I agree... we are planning for three rotations so we'll have two done by 8th grade. We may just do the last four years of school according to WTM, but if we want to do AP whatever for history, I want my kids to have had the "whole thing" at least twice.

:lol: Peek! I will NEVER forget that story! I sometimes look very closely at my strawberries and think... well, I KNOW I didn't put a placenta in here, so guess they are OK!! :blink:

This was the second year my ds watched the spelling bee on TV with me, and this time it really captured his imagination. He's started asking "Language of origin?" and "Would you please use it in a sentence?" when we do our SWO pretests. He's actually a good natural speller, IMHO. We'll be halfway through SWO D at the end of 1st grade, and he doesn't miss very many words on those pretests. So, does anyone here actually do competative spelling? How would you get into it--start at what age, and where? And how would you study to make it possible to compete in a few years? Are there "prep books" or what? Edited to add: You can now take the prelimary round test on the web site just for fun: http://www.spellingbee.com/

I bought CW for next year, all the books, but I think I'm just going to use the core, as it turns out. We're doing GWG4 and SWO (which are working very well), so I see no need to have an additional set of those subjects. We'll basically be doing just the writing part of the program, but I have high hopes! I was one of the weird ones--I liked the core book itself, but the teacher's guide and student guide didn't do much for me. Next year I'll just buy that, at least to start... Let's compare notes next year and see how it's going!

I find the Activity Guide very useful, if you don't have that already. It also has some suggestions for library books to read, some of which would be a good supplement because your children are older. Do you have a good library in your area? I might do the timeline with both at that age, but I think you can jump into outlining or not depending on their writing/comprehension ability. He'll get a lot out of it either way!

Lol! I just think he disagrees about the "not so hard" part... not that there shouldn't be acadmics as well. He finds housekeeping VERY hard. Science, math, writing, teaching, not so much. But he can be reduced to a small pile of jelly by a large pile of laundry. But yes, I think if he had more training as a child, he wouldn't find it all so challenging today. And yes, he expects our kids (including girls if we ever have any) to be headed to college...

Well... my dh is a comic book geek. How much? Well, about ten years ago now they sold Kraft mac n cheese in "superhero" shapes. It had lots of superhero shapes all mixed up, and dh had once lamented in passing that they didn't sell them individually so you could just buy your favorite hero. So as a birthday gift (funds were tight!) I bought 20 boxes or so and hand separated them by superhero. So he could eat Superman macaroni and cheese, or Flash macaroni and cheese, or Wonder Woman macaroni and cheese. It took hours and hours... but he loved it! Best gift for my dh under $15 ever!

Well, feedback is a whole different ball of wax! I'm not crazy about it, but particularly the Neg Rep ability, from which I choose to abstain. But I think here there are more people having more conversations, making it easier to jump in. On the old board you might find a post like "It's like when the UPS man sees you naked--did he notice your booKs or your nice shoes? Lol!!!" A whole group of people would be laughing and responding, but a newbie might be thinking... "Huh? What the heck are they talking about?" There seems to be less of that here. I just love the old stories. Who was it who had a family member mistake thier frozen placenta for frozen strawberries when they wanted a smoothie? Oh, the good old days....

Hmmm... we do both and I think it depends. We read modified versions of The Illiad and the The Odyssey, and a picture-book format Gilgamesh as read alouds this year. But children's classics--Treasure Island, The Hobbit, classic fairy tales--we stick with the original. In the case of using abridged classics, our goal was familiarity and interest. However, in addition to reading some abridged versions for next year (Chaucer, Beowulf, as well as Shakespeare), I think we'll also read aloud at least one Shakespeare play as written, and some sections of Beowulf as well (I love the Seamus Heaney translation). In general I prefer modified versions that use original language where possible, but perhaps not all of it. Though most of these works are in translation already, in reality!

Ah yes... I forgot stuffed pastas. I love tortellini too... though we generally end up buying the kind you get in packages at the grocery store.

Dh made dinner tonight--macaroni with meat sauce. It was good, but I realized that I don't really like macaroni. Don't know why... it tastes the same and all, but it just isn't... as good. We generally have a multitude of pasta shapes in the pantry at any given time, and we all have different favorites: Dh likes macaroni, older ds likes rotini, younger ds likes spaghetti, and I prefer fettucine. So how about you? Do you have a favorite?

Welcome back! Glad you've decided to join us!

Yeah.. I kind of miss the way you could skim down the board and feel like you were part of EVERY conversation. No missing the funny threads... here if it isn't on that first line of the first post, it's easy to not "hear" about something. I do also miss the crazy late-night board flipping discussions. More like a chat room than a board, really. That said, I think this format allows more people to participate, and is far more welcoming to newcomers because there IS less of that "insider" feel. And I love avatars. And subscriptions to threads. Etc.

I was just thinking the other day that I would NEVER tell my kids about one of the things my best friend and I got up to in 6th/7th grade. You see, we had this old-fashioned (well, probably new at the time) hard side suitcase, and we caved one side in so that it was concave. Then we would pour small amounts of various fluids in it and light them on fire. Perfume mostly. Other toiletries. Cleaning products. Yes, quite the dangerous chemical exposure. Oh yes, we did all this in her bedroom. Finally, over the course of the year the hard plastic of the suitcase got all bubbly and warped from so many uses as a pyrotechnic lab, and eventually caught on fire itself for real... we managed to put it out, open the windows, and were never "caught". My best friend was completely unsupervised at her house, for the most part, and it was a huge house. These are some of the reasons I like being with my kids. I know what I got up to... scary stuff.

I think we were well "prepared", but that doesn't actually mean it's easy, right? We were in our early 30s, had been married almost a decade, before we had children. We were prepared in that we knew it would be a huge lifestyle change that we couldn't predict, we wer willing to make whatever sacrifices being a parent takes, and we longed to welcome a child in love... isn't that really what it takes?

I need to add a comment from my SAHD dh: "I totally disagree! I don't know how to do these things (homemaking), and I'm pretty bad at these things! I don't think they should be taught to the exclusion of academics, but I feel like I was never taught "life skills" and wish I had been." So, he thinks *everyone* should learn homemaking skills in a very intentional fashion--but not just women/girls. I don't think he ever thought he'd be a stay-at-home-dad who homeschools his children, and his mom did everything for him as a child. She's a "super homemaker", but didn't pass those skills along, ya know? Dh's sister is a banker (major executive) and she just pays people to clean her apartment. Neither of them every learned to cook/clean/etc, and dh has had to play catch-up for the last 6 years.

This is perfect, Abbey. A range of possibilites exist, some are fantastic and others are not. But we also choose to be "soul mates" or not.

Well, we are a Christian family that places family togetherness as one of our primary values. I'm a bit uncomfortable jumping in because I always feel a bit uncomfortable around "keepers at home" threads (clearly I believe I am called by God to my vocation), but I work full time, much of it at home, dh is at home full time, plus a pt job that is his "break" for the week, and would guess we are NOT together as a family a maximum of 15 hours a week, on average. Church time is work for me... but still family time, and God time in addition. We live a totally urban life, so we aren't returning to anything, but I think we've done a fair job of melding all our spheres of activity into one happy, busy, life-affirming whole. The fact that we aren't in "typical" roles doesn't mean we aren't honoring the bible...

My son has SID (sensory integration disorder) and is "sensory seeking". He likes more intense sensations, touch, sound, etc, and then has others that he finds overstimulating. When he was very young he used to twist and rip his nipples--ouch! Yeah, I know... Anyhow, we basically trained him to keep his shirt down always, and then he started chewing on his shirt collars. He'd ruin a new shirt in a week or less. We decided to "feed" his oral fixation... I bought latex tubing (like for a fish tank) and made a necklace for him out of it--just tied it in a circle large enough to fit over his head. I think it's a fairly common OT thing, but I first read about it on the old board. I used blue, his favorite color, and anytime he'd start to chew on anything I'd remind him he had a necklace to chew on. Worked like a charm! He hasn't ruined a shirt for months and finally stopped wearing the tubing fairly recently. He still bites his nails, but I'm not quite so worried about that...

One thing I did before we were "official" homeschooling age was to connect with a group of homeschoolers. There was a local "young homeschoolers" group for parents of kids who were K age and younger. We started attending, at least sporadically, when my ds was 2. He's 6 now, and having those connections has stood me in good stead. I also wouldn't buy curriculum, but I do believe in expanding your home library. We've collected childrens and adult classics en masse over the years, and it is wonderful (IMHO) to have a home full of great books. We use the library a lot, but I want our kids to have instant access to Narnia or Oz or Middle Earth. One good predictor of future reading is the number of books in the home... http://www.ncte.org/about/research/articles/110444.htm You can be poor (ahem) but if your house is full of books, your kids will read and be better educated. Hanging out on the boards doesn't hurt either... I can't imagine having tried to pull together my resources for K & 1st if I hadn't already read so much about all the options.

Lol! If we could spend up to $300 without talking to each other, we'd be eating ramen noodles, or begging under the overpass REAL fast. That's more than our "discretionary spending" for two months! When we've had times we "check in", the cut off is $20. Frankly, we do most of our shopping together anyhow...

I totally agree! I would say "yes" to all of the above, but not because they are rules, simply because that's what partnership is all about. There may be times when we forget to tell every detail of everything, but we keep a joint calendar on the computer, so all that info is "out there". Otherwise we'd never be able to schedule our lives--I work full time, dh works part time, and we homeschool. We spend a lot of time together, and when we are apart it just seems natural to "report in". He's my BFF, yah know? When finances are tight we have had a "call before you spend" rule. I don't think either of us ever vetoed a purchase, the idea was that we are both pretty implusive purchasers, and having to check in first gave us that moment to think about if we really needed... whatever it was.

I'm working on my sermon for Sunday--have open windows with Oremus Bible browser and Homiletics online, also bidding on some curriculum from Ebay and still searching for one last book for next year. I've also got my current reading (a young adult pirate novel called "Under the Jolly Roger" by L. A. Meyer) sitting here. My dh is trying to engage me in some banter, but I'm ignoring his bad jokes, and about to give him his insulin shot. He wants me to say, "no, they are good jokes!" Night all!

I agree with much of what has been written here about forgiveness and reconcilliation. However, one thing really stood out to me about your original question that no-one mentioned. Of course you are being vague, so it's hard to tell, but you wrote: In the whole year there have been *two* times of your feeling hurt, and you can't be reconciled with them? Now, if these were two horrible abusive awful times (intentionally causing mental anguish), I might get that. No one needs to be friends with abusers. But you have repeatedly said how "nice" they both are. I simply think that having a close friend say something irritating twice a year is pretty darn low... Heck, my dh is my best most intimate friend and he's got to hurt my feelings over twice a year. Friends don't always agree, and shouldn't have to always agree if they are to continue in relationship. If I witheld forgiveness every time (or every other time) someone inadvertently hurt my feelings, I'd have very very few friends. I'm all for protecting yourself from abuse, but is it possible that witholding forgiveness and reconciliation, even avoiding the relationship, is not about them and thier two slights, but about you and your own struggles and fears surrounding intimacy? YMMV. It's hard to know without details, but that was my first instinct.

I really enjoyed that! (and we all loved the video). I'd rep you to say thanks, but I have to spread some more around, apparently. Thanks!