praying for you!

Does anyone have or know of any great websites that are devoted to once a month cooking? I'd love to have some quick recipes at hand. Most of the resources I've heard of are books and I just don't want to wait any longer. I'd like to go shopping today with some ideas to get started. Thanks!!

The mere idea of "getting up and teaching my kids" at all like the school systems is nauseating to me! The methods they've been using in our school systems for decades does not work, therefore I try to do as much possible NOT to mimic their techniques. My dd10 is very independent in much of her studies. She has grown to love science and can tell you why it is that the word 'dinosaur' is not mentioned in the bible as well as a huge array of other things that are completely uninteresting to me, but will do her well when she is a scientist. All of this LOVE for learning would be drained from her if I sat her down at the table or a desk and lectured her for hours on end. I merely open the doors of education to her and she chooses to learn. Personally, my 1st goal as a hs mom is to raise confident communicators for Christ!! The way you run your hs will vary based on what you prime objective is. Hope this helps!

Loving this post!!! I have recently been drawn to CM's ideas and am trying to incorporate them little by little. I own her books and am SLOWLY working my way through them; not so sure I'll finish before my youngest graduates though, lol. We're using Saxon for Math again this year, but I'm trying to incorporate CM's ideas with this program. Instead of reading the lesson word by word from the book I'm preparing myself with the concept and discussing it with dc until they grasp it, then I'll let them loose on some practice problems. Spelling - I'm using Spelling Power, but I'm not sure how this really works with a CM model. We use Apologia for Science which definitely has a CM approach. Then, I'm using SOTW for History, but I'm really going to use a lot more books on each topic instead of just sticking with the SOTW text. My oldest dd will continue with Shurley English, again I'm not certain that this follow CM's model at all. I am so knew to the CM model that I only know enough to be dangerous!!! lol. Oh, and we will do dictation (dd10) and copy work (ds7) all from our science and history lessons. I'm going to enjoy following this post!!:lurk5:

Great!! Thank you. That definitely answers my question, and my dd will be so excited to not be forced to do formal editing lessons. lol.

I know SWB is very busy so if anyone wants to give their input on this I would be delighted. I'm already going to be doing dictation with her. I will be watching her and correcting her as mistakes are made. This way we will be discussing the use of commas, semi colons etc. as we go. Do you think I need to practice editing exercises with her as well or is the dictation enough? dd is 10 Thanks so much!

That must have been it. I will try again. Bummer though I have to type it all up again! :banghead:

Why on earth is it taking so long for my sale ad to be posted in the for sale section? I tried to post it last week and nothing! How long does it take for the moderator to allow the post? Anyone else have issues with this?

Praise God!! :hurray:

More than likely, Yes. We live East of Cincy and do a big garden every year. My dh made raised beds for us and then filled them with super soil purchased from the mulch supplier place (tee hee I obviously don't do this part since I can't think of where we get it). If you don't use raised beds you at least want to mix in some good soil and manuer into the ground. The clay around here makes it almost impossible to grow things. Also, you may want to consider a container garden. Beans and peas can grow up poles from in a container. All other veggies really could potentially do well in contaners as well. Just a thought. They also sell soil test kits at Lowe's and Home Depot for fairly cheap. Hope all this helps.

I agree with OhElizabeth! That is great advice. Sometimes it does just take a new way of looking at the problems to grasp the concept. I totally agree that you want to be careful about switching methods completely. My dd was struggling with getting prob. wrong in saxon 5/4, but we just backed off a bit and tried again. I'm not saying that will work for you, but it did for us. I also did away with the DIVE CD we were using and went back to one on one teaching with her. That was success for us, cheaper too :)

From my understanding...SOTW will not be enough for upper grades...9th, 10th etc. It should be enough for your 6th grader though and easy to add extra assignments. I'd assume you'd be able to do the same to adapt it to a high schooler, but it might be a great deal of extra work for you. One option is to find a Classical Conversations group that has the challenge program for the high school age children.

I didn't find this group of convention goers until afterward. I would have loved to meet some of you and join you for lunch. Oh well, next year maybe :)

My question stems from your session on writing for 5-8 grades... Will I need to add editing exercises for my 5th grader if I am practicing the dictation exercises with her exactly how you explained 2-3 times/wk? Thanks!

Hilarious! Isn't Head Start the government run preschool? That explains a lot! I did want to say that when I first made the decision (along with my husband) to hs, I also met some opposition. My father was opposed, but did not voice as much as a women might have. My mother was supportive. He would do things like ask the kids questions to quiz them when he came, and question what they were involved in socially. lol. Recently I've noticed a shift in his thinking as he watches his step grandson struggle in the public education system. BTW...I'm finishing my 4th year of hsing, and this support from him is just now coming. It was just something I had to accept. Some family members will be supportive and some won't. It has been helpful for me to find "veteran hs moms" (6 or more yrs hsing) to give me support. I've also tried to attend hs conventions to gain encouragment and insight. All of this helps, but above all you need to be confident in your decision to hs so that you can tune out the things that are not helpful.

Thank you all. Jenny, I'm glad you mentioned all that you did b/c it really made me think of everything we have accomplished this year. Thankfully this was the year I joined Classical Conversations so I can at least say that for 24 weeks one day a week my kids studied science, history and latin with other children whether I continued the lessons at home or not. ug, I just wish I wasn't dealing with this, but such is life. We did more than that, but it's nice to have at least that ( ; Unsinkable, those are great suggestions! Thank you. Christina thank you as well. I hope your children's health has improved. I have thought about doing the testing regardless, but I've already missed sign ups for any of the groups doing Standardized testing in our area. I have heard that some testing you can do with your children at home, Does anyone know about these?

Ok, I'm about to share a very personal thing, but I need some understanding hs moms to help me wrap up my year. We found out we were expecting baby #4 in November of last year. I was VERY sick all through December and much of January (you can imagine how much of our formal schooling was accomplished). Just as things were getting better we were shocked to discover on February 23rd (18 weeks preg.) that our baby died!! I went through a period of grief where the kids were just about completely on a break from ANY formal schooling. We are just now getting back on schedule as I am feeling the cloud has lifted. As testing approaches I've already determined we will not join. I've decided to pay someone to do an assessment (state requirements are assess or test). Have any of you had similar years? What do you get together for the assessor? Would you wait until the mid Summer to assess and just continue schooling through that time? Any suggestions would be appreciated, and if you happen to know me, privacy is also appreciated. Thank you so much!

I've never used the meeting books so much and my oldest dd is now successfully doing Math 6/5 quite well. My ds is in Math 1, again I am not using the meeting book, but what I did was print off calendar pages I found online. We stapled them together so the he can have a calendar to do the dates and the patterns on. That's it, and it works for us.

Donna, WOW!! Thank you for that very thorough review. I had not heard all those things about MFW until your post. Thanks, and they will be at my convention in April so I will definitely pay closer attention to them (as in the past I have just walked past the booth). It's nice to hear moms like you talk about the difficult process you've gone through discovering what type of different educational needs your children have. It is definitely a frustration that I'm noticing we all face, but so often feel alone in. Thanks again, Beth

Angela, I've used IEW this year and like the direction it gives. Andrew Pudewa is an EXCELLENT speaker. If you ever get the chance to listen to him; go! One of the reasons he started IEW (along with others I believe) is b/c he wanted to reach out specifically to boys. His goal is to give very specific directions and tools to get them writing good pieces of work that they can be proud of. Side Bar: Andrew Pudewa was a violin teacher prior to teaching writing! He has no college degree in English Grammar, but yet is asked by Public and Private schools alike to come and teach their teachers how to teach writing. ( : I wouldn't worry about the amount of writing your fourth grader can produce at one time as much as the content. Hope that helps.

Donna, Do you think it is adequate for the older children? Most of the people I know who have used MFW say that they discontinue after the first few years of education. Why do you suppose this is?

No. We will not be using CC at all for next year. There are a lot of practical reasons for this. We live far and baby #4 will be here this summer, but in addition to that my ds 6 hates foundations. He loves new friends and lunch afterward, but does not like the coursework. I'm noticing that this is just not his learning style, and since my primary goal aside from raising "confident communicators for Christ" is that they LOVE learning. I just have not seen this come from CC this year. That's not to say that CC is not a good program. I think it is. It just isn't fitting the needs of our family right now. As far as Essentials goes... We have an EXCELLENT tutor for this course, which I feel is important for success in it. Having said that... We will just not do Essentials if we are not doing Foundations. Also, my dd 10 prefers Shurley English to Essentials. Again, this points to the difference in learning style. She says she enjoys SE b/c of its Jingles (I know a lot of people hate these but hey it works for her). I have enjoyed IEW, and will try to continue this at a closer Co-Op that is not a CC program. They offer a course in IEW as well as other extracurricluar class options.

Thanks! I'm assuming your referring to SE 4 not 5 being more like a review of 3, correct?

My dd attended Classical Conversations Essentials course this year and has pleaded with me to do Shurley English next year instead. She loved SE 2 and 3. She did well in CC this year so I'm just thinking of picking up again with SE 5 instead of doing 4 (the one she missed this year b/c of CC). For those of you that have done 4 and 5 (maybe even 3-5) is this a good idea to skip 4? Thanks!

I thought we were a 'classical' family when it comes to which method of education suited us, however I'm starting to see that it is not the method for us. I'm thinking that Charlotte Mason might be a better approach. To any of you practicing Charlotte Mason out there... Am I right that in some aspects the classical method blends with the CM method? Some use of the trivium etc. This might be the wrong venue to ask, but have any of you switched from classical to CM? If so can you give your advice on making the switch? My oldest is 4th grade, and I have not been a true blue 'classical' approach mama so it shouldn't be too difficult, but any advice would be helpful. Thanks!