Real Learning: Education in the Heart of My Home A Charlotte Mason Companion The Latin-Centered Curriculum Marva Collins' Way

Here's an easy way to search this board for exact terms using Google: Go to google and type in: site:http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums "the phrase you want" the word site is important, as is NO space between site and the URL. Put a space between the end of the URL and the beginning of your phrase. Put the phrase you want in quotes. So to search for logic stage you would type in site:http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums "logic stage" HTH! ETA: ahhhh, they are coming up as links here...you don't have to underline them or anything, just type in the letters as above

I completely understand. I'm the exact same way. :grouphug:

Joining you - I'm in constant declutter mode, but I need a challenge. :)

I think I'm in the minority with wanting Ecclesiastical pronunciation - we are Catholic and 99% of the Latin they'll hear (at Mass, in hymns, etc) will be Eccl. If we decide they'll continue with Latin past the basics, I'll introduce them to both pronunciations.

I think they are totally unnecessary, but I did like ours - they were relatively cheap and I'm pretty sure most people ate theirs - we bought a few bags of Hershey's Kisses and Hershey's Hugs (do they even make those anymore?) and wrapped two kisses and two hugs up in a little tulle. Hugs and Kisses. Cute, huh. :tongue_smilie: I think I was much goofier back then. ;)

Thought of one personal one (guess it's more like a vent :tongue_smilie:) - when people, like my parents, spend hand over fist on a new condo, new furntiure, tons of toys for my kids (that we TOLD them they didn't need and we didn't want), all to be "happy" and have "the American dream" - yet they were/are *highly* in debt and are now begging US for money. We're 7 of us to a 3BR 1200sf home, on borrowed/old furniture and nasty carpet with all our appliances aging out and 5 kids to put through college. Oh, and a huband who has a 50-50 chance of being unemployed come May. But they can ask us for money and make us feel guilty when we don't give. We have a substantial savings only because we scrimp and save and do without so that we can hopefully afford a bigger home (not huge, just bigger). OK, rant off. I guess it wan't a recession rant, but an "un-thrifty generation" rant. ;)

:grouphug::grouphug::grouphug: I'm so sorry...

This is me, word for word.

We liked The Burgess Bird Book for Children, which it looks like you can even see here for free. ETA: my dd liked Owls in the Family, but I admit I never read it. :)

Our new curriculum has lots of opportunities for memorization and daily practice of little "bites" of work - Latin vocab to memorize, one or two sentences to parse, an alegbra problem to do every day, spelling words for two dc, pesky mult. facts, etc. Does anyone have a neat system they use to organize and/or display these short daily tasks? I've heard of a card system for memorizing but can't find the thread...also, if I chose that I'd want a way to insert those daily practice items too, such as the sentence from MCT Practice Town to diagram or the Hands-on Equations problem to solve. I'd *love* to make it all work together in one system, hopefully somehow motivating. Any ideas? TIA!:bigear:

Let me start off by saying A) I'm not a realist, I just want everyone to be happy :lol: and B) I don't understand everything about economics. :tongue_smilie: I do see what you are saying here. I certainly don't want people to be out of jobs. I think my problems with the movies/entertainment industry is much deeper than just "that money could be sent to charity". I simply think the money could be *better* spent - on edifying activities instead of feeing into a system where stars get multimillion dollar contracts so they can live in huge mansions while the rest of us poor saps struggle. ;) And my problems start higher up than that - with the whole advertising/entertainment system which tries (and succeeds, in so many cases) to convince us we *need* so many things, that we *deserve* to be entertained. If we could all live more simply, there would be fewer problems, I think. And so I took it out on "going to movies". I do believe that if the movie industry wasn't there, there would be *other* jobs these people would have. What, I'm not sure. Like I said, I don't understand it all, but I also know that 100 years ago before movies, people had jobs, and they will again if/when the movie industry disappears because people listened to some silly homeschooling mom (me :lol:) spouting her mouth off on a message board. :tongue_smilie: Oh, I'm so bad at expressing myself. Not trying to argue - because I see where you are coming from! Maybe I should just step away... :auto:

My 40th birthday present was a certificate that said I could pick whatever house I wanted (that we could afford, of course - we were house hunting). Unfortunately, we had to stop house hunting before we picked anything, so I essentially got nothing for my birthday. :tongue_smilie: If I had known that, I would have asked for a week away at a silent retreat. We have four girls in a row. I need silent. At *least* a week. :lol:

We live in a small house *next* to yuppieville ;) and are amazed at just how many of those homes are going into forclosure/short sales right now. Honestly, though, since we've been house hunting, I do find it difficult to not get swayed by the newness and largeness of the homes after being squished here in a home badly in need of repair. :tongue_smilie: I know this is only a small amount of $$ per person, but I'm always amazed at the amount of money brought in by the movie industry. If everyone would just stay home from the movies for a few weeks and donate that money to charity instead, all *sorts* of problems could be solved!

Hey, another speech-language pathologist here. :) I don't think I could go back to it. I got my B.A. in biology/psychology, then the M.A. in Speech-Language Pathology. I worked just long enough to pay back my school loans, then quit a few months before dd #1 was born (I worked with severely emotionally disturbed adolescents and the risk of getting tackled, etc, was just too great :001_huh:). I *do* use a lot of what I've learned, however, in teaching my oldest with learning disabilities and my#2 dd with a hearing loss! I let my license lapse about 6 years ago. I'm pretty sure I would not want to go back in the same capacity, but I *love* working with severely disabled kids and communication devices, so maybe something like that if I needed to.

Teaching Textbooks Timez Attack Apologia Elementary books (Astronomy and Zoo 3 so far) Many, but not all, of the read alouds from SL Cores K-4 Ditto with the readers from SL 3-4 Will be keeping MCT's Town Level Hands-On Equations Keeping Prima Latina and LC1, but my youngers may have absorbed so much by the time they start Latin that I can at least drop PL I think there's more, but I'm drawing a blank. :001_huh:

This is what we have. It doesn't say it's wood, but it's a wood "look" and may really be wood (although it feels plastic-y to me :confused:) They have another, smaller board that says it's wooden framed, here. The frame on the wooden framed one looks just like the frame on mine, from the picture. ;)

Me too.And I forgot to say that I just put myself in a constant mindset of "do we really NEED this?" as I go about my life every day - so I don't need lots of time to declutter. We keep a box/bag downstairs, and as I'm hanging laundry, or cooking, or looking for something on our bookshelves, I'll think about the items I'm seeing in front of me and grab something I realize we can do without - into the box it goes, and out the door within the month.

We have a charity (National Children's Center, I believe) that comes right to our door about once a month. I believe other charities have home pick ups as well -- I know my neighbors use someone else but I'm not sure which charity. I probably would not be the crazy declutter I am if I had to pack it all in the car with the five kids and take it all to Goodwill myself, although I *do* do that occasionally.As for the baby stuff, I keep only a few select favorite clothes items, maybe 3-4 things tops? Just enough to bring back a memory or two. Probably better to just keep a *picture* of the kid in that outfit though! If you want your life to change, you have to just DO IT. In the end, these things are just THINGS. You may be upset that you gave something away, but grief is a normal reaction to loosing something - it doesn't mean you *shouldn't do it anyway*. Watch out though, decluttering can be addictive. It snowballs as you realize just how much better and easier your life can be without so much STUFF.

Thanks for mentioning those - they look like my cup of tea. :001_smile:

My fourth grader is doing: Grammar - MCT's Grammar Town and Latin (more on that later). Schoolhouse Rock videos and books like Ruth Heller's series have always been a part of our lives, so she has the basics down. Latin - I've recently been introduced to the "joys" of Latin study, and so we are a little behind of where I think their abilities lie (my 4th is doing this with my 6th grader). They are a few weeks into LC 1. I'm pretty sure we will go to First Form Latin next. Spelling - 4th grader is a natural speller so I'm punting here and not pushing it this year. I correct her spelling in her writing, etc. Writing - a homemade combo of MCT's Sentence Island and CW Aesop. My dd is a natural writer (is there such a thing? She's been writing stories reminiscent of American Girl books for years now, with some skill) but at the same time when you give her an assignment ("write a paragraph about XYZ that you've studied") she produces next to nothing. It's so strange. Hence me starting from scratch with some writing programs for her. Handwriting - This dd needs a little help in this area, so she does a page or two out of any random cursive book we have around (the styles are all very similar) Basically I just want her to spend a few minutes CARING about her handwriting, lol. Reading - I think we became burnt out last year on SL's core 4 - which we all loved, but we sped through it a bit and it was intense. So this year I haven't assigned reading yet, as long as she is reading something (and she is, at all times!). In the new year, though, I will start assigning more. I'm not exactly sure what yet, I think I'm going to hit some "great books" lists and try to pick out a few that she hasn't read yet for her age/level. Last year we kept a reading journal, where she could write anything she wanted to me about the chapter she just read, and I would respond. She hated it at first (see above paragraph about writing!) but it did grow on her and now she wonders why I'm not assigning it. :) I loved it because it freed me up to respond when I was able, instead of having to interrupt the diaper changes, helping 6th grader with math, breaking up a fist fight, etc that makes up our daily life. ;) Vocab - nothing formal here, we're getting this through Latin, reading, and daily conversations.

5, and it is with grief that we are chosing to try to avoid another for the forseeable future. I would love to adopt (I'm adopted), and dh is OK with that, but a baby would probably have to be dropped in our lap for that to happen.

We actually bought it in Nov. and gave it to the kids then as a combined double birthday/Christmas present. So Christmas was "lighter" this year - we did get some games from family!

I think the biggest hit here was a 4 game set of Nancy Drew Mystery Games. I haven't seen so much shrieking and jumping up and down in a long time (from the gift receiver AND her sisters, lol). Also hits were some Wii games...and the food (junk) in their stockings. :) Only one real miss (some books).

:grouphug: