonic after this one, though.
  2. You could tell them that you are moving because you need both of your daughters to be in the same troop. I probably wouldn't elaborate any more than that, but you do need to let them know you'll still be leading a troop and that you will be around. Do they have someone new already to take over for you?
  3. It is true that there are many opportunities at a large church. There are more than enough resources available for both you and your children. On the other hand, it is easy to get lost in a large church. It is easy enough to attend without getting involved. It would be really overwhelming for my children to be in such large classes. It would be really overwhelming for me to deal with crowds when we attended. It's a personal preference. It is possible to be very involved in a large church, as it is a smaller one. It's easier to "slip through the cracks" in a larger one, but also easier to find the services/support you are looking for.
  4. You don't really need materials yet for his age. If he's testing so high and is already reading, I'd just keep reading aloud to him (for pronunciation, vocabulary & comprehension skills), and work on addition & subtraction facts (that will help him much later). If he can count to 100, you're good in the math dept. through Kindergarten. If he's interested, you could get a kindergarten workbook (any) and go through that with him. My daughter was reading in kindergarten, and I just got her a huge workbook that had all the subjects and she worked through it whenever she wanted to (which was every day for a couple pages). She read the directions herself, and then did the pages- which was easy for her to do, but gave her something to do and made sure I didn't miss anything she should have known (like telling time, etc). (That was a hard year for us because of a younger child who needed special attention and a baby). If it's not required in your state to have him enrolled in school next year, you might just want another year of enjoying him and doing whatever you both find fun. Especially with two toddlers in the house. :)
  5. I'm not sure how many toys, etc. you have, but that may play into who gets the bonus room. Your daughter & baby could share one room. The younger boys should share a room with different bedtimes, and the oldest probably needs his own space. If your oldest has the bonus room, you may tell him that it is the playroom & his sleeping room so that your daughter & he can both play in there w/o the younger children getting into small parts. If it's as big as my sister's bonus room, it's big enough to even put a room divider in if he wants and separate the play space from the sleeping/changing space. We have a 15yob, 13yog, and three boys 10, 8, and 6. I'd love for my oldest to have his own room (he would too), but for now, my 13 yo daughter gets the tiny room by herself, and my 4 boys share a room. We are working on a room divider for their room- my oldest has a loft bed and his stuff on his half of the room. The other half of the room has a bunk & trundle bed for the three younger boys, and their dressers/toys are in the closet. It's very squished in there, but it's what we have for now. They do have some trouble getting to sleep at night, but I try to stagger bedtimes too.
  6. We've only done a couple- Astronomy, and Zoology 1 (flying creatures). We are doing Zoology 2 (swimming creatures) next year. My kids have loved all of them. They are also very hand's-on. If you get the notebook, there will be some writing and cut & fold books to do that are fun. We have avoided Botany because it seemed uninteresting to me, but I know someone who did that one and said it was really good. There appear to be hands-on activities for all of them. I think Astronomy was my favorite so far.
  7. :iagree: For that age, 2 hours/day OR a "field trip" would be plenty. I'd skip formal school on any day you are out for the morning. I didn't do formal school with my 5 year old this year. We read when we had the opportunity, and he sat in on brothers science & history. But I do understand the stress/pressure you feel for your first. Relax & enjoy your time with him at least for another couple of years.
  8. You & your husband need to respect her parenting decisions. Encouraging a teenager to deliberately and secretly go against her parents wishes is much more serious than slipping a 3 year old a sip of diet coke. However, even this small thing causes you to give your mom the "stink eye". It's the idea of undermining the parent's authority in either case. If you & your dh take off for an hour or two to see Harry Potter and then join the rest of the family, it shouldn't need to be a huge issue. I wouldn't encourage any of them to do something that's against their conscience. And family may need to be more important than Harry Potter.
  9. For some kids, it would work. You could always start them out together in everything, and then if the youngest falls behind or gets overwhelmed you could re-evaluate at that time. If he is interested & wants to participate, I'd just plan on teaching them together. Certainly include him in everything aside from reading, math, and maybe writing. But it's possible he'd keep up with those, too.
  10. If it was a textbook, it is allowed to have some highlighting. But the sender is supposed to notify the receiver with that information before sending it. If you want it even with the stuff it has in it, I'd not put "with a problem" but would instead let them know in the part where it says, "Is there anything you'd like to tell the sender?" I'd put that I would have preferred to know about the highlighting & check marks before it was sent, and that they should let the receiver know next time. I'd also mention it in the part where it says, "Is there any other information you'd like paperbackswap to know". It's nice if they have that information so they can inform what to do for next time.
  11. :iagree: If a word is not part of their vocabulary, they are just trying to sound it out. Also, my kids were reading early, and much of their vocabulary building came from reading to themselves. So for my kids, it's common for them to mispronounce normal words that *are* part of their vocabulary since they read them before they heard them, and weren't corrected early on. We do correct mispronunciations when we hear them, which is a good reason to have them read out loud even after they are reading well. (Until at least 4th grade or so).
  12. Well.... I'm certain you're home by now... did you pick one? I guess you'd be too busy with the new pup to update. Or maybe I missed it?
  13. We are doing Zoology 1 now, and planning on Zoology 2 next year. I suppose if you are doing one lesson/week instead of taking 2 weeks to do a lesson, you could finish two books in one year. It depends too on how much time you devote to science and how much extra stuff you do (experiments, journals, etc). I'm sure your older one could get through two books in one year. You might want to spread out the reading for your younger one, though. My younger kids can sit through 1/2 a lesson's reading in one sitting, so if we did science daily, we could finish each lesson in a week. They are K, 2nd, and 4th grade this year.
  14. I like your pros. I don't see any cons. For one thing, you could always grab the books for the current subject and have her work at the dining room table while you are making lunch. Baby monitor for while the baby is sleeping. It would be a *great* place to store all of the reference materials, charts, timelines, books not currently being used, etc. without having them all over the house. If you have the option for a school room, I would certainly make one. Do the main teaching there during a time convenient for you. Let her do her reading & independent work upstairs at the table (unless she *wants* a quiet place to work away from everyone). My husband likes everything school-related confined to one room. He thinks it makes the home look cluttered and not "nice" when there is a timeline that runs all around the walls into the living room, etc.
  15. Thank you so much for the explanation about titers, and for your thoughts & comments. I am pro-vaccine, too, but am so hesitant to give them to two of my children. Seems they should have found a better way by now to minimize risk.
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