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La Condessa

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  1. My sister has a college degree in genealogy, and my mom has gotten really into it, too. A few years ago I came for a visit and somewhat skeptically joined them working at it, because it was what they really wanted to do. It was awesome! It’s like a big treasure hunt, poring over old documents, trying to decipher the “code†(mix of German and Latin written in the old Gothic alphabet). And you can grow to feel so connected to the people you “discoverâ€â€”I especially do to one family who had 14 children, and only three of them survived to adulthood. Every few years the plague would come through and kill two or three of their kids. Of the survivors, one became the local priest, my direct line grandma immigrated to America, and one brother settled down in the same town and had fourteen children of his own. I guess they had to be that prolific just for the family to make it from one generation to the next. I also have a grandmother who has been an avid genealogist for many decades, so we know a ton about our family history on that side. I’m a direct decendent of Eleanor of Aquitaine through John Lackland. And a Hessian mercenary in the Civil War who defected and stayed in the US. And a pair of very wealthy plantation owners in the 1800s South who met the Mormon missionaries, converted, set all their slaves free, and headed off in a covered wagon to the Rocky Mountains.
  2. Those in AU or the UK, do you foresee illegal guns becoming more of a problem in your countries as they are rapidly becoming easier and cheaper to make at home? Or do you think that the very rareness of firearms in your countries will help the police to stay on top of finding and destroying these weapons?
  3. The LDS church has family history centers all over where you can use Ancestry.com for free. They also have volunteers to help if you want.
  4. I think it really depends what your state’s legal requirements for private schools are. There were some homeschool moms who formed a private school in the town south of here many years ago, and it’s still going strong. (But a normal teachers-teach-the-kids-on-location school, not teaching at home). They were religious homeschoolers whose #1 goal was to keep their kids out of the bad public schools, and they kept having other parents ask if they could pay them to homeschool their children, too. They make good money running their little Christian school out of a church during the week, but I know they have to follow certain rules from the state, like kids must be on campus for a certain number of hours per day. Private schools regulations vary from state to state as much as homeschooling regulations do. I know that the private school requirements are simpler in CA than here. My kids are enrolled with a public charter that gives us homeschooling money, and we prove “attendance†by providing lesson plans and a work sample each week. These schools are uncommon in my state, but they got their unconventional (for here) methods approved. Technically, my kids are public school students in a town on the other side of the state, where they fund their tiny rural school with the excess funds from the charter school students. (Win-win as far as I’m concerned). I’ve been toying with the idea of trying to start a similar charter here—that model could save our struggling schools, for which the local population votes down every funding measure. It just looks like so much work to get it set up, though, that I don’t know if I can simultaneously manage all that and homeschooling my own kids in the manner I want.
  5. I followed a similar concept, but with weekly dividers in binders. It was a big bother to be constantly adjusting subjects forward and back as the kids grasped some concepts more quickly or slowly than planned for. Now I still prepare all the worksheets similarly, but I have them organized by subject in order of use. I just transfer over approximately a few weeks’ worth of pages to the kids’ binders whenever that subject is getting low, and this allows me to have the ease of the advance prep that the file system allows while still allowing the flexibility for my kids to move at their own paces.
  6. I don't bother with the workbook, unless a kid seems to need extra practice on a particular subject. The workbook contains lots of simple repetition of the concepts covered in the textbook, so I use it for only things they don't seem to get yet after covering the textbook. The IP books practice the same concepts, but in more interesting ways that take things a step further. My kids do Singapore Textbook, IP and CWP and Beast, but we will shorten and skip things from Singapore when it isn't offering anything new or challenging--often if it is a topic that BA has touched on, we will skip the textbook entirely and sections from IP where the questions are fairly repetitive. Occasionally they will do only CWP for a chapter. We've never needed to skip anything from BA, because even when the math subjects are review, the questions always offer something interesting or different about the way it is applied to stretch their brains.
  7. Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and of course, the best ever: The Hobbit ETA: the trilogy Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, and Dragondrums and the Enchanted Forest Chronicles: Dealing with Dragons, Searching for Dragons, and Calling on Dragons
  8. No, 5 is slated for some time this summer. 3 & 4 are April, and 2 is supposed to be sometime around or shortly after the level 2 books are all out. Dd1 is halfway through 4, so I was figuring roughly from next school year.
  9. I think I saw a while ago they were saying you could do memberships by the year or by the month.
  10. I didn't say I thought it was unreasonable--Beast Academy is so awesome, they could charge whatever they want--just that it is untenable for my family.
  11. My kids have been super excited. I've been wondering how much to set aside from our charter funds to pay for it. On their facebook page, BA said that a year of BA online will be roughly equivalent to one year of books--but I was thinking per family, and it sounds like that is per kid (though they may offer a small sibling discount). Ugh. Oldest dd has another year of BA, and youngest son will have one or two years before he's ready for it. We've all been looking forward to it, but that would add up very fast--maybe $1200+ over the next five years or so? For an addendum to a $400+ (4 year) curriculum I've already purchased? That's just not going to be a possibility. They're going to be so disappointed. :(
  12. Ds2 has dictated: AAR is begun and he has started self-directed piano with Hoffmann
  13. I second the Dragon Box apps. Also, Reading Raven 1 and 2 are great fun and real learning for phonics. And Letter School is great.
  14. What about letting her finish up the year with WTM Academy AOPS Pre-Algebra? (Do they let students transfer in mid-way?) It's supposed to be slower and gentler than doing it through AOPS.
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