I'm in Jackson County, just north of Athens.

If I received this from my pastor, I would assume he'd seen me during his sermons. Lol!

I have read some of the stories to my ten year old and she enjoys them. She really likes science and also wants to work with animals one day, so I think James Herriot's stories are an excellent mix of science and literature with some humor thrown in (we have read the adult book - not the treasury for children).

This is not meant to begin a debate about BSA's recent policy changes. I just wanted to let people know that a new organization is forming called Trail Life USA, which is designed to be a Christian alternative to Boy/Cub Scouts (Kind of like what American Heritage Girls is to Girl Scouts). If you have a pack or troop that is concerned about moving forward with BSA's new policies, you might want to consider checking out the new group. https://www.facebook.com/TheTrailLifeUSA http://www.traillifeusa.com/#prettyPhoto

I tend to agree with the pp who said good fences make good neighbors. If it doesn't work out (which could definitely happen if you all are not in sync with curriculum/philosophies/discipline/etc), there could be hurt feelings and awkwardness that would make being neighbors difficult. However, if you do want to consider it, then I think you would need to make it a part-time thing at best. My thoughts are that maybe each of you homeschool your own for three days a week and homeschool cooperatively for 2 days/week. On those days, perhaps you could each take a subject - in the morning, you do science with the younger kids while she does art with the older kids and then you could flip flop and you could do science with the older kids in the afternoon and she could do art with the youngers. Another idea would be for each of you to take all the kids for one day a week, thus giving the other mom a day off to run errands or whatnot. If you did that, then I think that each mom would need to be responsible for sending her own kids with work to do for the day and not expect the other mom to give assignments - more of a once-a-week child care arrangement than cooperative schooling, I guess.

With my oldest, we used this bed wetting alarm http://www.sleepdryalarm.com/ Best $60 we ever spent. She was 6 and wetting consistently. She would go to the bathroom before bed, we would wake her up and take her before we went to bed, and she would still wet the bed before morning. We bought this alarm, and it snaps to the child's underpants (we had her wear two pairs of underpants so it didn't rub against her skin). It sounds an alarm the second it feels moisture; it trains the child to wake up when he/she is peeing. In less than a week, dd was waking up on her own in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. She continued to wear the alarm for a couple of months to prevent regression, and it worked. We used it with my middle child as well. He was younger, but we wanted to get him out of nighttime pullups. It worked great.

Mine are 17.5 inches, and our house was built last year. I don't know what the cabinet height was at our previous house (built in 1984), but the cabinets were definitely lower than the ones in this house. I am tall, and I was fine with the lower ones, and I'm fine with the ones I have now. If I were you, I would go with the lower ones so that you know they are useful to YOU, and I don't think those three inches would affect the future resale value.

I'll give you a bump. I can't answer your question, but we are going to be using that program this year (without the DVDs), so I'd love to hear from others who have had (hopefully positive) experience with it.

My son uses an app called chess free by optime. It doesn't really teach the game, but you can play the computer and set the difficulty level to match your skill. As long as you know how the pieces move, it's a good app for improving your game.

Thanks everyone. I appreciate the advice. It sounds like we will tell the kids ahead of time and let them say their goodbyes.

DH and I have pretty much decided that we will need to have our dog put to sleep soon. We've had her since she was a puppy, and she is the family pet. She is 13 years old, has gone completely deaf, is half blind, has suffered from incontinence for several years, and has arthritis in her back legs that seems to be getting worse quickly. Despite these problems, she still has a pretty happy attitude, so it has not been an easy decision to make, but we are having to weigh the "quality of life" question. We have three children, ages 9, 7, and 4. What do we tell them? (The older two - not the four year old). Do we explain our decision to them and let them say goodbye to the dog first or do we have them go to a friend's house for the day and when they come home we tell the the dog died while they were gone? They do know the dog is old and have both made comments about her not living much longer, so it will not come as a complete shock to them. What would be the easiest/best way to help them handle the situation?

I think the school systems' responsibilities vary by state. My husband is a school psychologist and works closely with other evaluators within the school system (speech language, visual, etc). When we lived in FL, our district was required to provide evaluations and services for all students regardless of what type of school they attended (public, private, home). We recently moved to GA where the rules are different. Yes, they will provide evaluations, but it is much harder to get the school to provide services for homeschooled students. We looked into it for my son, who has some speech issues. The district we live in would test him, but they couldn't offer him any services this year because they didn't have it in the budget (they budget for a certain number of homeschool student services at the beginning of the year). I was told that if they tested him this year and he qualified, he would get put on the list and get services next year because they would account for him in the budget. If he had been enrolled in public school, they would have provided him services this year. Oh well. I ended up not taking him in for an evaluation at our district because the SLP in my husband's district (not the one in which we live) tested our son after school hours, went over the results with my dh, gave us exercises to do at home and re-evaluated him a few months later to check for improvement. I mention all that to say that not only does it depend on your state's requirements, but also the person you talk to. There will be people in the school system who work with you, give you their time, and make sure you understand the results and your options for services. And then again, there are those who will only really help you if your child attends their school. If it were me, I would go ahead and request an evaluation through the school system and see what happens. You could have a great experience and get just the type of advice and insight that you need, or you might not, but at least you're not out $2000. I would say, as a general rule, that most people who work in the school system really do genuinely care about kids, and I would go into it expecting the best.

I'll admit I haven't read them, so I can't exactly answer your question. We got them for my son, age 7, and he really enjoys reading them. My 9 year old daughter also likes them. As far as reading level, they are on par with the Magic Tree House series. They are definitely not high quality literature, but I don't think they are objectionable - just easy reading adventure stories.

We do use the tests and the worksheets. We go over the lessons from the book orally and then if there is a corresponding worksheet, I have my child do that. Eldest dd much prefers doing the worksheets to writing the lessons on paper, so it gets her practicing the skill without a battle. The worksheet books are so inexpensive that I think the cost to copy the pages for other students would be higher than the cost of a second book. So, we reuse the textbooks, and I buy new worksheet and test books for younger ds. ETA: not sure what level you will be doing, but I'm pretty sure level 2 does not have any worksheets, just text book and tests.

I agree that the siding option seems like a reasonable investment regarding time and money. That being said, are we talking about vinyl siding? From a personal perspective, I dislike vinyl siding and feel it cheapens a house. When we were house-hunting last summer, I was instantly turned off by any house that had vinyl siding. For colors, I don't think you can go wrong with white - it's a classic, neutral farmhouse color. Another option - could you put the house up for sale and advertise that it comes with $X for an exterior finishing allowance? Make it the amount of money that you would have spent on the siding. (This might not be a good idea because you'll lose instant curb appeal, but it does allow the buyer to choose their own color and exterior option - whether they want to paint or put on siding).

Agree with having baby nurse in different positions. What I read (and what worked for me) was to have the baby positioned so that his/her jaw was over the clogged milk duct to get the most "massage" there. Also work the area with your hand while the baby nurses. Definitely awkward to accomplish, and you'll probably need to lie down to do it, but it helped here.

This is what I have decided to do. After I realized the price of what I wanted, I adjusted my IEW wishlist. ;) I looked at the sample pages for TWSS seminar book and the SWI books, and decided that we could get by with just the TWSS. The TWSS is a teacher training course for you to watch and then use to instruct your students. It contains all nine units, so it will have the information presented in SWI A for your younger child and the new information presented in SWICC for your older child. That would be the most economical way to go. If you don't feel comfortable teaching the material, then get the continuation course or a theme book for your older child and simply get the SWI A for your younger child ($109) instead of the bundle package ($299). On the IEW website, in the sample pages for the SWI workbook, it says, "If you do not have the teacher’s course, you can still use the SWI successfully. Watching the Structure and Style Overview (available from Excellence in Writing) will give you an overview of our writing methods." The overview is a $10 DVD. You can still do IEW with your kids without spending $500.

Our dentist recommended two orthodontists, so I made appointments with both of them for a consultation. The consultation was free and included digital photos and a panoramic x-ray. The orthodontists then sat down with me and discussed what they thought should be done. We made our choice based on which one we liked the best (both personality and suggested course of treatment).

Thanks, everyone. After looking at TWSS again, I think that is what we're going to use. For some reason it hadn't occurred to me that I could use TWSS without the SWI. I would have *preferred* to have all the information that is presented in TWSS in a book form instead of having to watch hours of lectures (and for a fraction of the cost), but I'm thinking that what I want probably doesn't exist. I do really like the content of IEW, so I'll make it work for us. (And if it doesn't - there's always the money back guarantee, right? :001_smile: )

My oldest dc will be fifth grade next year. She is a reluctant writer, and I have been planning to start her on IEW next year. However, since January, I have scrapped the writing program we were using and begun teaching writing on my own. We are working on topic sentences, building paragraphs, variety among sentence structure, and five paragraph essays. She is responding well to this, so now I'm wondering if I really want to do IEW. I am comfortable teaching writing, but I don't want to do it completely on my own. Does anyone know of a book or program that helps teach stylistic elements and checklists comparable to IEW, but allows the parent/teacher to teach and come up with the writing topics?

Homeschoolshare.com has free lap books and unit studies for a variety of topics and books (many FIAR books as well).

I really like R&S. I tried FLL when my oldest was in second grade, and I hated it. It was SO slow and repetitive (I understand it picks up later, but I couldn't get past the initial slowness - half the year on "what is a noun"). It's also too scripted for me. I started R&S 2 in the middle of the year and have stuck with the progam (oldest is now fourth grade). We mostly go over the grammar lessons orally wihtout doing the written practice, and I find that my kids are learning and retaining a lot. It is a very thorough program, but it does not take us a super long time to do it. R&S English does not include handwriting, but they do offer a separate handwriting book. I can't say anything about it because we haven't used it (we do something different for handwriting/copywork).

We've also been using Khan Academy for review. I can pick whatever skill I want the kids to practice, and the computer gives them about 8 problems. If they get one wrong, It won't let them move on to the next problem until they get it right. At then end of the practice, it gives a progress bar. As a parent, I can go in and see what they've done, what they had trouble with, etc.

Thanks everyone. I will look at Visual Latin, Lively Latin, and Latin Prep 1. We definitely want her to learn Latin - not just a Latin roots vocab program. However, becuase we don't intend for her to study Latin long enough to become "fluent," I didn't want a program that would bog her down in complex grammar rules at the expense of vocabulary. A balance of both (with a heavier focus on vocab) is what we are looking for.

I teach from the TB then the kids do the page(s) from the WB. I don't use the test book, but I use the reviews in the TB and WB as tests for me to see what they have retained. I give them problems from CWP about two times a week, trying to put those on days when the workbook assignment is light.