DS(5) - just got done reading a whole set of Bob Books to his stuffed animals :)

I'm cleaning like crazy since my IL's are coming this afternoon. Nothing like finding out Wednesday evening that they are showing up Friday afternoon. I'm PG with #4 and have been sick for the last 4 months so my house is a wreck and in need of some major cleaning. Spent as much time yesterday as the little ones would allow and have been working for about 2 hours so far this morning.

Welcome! I'm just starting my first year with my DS who is also 5 and starting K. I read WTM and also Cathy Duffy's book and picked the basics for Math, Reading, Phonics and Handwriting based on programs that I thought would work for my sons learning style. We are starting off slow with the 3R's and then adding more fun stuff in as we get into the groove. This way it also allows me to follow my DS's interests. As long as we keep progressing in Reading and Math I don't care what we learn about for Science/History etc. We will follow his interests and just have a fun year of exploring while he learns how to read and increases his math skills.

If you aren't opposed to spraying your yard with chemicals we just used the Cutter spray (found it at Walmart and Lowes) it significantly reduced the amount of mosquitoes in our yard. We were being eaten alive even with strong bug spray on so we had to do something to be able to enjoy our back yard again. You have to reapply it every 4 weeks or so but well worth the $10 to not have to be coated in bug spray just to walk out the back door.

My Irish setter with long ears wears a snood - Which are basically a tube of fabric with elastic at both ends. It goes around their necks and then above their ears. It keeps her ears contained so all we have to do is wipe up her mouth when she is done eating. You can google dog snood to get a better idea of what they look like.

I've been in 4 - I was 12 - my parent's car was rearended - I was 15 - my parent's car was run off the highway by someone driving too fast on ice. No damage to their car and they kept going, our car got a few bumps - I was 16 - driving when an older man made a left turn in front of me. He blamed it on me and it was a long drawn out fight over who was right. Cops ended up writing the report so it favored me so that helped. He couldn't see his left turn light because of the sun. My junker of a car was totaled. His just had the bumper ripped off. Busy intersection and no one would stop to be a witness for me. - I was 18 driving to school when a 30 year old woman was racing another student from my highschool and lost control. Hit my car just right and managed to knock out the support that goes between the drivers door and windshield totaling the car.

Beautiful! I have been looking at that website for months trying to find the time to make something. My DH has all the tools I would need I just don't have the time away from the kids to try it!

I'm a newbie who is getting ready to start homeschooling my DS this summer. I found the boards after reading WTM. I've been hooked ever since. I read a lot and only post every once in awhile since I am just starting. I had picked most of my curriculum before coming to these boards and it was nice to find a group who was using a lot of the same things that I had already picked out for DS.

I think #4 would be great. When my mom's group brought us meals after I had #3 I was extra thankful for anyone that brought us something that wasn't ground beef. We had so many lasagna/italian type dishes. I was very thankful for all the meals that people brought but it was very nice to get away from the casserole and ground beef dishes.

Thanks! That looks like a really interesting program. I think I am going to have to order the book to read through it!

I'm just getting ready to start our first year of homeschooling with DS who just turned 5 this month. Your plan looks a lot like ours, except that we are adding in AAS earlier - I think my DS will be ready for it by about January. He is just like your DS and always asking how to spell words and he likes to write lists of all the words he can remember how to spell. What is BFSU? I'm looking for a more intensive science program for my DS to start more around the time he would be in 1st since I have multiple science degrees and he seems to be like me and enjoys anything science related.

If you want a natural look I would look into the mineral makeups. It gives some coverage without making you look like a doll. I very rarely wear makeup and when I do I generally just use a mineral powder, blush, mascara and then some tinted lip gloss. It gives me a very natural look but covers the blotches that I want covered up.

If she already knows all her uppercase letters I would look at the HWT 1st grade printing book. It does a quick review of the uppercase and then moves into the lowercase letters. It is what I am going to use with my 5 y.o this summer.

Wow! Thanks for the info on this group buy! I had always searched their free portion but it is nothing compared to the whole site! I'm having a great time searching through the site. I sent my paypal this morning and had the username and password within the hour!

In my area Costco and Sam's are just about even on prices, but I like the selection and the Kirkland brand at Costco so I keep going there. The other thing I like about Costco is the return policy. They will accept returns on anything for any reason. If we buy a product there,try it and don't like it, we take it back. They happily refund us our money without any additional questions.

Some of the non electronic favorites in our car are Etch a sketch, magna doodles, the mini travel games (connect 4 and sorry) and Clipboards with random coloring pages, Road sign bingo and scavenger hunt lists.

We have an 08 Kia Sedona and love it! We bought it used last year and other than one problem (problem with the electronic stability control overriding the gas pedal therefore the car wouldn't go anywhere) we have not had any problems with it and have put 16,000 miles on it in the past year. Kia was wonderful to work with when we had the problems with the accelerator and even rented us another minivan for the weekend when it happened as we were getting ready to take a weekend trip and they didn't have a loaner car on the lot big enough to hold all our carseats. I have a number of friends that all have Sedonas (05-07s) and they all love their vans. I really wanted a Honda when we first started looking at vans, but I actually like the layout of the controls and the feel of the Sedona when driving much better than the Honda. Plus add in the price difference and I couldn't pass up the Sedona.

We gave my DH's sister $50 for her graduation last week plus we traveled 12 hours to be there. If we had not traveled to be there and visit with family we would have given her $100.

I'm Jen I have 3 kids - D who is starting a mix of K/1st grade work this summer, S (my princess) who is 2.5, R my little guy and another little boy on the way in September. This will be our first "official" year of homeschooling although D has been doing work at home for the last year. We decided to keep D home next year because none of the schools we were interested in had a way to deal with D being ahead of most K'ers - Most teachers said that they didn't have time for kids who were ahead because they had too many behind. So their ideas were to either skip him a grade or to put him in front of a computer when he finished his work.

If you subscribe and choose not to get emails you can click on the User Control Panel and it will give you a listing of all your subscribed threads that have new posts. You don't have to post to the thread to subscribe, you can just chose thread tools from the upper right side and subscribe to follow any threads that you want.

Many prayers for everyone in Nashville and the surrounding areas! A quick question for those in the Nashville Area - We are supposed to be leaving for a trip to Missouri tomorrow morning. We are in North Alabama and normally drive up 65 through Nashville to 24 North of Nashville to head towards St. Louis. Is any of this affected by the flooding? I know that Cool Springs has a lot of flooding but it looks like it is all off the interstate. The TDOT maps aren't any help - they are showing that every major roadway is flooded :glare: We are already putting off our departure by a few hours so we will be going through Nashville during daylight rather than just before dawn so we can see any flooding that might be in our way. I just need to know if we are better off trying to find a different route to St. Louis.

For word search puzzles it helps my son if I write the word down on an index card. He uses the card to go line by line looking for the starting letters. All the word search puzzles that he is capable of doing have the word either straight across or down, no backwards or diagonal words. I have taught him how to use the edge of the card to help him stay on the same line of letters either horizontally or vertically. It has really helped him to focus on a single line at a time. Then having the word written on the card helps so he doesn't have to go back to the word box to figure out what word he was searching for.

If you have a books a million in your area they carry those books in the childrens section with all the other workbooks. I would agree that they are more extra practice than comparable to the IP.

My other word of advice would be to take a digital picture of how the wires were attached to the old thermostat. We got a programmable one that ended up being broken. Our Home Depot didn't have another one in stock so we had to wait a couple of days until they got more in. Thankfully we were able to look back at the pictures and rewire the old one to use until we could try again with a new one.

I'm right there with you starting this summer and giving it a trial run for Kindergarten. My son is turning 5 in May but is working at almost a first grade level. So I decided to relax and take it easy for Kindergarten, even if he didn't learn anything he would still be on level with most of the 1st graders if we put him in school. All we are doing for K is working on the three R's using OPGTR, Explode the code, Handwriting without tears, and Singapore Math along with a lot of fun math in the kitchen. I also plan to spend a lot of time reading aloud, playing outside, building with Legos and going on field trips to the zoo, children's museums and aquariums. My only goals for next year are to get him reading more independently, writing better and having fun! If we have time we will throw in some science experiments or a little geography but I'm not worried if we don't do much of that. There are plenty of years to come to get around to teaching him more than the basics. I have 2 more little ones at home and another on the way this fall so I know that my teaching time will be limited. I also know that he will grow up in the blink of an eye so I might as well enjoy another year of fun before we slowly settle in to more of a routine of school work.