I haven't used HST, so I don't know everything it offers, but I am a Mac girl, and have spent a ridiculous amount of time hunting for planning software. DH toyed with the idea of developing something for me, but that sounded like so much extra work for him - I really wanted something simple, something already in existence. I tried Skedtrack, but did not love it. I loved the functionality, but not the look of it. Lots of people love it though. And then... I found scholaric.com. I think I must have read about it here (?). Love it. Easy to use, very inexpensive, and it's more intuitive, more like a real planner. There's a free trial period, if you want to check it out. It's an online planner, which I didn't think I wanted, but it's worked out beautifully. Good luck!

Thanks for the welcome, and the hellos! Julie, lots of people think our story is like "My Best Friend's Wedding" too. :) I never watched that one though! Very happy to be here with all of you!

After all the talk of trolls today (apparently there was some excitement around here over the weekend!)... I think I need to introduce myself formally. :) This is my 3rd year homeschooling (wow!) and we've been following WTM the whole time. My kiddo is 7, in second grade. We didn't plan to homeschool, although we were always interested in it, until he developed severe allergies. Finding out that we would have to *fight* to have his epi-pens in the classroom put us on the fence between homeschooling and public school. Then, we took him to register for K, just to keep our options open. Oh my. The teacher took him back for a test, brought him out and said, in a sickly sweet voice, "He scored 100! I just don't know what we're going to teach him!" ...Not the best comment for 2 parents sitting on the fence, she tipped us right over the edge. We've never looked back. It's been the best thing to happen to our family in a long time! We also have a 3 month old. She was our surprise visit from the stork. :) We are approved foster parents, and we were expecting a foster kiddo, rather than a little bundle that would be ours from the start. She is our little miracle! We have a not-quite-20 year old as well. He is my bonus kid, my wedding gift from DH. I was privileged to help raise him, and am still privileged to call him son. SS has some issues, but we are working through them together. Oh! And DH... :) We've been married 12 years. We have a great story, super sweet story, and I don't want you all to need dental work after reading it... Think "An Affair to Remember" ... It took us 11 years to get married, but he was my first love! I love this forum. It has deepened my relationship with Amazon in a meaningful way (Amazon loves that I read posts here and immediately go shop), and truly, you all are amazing. Thanks for the help you've provided! I wish I'd found you all before my kiddo was in first grade, as I think it would have spared me some painfully bad curriculum choices. (No signature... I have no idea how to create one, or how to make it pretty the way you all do!) Thanks for being here, from another real person.

:bigear: My best guess is StartWrite, but I haven't ordered it yet. We're switching to D'Nealian this year, so I've been looking into options as well.

I know a lot about my family history, but DH is adopted, and until now we've had very little info about his genetic side of the family. (His adoption was closed until recently. I wouldn't call it open now, but that's changing quickly, and we are cautiously hopeful that it will open in a good way soon.) DH was always very interested in finding information about his genetic heritage, so we used Family Tree DNA and did quite a bit of testing. It was fascinating! We have a fair idea of his birth family's roots now, and he's made connections to distant relatives. Through those relatives (again, very distant), he has learned the (probable) oral history of his birth family's arrival in the US, and their origins. It's made me want to do the same testing for my own family, although I'm not sure I can justify the expense since I *do* have quite a bit of family info. Maybe I can work it into our curriculum at some point and justify it as a school expense? :) Just wanted to throw this option out, though, in case anyone is interested in learning more about their own history, through an unconventional avenue.

I know of one family taking this approach. I don't know them well, as our parenting styles aren't even in the same ballpark. 2 older kids, one younger. The older kids (young adults) have struggled to find their way in an adult world. The young man just joined them military, and seems to be getting a handle on his life, despite very little support from family. The young lady is simply a disaster, very little focus, very flighty, very self-centered. Some guidance from her family would probably help her find a path for her life, but for now she is floundering. The youngest child is only 14. She recently placed a baby for adoption. (Where is the smiley face icon of for complete and utter dismay?) It is a sad, sad situation. Those kids *need* parents who are involved in their lives, but the parents plan to continue their hands-off policy. They are professionals, they live in a nice neighborhood, and on the surface they seem very normal. This is their parenting choice. I don't understand it, and fail to see how it is helping their kids develop into productive, caring adults. I'm sorry your friend's children are being bullied. And hope that there is a way to support them through a trying time in their lives.

My DH just started a diet, too. Not the same diet, DH is doing the Tim Ferris Four Hour Body diet (I think that's the right name). It's not his first time on this diet, and I have to admit that in the past I've found it a bit annoying - ok, very annoying - because of the shopping and the meals that work for DH only, but not for anyone else, and the extra dishes that result. So I hear you! But this time, I am trying hard to be completely supportive, and am even doing the diet with him. Maybe we need to form a support group for those of us with DHs on diets! :)

Oh my. I opened this thread thinking it would be about abbreviations or something along those lines. Oops! Am I reading this right? The person with 17 kids wasn't real? ...I only read her first post, but I shared it with DH, because, well, the thought of 17 children was simply ... daunting. We were cleaning up the kitchen at the time, and just chatting. That story had us pondering how many dishwashers we would want, with 17 kids! I'm embarrassed to share with DH that it wasn't a true story. Feeling very naive.

Thank you! I am so excited about finding sale prices on Amazon! Crazy question - where are you finding the SOTW 2 CD? I can only seem to find one, listed at $84. I'm guessing there are different editions... Or I'm blind? We adore the audiobooks, so finding it for less than $84 will be great! ETA that I found it! Yippee! Thanks, all!

We loved the audiobook for SOTW1. I've been holding off on picking up SOTW2 because it's so pricey. How do you see if/when they go on sale at Amazon? (Silly me, I didn't even know that Amazon has sales.)

I have a lot of this as well, and have been pondering what to do with it all. Some of it is great stuff. My tentative plan is to give it one more shot, this year. I am using scholaric.com for planning and I am scheduling it all in. If, at the end of this school year, I have not cracked these books, then I am going to pass them along. I have sections titled Math Extras, Science Extras, and more. If nothing else, I'm trying to schedule unused items at least weekly. Great curriculum is only great if we use it. If I consistently find excuses not to use it, then it's either redundant, too teacher intensive, too much scheduling, or just not something I'm going to implement. So I will pass it along to someone who will use it. :) (I say this now, but may change my tune next May! Please don't hold me to it!)

Yes, make sure she is looking at subsidized loans, not loans that will accrue interest before graduation. I received grants and used student loans for part of my living expenses while in school. Money was tight, and I worked during the summers. I also part-time nannied for one of my professors for a few years, and then later I was a live-in part-time nanny for another professor. That helped, because I didn't have rent (I lived in the MIL apartment, so still had to pay for food, etc). Thankfully, my parents kicked in some each month too, or I could not have made it work as well as I did. I don't think she's crazy to try this, but not knowing the specifics of her situation - where she will be living, etc - it's hard to say if it will work comfortably. I would talk to the financial aid office with her. It's probably hard for her to totally grasp the idea of paying back these loans, since it's so far in the future (to a teen). One bonus to the student loans, at least the subsidized loans, is that if she *must* she can defer payments at some point. I don't remember how it works, but in the event that she is ill or unemployed, student loans can be deferred without hurting one's credit for a specific amount of time. So it's better than, say, credit debt, in that regard. Double check me on that, though, it's been awhile since I've been in school. Good luck!

Am I the only person who shops online? I love online shopping! Our grocery store offers express shopping, so one can shop sales, etc online, make a list, and then send it to the store. The store gathers the order together, calls when it's ready, and we go pick it up. They even load it in the car. The fee varies: in summer, it is $1.95 for every order, no matter how large; in winter it is $5, but we often have coupons for fee free express shopping. Manufacturer's coupons are accepted, too. The same "shopper" gathers my order together each week. She knows our preferences if a substitution needs to be made (though she always calls any way) and she does a great job picking out produce and meats. She even remembers my son's allergies, although of course I read every label, every time. Our weekly trip is always on Monday, because I clean out the fridge every Monday (trash truck comes on Tues). Any minor trips we do as needed, but for the most part - online shopping all the way here!

Sorry for the uninformative title. I'm not sure what to title this thread. I am completely confused about how best to teach my son. Not sure where to post this rambling question, either, so if it belongs somewhere else, please let me know. DS is 7, and we are starting 2nd grade. He is very bright, very motivated about his areas of interest (science is a big one right now). Very creative, very interested in drama and dance. He draws constantly, and creates costumes from construction paper on a daily basis. At 4, he created a life size toy soldier with moveable parts - from paper. The kid can create anything with paper. :) But handwriting (for anything school-related) is a miserable chore for him, and he is still reversing letters. He writes constantly, for fun as part of his artwork, but it is sloppy and he mixes capital and lowercase letters. Reading is not coming easily to him either, as most things do, so I think he finds it frustrating, and he has voiced as much to me. He is, technically, on grade level, but I feel that he is behind where he could be, and blame myself. I think perhaps I have not been persistent enough in teaching him when he is so resistant. We do a small amount of reading each day, but he is a very wiggly, very active boy, and I have not pushed hard in that area. Math is similar, in that he understands it all conceptually but doesn't want to do the work to learn facts or computation (for example, his end of year testing placed him in the 99th percentile for conceptual understanding but 52nd for computation - partly because some of the material on the test was not covered in RS last year, but I think also because of his own issues). An old college friend came to visit a few months ago, and we watched the animated version of one of Sir Ken Robinson's talks (the one with the whiteboard, if you're familiar with it), and immediately afterward DS grabbed his whiteboard and essentially recreated the talk for us - simply drew the entire thing. Fairly normal for him, crazy kiddo, and DH and I are used to this. :) My friend watched this, and watched DS for a few days. Then she talked to me about DS. Friend is the director of a gifted program at a magnet school for the arts. She strongly encouraged me to get DS tested so that if we put him in public school at some point, he will be placed into a gifted program. She's worried that he would be placed into regular classes and suffer for it (though it's unlikely that we will put him into PS, if we can possibly help it). Fast forward to now... We did get a psych eval, albeit not specifically to test for intelligence. We were concerned about other issues (which, it turns out, are not at play, thankfully). DS's test results are confusing to me. They administered a Wisc IV test. For the most part, his test results were very high (gifted category). But in the areas of processing and working memory, his scores were average. There was a 43 point gap between processing speed and the other results. That's a large gap. His working memory was average, also. I don't think there's anything wrong with average, by the way, only feel concerned because of the big gap between the numbers, and wonder how that is impacting him overall. Psych thought his fine motor skills could use some work as well, although all the drawing helps. He has some ADHD tendencies, but is not diagnosed ADHD. Would this be why reading and handwriting are difficult for him? And how on earth do I go about addressing these issues? FWIW, we are using WWE, FLL, AAS, MM (this is a recent switch), SOTW, RSO, HWOT and a lot of other resources. I read aloud and he listens to audiobooks daily as well. We are probably going to pick up OPTGR again, because I think more phonics might be helpful. He has not enjoyed it to this point, and we dropped it for ETC for a while, but I think it might be a better choice. He might not be happy about it though! I'm open to changes though, if anyone has suggestions. For the time being, other than SOTW, RSO, and all the supplemental materials we use, he is not thrilled with schoolwork. I often think he's not challenged enough, and maybe that's the case? Any thoughts, any advice, anything at all would be appreciated. I am lost as to how best to help him right now. Or if you can direct me to a better place to find answers, that would be fine, too! Thanks for reading.

We struggled with this with our 20 yr old. He lived with us the majority of the time, and with his mother every other weekend and a few nights each week. Two different households with radically different values and parenting approaches... Boy, was he confused. Meals at his mother's were ... sporadic, and mostly in front of the TV or computer. The above suggestions were the backbone of our approach but we also played a lot of silly games. We would sometimes dress up for meals and try to outdo each other on manners, we put on silly accents and exaggerated our manners, we instituted rewards for manners, and we developed wordless hand signals to remind the kiddo about his manners. The best part of our plan, though, was that once every so often we'd throw manners to the wind, have the messiest possible meal and just let him have at it. Ribs were a big hit for this. :)

I second the Happy Scientist. It's been a huge hit here! We love Brain Pop, too. My kiddo also likes to watch MathTacular DVDs, then recreate them with his own manipulatives. He'll either set up a class for DH or me, or make his own films, using the whiteboard and manipulatives. We're considering using the Inquisikids Discover and Do DVDs in the same way, thinking he will watch then do the experiments, teach and/or film. A science bin is essential here, too. We keep it stocked with a variety of science tools. Above the science bin we have a cabinet full of science kits, and the kiddo often chooses a kit to work through during an afternoon. Thames and Kosmos kits are the ones we have, but there are lots of choices. We also have a bin filled with TOPS Lentil Science supplies, although I think the work it took to set that up was not worth the pay off, in the long run. Math - We're starting Life of Fred Elementary here. Right Start games have not gone over well here for some reason though. How about math board games? Not sure where your kiddos are in math, but we like Money Bags, Sum Swamp, 'Smath, Mummy Math, and Zeus on the Loose.

The assassination attempt on Reagan. I was in 2nd grade.

We like their kids' furniture a lot. I prefer the wooden items over the particle board, and think they hold up better over the long haul. We've used our Trofast bins and cabinets for 7 years, and they still look new. And we just gave away a 12 year old wooden loft bed - it was in perfect shape. The Ivar wooden shelves in our garage have survived since my college years, through 2 cross country moves, and a lot of abuse. We've added on to the system to line our garage with shelving. I have no idea about their upholstered furniture though. We looked at it fairly recently, and went with another store. Have fun in Ikea!

Our plan, still being revised here and there: Language Arts FLL WWE AAS Handwriting - starting cursive mid-year Lots of great books planned and waiting to be discovered Math MM Life of Fred A,B,C Lots of living math and math readers sprinkled throughout the year MathTacular DVDs for fun and inspiration (DS like these!) History SOTW 2 and AG Many field trips planned - I can't wait! Great history books Science R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey Earth Peppered with appropriate videos from the Happy Scientist "Family course" - The Story of Science, which we are reading together after dinner each night Lots of science books and trips to science museums planned Foreign Language Song School Latin - starting mid-year Art Discovering Great Artists Mark Kistler Online Lots of projects with Dad Music Piano PE Swimming Karate or Dance - if we can find a dance studio that has at least one other boy :) I, too, worry about glaring gaps. I'm worried about phonics at the moment, and hopeful that AAS will cover/review phonics enough. Any thoughts on that would be appreciated!

This has been an interesting thread. My kiddo is not a fan of worksheets either, though when I deem them necessary, he does them. This year we are trying something new, and I don't think it's been mentioned. It may not work for all, but for my film-loving kiddo - it's worth a shot. For science this year, we are doing R.E.A.L. Science Earth, plus we do a lot of extras with the Happy Scientist ($5 at HSBC right now, can't go wrong) and the Inquisikids DVDs. When DS does an experiment, on his own or supervised, he is now making a video record of his findings. For us, this consists of either using PhotoBooth on the Mac or using the iPhone, and DS either demonstrates or explains his process and findings. He loves it. Just an idea to keep things moving along, fun, and off paper.

I am trying both of these, and am leaning toward Scholaric at the moment. It's prettier. :) Until now, I've attempted to plan on paper, but find that the smallest bump in the road throws our schedule off. In Skedtrack, I like that we can just bump an activity to the next week if we don't get to it for some reason. Or if we do *more* than planned, it seems easy to notate that as well. Can I do the same in Scholaric? Or will it throw off our schedule? Any other thoughts on pros and cons of Skedtrack or Scholaric? Thanks!

Cute thread! And great ideas. :) We have a fairy door (a la the Urban Fairy Operation - google it for fun), and our fairies leave tiny clues that they've been out and active, too. Little notes have been fun. And cryptic "messages" on leaves (just patterns poked into the leaves, nothing fancy). Flower petal trails are always exciting. I have been wondering how to end our fairies' stay, though, and this thread has given me some ideas... Thanks for that!

My son watched these around age 5 - 6, and they were a big hit. We watched some of the youtube videos first, he loved them, and I ordered the first DVD. (This reminds me I should order more!) My son would watch the videos and then get out his manipulatives and play. He would teach me, or DH, or even the dog. He is a little film maker, so we have many movies of him at that age, working with his math manipulatives and demonstrating concepts. The only con I can imagine, at this point, is that we used this for fun only, and didn't schedule it - we may have gotten more out of it if it had been scheduled. Then again, the beauty of it for my kiddo was that he watched the DVDs for fun, and it didn't feel like "school."

Netflix. :) My kiddo has enjoyed these as well. Our local Redbox also has a DVD that we've enjoyed, though the title escapes me at the moment. Finding it was a big surprise!

Great ideas! Thank you! I think the box idea is perfect - will corral some of the smaller books that tend to get lost on the shelf, and those will make perfect dividers. I'll put the labels on the box. And add the colored stickers, too. And the paint stick to mark the place where the book goes... genius! We will still likely end up with books everywhere, but it's worth a shot. Love it! Many thanks.