Thank you so very much! I have been wondering about this. I guess we like to 'poke along' here but I call it 'taking time to really explore the subject.' But, I suspect it looks exactly like poking along.

There are many versions of "The Jungle Book' I believe that I have seen Rikki Tikki in with it Here is more information about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungle_Book

umm.. you don't have to rebind WWE or anything. Just make a binder with loose leaf paper and use that for writing, dictation etc. My kids writes his name and the date at the start of every exercise. I use HWT lined paper but YMMV. My book is ready to go for kid #2. The readings are suggestions, not directives. If the library doesn't have a book, it's not the end of the world. For science etc. just do a good search on this board. If you are doing year two then it is earth and space science. just do a search on 'earth science' using the search function on this board. You will get SO MANY hits! You can while away the hours researching different science options. You can also buy many things like usborne science encyclopedia used. It's often just fine to buy a slightly out of date version. Find out if your library system has a book sale. My friend and I travel around to library sales of neighboring towns. It is homeschool heaven! For literature in year 2 of the history cycle just pick a couple books to read during the year. For a second grader maybe a king arthur books, some knight books, maybe a kid friendly robin hood, a kid version of a shakespeare play or two, maybe a St george and the dragon? Ask her to do a narration of the book, like three sentences and make a picture of her favorite part. Put it in her notebook.

It might help to know what his objections are. I find many 'civillians' have odd ideas about what homeschoolers are like. I would either ask him to read "the well trained mind' or have him listen to a 60 min lecture by Susan Wise Bauer called 'The Joy of Classical Education." That is for sale at Peace Hill Press as either a CD that can be mailed to you or as an audio download that you can play on your computer or (if you have itunes) put on an ipod etc.

I am not sure that is a great idea..but it could be ok. My son's pt uses twister to challenge my son. He is fine with knowing his left and right (just turned 6) but twister makes it really hard for him. It challenges him to move his left or right when he can't see them. The point is that you get thrown off of where your left or right hand is and that makes the game hard. What about hokey-pokey games or simon says or mother may I?

I don't have any housekeeping duties during the day outside of what the kids need. My kids are 10 and just turned 6 yesterday. I have a fulltime job of childcare and teaching. I make meals during the day but I don't do laundry or anything else like that. Heck today I didn't even have time to wash the lunch dishes and dh took care of them with the dinner dishes. it's not my job to also run the house. That takes a whoooole lot of pressure off. You will get more 'me time' as the kids get older. Really. It won't always be this way. They will get older and one day, you will realize the 10 year old has hardly spoken to you because he has his nose in a book and gets his own meals. And, honestly, some people don't like it. It's not for everyone and that is ok. I wouldn't do this if I didn't love it. It doesn't make you a better mother to homeschool. You don't get a medal or anything. At least I wasn't told we do. Did any of you guys get a medal because if you did, I want one!

I am sorry. I will come over right away and pick up my kids.

OMG, I had to work with my son on this. It brings back such memories. I would get a book that was all about the rhyme. THe one I used more than any others is called "when a bear bakes a cake" It is a whole book of nothin' but couplets. We sounded like this: Me: " 'When a bear bakes a cake, he throws it in the lake.' Cake, Bake, that's a rhyme. Words that rhyme sound the same at the end." do this for every. page. Try not to go crazy. You can also make your own rhymes for him and let him see the model. Say "peach, beach, meach, teach, neach, deach. Now you try with peach." Yes, I know those aren't all real words. The point is to let him hear the sounds.

My boys have always had their hair long. I've let them pick since they were old enough to talk about it. He has a shoulder length bob now and it is shorter than it has been when he was 7 or 8. The funny thing is that when he was that young, no other little boys had hair that long and occasionally we raised some eyebrows. Now that he is 10, they all do. It seems he was just ahead of his time, lol. I should add that my husband also had shoulder length hair. He is in acadamia and it is fairly common.

To me, that says evening wear. Women in gowns and men in tuxes. However, I would call the production company to find out. I will just bet that a man came up with that. A woman would know how to describe a dress code! :lol:

I've always thought he looks Beatles-esque. I remember being a pre-teen and being all ga-ga about Donny Osmond and Sean Cassidy. Michael Jackson wasn't the most masculine of looking guys and he had the teenybopper screaming until they fainted Teen girls often find effeminate men attractive because they seem non-threatening. Parents often find it less objectional as well. Remember the uproar Elvis caused with his amazing pelvis... but the parents loooved Pat Boone. It is a well established marketing tool. Anyway, my son has hair down past his shoulders (not in his beautiful face though) and the girls do seem to like it.

The constant reenforcment makes me think that Saxon could also be something to look into. That said, I have only ever used SM, Miquon and MEP and only have Saxon=reenforcement from things others have said. I hope you find what works for him. That is such a hard place for you both to be.

Ok, so year 1 is chemistry and physics and year two is life science and earth science. I had them reversed in my head. Ok, that is fine. I am doing life science in 5th grade and earth/space science in 6th grade. So, I don't need year 2. Could I take year 1, physics and chemistry, and pull it apart into two years of study? It would be used for 7th and 8th grade, which is the target age group. I would plan to supplement with some WTM resources.

I never taught that to my elder son but he just taught it to his little brother, lol. It happend today in front of my eyes half and hour ago. There was a little bit of (expected) confusion by little brother over which sign to pick < or > . Big brother say "Hey, I just always reminded myself that a big hungry alligator will open his mouth to the bigger amount of stuff." So. That was that.

It's all in the blender, baby! My friend has one of those super expensive blenders and it makes smoothies like nothing else. It is like silk!

I follow the WTM schedule for science. So, we do each subject as a full year. Is rainbow science something that could be split up between the two years? For example, could I get physics and chemistry and just spread it out with supplemental readings and other stuff in year 7 and 8? If it teaches sequentially, then I could flip my physics year with the chemistry year. That wouldn't be a problem. I have always wanted to know this, lol. And how christian is is? We are very secular around here.

Well, I live in the opposite climate, lol. here it is the winter that curtails outside activities. July and August are the only truly hot months. So, we take full advantage of the summers with lots of swimming and outdoor play. I also send the boys to fun camps in the activities they enjoy. They are very involved in the local arts scene so for at least two weeks they will do a morning theater camp. I think a round of swimming lessons are usually in order as well. We keep up with music practice, but not daily. I will do my very best to make sure DS2 does some reading practice. If I have to wait with one boy for the other to finish a lesson then I pull out a kumon book to keep math fresh. But that is about it. Sunshine is just too precious around here! The public school in this state don't start until september and finish at the end of june. We follow pretty much the same schedule.

I just finished MEP reception and have started MEP year one with my just turned 6 year old. He turned 6 yesterday. Starting in september we did reception year. We did it every day (because he was older) and in November, we moved onto year 1. MEP reception year is made to be done a couple times a week with youngers, and last a whole year. I am pretty sure (could be wrong) that we never encountered the < and > etc, signs until MEP year 1. Reception was mostly about working with in 1-5. It is super short, lessons took about 10 mins. You look at all those nicely coloured pictures of the family: Mum, Dad, Ann and Ben and talked about them. It was a lot of left and right, top and bottom and matching. We did count things and "clap it out" but it was "how many balls do you see? Once you know, clap out the number" Or I had him jump or knock on the table. If he is 4 I would just back off and focus on counting, one to one matching, dot to dots and other fun stuff. Some kids don't even start formal math until 6 and do just fine.

I have already told dh that soon after turning 50 I will want my droopy upper eyelids done. I want them done before they look terrible. I see my mom and I don't know how she lives with it. She doesn't have to but she just scoffs at the idea of fixing it. That is not going to fly with me. I have two friends who had the full on face lift. One friend, C, had a face that looked angry all the time. She is a very kind person but as her face settled into it's ageing look, she looks really pissed off. People at work were always asking her if she was mad about something. Other times, people would say stuff like, 'I saw you at the mall but you looked so upset I didn't want to bother you. Are you ok?" So, she decided she needed a lift. She did look better after that. My other friend has the money. Period. SHe is very hard working and sucessful in her field and has money to spend. Good for her. She wanted to 'freshen up' a bit to stay competitive. I don't actually see the difference, to be honest. But she does and she earned the money so it's her business. If she had asked me, I would have suggested some laser work and botox etc before jumping into the face lift. Now, if I had the money, I would be getting some lasar work in a heartbeat! No question.

DS1 has them. Is it 'cosmetic'? I don't think so. His teeth were so out of wack it is a mess in there. His front teeth were pushed out to the point where they would be almost horizontal. Not a good thing. However, there are also class issues. We are middle class, we are expecting our kids to have white collar jobs. Both DH and I have sat in on enough hiring committees to know that things like teeth and hair and clothes are noticed by employers. Straight (more or less) teeth are a marker in this country of an upbringing that is at least middle class. When we see people who are in professional jobs with very crooked teeth many make a judgment on their education and upbringing. I am not talking teeth that are not photo-ready. I mean, teeth that make people say "wow, guess someone's parents couldn't afford braces." And yes, I have heard that said about a job candidate. Toss in a college degree from a state university instead of a known private one and things can get difficult on the job market. Not impossible, but difficult. I don't want my kids fighting upstream when it's not necessary. We can afford it..with some sacrifice.. so we will. I have friend's who can't. I know we are very lucky. To have teeth that are, for the most part, straight and clean are a mark of good grooming in this country. When dh's brother went to the air force academy 30 years ago, dh noticed that many, many of the freshmen had braces (paid for by the gov't). His brother said that the military didn't want their officers to have unattractive teeth. It didn't suit their image for the professional officer class. So, the students show up and get told they are getting braces.

I also have kids who want to blow stuff up reeeal gooood. I swear there was at least one thread about 'science for blowing things up' or something along those lines. I would suggest doing some searches along those lines. There is also a thread in this forum, not an old thread at all, about Mcsomething science? I don't know what the term meant but it seems to be lots of taking stuff apart and making stuff from other stuff. The mom was making it herself. It might be on the next page of posts.

My son is 10 and would be 5th grade in ps. We do math 5 days a week and SM is our main program. He is now in 5B of SM. We do LOF twice a week. Once a week we do LOF addition to SM. On fridays it is instead of SM. Logic (fallacy detective) is it's own subject for us and I do that three times a week. We are using the 'orbiting with logic' series. He does one exercise (one page) three times a week. It takes on about 10-15 mins. I don't know how long Fallacy detective exercises would take.

:lol::lol::lol: OMG, don't tell my DS1. I would condsider him a 'bright average' math kid. And don't tell his non-mathy mom who has to teach him! For years, my son was half a year 'behind' in singapore. So at the start of third grade, we started 2B. We did that because he just couldn't tolerate some of the longer lessons. He could do the front of one page in math a day ONLY or he just collapsed. Somehow, at the end of third and begining of fourth he totally caught up. So, here we are starting 5B, right on track. Give SM a shot. I like it. If she is 'behind' grade level, don't sweat it. I have seen that it all works out in the end. Just do it every day, 5 days a week, at the level that makes her feel sucesful.

I use chedder. My kids won't eat cheese food product.

Being manipulative is a surival skill. It's a good one to have if things are unstable. The problem comes when the behaviour is still around when the danger is past. It can be very, very scary for anyone to give up survival skills and learn new ones. I hope they are working with a very skilled therapist.