Here is a free one that you can print off at Zaner Bloser Spelling Connections. http://www.zaner-bloser.com/spellingconnections/practice-pages.html

I agree with a PP, if you want your child to know the rules of spelling then you should look into a phonics program. Phonics tells the rules of "why" we say words like we do. Once you are pretty well into a phonics program then start spelling to reinforce the learning of the phonics.

I started attending DH's church when we met and still don't feel "like family". It has about 40-50 people depending on the day. There are 9 different families that have kids and only 2 of the families don't send their kids to the school in the church....I am one of them. The other family has 4 kids that go to PS but they started in the church school and didn't like it. My DD started K there and I pulled her out in April. I didn't like the curriculum, the teacher for the younger grades was way too strict IMO, the "administrator" literally asked my 4th grade neice once "Kayla, you have ANOTHER question???" when I was there to help (parents were supposed to help once a week in the school) I was mortified that this young girl had a question and he put her down like that. That to me, doesn't instill the love of learning, it instills the fear of asking questions. I didn't feel like DD was learning things by mastery and only getting passed on to the next pace (ACE) whether she was ready or not. I didn't like that the kid's desks were little white desks with big pieces of plywood that stuck out like blinders on a horse so they couldn't see their neighbor. Talk about no socialization!!! She didn't get to talk during school except their 30 minute break....WTH? I talked to our preacher about my concerns with the school before I pulled DD out and was met with a "a Christian education is the best thing for our children" speech...of course...who started the school??? our preacher. Great, fine and dandy, I want my children to have a Christian education as well but I can do a heck of a better job not putting my child down, not breaking her spirit and socializing her at home, while teaching her about Christ. He isn't supportive of it but I don't need his oppinion. I am her mother. I was literally not spoken to when I pulled DD out. In fact a bunch of the moms got together to take their kids to swim lessons and there was 3 lessons left when I pulled DD out but I continued to take her and just sat in the pool while DD did lessons not talking to anyone:confused:. Oh well, I prayed long and hard about my decision to homeschool my girls. I know that PS isn't an option for us as they failed my DS in school, IMO. And I didn't think that church school was for us either so home we went and home we will stay! Even to this day, I still feel like a misfit because I don't support the church school by sending DD there. I don't get invited for playdates, I don't get invited to BBQ's, etc etc etc. I get talked to at church now but never about homeschooling. Our preacher quit having personal Bible study with us after I pulled DD out...don't know if it is HS related or a coincidence that he is busy. If it weren't for DH, I would have found another church a long time ago but he has went there for 20+ years and so I will stay. I stay for him and Jesus...not because I am there to make friends. Do what is right for your family and if the church doesn't like it....tough!

My name is Melissa and I am a coffee-a-holic, homeschooling to a 6yo, adoptive nursing to a toddler, gramma to a baby, harping on him to get a job mom to a 19yo, farmer's wife, baby delivering lover of Christ! Is that too many adjectives that aren't really adjectives? :lol:

yes, I saw it too! I cried and I don't cry very often! I can't believe that happens in this world!

I have irritable bowel syndrome and have had it since high school (now almost 37) It is the :001_huh:where's the bathroom NOW kind! I have tried the elimination diet, eliminating everything that can cause probs from my diet, milk, gluten, sugar, coffee, irritants...to no avail. The minute I introduced a food I would RUN!!! I finally went back to the gastroenterologist and they put me on a med called Cholestyramine. It is a bile acid reducer and I am not kidding you!!! it is a miracle! I took it the first 3 days and actually then bound myself up like a stuffed goose. I now take it every 2-3 days and for 3 weeks now haven't had to RUN once. I have even tested it out with my tried and true foods that I know cause me problems...eggs, pancakes, coffee, any fast foods and the cheesy eggs in the cafeteria at the hospital that I work and nothing has made me go. I had diarrhea so bad I had cramps, sweats, nausea etc. The cramps were worse than labor. I was to the point where I didn't want to eat unless I was at home, lest I couldn't make it to the restroom! Miracle I say!!! miracle!

I am a Labor and Delivery nurse and I work two 12 hour shifts a week. I homeschool on my days off (during the week) and DD goes to her dad's house the days that I work so I always send worksheets for her to do there too. My DH is a farmer and this will be the first summer where I am going to have to fit work, farming, HSing all in one schedule so it will be interesting. I have chosen to HS all year knowing that we won't do a full schedule during the summer but will continue math and phonics and reading and fit extras in if we have time. So far it has all worked well. It actually works better than having DD in "school" because I can go to the farm (80 miles from our house in town) and take DD and her work with instead of not being able to go and help DH because DD was in school.

Honestly, I haven't even figured out how many pages of stuff to do per day/ per week to last all year long. For example with Math Mammoth, I just have DD do a page, front and back, a day...sometimes more if it is an easy lesson. So she will do 5-7 pages, F&B, a week. I also have been schooling all year long with a little more lenient schedule during the summer due to camping, harvesting, time with her dad etc. Maybe I should at least plan that out a head:confused: I like that Elemental science is planned by the week, although we haven't started it yet and will start in the fall.

yes, that is exactly how I do it! :001_smile: I actually have all of this weeks stuff piled on my table by my recliner since I have worked the last 3 days and haven't had time to put it away!!!

I see the thread with 700+ responses...haven't got up enough courage to read them all. And, I see all of the workbox stuff. I was just wondering if anyone out there (besides me) doesn't do any of that. I just keep my stuff on a schedule that I made for us a week at a time including the subjects/curricula that we are doing and fill it in a week at a time. It seems to work well so far, since April anyways. I am just wondering if I am missing something. Obviously I haven't gotten over the newbie "gotta try that". I think I am done curricula hopping, maybe;)! Is the filing of the whole year flexible? I really need something that is flexible so I can change, go faster, slower, take days off if needed etc. Hmmm, maybe I should just stick to what works for us:001_smile:

My 6yo DD does that too...a lot. I think that if they catch the first few letters it triggers a word in their brain that they have seen like the word "then"...DD will read it as "that" or "this' sometimes, obviously just guessing. I make her stop and sound it out. I came across a site like this a few years ago and it makes you wonder how many words we actually come across that are misspelled or that we read incorrectly. http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/Cmabrigde/

I have the WWE book...not the workbooks, the main book for sale if you are interested. PM me if you are. We aren't using it.

Short shorts would slow me down! My chub rub would get in the way!:lol: I am so glad I am not the only one that feels the way most posters above feel. I do wear a swim suit and in public:001_huh: but it has a little skirty thing on it. My girls wear regular swim suits but no bikinis. In fact, DD 6 just asked the other day while in JC Penney's "mom, when can I get a bikini?" my reply was "never while you are living in my house!" I then went on to explain that we don't wear bikinis because they don't cover our bellies. We go to the public pool maybe 2 times a summer....We prefer to take the boat to the lake (if we have time). I wan't raised in a modest home at all, infact my mom used to change oil, work on the front yard etc in her bikini or bikini top and the shortest cut off jeans she had (still has them GAG!) and I remember being SOOOOO embarrased to live there! I am complete opposite of that. I don't wear shorts that don't come at least almost to my knees, I don't wear tank tops or tops that show cleavage. I actually prefer pedal pushers/coulots/capris than shorts. My step daughters wear bikinis but that is not by my choice! I wouldn't allow it at all if I had a choice.

WOW! I know adults that can't use commas and quotation marks correctly! That is fantastic and I do not think she is behind.....although now you make me wonder about my 6 1/2 DD, who is just learning to put periods at the end of sentences. (Just kidding, she is a rising 1st grader and is doing fine for her age, I think anyways!)

I sent ours out a while ago too and haven't received one back or heard from ours. We sent our to New York so maybe our "flat Katie" is having a good time in the Big Apple.

I saved 1a and 1b to a drive and took it to Staples and printed it for $20.00. I then 3 ring punched it and put it in a binder. I don't want it spiral bound because I send stuff with DD to her dad's house and don't want to send the whole book.

Your post is everything that is screaming inside of me! I guess I will answer it the best I can. I do not feel like I can talk to DH about my concerns/fears/problems for 2 reasons....I don't want to start a fight/issues/drama in our house and when I have brought up concerns/problems about his kids he gets defensive...not abusive or yelling, just defensive and then usually will bring up how much of a loser my 19yo pot smoking no job son is. (his girls are straight A students and can do no wrong in his eyes) I was in a marriage that every thing became a conflict/fight and abusive so I try at all costs to avoid that. (not exactly healthy, I know). DH never reprimands his girls. I used to bring any problems to him like please tell the girls to pick their dirty laundry up out of the bathroom and bring the towels out of their room when they go back to their moms so we actually have towels. (they both have long hair and would use 2-3 towels a shower so at the end of the week the towels are all dirty and in their rooms) Nothing ever became of it. I asked him to please make the 15yo sit up in church and not to sleep on his or other DSD's shoulder, it is disrepectful and she needs to sit up....again, nothing became of it...so I quit bringing it up. I throw their dirty socks in their room and shut the door. I now will at least say "please take your dirty glasses/dishes to the kitchen" Anyways, I went to the garage where DH was working tonight and asked him calmly..."so, what exactly happened to my brakes?" and he said "Mary put them on and didn't tighten the bolts" so I said..."I am not trying to start a fight, but why didn't you check them? You know the curves I have to drive going to and from the farm and could have went off the cliff with the girls in the car with me"........WRONG! Then it was all about how when my son helped with a repair job and how he did this and that wrong. I just turned and left the garage before I started crying...and that is where I sit. Now I am sitting here ruminating about if DSD did that on purpose or was she just being lazy...the world may never know! I try hard to be a good Christian wife, to not argue, to let my DH make all the major decisions, to keep the house clean, meals cooked, kids taken care of, to not "pick" on his girls but I am still so mad I am shaking and nothing will become of it. Well, the good thing is my car is fixed, we are all OK and the world will revolve around the sun by morning.

The last line of this made me smile! thanks :001_smile: I am pretty sure DH would think me off my rocker if I started turning over tables but I was about ready to have a seizure over it, I was so mad! I have taken my :chillpill: and now am more calm but this has been eating me all day. Hopefully tonight we can have some calm pillow talk.

you can add a few drops of tea tree oil to your regular shampoo too and you can wah with lice shampoo to prevent I think

OK, I have a 15 1/2 yo stepdd that will try to get out of manual labor at any price and corner cutting...for example...I have caught her doing the dishes under just cold running water, no soap, multiple times, called her on it and asked her to please use hot water and soap! (I really try not to "parent" my stepgirls because it is their dad's job but sorry, gotta have clean dishes!) OK, fast forward to Saturday. We farm 80 miles from town and have a house in both places. I had to come back to town so I had both little DD's with me. I stopped at a little town on the way back to go potty and my stupid car wouldn't go in reverse:confused::confused: A few farmers looked at it and thought it was a rock in the brakes but I should be ok to go the 80 miles back home and have my DH fix it. I got home (DH still at the farm BTW) and when DH called later that night he thought it was not a rock, it was the transmission....great, there goes a few thousand bucks. Well, today DH talks to a transmission place and they think it is the brakes, not the trans. So DH has the car apart in the garage (he is also a mechanic that builds racecar engines when not farming) and he comes in and says "it is the brakes" and asks stepdd which side she put together when they put brakes on my car a few weeks ago, she said both front ones. Well after he told her that she didn't put a main bolt on the brakes is the reason the brakes didn't work, it was all I could do not to lose it! I can't believe that he let a 15 yo put the brakes on my car and didn't check the work!!!!!! Expecially one he KNOWS hates mechanic work and does a shoddy job at most everything she does! (I have an 18yo stepDD that loves it!!!!) The thing that really makes me mad is that I drove the car 80 miles on a road that has tons of fast curves and cliffs (not that I took them that fast because I am a chicken driver!) but still, with my 2 littles in the car and if the brakes went out, we would have been in big trouble! DH and I do not argue and if things are bugging me I usually bottle them up to avoid confrontation but geez...I really feel like that put the lives of myself and littles in danger! Hopefully I can find a calm way of bring this up. I totally understand him wanting to show 15yo how to work on cars and that is all fine but CHECK THE WORK!!!!! OK, off vent, thanks for listening.

Yes, I find that we can breeze through some lessons to but if you think about a teacher in PS, they have 30ish kids they have to teach to and you only have 2, that is the way I look at it. You don't have to make sure 30 kids understand it. On the handwriting, if they know how to form their letters and just need practice I would incorporate some sort of copywork, like verses from the Bible or another book, poems, haiku, etc or letters to family. Can't help you on the geography, we aren't there yet.

I am glad you had a good first day. I still lose my patience now and then but we are both still learning at being a homeschooling family. Like right now, she didn't want to do her work because she said she had a headache...so off to take a nap then. You surely can't play with a headache and only a nap will fix it.

I started HS in April after I pulled DD out of our church school 3/4 of the way through K. I just went into more of a 1st grade curriculum when we started stuff at home. I started with the WTM and jumped on the band wagon of all the stuff written by the authors. I stuck with it for about 3 months and found it so dry that it was boring me and DD both. (I know some people really love it, it just wasn't a good fit for us) So back to the researching I went to find something that I thought would fit better. DD likes workbooky stuff which I know is not in the classical mindset but I have to pay attention to her learning style. I do not like stuff that only involves me reading to DD with no written participation from DD (ie FLL, Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading) I also have a 18month old DD tagging along so sitting down and reading EVERYTHING to DD all day long didn't work well for us. I have our current choices in my siggy.

Here!

I have looked at BJU and I like it for Bible (we use it currently) but I bought the science and didn't like it much, it felt disconnected. I do like the WTM timeline for science, it makes sense to me. I looked at HOD, not really what I am looking for either....:confused: I guess I want something following the WTM timeline, I like chronological order, but adding more Bible timeline into it KWIM...? Maybe there isn't even such a thing. Has anyone done history for the grammar stages just using, reading, discussing books like Usborn History or Kingfisher's History of the world and checking more books out at the library on the subjects? (Which I know goes along with the SOTW theme which is where we are right now already) Geez, I just need to get my undecisive pants off and stick to what we have for a whole year.