Popovers use a lot of eggs, relatively speaking. My recipe uses 4 (for a dozen popovers). Not going to use up ALL your eggs, of course, but I've been baking them instead of other breads when I have too many eggs--uses up some eggs and I have a quick, high protein bread around for the kids to snack on or eat for breakfast.

I got it today, too! J in Santa Ana sure has been busy lately! I was guessing maybe they bought lists of addresses from somewhere I've actually bought seeds from.

We use/have used a lot of their books, and they've all been a big hit around here. We've used Building Thinking Skills, Mind Benders, Mathematical Reasoning, Science and Math Detective. I love their stuff!

Incidentally, the salary for a 40 hour week, 52 weeks a year (i.e. no vacation) at $40/hr would be $83,200. That's a great salary, but it's not an outrageous one. Plenty of people with no overhead, people who just take home a paycheck from someone else, make that much (and get benefits worth much more on top of that). I would suggest that the thinking that because someone is doing something useful and worthy like "helping children learn" s/he should be paid LESS than other people is...a little backwards. Can you tell this is kind of a personal subject for me? :) Listen, I TOTALLY get how hard it is to afford stuff like this. But I don't think the solution is to tell your friendly neighborhood tutor that s/he has an obligation to take less than the market supports for his or her services. Would you tell your friend who was selling her house that she really ought to price it under market value because a lot of people need a house and can't afford one? This isn't fun money for us; it's an important part of our income. Like I said, if someone couldn't afford it and wanted to propose a barter arrangement, he'd be all over that (he's worked out bartering arrangements of massage therapy for computer programming before, in fact).

We certainly couldn't, either. I doubt there are many school teachers who could.

Yes, what she said :001_smile:. You certainly could do it without the workbook, but it would be far more extra work than would make it worthwhile to me.

I certainly understand how it difficult it is to pay for extra classes and other activities for children. Like I said, my husband is a public school teacher, and we're supporting 5 people on his salary. He's good at what he does, and he works hard, and I don't feel like there's a thing in the world wrong with him charging the going rate in our area for tutoring (and, as someone else mentioned, it's less than someone would charge to come and fix your toilet for you). Now, if someone needed tutoring for their child and couldn't afford it, he'd be glad to work out some kind of bartering arrangement. But I have to say that I bristle at the suggestion that my husband, who works every day helping kids learn for far less money than he could be making elsewhere (he left a web programming job for teaching) and then volunteers his free time to run the chess club at his school, chaperone math tournaments, and go in early every single morning to give his students extra help--is ripping people off by charging the market rate for his tutoring services.

I think it probably depends on what/what age you're interested in tutoring and what your qualifications are. My husband is a high school math teacher, and he gets $40/hr...pretty much all of his students find his name on a list the school district maintains. He sometimes works for a private tutoring business, and I know they charge less for middle school and elementary school than for high school.

This may be old news, but CBD has the VHS version of Puertas Abiertas for $77 (with free shipping) right now. There are only a couple left in stock. I'd rather have DVDs, but not as much as I'd rather have an extra $60 :)

My oldest didn't crawl until 9 1/2 months, but he still walked the day before his 1st birthday. He pretty much just sat there like a lump until he suddenly tipped himself forward and started crawling perfectly one day. We used to say he had an "If I can't reach it, I don't need it" approach to babyhood.

My 5 1/2 year old does 2 pages of ETC and reads one reader aloud to me every day that we do school (so 4 to 5 times a week). Right now he's reading the level 2 Now I'm Reading books, but I have a ton around, so we do different ones.

Thanks for the ideas everyone--keep 'em coming! Stacia, I'd love to go to Spain if we can afford it--we'll have to watch and see what airfare does. Reya--Costa Rica was the first thing I thought of (we almost planned a trip there pre-kids, but wound up not going)...I was researching it the other night and kept reading about all the rough, winding mountain roads you have to drive on. I am sort of terrified of winding mountain roads. I nearly passed out when we went to Muir Woods in CA, and I suspect that was tame compared to what I'd find in Costa Rica. I should probably get over it, though. Heights and I are not friends.

We live out in...exurbia, I guess it is, and, unfortunately, we find that we need to drive closer in to the city to find a church we feel comfortable in (we look for some of the same things you do). The UCC's government is at the congregational level, so, much like with Baptists, you'll find big differences from congregation to congregation. The public face of the UCC is very liberal, but, while technically a newer denomination, it's merger of some very old ones (the Pilgrims were Congregationalists), so a lot of congregations are still more conservative. Anyway, right now we drive nearly an hour to church--though we're considering switching to a church "only" half an hour away.

Apparently I've opted for an extreme in comparing Atlanta to Boston, then :lol: I don't love driving in Atlanta, but I'll do it. I absolutely refused to drive downtown in Boston for the 5 years that we lived there.

I don't take MARTA often (we're north of Atlanta, so we're not in town too much), but I have done it with kids a few times, and I've never felt unsafe. It's definitely less convenient than public transportation in other big cities (and parking in Atlanta is more convenient and less expensive than other places (Boston is largely what I'm comparing Atlanta to on both counts)), but it has its place. If you're staying very close to a MARTA station and going somewhere near one, I think it would be worthwhile. FWIW, you can find free on-street parking within a few blocks of the High fairly easily. Well, maybe you can't right now, with the special exhibit.

The kids are studying Spanish now, and I was thinking it would be fun and motivating to plan a vacation to a Spanish-speaking country a couple of years down the road. Does anyone have suggestions for places they've enjoyed that are kid-friendly (kids are 7, 5, and 3 now, and we're thinking of maybe 1 1/2 to 2 years from now)? TIA!

My son started hair pulling when he was 4 (although when I look back at pictures of him from earlier, I can see that he was always playing with his hair--twisting it while sucking his thumb, etc.). There's a name for it, which I can never remember--trich-something or other. We talked to our ped about it, and her response was pretty much, "I'd just keep his hair short. You're lucky he's a boy." So we kept his hair very, very short for awhile. He's 7 now, and he seems to be over it; we've let his hair grow out and it's been fine for months now. He still sometimes twists his hair, but he's able to keep himself from pulling (most of the time; occasionally I see him pull, but I remind him about it and he stops). The reading I did when it first started indicated that the younger it starts, the more likely the kid will grow out of it. ETA: DS has some issues with anxiety, too, which we've seen big improvements with lately (i.e. the hair pulling has gone away as the anxieties have).

Not a dumb question--I asked pretty much the same one before we switched :). We did go right from one to the other, and the level seems about right. A lot of things are review, but there's a lot of new material, too (and I don't have FLL4 to compare to, but I would guess it reviews a lot, too; FLL3 does, anyway). The diagramming is less complex so far (they just have him diagramming simple subject and simple predicate), but then he also has to draw his own lines in GWG, so it's a bit harder in that sense.

Growing with Grammar is secular. It goes up to 6th grade right now, with more levels planned. We switched to Growing with Grammar after FLL 3 (partly because FLL 4 wasn't out yet, and partly because we just wanted a change).

My current plans for DS, who will be 6 at the end of May: LA: *continue with Explode the Code (he'll probably be in the middle of ETC 3 by then) and easy readers (right now he's working his way through the Now I'm Reading series. *Start WWE 1 and FLL 1 *Spelling--TBD Math: not sure yet. He's doing Singapore 1A right now, but I'm considering switching to Right Start. Science: we're doing Nebel's BFSU, together with my 7 yo, right now. We'll continue that in the fall, and maybe add in/move on to Pandia Press' REAL Science History: second year of American history, again together with my 7 yo. Spanish: I'm hoping to get Puertas Abiertas Latin: Song School Latin Etc: we're in a homeschool co-op that will probably be doing some kind of math or math games, a kids' book club, maybe a Spanish tutor, not sure what else one afternoon a week. If it's in the budget, I'd like to sign him up for homeschool art classes. He might or might not want to do gymnastics like his older brother.

I don't spend more than 30 minutes exclusively on my K'er right now. The only things we do that are just his are Explode the Code, Singapore math, HWT, and then he reads aloud to me from a beginning reader. But I also have a 7 year old and a 3 year old, so he does a lot of stuff together with one or both of them, too. If I were doing a straight 30 minutes with just him, I'd round it out with read alouds and maybe some critical thinking stuff (from Critical Thinking Co or somewhere).

I wouldn't worry about it too much, either, unless it's causing other problems. I have two very orally fixated kids, and I've noticed that if I manage to eliminate one quirky habit, another one pops up somewhere--often more annoying than the one that disappeared. With my 5 year old, who tends to destroy his shirts and his skin with his obsessive chewing and licking (uhh, he sounds kind of like an overeager puppy, doesn't he?), I bought some surgical tubing for him to chew on and keep his mouth busy.

Mine's up!

I live very, very close to where I grew up...same zip code, same school district, about 3 miles from the house I lived in (where my mom still lives). I didn't really plan it this way...I went to college 2 hours away, but never even came home for the summer. Then I moved to Ohio for a year after college, then we were in Boston for 5 years. And then....we wound up back here.

Yes. Mine goes down around $20 (and it's only around $60 to start with) when I consistently hang stuff up to dry. But I'm sadly out of the habit at the moment.