Aw, that is AWESOME!

At the beginning of the year I look ahead at the lessons, plan them out, coordinate some demonstrations, etc. By this time in the year I'm more likely to be going in blind. :-) It still works, though. We spend a couple "periods" on each lesson. Sometimes I read a library book out loud or use their pictures. Sometimes we do a demo from BFSU or a book of 250 easy science experiments. To "finish" a lesson I write the major points on the bottom of a story page and they draw an illustration on the top. This is helpful when we want to review a prerequisite. They find it in their notebook and we talk about it. Before I put the book away I look through whatever lesson I plan to do next. That gives me a heads up about how much prep I might need. One last tip, I made up a schedule for the lessons with checkboxes so that I can keep track when we do lessons out of order. There are flow charts on the yahoo group or you can pm me. Good luck.

You have a TIME machine?? That sounds great! And I can see why you wouldn't want to use it to recostruct spelling sheets even if they are beautiful. Wow. A time machine.

Thanks for the tip! I found it at my library. I love my library. :-)

If you might use it in the next week or so, and don't have room for the happy bouquet, I put mine back in the bag add a bit of absorbant material around the stems (paper towel or clean rag) then SQUEEZE out as much air as possible and twist tie it shut. As an added advantage it is much more compact and easier to squeeze into the fridge.

You must buy your groceries sonewhere that does not sell tabloid magazines. All I know is what I've read on the covers while waiting in line - which is not any kind of coherent story.

Apples to Apples is enjoyed here. It isn't spelling but rather vocabulary building. You need at least 3 to play (more is better)

There are a lot of great ways to get started with Spanish and building up your Spanish vocabulary! Salsa is good. We just do it once a week, you can find lesson plans out there somewhere but I've never used them. Don't forget to check your library, ours has a few basic Spanish for kids videos (Little Pim, Whistlefritz, etc.) and a bunch of board books and picture books in Spanish (many familiar ones translated from English), plus a variety of "First 1,000 Spanish words" or similar picture dictionaries. They also have a number of cds of kids' music in Spanish. One of the local libraries has Muzzy online and you can watch a segment and then play some games. I've printed a few basic Spanish readers from the McGraw Hill website. Also, Babybug is coming out with some editions in Spanish, I haven't seem them myself. The BBC has a number of Spanish-language resources on their site that you might want to explore. There are also plenty of programs you could spend money on, of course. Also, if YOU have ever studied Spanish there are more possibilities for teaching children that are, um, facilitated (?) with Spanish instructions, like this one. Or even taking common games (Guess Who?, Headbandz, Rory's Story Cubes, etc.) and using them in Spanish. We also enjoy the kids' cartoon Pocoyo in Spanish on YouTube once in a while (I also found a season at the library). Have fun!

This is an issue I struggle with because I am in a really good school district (according to their reader board). They have lots of extras and academic success stories. They don't have individualized education plans though... and I enjoy the life-style over all. I don't want my kids to be overly peer-focused, even if they are "good" peers... Usually we happily move along enjoying our groove, but once in a while my doubts assail me. Is it for me? Is it really best for them? So far, homeschooling wins. Even if it is my selfish avoidance of outside work for me or bully exposure for them it is still in their best interest.

You are fine to go on. That said, we spent a couple weeks doing The Sentence Family in between the two levels. It was a nice, brief change of pace with a gentle introduction to diagramming. It is told in a story format and we've keft tge pictures up to refer to on occasion.

Have you (or your library) got a book like Barron's 501 Spanish verbs? The introductory section talks about the regular verb endings for different tenses. You could pull out some of the common past-tense endings as a crib sheet to get you started. Sounds fun!

Mine has the car stuff, library card, loyalty cards a robot-shaped headphone splitter to keep the peace at the library when more than one kid wants to hear the game on the computer, and a p38 can opener - which hasn't come in handy yet (probably 20 years) but YOU NEVER KNOW! It has a sharp edge which occasionally scratches me and sometimes snags my knitting. Okay. I'm going to go take that thing off there.

For what it is worth, I try to do this with my 2nd graders once a week. We use Frog & Toad (Sapo y Sepo). They read me two pages, explain what happened, then go back and reread a sentence at a time and translate as they go. We focus on pronunciation and verb tenses, the vocabulary is not challenging. Turns out I am as fluent in Spanish as a typical nine-year-old. :laugh: You might want to look at some of these other Spanish resources if any fit the interests of your student... News in Slow Spanish has a short discussion of topics in the news each week (I haven't listened in a while, I think the formula was one U.S. story, one "international" story, and one celebrity-type story), then a discussion of some grammatical topic and then a cultural story from or about a Spanish speaking country. There are supporting materials online but I never explored them (I listened to the program while I was running in the morning). Sadly, while it used to be free, I see they now charge a fee. Another site I've poked around on in this Hablando de Ciencia site. It has articles on different scientific topics. It is down for maintenance (my success rate is low this evening!) but hopefully that is temporary. I also stumbled on rtve.es which is a Spanish media homepage, so they have news, sports, weather, etc. In the past we have watched some children's t.v. shows there. Lastly, I've found a lot of neat things (including some of the ones above I suppose) on the blog Teaching & Learning Spanish. HTH!

What about a non-timed option like fun4thebrain.com (I think) My dd gets stressed when there is a timer, but does pretty well on her own. She likes the game where you drive around town and go into different shops (merbs I think)

I think I bought the manipulatives from Saxon, but it wasn't a good use of my money. I didn't know about tge RR ones at the time. It wouldn't have been too hard to put it together as we went, if you ate so inclined (we had a foot ruler and dominoes and playing pieces from other games and toys that we already had) I might have liked more pattern blocks. It was nice to have it all in one place. I bought all the teachers guides used from various places without problem. At one point my teacher's guide didn't match up with the worksheets, but it wasn't terrible - I just got a little creative. I applaud your decision to start with 1. We started with K and then sped through it before the end of the year. We only went through 3 then had to move to a different program that was a better fit for us.

Well, what about investigating whether a local copy shop can do part of the work for you. Can they laminate a long strip of sheets? Can they print out a long timeline that doesn't need to be laminated, just folded? Can the kids do some of the work at the first meeting? Maybe they could add a page or two each week. Just throwing out ideas. I hope you figure something out!

I made one like you are describing. In Excel I created the lines across the pages and put on the dates. Printed them out on card stock, and used clear Contac paper to "laminate"and hold the pages together in a long strip. I didn't hole-punch them, but you easily could.

I chose to read it as an adult, didn't rush it, and enjoyed. I thought it was waaay better than Secret Garden! :-)

I like Alice Medrich's because you mix the batter and then let it rest overnight and that always gives me the illusion that I'm baking and eating cookies without the work. Totally illogical, I know. Also, she melts the butter which is nice because I never seem to have enough thawed out.

My 8yo b/g share. In fact, when we moved (they were 4) I moved the baby in with them. The twins moved from sharing a twin bed to bunkbeds and younger dd now has a trundle mattress. That is the "sleeping" room and their toys stay in other rooms. I'm in no hurry but I do have another room I can use when it is time to separate. This arrangement was dictated by the layout of our house, but it is working for us.

My dd has met some other homeschoolers at ballet and through my efforts (asking and arranging) and we had some kids move in next door. For my ds I answered a posting on the local homeschool forum looking for a similarly aged playmate. We have been getting together consistently for a couple of years now. I have made sure that we continue to schedule this even though I have to modify our school schedule to be sure it happens. My dc are all playing soccer this season, but the other kids (partcularly the boys) are more standoffish. My advice is if you find a potential friend, be willing to modify your schedule to accommodate theirs for long enough that the "habit" is established. Also, consider letting them do you a favor once in a while (can I drop off dd while I run this errand and then come right back?) Sometimes, rathet than being an imposition it can help break the ice. All the normal safety cautions apply, of course.

Oooh, I have "The Illuminated Rumi" by Coleman Barks and it is so beautiful I can only read one or two pages a day. One of my favorites: Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don't open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. Umsami I would love to know what you end up doing and with what materials - for myself if not my kids! "Keep knocking, and the joy inside will eventually open a window and look out to see who's there."

As an adult I think the WWE copywork should just take 5 minutes, but for my kids it always takes much longer. It helps me to explicitly decide up front what work has to be done before *special thing* and then share that and then add occasional reminders and maybe a cut-off time. As for what we do, we start the day at 9. If they are done with breakfast before that they can play. We do math, 10 minutes of piano, 2 of (WWE, FLL and spelling) and then break for 30 - 60 minutes. After lunch we do Spanish and either science or history. Sometimes we reconvene later for art, music or American History. Maybe an hour total in the afternoon. On days I'm pulling out my hair I do try to spread it around and not do it in clumps. :-)

We all got a chuckle from your story here!

We're in SOTW 2 and this year started American history, loosely planned to be a 3 year cycle. American history is a bit more seat-of-my-pants and fairly passive for my kids (which makes it popular). Our library has a good collection of junior fact books, so I do some read-alouds and some strewing. So if everything continues at this pace both history cycles will finish together and then ?