My kids LOVE to cut out stuff they've drawn or colored and stick it on construction paper as a "final project". Glue sticks are just so much less messy than wet glue, which pools and puddles b/c my kids always use way too much!

I'm such a loser. I finally outsourced phonics/reading. How pitiful is that?? They just weren't getting it, and I was frustrated, and they were frustrated, so now they go to a tutor for reading 5 days a week! And now they are all reading!!! It's a summer-only thing, though, so I'll have to pick back up in the fall. But at least the initial hurdle is done! I just could not bear to listen to CCCCC-AAAAA-TTTTT one more time without going insane...

Lots of complaints on Amazon about quality - if you have a copy you like, would you tell me who the publisher is? Or can you offer comments in general about the quality of - Yesterday's Classics - Dodo Press - Book Jungle THANKS!

I feel the same way - LOVED those old cards! I do like that the new ones add some more non-Western stuff though. I scanned in all the timeline cards (both VP & CC) and combined them into one huge Word doc. (Dates across the center line, CC cards on top, VP cards on bottom.) I didn't want my kids to forget the ones that we already learned & I want them to know where they fit in the new timeline, and I want them to see where the new cards are the same as the old ones, just sometimes called something a little different. I also put the corresponding CC history sentences under the cards. That way when we get to that timeline event, we will review the ones we have learned previously. (In another year, we will have been through all the cycles, so they should ALL be review!) My plan is to print the whole document (72 pages!) duplexed on cardstock, and then bind it. One copy per kid to keep in the car for review. If you would like a copy and your email will accept large files, email me. megan.welfare@gmail.com Anyone else who would like a copy, let me know. In order to avoid copyright violations, I would like to only share with those who have purchased BOTH the VP timeline cards as well as the CC timeline cards. Please confirm that when you email me!

As a whole, we have had good luck with Librivox. We just did the Burgess Bird Book, though, and there are different readers for each chapter. Some are great, but several were terrible. One in particular sounded like he was just learning to read, stumbling over words. One is speaking 10 feet away from the mike. Etc. etc. So I hated to download this whole new book and waste all those CDs without getting an opinion! As long as the reader speaks proper English and pauses appropriately and so on, I can deal. We are planning to use a lot of this book, though, so if she wasn't decent I was going to buy the professional one from Amazon. But there aren't reviews on that, either, so...

Has anyone used the Librivox version of "Our Island Story"? Is it a good reader? THANKS!

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=226417&highlight=visualize

Awesome website! Thank you thank you!!

OK - THANK YOU!!! I'll take out "furry animals". Now that I think about it, I'm not exactly sure where I got that! :) So should fish & reptiles be in Cambrian or Triassic? THANKS!!

Honestly, it just wouldn't be that big a deal to me, but my kids are asking, and I am trying to figure out something that is reasonably accurate to tell them. "Were there dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden, Mommy?" ACK!!! Clearly no, but HOW would you explain this to kids? It's just something I never even thought about before this. I just assumed that science was proving the HOW, and the Bible was telling us about the WHO, and somehow all that fit together, even if humans hadn't figured out exactly how yet. But now my kids are asking questions that I just can't answer. What do I do????

My kids are 17 months apart. We are still early in our HSing, so I don't know what we will look like long-term, but currently here is what we do. All content subjects are done together (history, science, art, etc.). I do all skill subjects together (phonics, handwriting, math), but then spend extra one-on-one time with the two kids who need extra support to stay caught up with the other two. We go as fast as we can without leaving anyone behind. I will admit that two of my children could move forward more quickly and are being held back a little just so that I can keep the majority of our work together. When they are more independent, I will probably let those two go at their own pace. For now, though, this is what works for us, and I just refuse to feel guilty about it! :)

I'm having a hard time finding a resource that supports God creating the heavens & earth & life with science. IF YOU AGREE WITH THIS VIEW, do I have the days of creation fit in correctly?? Precambrian - Proterozoic (Creation Days 1-4: God made the sun, earth, moon, stars, oceans, etc.) Phanerozoic - Paleozoic ----- Cambrian (Creation Day 5: God made mollusks, earliest vertebrates, fish, spiders, plants, amphibians, reptiles) ----- Ordovician ----- Silurian ----- Devonian ----- Carboniferous ------------ Mississippian ------------ Pennsylvanian ----- Permian (mass extinction) - Mesozoic ----- Triassic (Creation Day 5: God made dinosaurs, birds, furry animals, flowering plants) ----- Jurassic ----- Cretaceous (dinosaurs go extinct) - Cenozoic ----- Tertiary (Creation Day 6: God made mammals, primates, people) ------------ Paleogene ------------ Neogene ----- Quaternary (Ice Ages begin)

I have a Brother MFC-J6710DW and LOVE IT!!!!

Well, I'll be the voice of dissention. At age 5, when my kids were repeating 4K, TWO of my kids hadn't settled on a hand. As they had 1/2 their practice with their left hand & half with their right, they were beginning to notice that they did not have the same fine motor skills as their peers and be upset about it. With the OT's permission, we began gently encouraging right handedness. We only picked that b/c we didn't think there was a preference, and our society is set up for righties. One of the two has gorgeous handwriting & coloring now. The other looks pretty average. My guess is that they were probably both not truly dominant on either side. It has been a real challenge in other sports. Swimming - which side to learn to breathe to, baseball - they never pick the same side twice in a row to swing with, throwing, etc. With swimming it was easy to just skip teaching one side only and go to both once we realized what the issue was, but the other sports have been an ongoing challenge!

Sorry - there is a post right now about racism in classics, and that was where I meant to post that link.

SERIOUSLY??? I didn't know ANYONE in America used that word anymore!! Except for really old people and maybe some backwoods remnants of the KKK or something like that. I truly don't know that I have heard anyone say that word more than 5 times in my whole life. (I live in a suburb of Charlotte, NC, so maybe location makes a difference?)

sorry - posted on wrong thread

I'm with you. I would be OK having the discussion with them, but I just honestly don't want my kids HEARING that word repeatedly. And I don't want to SAY it over and over again, even reading. So glad we aren't at the age for that book yet!

I've gotten to where if I miss more than a week or two, I download it off Librivox and we just listen to the rest in the car. My kids hear more Librivox readers than they do me. Is that awful? Some of them are just HARD to read out loud. Winnie the Pooh comes to mind. I don't know why I thought it was so hard to read, it just was!

I'll copy out of my Homeschool Tracker list. This is a comprehensive list of everything I would like to get to eventually, NOT something that we are attempting to do all of every year! (I tried to set up HST to grow with us rather than needing to be updated every year.) 01 Christianity (Bible, Morals, Values) 02 Memory Work & General Knowledge (CC memory work, AWANA verses, calendar, weather, number line, themes, etc. - most of this is from Core Knowledge - anything that didn't fit in another category got assigned here) 03 Therapy (flexibility, gross & fine motor exercises, vision therapy homework, etc.) - I also include all forms of formal exercise here - dance class, soccer practice, homeschool PE class, etc. 04 Reading (literature (parent reading to child) as well as phonics & child reading to parent) 05 Writing (handwriting, copywork / dictation / narration / composition, spelling, grammar) 06 Math 07 Foreign Languages (Latin, Spanish, sign language) 08 Music (music appreciation/history, instrumental instruction, singing) 09 Art (art appreciation/history, drawing, other art skills) 10 History, Geography, Other Social Studies (econ, govt, poli sci, sociology, religion/ethics, anthropology, etc.) 11 Science 12 Logic & Critical Thinking 13 Life Skills (cooking / meal planning / nutrition, laundry, housekeeping / cleaning, finances / budgeting, home repair (electrical, woodworking, plumbing, wallpapering, painting) car maintenance & repair, lawn care, gardening, sewing, basic medical (first aid, CPR, etc.), photography, driving, interior design, cake decorating, event planning) Just to be clear - we are NOT planning on doing all this in any one year - it's my list of things I want to get to sometime in the next 12 years!!!

We are enjoying Atelier.

My sister has wonderfully imaginative twins who are almost exactly 2 years older than my trio, and another child who is about 6 months older. I truly just watched and copied them in the beginning. After a while it really does become a lot easier!

thank you thank you!!

It's almost Olympics time - the games start July 22nd! I thought we might do a short unit study on the Olympics. Tell me about your favorite Olympics books, educational DVDs, lapbooks, crafts, or other resources or ideas. I remember from my childhood a short cartoon with a guy that looked like the Little Caesar's guy (yes, I know he is Italian, but that is what he looked like!), explaining the history and so on. Anyone have a clue what that was? My kiddos are doing work on a first grade level if that matters.

My big kids were born 9 weeks early, and have some challenges as a result. I literally had to teach them to play. We focused on a book a week, and did a different activity each day. For example, one week we did Little Red Riding Hood. One day we made the characters out of Playdoh. We assigned each person a character, and then reenacted it. One day we did it with puppets. One day we built houses with pine straw, Lincoln Logs, & blocks & reenacted it. One day we dug through the dressup bin & reenacted it. One day we drew pictures. One day we used the dollhouse figures. One day we drew with sidewalk chalk. One day we played it outside using the trees as houses and turned it into a game of tag. I had to literally lead them every step of the way. By the time we had done that with 10 stories, they knew how to use puppets, playdoh, legos, lincoln logs, etc. I tried to incorporate every toy in the playroom & garage. After a while, we read a story, and I would send the kids off to find appropriate puppets, practice, and put on a show, or I would send them off to illustrate the story with sidewalk chalk. I didn't do that until I knew they could be successful at it though. I know a lot of kids just figure all this out, but some kids just don't. Mine didn't, but it was work investing the time to teach them step by step.