hey thanks for asking and thanks for posting that link. I just ordered Math Mammoth and bought an abacus but didn't know the trade trick. That was awesome!!!

We had a private open adoption. I knew the BM from work. Our expenses were not bad compared to going with an agency. homestudy $1300 lawyer $1200 background check $40.00 each birthmother counseling $300 You might put the word out to family, friends, coworkers, church etc that you would like to adopt.

it sounds like you are on the right track already with your ideas. Measuring, building, baking, traveling, planning a trip, how many miles, grocery shopping, clothes/school shopping, paying bills... all involve math. Why don't you have him help you with some of those or make him his own budget etc.

I am just looking into something else. Another thread got me thinking that I really don't like the FLL (sorry SWB). What do you like for grammar for a 1st grader? Thanks!

sometimes. If I do extra reading that day like in Charlotte's Web, I have her do the narration from that or I have her copy something like a Bible verse for the copy work. I think I use the work book about 1/2 the time, and the "ideas" from the workbook the other 1/2. YOu don't have to have the instructor book and the workbook. They are basically the same but the workbook has the copywork on pages with lines.

I am glad I am not the only one that finds FLL dry and boring. I thought it was just me. Sorry to Hijack... but if you don't like FLL, what do you use for grammar? I do like WWE, it is easy and takes minutes. I don't always follow the book and I incorporate other things into our day like Charlotte's Web and narration from that or copy work from the Bible but I like the layout of WWE.

I had the same problem with my son. He peed in pull ups just like diapers. I finally went cold turkey and went to big boy unders. I let him pick them out at the store, we had a big talk about how you can't pee in them because they aren't diapers, they are big boy underwear. He of course picked out the Barney ones (this was 17 years ago...he is 19 now) I told him that if he peed in them Barney would be sad and I was going to throw his new unders in the garbage...just like a diaper. He peed in it, I threw it in the garbage and he never peed in his big boy unders again! This was of course after we learned how to potty in the toilet and he would just get lazy and pee in the pullups. So, my advice (I am not a potty training expert by any means!) is to get him real underwear and ditch the pullups all together. If he pees them, make him take them off and take to the laundry area and he has to put new ones on himself. You might have some accidents but he will get the hint really fast that his clothes, legs, bum, everything will be wet if he pees the unders vs. pullups that keep everything dry. Hope that helps! ETA...I just read your post again and figured it was about #2...same thing....if he poos in the big boy unders he has to dump the poo in the toilet...he will make a mess and protest but it shouldn't take more than a few times of that before he wants to just poo in the toilet.

I honestly can't remember how much I spent on ES....$12.00? I just bought a math program and took it to staples and had it printed off. It was about 240 pages (I think) and it was $22.00 to print off. I figured it would take a lot of ink at home to print that so I took it there. Just to give you an idea of what it costs to print off stuff. It might be just as good to get the preprinted version. For this math program for instance, I could have bought the preprinted one for the same price as buying the ebook but I wanted it to print off for practice and for my 1yo...in 4 years:001_smile: If you want to be able to print multiple pages/copies of the ebook for multiple children, then maybe the ebook itself is worth the ink to print off the book.

I bought the 1b light blue and it downloaded to notepad all in plain text. I can't find the link to redownload it now. It says in an email link below and the link isn't there. It has instructions for unzipping it and I downloaded the unzipper and cant find anything to unzip. UGH!!! can anyone that is savy with computers help me out? I tried calling them and of course they are closed today. I will call them tomorrow of course but wanted to print stuff NOW....insert little face throwing a fit here!

DD is about half way done with Saxon 1. I really think she would do better with some color/fun. All the rest of our curricula is black and white and frankly....boring to look at. I love the concept of WTM and I am using most of what WTM recommends but it is pretty colorless. I also think I would like the idea of mastery better than spiral. It seems to me that we spend a lot of time repeating the same concept until boredom! So, help me pick a math program for 1st grade colorful...workbooks are OK with me fun...fun to learn and fun to do mastery vs spiral won't cost a million $$$$$$$$ thanks!

misidawnrn there too! I will try to find ya!

I have 2 children that are adopted and have placed one for adoption. I wouldn't be offended if it was mentioned that my children are adopted because they are, and they will both know it (6yo does already). It would be nice if just a little (A) with a subnote what (A) means, was placed next to her name though instead of a complete sentence that basically states the child's mother's marrital history....JMO.

I was begining to wonder if DD was retaining anything from SOTW. I really like the program but it does sometimes seem a little advanced for DD. We are only up to the pyramids and Cheops as we are kind of having a light summer schedule. We we went camping this week and boating a lot in the mountains. I pointed out some big caves in the side of one of the mountains and my brilliant little DD said "mommy, the nomads probably lived there" :lol::lol:I have a smarty!!:lol::lol: Thanks for letting me share!

Hi, yes, CNM's can do home births but in Montana they have to have an MD back up...the MD's here don't particularly like midwives so finding a MD is going to be near impossible. There is only one MD that backs the only CNM in my town that does births out of hospital (she used to do them in hospital but the clinic she worked for phased the midwives out)....unfortunately that MD and I butt heads...he is pretty nasty to some of the nurses if you aren't in the cute, pretty, skinny little blonde nurse catagory...which I am not:D Also, to get my CNM I have to have it before 2014. I only have my associate in nursing (RN, ADN) would have to get my BSN then MSN then CNM....not possible in 3 1/2 years unless I quit my job, sold my husband and put my kids up for adoption :lol: If you don't have it all before 2014 you have to have a doctorate in nursing...that is TOOOOOO much schooling for me. I am almost 37.

Steam them...don't boil them LOTS OF BUTTER!!!!

I am a L&D RN now but for many years have felt called to the path of midwifery. I would like feedback from any educational sources you have attended. I am trying to make up my mind on which program I want to choose. I only want to do direct entry midwife/CPM not CNM for in hospital deliveries. Thanks!

My stepDD's are 18 and 15 so it was important for us to have them participate in helping pick little DD's name. I wanted them to help so they felt apart of it, not like they were being replaced with a new stepmom, a new 4yo sister and then a new baby. We adopted DD right before our 1st anniversary. They really wanted Cooper for a boy and I would have went for that name but DH didn't really like it but would have went with it in the end I think. When we found out it was a girl we all sat around and I read names from a baby book that I liked. When I got to Sarah, my ODSD said "Hey, my dad wanted to name me Sarah but my mom wanted Megan and she won." So I asked DH if he still liked it which he did and the 3 girls all liked it...so Sarah it was!

here's another tip that I do when DD seems to be not listening. I make her look at me and I ask her "are you listening to me?" Then if I really want her to get what I said I ask her ??. For instance, just about an hour ago she asked me how to spell "5". She asked it then layed on the floor and was playing with her pencil. I spelled it, then asked her now how did I just spell that. She said f-i-v-e. So I know she got it. I don't think that any chart thing is going to get her to listen to you everytime you talk. You will just have to capture her attention like I said above. I am not an expert at parenting but I am figuring out my kids...day by day:001_smile:

I haven't seen that before but it looks cute. I just started a reward system. I bought a "job/chore chart" at the $1 store and it has 8 rows and 14 columns, so basically it is 2 weeks worth of 8 things I want her to work on like doing work happily, being nice to others, doing chores when asked, doing her best work on her work, keeping room clean, reading everyday, doing work at her dad's house when assigned ( she goes to her dad's 2 days a week and has taken to not doing her work there....her dad is a piece of work and doesn't help her:confused:) Anyways, obviously she won't get checks for the dad's house one while she is at my house or doing work on SAT and SUN so out of the 112 possible squares she only has to get 50 in 2 weeks to get a reward. This whole reward system stemmed from her having a little bit of an attitude problem like "oh, I have to do TWO pages" and not sitting and doing work but getting up and fiddleing around lately. She asked the other day if she could go to the pool (the nice big outside one that is only open in summer and is stupidly $$$$) So I said she had to earn it so I came up with the chart, so far it is working good. She folded the washclothes and towels yesterday while I went to the store and when I came home she said "Mom, I am doing chores without you even asking so I can have a sticker on my chart!" Hopefully this will work good for us but we are only 3 days in....:lol:

it all looks good to me. I am not doing much with art (or have planned anyways) We do have an art museum, if you want to call it that, and they offer art kind of stuff for younger kids. I will check it out in the fall. Our PE stuff is playing outside, swimming, there is a class at 4pm at our gym daily (when we go). We do LA everyday and math everday but not science or SOTW.

I am not an expert but my 6yo DD doesn't always get the SOTW stuff either, which is OK. I figure I am just introducing her to the stuff now and she will get it again 2 times in her schooling so she doesn't obviously have to be an expert at it in 1st grade. I really stressed about it when I would review the last chapter before reading the next and she didn't know why people were mummified.... then I just said to myself...she doesn't have to grasp the entire concept just yet, just to get it introduced.

I am not a specialist by any means...my handwriting wants to be a doctors penmanship when it grows up:lol: but...I have a 6 1/2 girl and if I say "I want to see your best handwriting" she will do a good job (for her age) and I notice when she is at her dad's for 2 days a week her work comes back hideous! Obviously not getting supervision there (that is a whole other topic) Practice practice practice but make it fun. Have her copy a fun poem, something out of Dr. Suess, the Bible, a fav book etc. Have her recopy your grocery list, a business card you get or even the sunday comics. She will get better.

DD used ACE in her church school until I pulled her out in April. I thought they were very dumbed down. I helped in the school with the older kids...4th and up and the pace is basically a section, a review, a section, a review, a section, a review...a test. The section and review are all the same thing and at DD's school the kids had to have the answers EXACTLY like the book said so if it said "Joshua aet the apple" in the section on the review it woud say "___________ ate the apple" you had to put in Joshua. It was also a lot of memorizing for the test. I don't like that theory. I also didn't feel like it was mastery at all. While the kids did score their own paces it left room for cheating IMO, and I felt like DD was getting moved on to the next pace without really learning the material. For instance, when I pulled her home one of her spelling words was "seeing" but she couldn't spell "see" so of course she spelled "seeing" wrong. Once you take the test, you are moved onto another pace, whether or not you have mastered the last stuff or not. She didn't have the long E sounds down good enough to add ing to the word. Anyways...gotta got to work. Take care.

I have been thinking of a name too, although I don't need one for reporting etc. I think I will call ours "For this Child school at home" or something along that lines after the verse in the Bible "For this child I have prayed and God has granted me which I have asked of him" (totally paraphrased but I don't know the exact wordage). I have been blessed by surrogacy and adoption for 2 beautiful girls that I prayed for since I was a little girl!