Yeah, we don't censor too much here... and we did watch that Medieval Lives episode about the "Damsel"... and I don't regret it... BUT... both of us were blushing and possibly giggling and I am positive that there are a fair number of parents who would find it entirely inappropriate. So... um... better preview that one. My kids enjoyed the BBC games for kids on Celts and Vikings and such... Yours might too.

Vision therapy was a trendy thing when I was a kid and my parents definitely hopped on the bandwagon and had both me and my dyslexic brother enrolled. I kind of liked it, actually... rooms of weird activities and games to do. *But* my brother was still dyslexic and I was still not dyslexic after two years of it. I think vision therapy is harmless and benign, but I haven't read any study that shows it actually works. And I have read a few that suggest it is quackery. There's a list at the bottom here: http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/eyequack.html that shows the studies that do not show any evidence of it being effective. I'd love to see some solid research that shows otherwise, because I think vision therapy is a cool idea and I *wished* it worked.

We joined Be The Match Donor Registry 10 years ago, along with my parents and brothers and nobody has ever been asked to donate (or even do the testing that narrows down whether you could donate). Just don't assume that if you register as a donor that you'll ever actually be asked.

Secular! I'm a bit embarrassed about my own poor science background at the hands of BJU and Abeka Press and teachers who didn't know much about science and spent far too much time trying to fit religion into science. I remember, for instance, going home and taking off my shirt so my brother and I could count how many ribs we had. (I had been told boys have one less.)

Yeah, my 4th grader does a lesson with me with Singapore. Then she does the corresponding workbook page(s). It can take her as little as 15 minutes (or as much as an hour if she's procrastinating...) It depends on her mood and the length of the exercises. We do maybe 5 minutes of review, 5-10 minutes of instruction with me and exercises from the textbook, then as much time as she needs for the workbook. The workbook exercises are generally pretty quick. She catches on quickly, but doesn't take pleasure in math. But... for the first time ever, math is not torture. Singapore is gentle and incremental and neither too hard nor too easy. I know she would cry if I increased her workload. I have to remind myself to stay the course and not change what is working nicely -- even if everyone else in the world is putting in an hour or two for math and we're only getting 20 minutes. It's okay.

We love our 2004. It has over 100k miles and is running great. We recently rented a different minivan for a vacation and I was shocked at how bad the turning radius was compared with the Sienna.

If he's interested in phonetics or phonology, start him with something like Ladefoged's "Vowels and Consonants". I think it wouldn't be too hard at all. Also, play around with an IPA chart like this one where you can click on the sounds and hear them http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/chapter1/chapter1.html I've let my kids fool around with Praat which is a free download to record and analyze spectrograms. PM me if you want more ideas about what a kid can do with Praat.

The I-Excel or Fan Math Process Skills are also pretty good at showing how to do the bar diagram for word problems. http://www.singaporemath.com/Fan_Math_Process_Skills_in_Prob_Solving_L4_p/fmpsps4.htm

If it's short or easy assigned reading, I just assign the whole book to be read at once. So yesterday, my daughter read "Vicious Vikings" from the Horrible History series in an hour or so... the day before I'd assigned Osborne's "Favorite Medieval Stories" and that also took her an hour or so. She is a fast reader, but not unusually so. For history (OUP "The European World") I only assign one chapter (less than 10 pages) because the text is not as light and easy to read.

The problem with linguistics is that it just isn't very accessible to the non-linguist. My 9 yr old is doing Excavating English now and she loves it... Eventually we might delve deeper. Here are some possibilities: Stephen Pinker ("The Language Instinct" and "Words and Rules") does a good job of writing to a general audience. I'd start there. He mainly deals with syntax-semantics and acquisition. John McWhorter ("The Power of Babel") does easy-to-understand historical linguistics. "The Language Files" are materials for intro undergrad course in linguistics. They'd be my first choice for a high school level course. http://www.amazon.com/Language-Files-Materials-Introduction-Linguistics/dp/0814251633/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1320817629&sr=1-1 "Semantics: A coursebook" is a *really* basic semantics workbook that would probably be appropriate for a high schooler. http://www.amazon.com/Semantics-Coursebook-James-R-Hurford/dp/0521671876/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1320817610&sr=1-1 If I were teaching Syntax (generative) , I'd go for one of Carnie's books... like this one: http://www.amazon.com/Syntax-Generative-Introduction-Introducing-Linguistics/dp/1405133848/ref=pd_sim_b_2 or maybe... http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Syntax-Coursebook-Andrew-Carnie/dp/052186335X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1320817473&sr=1-2 I can't think of anything particularly easy for phonetics or phonology or morphology... But there's surely a lot out there for sociolinguistics that is pretty easy to read.

Our schools use TERC Investigations. Singapore is vastly ahead in scope and sequence of this program. I think teachers are aware of this... I was told that TERC doesn't meet the new common core state standards that have been adopted and they'll eventually have to supplement or change programs. :hurray:

Too young for such a pricey doll. I waited until my girls *really* wanted one. And then I used it as the ultimate reward for memorizing their multiplication tables. It worked well.

It was, rather weirdly, my daughter's favorite book in first grade. I wouldn't have given it to her, but she read it at the Montessori school she went to and I did not know about it. She's since read it a number of times. I'm not sure at 6 what she understood. I'd recommend it for 4th-8th grade. And I don't mean "4th-8th grade reading level". I mean, a mature 9 yr old and up.

We started homeschooling in second grade, so we started with ancients then... First Galore Park Jr History, then SOTW and now OUP. My daughter loves history and has trouble leaving a period. We're going at our own weird pace. My younger will start maybe in the spring, I think (at age 8). We've had a few false starts and she is not really very eager or academically oriented... We're just focusing on the basics -- reading and math right now.

I don't understand... Lots of the closed categories -- like conjunctions, have a syntactic role. Is a conjunction not a "part of speech" in your mind? Does a category have to have a semantic meaning to be a "part of speech"?

I'd be pretty surprised if standardized tests like the SAT or ACT test a student's knowledge of parts of speech -- they certainly didn't when I took them. As for my own kids, I teach what we know in the field of linguistics now, not what was thought 100 years ago. It's the same with anything in the sciences... We know more now than we used to. Being as accurate and truthful as possible is more important than trying to maintain an inaccurate system simply because we learned it that way.

I lived in Johannesburg for a year in 1995 as a young adult. It was very high crime at the time. I don't know what it's like now though. To be fair, I was doing young adult things... going to clubs and bars and such... I'm certain I would have had different experiences if I had been going to the library story hour or the synagogue or the opera. I think in 1995, there was a lot of overt drug use and a lot of weapons and a sense of... disenfranchisement. People were coming off of the high of the elections and finding that life was not gloriously better and they had a miserable history to deal with and a lot of angry and powerless and poor people. In 1995, with the social circle I was in, being in a relationship with someone of another race was considered pretty cool. I'd imagine it's okay. Would I take my family to Jo'burg? Probably... I'm pretty adventurous. I'd be looking hard for the safest parts of the city or perhaps I'd find a nice suburb or small town and commute.

What I like most is that it gets done! It takes about 5 minutes per day. It's clear and straightforward. One of my girls loves the word searches and games, the other hates them. What I don't like is the vocabulary definitions are not useful to kids. The vocabulary in the definition is often more difficult than the word itself. So... we're sticking with it for now because it's working. It's pretty inexpensive and quick and it keeps us on track for learning how to spell new words. I'm not 100% enthusiastic about it though.

Some are better than others. We absolutely love the murderous maths and horrible science and the "Ten Best..." because they're clever and silly and perfect for that 9-12 yr old range (give or take a few years on either end), but some of the histories were too gruesome for our taste. The histories of individual cities (like York or London) were the worst. I don't know how to describe it. The books I like present interesting facts and academic content in a cool and silly way... but some of the horrible histories were more just presenting the worst of what people can do to each other throughout history.

I took my daughter to a podiatrist and was pretty impressed. She wasn't the only kid in the waiting room. The podiatrist x-rayed her foot... more of an ankle/tendon sort of thing... to rule out a fracture. He said it was almost certainly a problem called "Severs" which has a lot to do with growing feet and growth plates and is typical with 9-12 yr olds. He also noticed she pronated a bit (which I knew about) and with her hyper-extended knees (which I also know about), was concerned about alignment and future knee problems. We decided to do custom insoles, which our insurance paid half of. I think, because she's serious about ballet, it's pretty important to make sure she's got happy feet. Anyway, I would definitely recommend finding a good podiatrist.

I thought the worksheets were good... and so was the historical background in the teacher's manual. It was definitely not worth $50... but maybe worth $15? So if you buy and sell carefully you'll do okay.

I bought it for around $50 and sold it for $45.

Those books look great! Horrible Science has a lot of historical information in their books on the human body (like "Disgusting Digestion"). Also Joy Hakim is writing a Story of Science book on life science, so there is also that to look forward to.

You guys must be in that same section of SM 4a that was getting us down! Math Mammoth Fractions (I think the intro book) had a section on it. Enchanted Learning had a few activities, but they were pretty easy. Also, check out http://www.mathactivities.net/frogs.htm

My 4th grader and her 5th grade friend are reading from the Medieval and Early Modern World (OUP) series this year combined with historical fiction, some documentaries and movies and the Medieval History Portfolio. We'll do the Renaissance History Portfolio after that (starting in mid-spring). It's working very nicely.