I'm so sorry :grouphug: ( because my dog had the same issues: is it congestive heart failure? have you tried/considered any medications? my now almost 16 year old dog has been on Vetmedin for CHF for years now, and has done really well on it. It sounds like you've been through all of this and are past the point of dealing with it medically, but I just wanted to put it out there just in case)

That's what generally happens here, too. But that week was special :D. I think we got mail for the first time on Friday, too.

Let this be a lesson to you to never allow yourself to run out of chocolate again! :D

We had good luck with McRuffy; it's a good blend of workbook stuff/games/readers, and the pace is not too fast and not too slow. At least for my youngest; YMMV, of course, which is the trouble with picking a phonics program...kids are all so different! But I'd definitely use McRuffy again, which I wouldn't necessarily say about any of the (many!) programs I tried with my other two.

It's taking all my willpower to wait until this weekend to make this: http://www.sophistimom.com/one-pan-skillet-cookie/

NRSV

I've got 3 kids, 5-9, doing SOTW1 now, and they're all doing fine with it, although it's clear that the 7 and 9 year olds are retaining more than the 5 year old. My now 9 year old did it when he was 5, too, and for him that was too early. For a kid who's more interested in history (he was more math/sciency at that age) I think it would be fine, though.

We got a Brother laser printer when it was on sale at Office Max for $60. This was the after Thanksgiving sale, but they seem to go on sale for that price (I think the regular price is more like $130) every few months. We've been happy with it so far. It comes with a starter toner cartridge that's supposed to print something like 800 pages, I think (the regular one prints 2600). I also have an HP all in one that I use for making copies or on the rare occasions when I really need something printed in color.

...another thought: once you get to Town, many of the writing assignments can be applied to other subjects. For example, this week DS is supposed to write a two paragraph essay with one descriptive paragraph and one expository paragraph. I'm having him do that on a topic from his history reading. And it would be easy to "supplement" by duplicating the assignment multiple times...he could do it once for history and once for science if I wanted to have him write two short essays during the week. So I guess what I'm getting at is that the writing component of MCT can be fairly light and need supplementation, but it's easy to adapt it so that there's more writing, because the assignments are so open ended.

right. Although I'd probably do those no matter what writing program I was using (well, I guess I wouldn't do more dictation if we were still doing WWE).

DS9 is doing Town right now. He does all the writing assignments from Paragraph Town, and at this point in the year I sometimes have him repeat them two weeks in a row (with different topics). I also aim for dictation (from his literature reading) 3x a week and a 2-3 paragraph history summary once a week. ETA: when he did Island last year, we did WWE at the same time. I think what we're doing now is similar to that workload; I'm just subbing in different readings for the dictation and narration.

My understanding is that there are ways to get library books on your Kindle, but you're not really supposed to, and it's a pain to do so. I just got a Nook, and I've read several library books on it no problem. My local library doesn't have e-books, but there are a number of libraries with a good e-book selection that will let you get a non-resident card even if you're out of state (the Free Library of Philadelphia is the cheapest one, at $15/year, as far as I know).

I finished All I Did Was Ask by Terry Gross and Ender's Game last week (reviews in blog). This week I'm finishing up The Irresistible Henry House and listening to Anne Tyler's Noah's Compass, and I'm about to start Roseanne Cash's memoir, Composed. I'm mostly keeping one fiction and one non-fiction (plus one audiobook) going at a time so far this year, and that's working out well. I can switch back and forth if I get burned out on one book, but it's not so much at once that I get overwhelmed.

I thought of my three remarkably quickly: Tuck Everlasting Charlotte's Web Peggy Rathman's "The Day the Babies Crawled Away" ...there's a line about the babies "on their brave little knees" and it chokes me up every time.

Mine's up--link in sig!

I was called once, but I had already moved out of state when I got the notice, so I've never actually had to serve. I was just thinking, reading the other thread, that I wouldn't mind if it happened now...I don't have any nursing babies anymore, and DH is a teacher, so I could just postpone until his summer break.

I read them to all of mine from 2-3 on up.

They have around 4000 e-books at the FLP. There's also one in Florida that I'm using that has around that many. I get a lot of ideas for books from NPR's book page and Amazon's best books of the month...and more often than not the books I'm interested in from those are at one or the other of the libraries (though I often have to put it on hold--but then they just e-mail you when it's ready). Then you have 2 or 3 weeks to read it before it magically disappears from your Nook!

Mine have enjoyed lately: Secret of Kells Totoro Ponyo Enchanted The Karate Kid (the new one) Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Your library may have them locally. Mine doesn't, so I sent off for a non-resident card from the Free Library of Philadelphia, which is $15/year. There are a few other libraries that will do non-resident cards through the mail, too, but I think FLP is the cheapest. Once you have a card, you just go online and check them out. Then you need to download Adobe Digital Editions to get them onto the computer and then onto the Nook, but it was really easy to figure out.

I finished Ender's Game last night. I really kind of hated it (review in my blog, of that and all the other books I've read so far). So onward! Now I'm working on Terry Gross' book All I Did Was Ask (transcripts from a bunch of her interviews, with brief commentary on each one) and I'm probably maybe about to start The Irresistible Henry House. I am loving getting library books on my Nook, btw. I almost never checked out real library books for myself, because there's always a wait for newer stuff, and our library doesn't have a very good selection, and I never have time to really look when I'm there with the kids. It's so much easier to be able to do all the browsing and placing holds and whatnot from home. Love it!

just echoing others here: it's very hard to enjoy reading when you're still struggling to decode words. My now 7 year old was like that until probably just before he turned 7 ("I HATE reading!"); once his reading took off he very quickly became a voracious reader. Like you, I had an early reader who came before him, and I was worried this one would never like reading. But my later reader is just as strong a reader at 7 as his big brother was. Slow and steady, and she'll get there.

Homeschool books are organized by subject. I have science/poetry/etc. sections. History is divided into world history and American history and then organized roughly chronologically. My books are divided into subjects (fiction, memoir/biography, religion, essays, poetry, etc.) and then alphabetized. My oldest keeps his books alphabetized by author; the other kid books are just on the shelves randomly. It all sounds more organized than it actually is, though. I find alphabetizing sort of...soothing, so I do it every so often, but there are also giant piles of books waiting to be put in the proper place floating around all over my house and shoved into stacks in front of the alphabetized books on my shelves. I counted my bookshelves the other day; there are 21 of them, including an entire shelf devoted to storing books I haven't yet figured out where to put permanently. This is why getting a Nook has been such a huge relief for me.

Mine is 9 with an early June b-day. Here the cut-off is September 1.

I try to do one nowadays...but I don't really type anything formal enough for it to matter much, I don't think. I can write entire pages relying only on parentheses, dashes, and ellipses anyway :).