We just listened to Tom Sawyer on audiobook and my kids (10 & we) loved it. It wouldn't have been nearly as good if I had read it aloud.

We aw in stage 3. Just finishing up chapter 3 of AOPS. It's been our best one so far.

We're not doing it online, just using the book at home. He does so much of it in his head, but if there's a problem he gets really frustrated because he can't look back, and that's not usually a good time to point out that writing them actually makes it easier. :-) We've done problems on a small whiteboard, but I think we'll have to move to the larger whiteboard and see if that works. As we went through the first chapter I was trying to decide how important I felt it was that he write them out as I think organization is a crucial skill or if it was simply more important at this point to feed his love of math and hope/teach better organization as he matures.

We just finished chapter 1 of AoPS prealgebra and DS 11 is totally balking at writing out the problems. He's always hated to write, but many of the exercise, review, and challenge problems required him to cross things out, regroup, etc., and sometimes he really needed to have the numbers on a sheet in front of him. I wrote out a few for him, but it was long and tedious and not how I want to spend my time. Do your kids willingly write out the problems if they need to manipulate the numbers? I thought of making copies of these sections, but the way they are spaced on the sheet doesn't offer much room for writing either. The math in this chapter was no problem and I'd like to continue, but I don't want each day to be a writing battle. Is it just my kid?

It's available for order now!

That's great. I didn't see a hard release date anywhere on their site. Thanks!

My upcoming first grader just finished her last lesson in AAR 2 and I'm not sure what to do next. AAR 3 it supposed to be released in late 2013, but we are on a roll and are both excited that reading is starting to click and want to keep going forward. What did you do after finishing AAR 2?

A great big shout out for Oregon and our vote my mail system. So much more fun to vote at home!

Go to the Driftwood Room for happy hour. It's a dark, cozy, super cool bar with delic cocktails and the most amazing Gorgonzola cheesecake.

Spray your hands with Pam spray. Comes right off!

The Murphy Mountain Lodge north of Killdeer, ND is beautiful. But then my brother owns it so I may be a bit biased. It's so peaceful and amazingly quiet in that part of the world! You can look it up on TripAdvisor or just Google it.

This book is the best! I have wavy hair that I used to do my best to make stick straight. Now it's curlier than ever and I love it. I also have two curly top kids and we're always hearing wonderful things from complete strangers about their hair. Embrace the curls!

This one is good too, especially if you add the extra spices listed at the top. http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Chai-Tea-Mix/Detail.aspx