32 orders in the last 30-days. No way I'm counting all the orders placed from the past six months! Now, some of those are from my subscribe and save items, so they are in there automatically and that's 4 of the 32. And if I count only orders made in the same day, then it's really 12 orders - I just wind up doing multiple orders frequently when I'm buying 4-for-3 books since I'll get them all into my cart and then move them to later, then move 4 back by price so the freebie is the same price as the other four. Another question might be - how many boxes does Amazon ship once you made your order? I shake my head all the time at the sheer number of boxes Amazon will ship for an order. I had one order a few days ago that was huge - 22 items - and guess how many boxes I expect delivered today? Can you say 19 boxes? How nuts is that?

If your DS could sleep in the living room (or other room) on your main floor, you could close the vents in his room and shut the door, letting that room get warm, while also forcing the cooler air into the vents on your main floor, so it'll take less to keep it cool. If you have windows on the southern exposure, close the blinds and drapes, that will keep some of the warmth from seeping through. You can also do this as the sun moves, starting in the SE side, then southern exposure, then SW, closing one set of window covers, then the next (opening the one no longer in direct sunlight) as the sun moves throughout the day. Since cool air falls, you could place a small fan on the floor to blow upward, near a vent, to keep the air circulating more. Our home has an upper level that can get quite warm and adjusting the thermostat downward to cooler will help, but then the main level and lower level get too cold....so we have a round cyclone fan on the floor at the top of the stairs, on the landing, blowing throughout the day, sucking cool air upstairs from downstairs - it keeps the temperature difference between the two levels about 3-5 degrees instead of 10-12 degrees....a significant difference and it's barely noticeable for noise.

We do: Banangrams Scrabble with a few different sets of rules Hangman on the white board Boggle (but after shaking rotate all letters to face the same way) Word searches (paper based) Up for Grabs (mindware) ...and I create "cryptic words and phrases" that is a mix of math and words - DS solves the math, then fills in the letters that each answer represents to find out what the phrase, sentence or word is.

-watching DS across the foyer (he's in dining room, I'm in home office) do his HWOT -browsing Amazon and adding a bunch of possible things to cart for DS's birthday next month - looking to put together a rock hound backpack for that and want to see if I can do it for less than Home Science Tools -eating lunch -listening to music -bouncing over here to see if there is anything interesting -have pages selected from various sites and files printing -answering emails -just got off phone from a call that came in

I haven't used either program, but was really scratching my head to try to figure out what in the world you'd need cheese for with Earth & Space, so I went to the RSO website. From what I can see, they're using food in some labs that's easily sub'ed with other stuff, like play-doh....like making a model of the earth's layers as a pizza...easily done with play-doh instead of layers of food. Rocks and Minerals - heck, use the real thing - I can't see why cheese would show what is being explained better than the real thing, the rocks and minerals themselves!

I do SOTW a bit differently than most - we listen through the entire book first (CD's), then dig in by area or major civilization in chunks. Basically when we do the activities and projects for Egypt, it's for everything Egypt in one unit, not broken up by chapters coming and going and coming back to Egypt as it does in SOTW if you read a chapter and do the activities, read a chapter, do the activities. While we did start SOTW that traditional way, we stopped and started again this other way and I feel DS retains a lot more doing it this way at his age. That said - with each major area or cilvilization covered as a whole, we typically did no less than a week on any one, sometimes up to two or more weeks. For each, I pick at least one book that will be a bedtime story - so right there is seven per unit. I also pick books that focus on something we'll be doing projects on, or something to read as the start of an activity we'll be doing....so that often means another 3-5 books for the unit. And we use the encycopedias for our overview and review of what we heard in SOTW to reinforce learning and vocabulary. Since I break up SOTW into units, I also incorporated world geography into the units since that works nicely with the SOTW activity book maps and adds just a bit more to our work by including a geography section in the unit. For example, when we did Egypt, we followed that with the rest of Ancient Africa since that allowed us to also do our geography of Africa and see how, throughout the ancient period the maps changed and what Africa looks like today. With timelining, instead of going linear across the wall, we do vertical time chronology within each area, side-by-side each other, so by the time we end, we'll have the chronology done, it'll just look a bit different as a timeline than if we did it horizontally as one long timeline.

:iagree:

For us, the first day introducing the concept tends to be the most time in the week - depending on what that is, it's taken as little as 10-minutes and as much as 20-45 minutes. Once the concept is done on day one of the new concept, that's it for the day. The days that follow are reinforcement, practice and review - again, the time to do that depends.....but I'd say the average time runs about 15-30 minutes a day for the worksheets or mental math. Math games can go on for much more time - easily up to an hour if DS is having fun with it. I don't schedule math for a very specific amount of time that it must run, but rather schedule it for up to an hour and whatever time we need is what we do. If we hit an hour and need more, we go over (that happens now and then with math games), if we're done before the hour is up, we're done for the day unless DS wants to move on or do more. I'll also add that we don't always do math in just one block of time in a day - sometimes we'll do a few pages of the workbook or IP....then later in the day we'll do some mental math in the car, or while out and about.

I've done LEGO programs in our area - depending on what you'd like to do, you have a bunch of options: 1. Use local resources for a meeting place - library rooms, rec center rooms, YMCA, etc. may have space for you to reserve free. You'll NEED a large space with a clean floor and/or large tables to have adequate space for the kids to go all out with the LEGO bricks and their building creations. 2. You'll want to plan how you're going to do your program and decide how long you want it to run to accomplish the goals you have if it's educational and not simply recreational. For example, if you want the kids to build freely, but to a theme - as a group, in teams, or individually - you'll want to layout your themes, set-up how much time to build, how much time to share with the others what was built and think about what key areas you're enhancing in the process (ie. communication skills, public speaking, open-ended problem-solving, team work, negotiation, sharing, comprehension of the theme, learning through the theme, etc.) 3. You'll need bricks - and lots of them - especially because it's extremely difficult for groups of kids to keep their own bricks separate once they start building in the same space; that can lead to their frustration if they lose bricks and/or someone takes a mini-figure of theirs, etc. There are places you can buy bricks dirt-cheap - on ebay your best price to look for is $6 a pound with shipping - no more than that! Garage sales are also good, as is Craigslist and Freecycle.....never pay more than $6 a pound for bricks though! 4. You'll need bases - at least one per group, team or person. The base makes a huge difference in containing the "imagination" to the size of the base and contains the crazy mess of the bricks strewn across a large space. 5. You'll want to incorporate clean up time in your program for the kids to clean up all the bricks and get them put away! 6. If you're not going to have the program in a dedicated space where you can keep your supplies, you'll want a big tub (or more than one big tub) to hold bricks AND a wheelie cart to move them around.....dropping the tub just once is all you need to realize the value of the wheelie cart and a couple of bungie cords holding the tub in place! 7. While you may be thinking about doing this for free - realize you are going to have expenses involved and probably should charge a nominal fee - mostly to set up the "vested interest" in attending regularly. Even a few dollars a week or session will help with the kids showing up regularly...without it, you'll wind up with hit or miss attendance, which can frustrate not only you, but the kids who show up no matter what. 8. The LEGO Education site has a bunch of interesting approaches to look through. If you google for LEGO groups, teams, programs, you'll find a bunch of other ideas too.

:lol:

:grouphug: Joanne :grouphug: What a difficult situation! You may not like what I'm going to say - but I think it should be said - I get how difficult it is to get by on an income that's low. But, in some ways you are blessed - your employer pays for your insurance, these days that is a rarity. Add to this that you can add your spouse, with pre-existing conditions, for less than a healthy person can buy insurance on their own, and it's one of those situations where, you might need to really stretch your budget to do it. While $400 a month is expensive, for his condition right now, that's nothing compared to what it will cost to properly diagnose and treat him, then continue with long-term care of his condition. What I think needs to be said is this - if it were me, I'd move mountains to get him on my insurance. The $400 a month is deducted pre-tax, so while it'll *hurt* your budget, it may not be as hard as it seems since it's not from your net, but your gross. He needs to be insured right now and that's the fastest way to get him insured. You may need to get creative and juggle a lot, but getting him on the insurance would solve the biggest issue you have right now - getting him the medical treatment he needs right now.

Creativity isn't always artistic pursuit.... sometimes it's problem solving when everyone else is totally frustrated someitmes it's inventing a way to use or do something better sometimes it's designing a new building or stucture sometimes it's communicating well with others when those others are difficult to communicate with sometimes it's coming up with a totally new programming code for computers sometimes it's seeing something no one else did sometimes it's written words and their use sometimes it's using math creatively (and no, not creative accounting!) sometimes it's teaching others how to do something no one else seems to be able to teach them Yeah, some will color the character in their coloring book with hair green and call it creativity, but being creative is so much more than that! ....creativity is seeing things in a different way, new ways, or ways not thought of before.

Well, you could call it pocket money, mad money, blow-it all on whatever money....for us, we each take $xxx each month and it's ours to do as we wish (and usually goes for incidentals that add up over the month). So far as discussing large purchases, that's just what we do, especially since DH doesn't ever know what's in our bank account (sad I know) and so when something is on the expensive side, outside of what cash he has in his wallet, he'll talk to me more to find out if we have the money to buy it (or ask when we will since I'll budget for it for him) or if he should use a credit card, or should he wait.....from my side just to give him a head's up more than anything else - it's not like either of us ever tell the other "no"....it's just what we do :)

To me it doesn't matter much if something is a brand-name or not, what I look for is quality and value for the price. For the kids, I'll spend a lot sometimes in big chunks, like when Hartstrings Kids Outlet has a coupon mailer that offers 30% off the total purchase when you spend $400 or more. While that seems like a lot, the offer includes clearance and sale items, so when I do it (usually once a year), I'll buy clearance items for the next couple of seasons (if I can guess size approximately), buy some soon to wear items on sale and do some shopping for my kids, neice and nephew for Christmas and any babies I might need gifts for in the next six months or so. I usually do it in the fall since the summer items are much easier to mis-guess a bit on than something like pants, where length matters! My last purchase there (fall 2010) totaled $420, so I had $126 off, so that brought it down to $294.....which netted us: 8 pairs of pants for DS 4 sweaters for DS 4 turtlenecks for DS 1 buttondown for DS 2 swimsuits for DS 6 shorts for DS 8 summer polo-style shirts for DS 1 spring jacket for DS 1 sweater for nephew 1 pants for newphew 1 L/S button-down shirt for nephew 1 skirt for neice 1 sweater for neice 1 turtleneck for neice 1 socks for neice 1 headband for neice 3 winter baby outfits for baby-DS (I was expecting) 9 summer baby outfits for baby-DS $294 divided by 51 items = $5.76 each (I didn't count the headband or socks) Considering their sweaters alone can go for $60+ when not on sale and no coupon, I thought I did pretty darn good! And for both DS and baby-DS, I didn't have to buy really anything this summer for clothes for them other than some onsies for the baby (I kept a lot of baby clothes from DS, which helped too)

For us, both second marriage, it was all lumped into one checking account. His 401(k) are his, but also ours, I am beneficiary, with our children beneficiaries should I die. My 401(k) is mine, but also ours, he is beneficiary, with our children beneficiaries should he die. Our cars are jointly owned. Our home is jointly owned. Our DVC points are jointly owned. Our stocks in his s-corporation are jointly owned. Our investment portfolio is jointly owned. Basically there isn't anything we own that is not in both of our names. When we first got married we were close in earnings to each other, so there wasn't a disparity in our earnings or potential earnings. We decided I'd stay home once we had kids, so I no longer work to "earn" but to manage our family and finances. He gets paid monthly, hands me his check, I deposit it, take out his cash "allowance" for the month, I take out my cash "allowance" for the month and the rest I manage. He never looks at the account, never asks, just trusts me, I'm his wife...and I'd never give him reason not to trust me. We have one rule though - if either of us is going to spend more than $250 on something (either from bank account or on credit card), we talk to the other first before making the purchase....except gifts to each other or emergency repairs for things in the house (like for instance a couple of weeks ago when a flexible pipe under the kitchen sink burst, I didn't talk to him before okaying the $400 repair as it was more extensive than we'd thought when we first called the plumber - it needed to be done, I didn't need to talk to him first)...basically it's talking to each other if we want to get something for ourselves that's above and beyond what our pocket money each month will cover.

These are great! Thank you! Others are certainly welcome too!

It'd be darn hard to eat enough to knock yourself out of ketosis - eat as many as you want, you can't eat enough to impact your weight loss.

Oh, I should post the route/cities we'll pass, or could take as an option if something is looking really good, huh? St. Louis, MO Nashville, TN Chattanooga, TN Atlanta, GA Macon, GA Gainesville, FL Ocala, FL Orlando, FL Alternatively, we could re-route and hit: Lexington, KY Louisville, KY OR Tallashasse, FL Mobile, AL Jackson, MS Memphis, TN ------------------- I'll check out the Nashville store if they're online - thanks!

We're nowhere near having to start teaching this skill yet, but DH and I have talked about it already. Since doing much higher level papers (grad school) requires the ability to track down and use primary sources, we've decided we'll first teach 'the old fashioned way' - hard copy references. As DS gets older and improves his skills, we'll then introduce the online option and how to utilize it with hard copy references that'll take legwork to find and use.

....like Strand in NYC or Wonderbooks in Frederick, MD. I'll be traveling MO to FL in October and would like to incorporate some stops to great used book stores along the way if any exist on our routes, from St. Louis through Orlando. We can make pit-stops up to 30-minutes off the main routes! Thanks!

Our Family Tree: An Evolution Story; Peters Life on Earth: The Story of Evolution; Jenkins The Tree of Life: The Wonders of Evolution; Jackson DK Eyewitness: First Dinosaur Encyclopedia (or visual dictionary) DK Visual Dictionary, Prehistoric Life Evolution Timeline; Charlie's Playhouse Ancient Creature Cards; Charlie's Playhouse

My DS will be seven in August and isn't all that into writing yet - he writes well enough, not picture perfect, but much better than six months ago! He was and still is a relcutant writer and what I did was incorporate his arty side into his writing by having him do copywork of one or two sentences a day that makes for a good picture, so he writes the sentence(s) and then creates the picture to go with the sentence(s). We're slowly ramping up how many words and/or sentences he'll write each day and he's recently decided he'd like to make up his own sentences (yeah!) too. For summer I've been incorporating basic grammar into what he's writing out so that we can ramp that up in the fall and keep things moving along into FLL and WWE.

Do you want evolution as part of that or not?

I have a running word document with each subject broken out into what needs to be done in the year, step by step to get to the end, in a list form. Since sometimes we run ahead in some subjects and slightly behind in others, every two weeks I figure out the coming two weeks work for DS and that's the checklist we'll use, checked off as we go. Midway through the second week, I'll start to create the next two weeks list by looking at what we've done, where we got ahead, where we're lagging and make necessary adjustments, cut & paste off my master list what to add now, and by Saturday have the final next two weeks schedule setup to go on Monday. If by Saturday anything remains on the lists from the previous two weeks, it gets added to the start of the new two weeks lists. Each week has its own page, but we might complete something in week one in week two, or from week two in week one - just depends on how much we're digging into something each day. As each week checklist is completed, it gets filed into the planner where I keep track of subject hours only - the sheet serves to show what we did, but not necessarily on what day it was done in the week. I keep a separate list of books read each week and that also goes into the planner so that I have a record of what we've read as a stand alone list.

I included it in my post, which I rounded up to $106 a week. Here is the breakdown I pulled from my spreadsheet that was groceries only (not cleaning or HBA since I break those out on the spreadsheet): 345 pounds beef = $1330 80 pounds pork = $320 40 pounds lamb = $350 20 pounds bison = $80 36 chickens = $288 4 turkeys = $110 2 goose = $40 2 quail = $30 4 duck = $40 CSA (mid-April/mid-Nov), Farmer's Market & other local* = $1236 Grocery store food = $1664 Total = $5488 Weekly = $105.54 *local items are eggs, sometimes butter, some cheese