We like Royal Fireworks Press' Aesop series. I'm planning on doing that in 1st/2nd grade with my youngest and then moving into MCT Island from there. Oh, and we do Writing With Ease, which has you talk about stuff like parts of speech, punctuation, etc. as you come to them in copywork. I feel like that's plenty of grammar for 1st and 2nd grade.

Right, and I guess if a girl scrapes her knee, she's supposed to cry for an hour and then go lie down for the rest of the day. Which seems a little backwards to me, actually, given that it's the girls who are likely to grow up and go through childbirth...

I guess what I don't get is what overreacting to a scraped knee has to do with gender?

DS just finished Singapore 5, and it dealt with percents a fair amount. I just looked up the final review section, and it has problems like, "The cost of a TV set was $640. Mr. Chen sold it at 10% above the cost price. Find the selling price."

Ha--me, too! DH is a math teacher, so I'd love to just turn it all over to him. But he has that pesky teaching job that doesn't leave him a whole lot of time for obsessing over curriculum choices. Maybe he'll have time to do that over the summer :D. It's his fault I wound up with this mathy kid after all!

I've thought of that, too, but it sounds so overwhelming! ooh! So getting things wrong is a built in part of the program? Yeah, DS would not be happy about that.

...or, of course, to make things even MORE complicated, I could always throw NEM into the mix of options. Sigh.

DS9 (10 next month) is currently flying through Singapore 6A. I think he has 5 exercises plus a review section left. He started it a month and a half ago. We don't really school through the summer, but I do plan to have him do a few minutes of math most days (largely because his younger brother needs to do math, and I don't want to deal with charges of unfairness). So it seems quite likely that he'll finish 6B by early fall, and I'll have to figure out what to do next. I thought I had already done this. I was all set to get Art of Problem Solving's pre-algebra when it comes out. I was very pleased with this plan. But then I started looking at Singapore's Discovering Mathematics, and now I've thought myself into a corner, and I don't know what to do! Here, I guess, is the main issue: DS has a big perfectionist streak and a low tolerance for frustration. We tried supplementing with Life of Fred pre-algebra earlier this year, and it was a big disaster because he could not handle getting any questions wrong on the bridges. And, of course, that's the way it's set up; it's OKAY to get a couple wrong on the first try. Then you try again. He doesn't like that system. It's an ongoing struggle. So...I'm worried that AOPS might drive us both insane. He wants to KNOW what to do and how to do it. And I hear good things about DM, and, hey, Singapore's worked great for us thus far. He enjoys it, he does well with it, I know from his ITBS scores that it's working really well for him in a measurable, objective way. So. If it ain't broke? As far as I can tell, both programs would get him to the same place at about the same time. But. I also think that he NEEDS to break through this fear of getting the answer wrong/fear of trying thing at some point, and that maybe AOPS could help him do that. Math seems like the safest subject for him to work through the issues...I mean, eventually you know you have the right answer with a math problem, right? Umm, or maybe I shouldn't take the subject he feels the most confident in and destroy his confidence. And that's where I get...thinking in circles. Thoughts? WWYD?

Thanks everyone! The DC by Foot tour looks great; thanks for the link! I just talked to the kids about it, and I think we've narrowed it down to either the DC by Foot tour or the Natural History Museum. The only problem with the tour is we're staying 2 1/2 hours south of DC the night before, and the tour starts at 10, so we'd need to get a really early start (after getting to the hotel late the night before). I'd love to do a White House tour, but I think it'll be better when my youngest is older (and I suspect we're too late to reserve it for this year anyway). My kids aren't big zoo fans for some reason, and we have pandas at our zoo here, so I think that's out. And, oddly, they all declared, "NOT the Air and Space Museum!" They're kind of strange children :) ETA: I'm also thinking of Mt. Vernon...but only if we can figure out a way to spend more time there, I think. I don't want to pay for it and then feel rushed to get through it in a couple of hours

Here's a link to my tentative schedule for next year. Ari is the one who'll be in 5th grade. Here's his part, typed out: 8:00-8:30: poetry and Bible (with brothers) 8:30-9:15: math (Singapore 6 until he finishes it, then AOPS pre-algebra) 9:15-10:00: Spanish for Children/spanish homework/Greek for Children 10:00-10:45: logic or writing (i.e. work on writing assignments from other subjects) 10:45-11:30: assigned reading 11:30-12:30: lunch and break 12:30-1:15: MCT Voyage, Killgallon, literature 1:15-2:45: history or science 2:45-3:15: rotating geography, art, drawing, music (with brothers) 3:15-3:45: piano ....we're NOT early risers, historically. We have to work on that. And this is for the 3 days a week when we're usually home all day. I still have to figure out what to take out and how to tweak it for our out of the house days.

Ha! that's awesome! And that dog DOES look kinda like Ollie. He has the same headlights over the eyes. Interestingly, Wisdom Panel doesn't have Kelpie (but does have Catahoula) listed as a breed it tests for. Maybe whenever they encounter it, they just call it Irish Setter :D

Yeah, I know there are no guarantees when it comes to dogs and chickens, but I figure it doesn't hurt to have genetics on our side...we've had good luck with our herding dog mixes and the chickens (and the dogs are never out with the chickens when we're out of earshot; I just want to be able to let them out to pee without worrying too much). The cats and other dogs things are bigger dealbreakers, really. and the little dog thing. I really want a little dog next time...so I'm kind of in the market for one of those elusive big dogs in a little dog body.

We're driving up to Mass this summer, hoping to spend 3-4 hours in DC doing...something, then meeting up for a quick visit with DH's aunt and uncle in Silver Springs, MD before getting out of the area before rush hour. Last year we saw the American history museum and walked by a few of the monuments on the mall. Kids are 3 boys, 5 1/2 to 10. What would you do?

yay! I'm used to herding. Our big some-kind-of-herding-dog-maybe-a-Bergamasco chases the chickens, but it just annoys them; I'm reasonably sure he wouldn't actually hurt them. That I don't mind.

I have another thread about how we got our perfect dog (the 16 year old) DNA tested and got the results today. some of the findings are a little suspect, but apparently (the part I'm willing to believe) he's half Jack Russell. But then I read a few horror stories about Jack Russells and cats today that make me nervous....

yes...my research on the scrappy little terrier breeds has revealed the following issues: bad with cats, bad with chickens, tendency toward dog aggression. Harumph. My list might be back down to Corgi.

Mine is reading Detectives in Togas for school. On his own, he's reading The Magician's Nephew, Roald Dahl's The Witches, and the 5th Harry Potter (I'm not sure how he keeps up with them all, but for some reason he likes to have half a dozen books going at the same time).

Ha--really?! What else did they say?

My mom does Cocker rescue, so she's had probably hundreds of cockers come through her house. The first thing she said when I told her was, "well, I can guarantee you he's not a cocker!" He was also completely housebroken by the time he was 8 weeks old, and that doesn't seem very cocker-like, based on what I've seen :lol:

Oh, I know; we'll never find another one like him :(. It's mostly just curiosity. It's not terribly expensive--I paid $59 for this one. I probably won't really do another one. I poked around a little, and I can't find another one that tests for nearly as big a variety of breeds as the one I got, anyway.

interesting! I just googled it...yep, there sure are. I wonder if they're right about the cocker spaniel, and are just missing something where they stuck in irish setter. I'm pretty sure I'll never be convinced he's got any Irish setter in him :D

I was thinking the same thing about cattle dogs...but I also don't know much about DNA :)

:D thanks!

I can't really remember my original reasons for thinking cattle dog. His obedience teacher when he was a puppy (the one who said of him, and I quote, "he's obviously very quick, and very bright, and you can see that in everything that he does." See? best dog ever) said she thought he was part cattle dog for sure. I think it's a combination of markings--the blue merle, which he actually doesn't have much of now, but it was very clear when he was a puppy--and his personality. He's kind of like a slightly more needy, more driven terrier. But I was perfectly willing to give up on cattle dog (my mother thinks I'm crazy for thinking he's cattle dog) if they'd given me an alternative that made any sense. Of course, there's always a chance that he is part spaniel, and the genes are just very well hidden. But I've read such mixed things about the DNA tests accuracy to start with, that I went into it with a lot of skepticism, so I'm less inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. It's interesting, though....I started a thread a few days ago talking about dog breeds because I have two senior dogs now and am thinking ahead about what breeds/mixes might be a good fit next time we get a dog...a couple of people mentioned Jack Russell. I've always thought I didn't much care for Jack Russells (we knew a lot of them when we did flyball)....but maybe we should give them another look after all!

I have a 16 year old mutt who is, of course, The Best Dog Ever. I got him at the shelter when he was a 5 or 6 week old puppy, and I was a 20 year old college student with my first apartment. Since he is The Best Dog Ever, I've always wondered exactly what ingredients went into him. My best guess was Australian Cattle Dog and Rat Terrier, or at least some kind of little terrier (he's around 22 pounds, so it had to be something small if I was right about Cattle Dog). Last time I checked, a couple of years ago, none of the dog DNA tests I found tested for either of those breeds, AND I'd heard very mixed reviews of their accuracy, so I never got one. But then, when someone posted a thread about it here a few weeks ago, I revisited the issue, and discovered that Wisdom Panel lists both ACD and Rat Terrier now in the breeds it tests for. So we went for it. Just got his results today. Here, by the way, is Oliver: Oliver (yeah, I put his pic on puppy wars. Because he's so cute. I can't believe he's not the top dog there. and if this works, here you can see a profile view of him when he was a puppy (and me when I was young and thin and had a cool panda tee shirt. Sigh.). All the blue merle that led me to suspect cattle dog is there: Oliver the puppy Okay, so I got the results today. They claim he is Jack Russell Terrier on one side. Okay, I can totally see that. And.....a mix of English Cocker Spaniel and Irish Setter on the other. Wha???!!!!! I don't think so. They marked Irish Setter with an asterisk because they are "less sure" about that. So. Yeah. I don't really believe for a second that he has a bit of spaniel in him. Okay, maybe I could believe a bit. But that's all. DH is going to kill me when I tell him, but now I'm actually tempted to try another company and see if we get similar results. You know, as a science experiment. It's for science.