It was the one at the mall! I'm guessing from your kids' ages that you were there before me, though (I worked there 96-97). The uniforms were different by then, but no less awful.

Like everyone who lived in Athens in the 90's, I have Michael Stipe encounter stories. He used to come to the movie theater where I worked (and Kenny Rogers! but I guess he doesn't have a new album out). Once he ordered chocolate covered raisins, which are so not vegan.

This is us exactly. One of my reasons for doing American History in the middle is to give my middle DS (who'll be 5 next month) time to get a little older before we move on to (what I hear are) the more intense parts of SOTW. Right now my plan is to finish out SOTW after 2 years of WP (assuming we like WP), which will put us ready to start over again with ancients when my youngest is 6 (eek! I can't believe he's ever going to be SIX!)

There's a website called backyardchicken, with forums where you can post pictures and ask what kind of chick you have. not that early, though. people post pics of 3 and 4 week old chicks, and educated guesses are made (roosters get combs earlier and redder than hens, for one thing), but you won't know for sure until they either crow or lay eggs.

I'm one of those who buys so few things for which coupons are readily available that it's not really worth the time to me.

honestly, my kids (same ages as yours) don't love it, either. I think, at least for my older son, it's that he's so visual that he really still needs something with pictures (although he does fine with fiction chapter books. I dunno). I finally bought the CDs--so for the rest of the year we're listening to it in the car and then I'm trying to focus more on the other things we do in history--actually getting some projects done from the activity guide, books from the library, reading the Usborne Encyclopedia more closely (I'm trying to use that more as the spine now, with SOTW as extra material, instead of the other way around). Next year we're taking a break from SOTW and doing Winterpromise's American history. I'll see if that's a better fit and reevaluate where we're at next year--right now the plan is to go back and finish up SOTW after American history, but we'll see.

My bias might become obvious from my first two selections ;): Delta Wedding, Eudora Welty Absalom, Absalom, William Faulkner those might be my two favorite books, but not exactly beach reading. Bobbie Ann Mason, particularly Shiloh and Other Stories earlier (but not too early) Anne Tyler--in particular, Celestial Navigation, The Accidental Tourist, and Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant Katherine Anne Porter's short stories, particularly the Miranda stories Peter Taylor's short stories more recent, less regional, I liked Middlesex and Snow Falling on Cedars

I wouldn't want to try it without the workbook. Very often, the student is asked to follow along in the workbook while you read something from the teacher's book. And the exercises aren't just copywork and dictation; I just opened randomly to one lesson, and the student is asked to fill in blanks and then add an apostrophe-s to words in one exercise. Everything is printed in the teacher book that's in the student book, so I suppose you COULD retype the exercises yourself and print them out, but I don't think it'd be worth the trouble.

Mine's up--link in sig!

my dh is a high school math teacher. There's another teacher in his department whose kids are homeschooled, too. Homeschooling is very common in our area, so no one really seems to bat an eye about it.

Poor Jason. I adore him, but I don't think he has it in him to actually TRY to win American Idol. I just can't see him picking songs strategically and doing all the stuff you need to do to win. I think he's just going to keep saying, "hey--that song's pretty cool; I think I'll do that one" every week and hoping for the best. Ah well.

I just noticed on the back of FLL 3 the other day that it says it can be used for an older child who hasn't done FLL 1 and 2. My son did do the first two volumes, but everything that's covered there is also covered (at a much faster pace) in FLL 3. You may have to spend more time reviewing some concepts, but I think you'd be fine starting with FLL 3.

okay, I'm convinced! thanks everyone.

my son's a natural speller, so we dropped spelling as a subject about midway through Spelling Workout B. I try to pick copywork that has difficult to spell words in it. He writes "books" constantly in his free time and asks me how to spell words a dozen times a day (and I've started sending him to the dictionary some of the time), so I figure between this and just doing a lot of reading he's picking it up on his own. If he ever seems to be falling behind, we'll add it back in, but for now I'm not the least bit worried about it. If he's doing phonics, he's essentially getting spelling (just sort of backwards) anyway.

That's pretty much it....I'm looking at this for next year (for my strong reader/writer 7 year old with a 5 year old listening in) and wondering whether it's worthwhile to get the teacher's book. thanks!

I don't sell much anymore, but when I did I always refunded shipping. My experience as a buyer is that most sellers will say in their terms that refunds don't include shipping, but in actual practice a good seller will always refund shipping if the error is theirs.

We have a scholarship program paid for through lottery money in GA, so I'm hoping that will still be around and we won't need to pay for college (it covers tuition, fees, and books (at least last I checked, which is when I was in college) at in-state public schools. If they want to go out of state or private, they'll need to figure out how to pay for it). My husband is a public high school teacher, and we have three kids (with 4 1/2 years between the oldest and youngest, so there'll be a lot of time where 2 are in college at once), so whether to pay for college ourselves or not likely won't be a choice for us. As far as what I would WANT to do, I think it's reasonable for kids to work part time while in college and to work hard and try to get scholarships, but I very much hope we're in a position to help out enough that our boys don't have to get loans. I had scholarships and DH had parents who paid for everything, so neither of us has had to deal with loans at all. I see a lot of people my age really, really struggling financially, despite making more money than we do, because of student loans.

this is how I've been making mine lately: 1 tbs yeast 1 1/4 cup very warm water 2 tbs honey 3 tbs oil 3/4 tbs salt about 3 1/2 cups flour I use instant yeast, so I mix it in whenever. If you're using packets, you probably want to do the thing where you put the honey and 1/4 cup of water in with the yeast first then add that to the other ingredients. I mix everything except the flour, then mix in the flour slowly until it comes together enough to start kneading. Knead 6 or 7 minutes, adding in flour as needed. rise until double, punch it down and shape into loaves, rise again, then put it in a cold oven and set to 450. Turn down to 350 after 10 minutes or so and bake until it's brown and sounds hollow when tapped. Sometimes I substitute a cup of oatmeal for some of the flour--that should make it softer. It's based on a recipe from "Our Daily Bread" by Stella Standard, but I tweaked it a good bit. It makes a nice, easily sliceable, not too dense loaf of sandwich bread.

I'd make sure she gets the basics of phonics down somewhere--either through a spelling program or maybe just some workbooks that she can do casually (my son adores doing workbooks in his free time, so it's easy for me to reinforce stuff that way). DS taught himself to read before he was four, but it was a long time before he was confident sounding words out (it was almost all sight reading). My observation was that that's just how it is for awhile for kids with very strong visual memories, because they just don't encounter unfamiliar words in the stuff they're reading. But he's at the point now where he DOES, and having the phonics skills to deal with those words is really important now.

The belief I'm talking about says that the Baptist religion predates the Reformation--that it existed alongside Catholicism before Luther. It's not Protestant because it doesn't come out of the Reformation. Incidentally, the Eastern Orthodox church would also fall outside your categories, wouldn't it?

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it:

I certainly didn't mean to put anyone on the defensive...I'm not Baptist now, but I grew up Baptist and the belief I described (and that Wikipedia notes) is one I heard preached in my Baptist church growing up (in a large congregation in a major metropolitan area--not a tiny, obscure little church). So it's definitely out there. The last thing you say is actually pretty much what I was trying to get at--that pinning down Baptist history may be nearly as difficult as pinning down Baptist theology--precisely because Baptists are such independent types. No offensive to Baptists at all intended! ETA: it may well be that this is something that the vast majority of Baptists reject and that it's safe to disregard it when considering Baptist history--I honestly don't know. I just know what many Baptists in my family believe, and I checked Wikipedia to see if it was a noted phenomenon, so I thought I'd throw it out there. Because I like to make things complicated ;)

Scholastic has a similar site, too.

Well, it may be a more complicated topic than you're expecting....a lot of Baptists don't consider themselves Protestants, and maintain that their roots go back to Jesus in Jerusalem.

I have it. It's a bit hard to justify the cost as a homeschooler (as opposed to a teacher with a classroom full of kids to print stuff out for), but the stuff I do use I really like, so I can't bring myself to cancel the subscription. Right now we're making a space pocket book that I printed out from the site, and the kids love it. I find a lot for science; not as much for history (although some of the history pockets are up there).