It took awhile for my oldest DS to get into chapter books. Some of the ones I managed to hold his attention with when he was that age were the Ramona books (I think the Henry ones are a bit "older"...at least than the early Ramona books), My Father's Dragon, and Charlotte's Web. Anything she's resistant to now (after she's given it a fair chance), I'd put aside and try again later. Nothing terrible will happen if she's not really interested in chapter books until she's 6 (or even if she'd rather wait and read them on her own when she's older). I know my son is very visual, so getting used to books without pictures was a big adjustment for him.

First cousin once removed. And then if your DS has a kid, his kid and your nephew's kid will be second cousins. I'm pretty sure...

We bought a pre-made hutch (this one: http://www.rabbitmart.com/shop/index.php?page=shop-flypage-16948 ) and then bought a chain link dog kennel off craigslist. Not the cheapest solution, but we weren't very confident in our carpentry skills. So we have a 6 by 10 foot dog pen and the hutch inside it, and then aviary netting over the top with a tarp over part of it. Then we put hardware cloth around the bottom half (so nothing could reach through the chain link and grab the chooks) and covering all gaps. And then we put cinder blocks all around the outside to keep animals from digging in. The whole thing is also in our backyard, which is enclosed by a 6 foot wooden fence, so it's sort of an extra layer of protection. We've never had any trouble with predators (knock wood).

I'm not from Alabama, but I was curious....I found this link with a list of cover schools, and it looks like the majority of them don't require a statement of faith: http://www.leapingfromthebox.com/hs/alhschurchcoverstatewide.html

Apple crisp is really easy.

There are 4 different parks (plus water parks), and, yes, without park hoppers you can go to one per day (but you can enter and leave the same park as often as you want). We've done it with and without park hoppers, and have found it's not really inconvenient to go without the park hoppers as long as you plan carefully.

I'm not sure what the laws are wrt sports and other extracurricular activities, but in GA the school district it required to provide special education services to all kids, including private and homeschooled ones. I'm in the process of getting speech therapy for my son through our county, since our new insurance company is refusing to pay for it. Insurance companies are welcome to deny speech therapy and hearing aids to kids who need them all they want. Sigh.

fishes=different kinds (species) of fish

We do co-op with a group once a week. They have park day once a week, too, but we don't make it to that super regularly.

I like most of the space to be in common living areas rather than in bedrooms. We have about 1900 square feet in our house, and the majority of it is in our 4 bedrooms (the smallest one is 12 by 12, and two of them are very large). So we use the first floor master as a schoolroom/playroom, which makes the house feel really spacious to me. I also prefer multiple mid-sized rooms to giant multi-purpose rooms, but I don't know if that's more about good use of space or personal preference.

Hi Cassie--nice to "see" you here :). We should have come to your house to play!

I'm an hour north of Atlanta, and we've got NOTHING. grr! It snowed for a little while, mixed in with the rain, but nothing but mud on the ground. I grew up here, and we used to get snow nearly every year, but I don't think we've had a single decent accumulation since we moved back 6 years ago. And it's been so cold this winter! cold without snow is not fair! Okay. I'll stop now and try to be happy for those of you SOUTH of me who have lovely snow on the ground.

Or they can adjust the rules so that moderating does not become so burdensome that no one volunteers to do it. That's what's been done. I've seen too many boards fall apart precisely because moderators are overworked and overwhelmed not to think it's prudent for the admins to take steps to keep that from happening here.

But not the mods who do the bulk of the thread monitoring.

I don't believe the reason for the politics ban has ever been stated as because "it's not about homeschooling." I think the mods and admins have always been very clear that it's because it causes too much nastiness and fighting and, in turn, too much work for the unpaid volunteers who keep the board running.

Hey--I did one this week! Link in sig

Ours is brown, but that's because it used to be our bedroom, and I'm not up for repainting it yet. But my friend just painted her schoolroom a nice grey-blue, and it looks great. If I were repainting mine, I think I'd go for that or maybe just a khaki-ish color.

Ah, okay then. I can compromise and hold off my snow wishes until 5! Later is better for me anyway, as I want DH to have a snow day on Monday.

It's totally going to snow. I don't understand all you snow haters ;)

We keep stuff in those big, white food grade plastic buckets. And we don't have anywhere to keep them in our kitchen, so we store them in the basement and bring up a little at a time (usually in big yogurt containers).

This is us, too. I don't care if they eat after dinner, but I am DONE getting food for kids by then. So fruit or carrots that they can quickly grab by themselves are fine. That way they also don't have any reason to eat poorly at dinner in hopes of scoring something more exciting later on.

I'd been meaning to cancel but hadn't gotten around to it, and then I got a notice from them that my credit card had expired. I guess that was the easy way to cancel ;).

It's printable versions of a whole, whole bunch of Evan Moor books/parts of books. Unless something's changed, you can look at everything they have on the site, you just can't print it out without paying.

I subscribed to it until recently...I liked it a lot, but I really couldn't justify the cost for how much I was using it (it's really intended more for classroom teachers). If I'd actually planned out a curriculum incorporating it, it might have been worth it...but just using it as a supplement I finally had to pull the plug. Even though everything was so pretty.

And, yeah. A few months ago there was a story on NPR in which they were asking some economists to consider whether perpetual economic "growth" was really possible. As if it had never even occurred to anyone before recently that it might not be.