Kathy Jo Devore (Barefoot Meandering) made lots of her materials originally to be printed in a physical 6x9 book. This means that her pdf files are sometimes MUCH easier to read on a phablet/tablet screen than most other similar content pdf language arts materials. I like that.

It made it to 50% off. :)

Math Mammoth is down to 40% off at homeschool buyers coop. The deal is on through the end of March, so it may get down to 50% still. Hope this helps someone. -Sarah

The thread comparing Cottage Press to Writing and Rhetoric reintroduced me to the CP offerings. Has anyone compared them to Kathy Jo DeVore's ELtL? I'd love to hear your opinion if you're familiar with them both! TIA Sarah

I heard about these (from this thread) and noticed that all but the English one is down to $8.37 today. I don't know if this is normal. But, I got one. :)

Math Mammoth is back on Homeschool Buyers Coop for the month of March. 130+ people buying puts it at 50% off. Now, you know. :)

I know, I know.....everyone says it. But, really.... I can't believe my oldest is going to turn 12 this summer and start 7th grade this year! Math: wherever we are in the Jousting Armadillos book trio (we just finished SM6, she's currently doing Hand's On Geometry for a break and then we'll start JA this year and continue into next....unless we don't, ha!) Logic: Argument Builder (Art of Argument went pretty well this year) English: R&S6 (finishing up), Lightning Literature 7, Lively Art of Writing, Vocabulary from Classical Roots A History: Early Modern period (K12's condensed History of US, K12 Human Odyssey [part of book 2], a couple of OUP books....) Science: Apologia General Science Art: Artistic Pursuits Middle Grades, Book 1 Co-op: (mostly just for fun) art, Spanish, science experiments/demonstrations, creative writing, gym community dance class This lineup sounds great in my head. I wonder how it will play out in real life. ? That is always the way of it. :)

I was browsing on Audible today and discovered that the Little House books narrated by Cherry Jones are set to be available starting tomorrow. HTH (And yes, I realize that some serious flaws exist in this series, most notably Wilder's treatment of entire people groups as less than. This heads up is not meant as an endorsement of that worldview.)

I finished Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria, North! Or Be Eaten, and The Monster in the Hollows last week. (I got my oldest DD started on the Peterson series, and she's read most of the first three already today. I guess that was a hit. :) ) I had a pretty lazy day at home with the fam today and got to read all afternoon. This almost never happens! I read Agatha Christie's Death in the Clouds (which I didn't realize until half-way through was a re-read...and, I still guessed wrong!) and finished up Walter Dean Myers' Fallen Angels (which was one of the suggested reads in WAAtBKSTitC....also, that acrostic looks...strange to me. hmmm) Why Are All the Black Kids... was so helpful for me. I have been a complete newbie in the last few years to the idea that white privilege is a real thing. (Embarrassing, but true) She explained rationally what I had seen glimmers of intuitively but couldn't coherently articulate previously. It gave me a helpful game plan for responding to the people in my sphere of tiny interactions. Very glad to have read this. Fallen Angels was brutal. I haven't read very much about the Vietnam War era. I wasn't even alive then. But, if the story was anything close to a real veteran's experience...well, it felt both painful and necessary to finish it. My brother was in Iraq, and I want to read his followup novel Sunrise over Fallujah. I want to ask my brother if the portrayal has any resemblance to his own experience. But, I'm not sure that would be a kind thing to do. I don't know. But, it was really affecting in ways I might have to think about for a while in order to make sense of. I enjoyed Andrew Peterson's books. They were what I was kind of hoping for when I picked up The Green Ember having heard the hype about that. I much prefer On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, North! Or Be Eaten, and The Monster in the Hollow. I haven't purchased the fourth (and final) book, yet. But, I plan to do that soon. It's not like it's in a competition with Narnia. But, it did have that _something_ that allowed me to get into a different world without being jarred by the author's close-but-couldn't-quite-manage-it. It's got lots of corniness, but in the class-clown-loveable-foolishness vibe not the trying-too-hard vein. Clear as mud? I think I'm going to have to go back and find the Bingo file for this year and see if any of my finished books qualify for a square and start planning for the future. :) As always, it's just plain fun to read what is interesting to you. Thanks!

Wow! Thanks for the heads up!

I didn't do a great job last year of keeping up. But, I'd like to try again. The times when I stopped back in here to see what was going on almost always added something interesting to my TR list. I love being able to start distinguishing your voices based on recommendations/commentary. Thanks, again, for being such a fun place on the interwebs. :) So far this year, I've read a new-to-me Agatha Christie _Murder on the Links_. And, it's a re-read, but I listened to it on audio for the first time Diane Wynne Jones' _Howl's Moving Castle_. I'm working on _Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria_ And, I have out from the library (with a time limit) _North! Or Be Eaten_ by Andrew Peterson (sortof a pre-read for the kids, but I'm interested to read this second in the series, too) and _Planets_ by Dava Sobel (also a pre-read for eldest dd11's upcoming unit on astronomy). We went to see _Hidden Figures_ last weekend, and I thought it was excellent. I got the kindle version of the book when it was just a couple of dollars (thanks to someone here for the head's up!). That's something I want to get to in the near future, too. I don't know about all the birthstone challenges, but I'd like to try for at least 52 this year. And, the bingo looked really fun. Back to lurking (and hopefully, more reading) for the time being. Cheers!

I'm looking for something to go along with the concise Story of Us, but I'm not super excited about the K12 student pges/teacher's manual. I like the level of work I see in History Odyssey, level 2, for my rising 7th grader. But, we need some focus on American history for a bit. Is this something I need to make myself? TIA, Sarah

Now I'm wondering about legos? (Also a bad idea?)

That sounds like an ideal solution to me for a trial run. I can do that. :) Thank you!

Thanks for your response. That's exactly the kind of thing I was wondering. Would using cardstock (2d?) be weird, too? If I'm prewatching the videos, will it be something I can figure out how to make something workable for him? They list the number of each size manipulatives.... hmmm.

How frustrating would it be for a student to work with Math U See and have Cuisenaire Rods as the manipulatives instead of integer blocks? Background: I'm trying to find strategies to help my SIL remediate my nephew. I'm looking at Math U See. (He has almost completely stalled out with MM.) We both have C-Rods, I'm not sure she'll be excited about springing for MUS blocks, too. So, I'm wondering if c-rods can be substituted. Bad idea? I'm planning to purchase a used copy of Gamma DVD/student text from someone on the boards. A trial run, I guess, to see how it goes. Will attempting to use C-Rods make it so irritating to the student that he won't want to try later if the program itself is a good fit, and we decided to go ahead and spring for the specific block set it calls for?

Thank you! That does help.

Did the 2nd edition change the TOC too much to use a 2nd edition student notebook with a 1st edition textbook? TIA

Thank you! (You made this book useable for me.)

No insurance, and other kids with medical bills, so I'm doing as much homework upfront as I can so I know which tests to call around for and ask if they do it and their pricing. Is this something with a directory of specialists who test APD specifically? Google is mostly taking me to hearing aid stores (who have audiologists). Is it something to call a general practitioner and ask who they typically recommend? Does it require a referral of some kind? DD just turned 9. I don't think there are typical/common developmental delays. Just some things that I've noticed are more frustrating to her than I would have guessed.

Hi! I think this is the place to ask. One of my daughters seems to have difficulty focusing in/filtering out everyday sounds in normal environments. I think it's a problem that's been there for a while, but I'm just starting to notice it. My DH's sister struggled with this, too, as a child. DD9 learned to read well at around 7-8, and now she can read (and enjoys) books like Nancy Drew and Mysterious Benedict society. The process was sometimes a struggle, though. I think using phonograms as chunks of words was key for her. I've wondered recently about her eyesight, too, and I think I've found a place that does COVD about an hour from where we live. So, that's on the short list of things to work on making happen. What kind of hearing testing is appropriate to see if she hears so much that it's hard to sort through all the sound? Is that what CAPD is? Or is there another acronym? I'm new at this. TIA Sarah Gwin

If there's room, I'd like to be added to the drawing list of possible testers. It looks fantastic! Thanks!

For nature study with easily distracted students (and/or teachers) we use cheap jewelers loupes. (5x magnification or thereabouts...I got ours from amazon 4 for around $7-8, I think). I like them better than magnifying glasses because they block out everything else. You can literally only focus on one tiny thing and if you look for even a little while, you have to actually SEE it. Find something interesting enough to really look at for a while. Then draw only what you can see in the loupe in a sketchbook. For those who can write words, jot as many observations as you want on the same page. I got the book _The Private Eye_, but you don't have to have the book to ask yourself, "What did that remind me of?" and "Why was I reminded of it when I looked at this?"

I'm having trouble adding pictures to the post. Hopefully, this link goes to a few sample pages in google photos. https://goo.gl/photos/fhFogPjTQ6DWNHWv6

I made up my own as a blurb book. Here's a bit of what it looks like. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9e9bOtgDri8OWJYelJBcFRUV3c/view?usp=sharing The first 100 pages or so are headed with the century years/title on one side, and graph paper on the other. (FYI, I did include Christian content: there's one page marked Creation without a year designation and one page marked Jesus the Messiah between the B.C. and A.D. pages.) The B.C. pages are writing on the left, drawing on the right. The A.D. pages are drawing on the left, writing on the right. Those pages are designed to just be bullet point quick descriptions (to get on the same page people/events that would be helpful to see as contemporaries). The last two thirds of our books are introduced with a page that restates the primary source questions found in TWTM (I hope that's not some sort of copyright violation; they were pretty basic questions and were attributed on the page.) Then it's around 200 pages of graph paper for doing short notebooking pages with an index in the back to record which pages fit under which category. I was mostlly pleased with how they turned out. We started using them last year (my oldest dd and I...although, I slacked off a bit mid-year) when we did ancient history. We plan to continue this year going into Medieval.