I couldn't wait for all the episodes of Season 3, after watching 1 and 2 for free on Amazon Prime, so I bought the TV pass, that way I got all of Season 3 and any time a new episode is released to amazon it will automatically be purchased for me. So I'm confused because you all are talking about the Christmas Special, has season 3 not aired on PBS yet?

Well I use HST+ but it doesn't automatically move stuff from one schedule day if I don't mark it as done. it sits on that day and I have to reschedule it myself. I prevent having to do this too often by only submitting stuff to the assignment grid from the lessons plans one week at a time. When I did it on paper, I would just write up the plans each Sat or Sun for the upcoming week. Sure you can plan your year quite a bit in advance,by making a list of the assignments for that subject, but you don't have to actually assign dates to those things until they are next on the list to be done.

From what we've done in IEW, this comes later in the program. IEW kind of bounces back and forth between report type writing and creative writing. the student writing intensives start in units 1 and 2 with learning to make a keyword outline from a source paragraph and then learning how to turn that outline into a summary. The next unit teaches them the outline for a story and they use well know fairy tales to outline and then can tweak that outline to make a new story. The 4th unit is working on more of a report type writing and teaches topic and clinchers. Unit 5 is creative again and does writing from pictures. SWI a skips unit 6 which is on how to write a research report from library sources. Unit 7 is about creative writingI don't think units 8 or 9 is taught until you get into the SICC levels . Unit 8 in the SICC-C is the one that teaches the basic, expanded, persuasive, super and personal essay. Through these units the kids will be taught different stylistic techniques, like the who/which clause, adverbial clauses, the super short sentence, various types of sentence openers, how to use strong verbs (some basic verbs will actually be "banned words" like say/said, to help kids use more variety) Now I believe you can get those other essay types in unit 8 from other things they offer if you don't want to use the SICC levels. They offer many theme based writing books. Many actually just get the TWSS (the course geared toward the parent) and a theme book and do all the teaching themselves instead of using the SWI and SICCs where Andrew teaches to the kids via DVD and you are there to help facilitate the lessons. I don't really know if they ever teach a "how-to" paragraph, we're only working through SICC-B. Oh and as for the student pages, I usually just buy the ebook and that way I can quickly print off another copy if we need one.

Unless you plan to go through SWI-A very quickly I wouldn't get SICC-A. You dont' need the articles and stories unless you think your kids would need more practice and you don't want to find things on your own. These are just little 1 paragraph blurbs on a subject, I find them pretty easy to find on my own. If you have any sort of history or science encyclopedia they are rife with things you can use. The SICC-A wouldn't be used until after the SWI-A, I know you said you didn't want to get TWSS, but that might be a better choice than SICC-A. I really can not see my 2nd grader(next year) being able to do SWI-A , so I certainly wouldn't expect them to do SICC-A unless you plan to do a lot in the way of scribing etc, or unless you child LOVES to write. The TWSS is the teacher training discs, so if you had them you really wouldn't even need SWI, you could use them to teach you how to teach the IEW method to yourself with paragraphs/source texts you find on your own. If you'd rather have Andrew do the teaching then I would just get SWI-A and either an extra student notebook or the ebook of it so you can print copies for your 2nd student.

I wouldn't put anything under my whiteboard, I would find it to be a pain in the backside. My kids very rarely use the big one. I use it to teach the lessons and if they use it at all it's for short amounts of time so they just stand. I also have a few lapsize whiteboards for them to use at their tables if it's something that will take longer.

This happened with my pug. This is probably TMI, but they looked bruised at first then started to look like raisins and then eventually just seemed to be reabsorbed.

I noticed a lot seemed surprised by many using 1T or barely more per load. Well you generally don't need more than 1oz in most washers, but of course the detergent manufacturers are going to tell you to use more, that way you'll buy more.

My daughter seems to be super sensitive to detergents. The one we've found that works well and doesn't make her break out is Purex Natural Elements. She likes the Linen and Lillies scent. Not sure what it is about that one that works for us, but nothing smells funky after we use it.

I have a macbook pro that dh got me last year and I got around the windows problem by spending about $250 on Parallels and Windows 8 (wish I would have splurged the extra 20 bucks and got windows 7, but that's a whole other story) I didn't need parallels, but that just makes it so that my mac can run windows and mountain lion at the same time. If you don't want parallels you can get another program that would be similar I think it's called VM fusion ware and use that, or you can just make a windows partition on your hard drive and use bootcamp (that comes with the intel macs) to run windows. Now my kids can play a lot of their old windows games just because on their iMac we bought a program called Crossover, that will allow many games to run. You may want to look at that first because it was only like $60. I went the other way because that was the only way to run homeschool tracker plus and although crossover can run quicken, it's not pretty when it does.

I agree with the above poster. There are quite a few "lessons" in AAR that are simply: "read The Nap" or whatever story that is to be read after certain phonograms are introduced. The readers are set up so that only sounds the child has encountered in the previous lessons will be in them with the exception of a few higher level words that are to just be told to them so the story makes sense. If you're not going to buy the readers I think you'd be better off finding another program.

I have a standard response for all of those questions listed above, "Did you really just say that out loud?"

I believe LCHF is Low Carb/High Fat

I have a book two audio set by Barbara for sale. I was going to ask $35ppd. I you're interested.

If you do all 7 levels that will take you through high school level spelling not just 7th grade. The levels do not correspond to grade level at all. How long will depend solely on the student. You work at their pace. We do 20 minutes 4 days a week. My oldest has done half of level 3 so far and should get through 4 maybe start 5 before the year is up. Most your her kids that are really good readers can probably get through level 1 in a month and level two in a few months. I say most because even though some kids are awesome readers, spelling is done In a different part of the brain so some still struggle with spelling despite their excellent reading ability. One thing to keep in mind is AALPs awesome return guarantee.

Just because it's on the test doesn't mean it was something they expected them to have encountered. They purposely put questions on those tests that are above and below typical grade level for that test. At least I remember reading that somewhere. I refuse to "teach to the test" That's one of the reasons I pulled my oldest out of PS.

I've noticed that you all have very few repeats. I don't have that many meals my family will eat to do that. My husband and I are not super adventurous in trying new things and the kids aren't at all. Also my dh won't do soup for dinner, he says it's not filling enough. Now being in the job he's in, he goes to the ship about 5am and is usually eating lunch at 10:30 at the latest, when he gets home he's starving. NO he can't snack, most days he's lucky to fit in lunch. Here is what we have for this month. Here's a key, FFY=Fend For Yourself, this happens every monday since I'm at the gym with youngest and don't get home until about 7:30pm, Every Tuesday is Taco Tuesday and Every Thursday is Italian night which means mostly it's just spaghetti, but occasionally I'll do Chicken Parm for dh and I or a ziti/lasagna Feb 1: Cream Cheese Chicken (this is a new recipe so I hope it's good and goes over well) Feb 2: DH and I will eat out as the kids have a thing at their gym so it's DATE NIGHT Feb 3: Chicken Cordon Bleu and/or Chicken stuffed with Broccoli & Cheese Feb 4: leftovers/FFY Feb 5: Tacos Feb 6: Chicken Rice Feb 7: Spaghetti Feb 8: Chicken Nuggets/Chicken Sandwices Feb 9: Pizza Feb 10: Pork Chops Feb 11: FFY Feb 12: Tacos Feb 13: Chili Feb 14: Spaghetti Feb 15: DATE NIGHT (we get two of these because the gym thing from Jan was postponed to early Feb due to weather) Feb 16: Steaks (most likely we'll go out as a family to our favorite steak joint) Feb 17: Chicken Cordon Bleu/Chicken stuffed with Broccoli and Cheese Feb 18: FFY Feb 19: Tacos Feb 20: Chicken Rice Feb 21: Spaghetti Feb 22: Mac & Cheese Feb 23: Pizza Feb 24: Burgers/Hot Dogs Feb 25: FFY Feb 26: Tacos Feb 27: Pot Roast Feb 28: Spaghetti And we just start back at the top for the next month. I've actually written this down on a white board calendar with a Sharpie and we just change the dates in the boxes with a Dry erase marker.

Another one from my family was when my dh explained to my daughter that when we were her age (11) cable was fairly new, so before that we had only like 3-5 channels and you actually had to get up to change the channel. Although she was agast when she heard that the first remote control my family had for a cable box was actually corded. Yep that's right it plugged into the box like a phone plugs into the wall and had like a 30ft. cord on it.

I was quite surprised to find out a week ago that my 13 y/o has no idea how to rip a paper out of a spiral bound book without tearing the top of the paper to shreds or mangling said paper. This was his GWG workbook, and all the papers for the first 7 lessons are all mangled at the top. So what things have you come across that you never thought you had to "teach"?

We always use our debit cards. I don't carry my checkbook at all, but had to have it for the one stupid company that still doesn't have online payment options. Luckily that debt was paid off last summer so I almost never use my checkbook at all anymore. Just for the random medical bill that comes in. I never have cash on me either because dh has direct deposit and I find it a pain to go to the ATM.

I was happy to see someone else said their child was allergic to peas. My youngest is allergic to fish and green peas. We've never tried shellfish with him on a Drs recommendation. The fish wasn't easy to avoid since my dh hates fish, so we never had it in the house anyway. We only found out about his allergy after visiting my mom in Wi where Friday Fish Fries are the tradition. That's the only time I eat fish so we tried some for my son who was about 2 at the time, he broke out in huge white welts. One time last year I bought brussel sprouts to try with my family and he would try them because he insisted they were "GINORMOUS PEAS" he kept ranting about how could I buy those blah, blah, blah. A few of us have allergies to antibiotics, but he's the only one with food allergies.

Before when we were a church going family we went to a church that baked special communion bread, my dd was about 4 at the time and she LOVED bread, of all kinds. After the pastor gave her communion she looked really sad. He said, "What's wrong honey?" She said, "I wanted a bigger piece of Jesus bread" Sorry if this is offensive to some, but our Pastor thought it was so funny, he let out a big belly laugh at her response.

which pressure canner do you have, and for a waterbath do you just have one like the big ball one?

Great thanks for the tip. I would hate to have to replace the stove in this rental because of a mishap if I could just get something else to use to can on.

Is this for when you use a waterbath? I thought of canning things, but was having concerns about waterbath on my glasstop stove. I know some just use a huge stock pot instead of the ones with the domed bottoms. Although I have thought of just using the extra side burner on my grill to can in the summer, but wasn't sure if that would be all that cost effective for the propane.

Those are neat, they are a bit pricey though. My kids like to have more room to spread out than those would have given. The bigger ones would have been a good top size, but at $300+ each that was more than I paid for all 4 of my tables.