I use the 'send to kindle' application to right click on documents and books on my computer that I want to send to one of our kindles. I downloaded the 'send to kindle' thingie from the Amazon website specifically to make it easier to send sideloaded books from the google ebookstore to one of my kindles. I have a ton of sideloaded stuff in the cloud, and four kindles and it has been really easy to move content around from kindle to kindle. Unless I run the MOBI file through Calibre, however, it tends to send sideloaded MOBI files into the documents section on my Fires instead of recognizing them as kindle books, and I'm not sure how that would translate on a paperwhite. I'm not sure why you are having a problem but I probably just don't understand exactly what you mean about how it isn't working. I've found the kindle customer support to be helpful if you end up having to resort to them.

We used Math Mammoth for the early years since Saxon didn't work for us then. Then we switched to Saxon with 54. My kids don't think it's boring or repetitive; They actually enjoy the mix of problems that include both new material and older material with each lesson. The verbal math questions at the beginning of each lesson have really helped them develop the ability to add and subtract in their heads. My older kids hated math, but the younger ones I've been using Saxon with all love math and think it's easy. FTR, all five older bio kids have tested as mildly to moderately gifted. (The five year old is using Math Mammoth, and hasn't had IQ testing yet.) We use the older editions of Saxon, and I've been able to get them really really cheap at homeschool book sales and other places. We love Saxon. I had a crappy public school education and though I had always taken the highest math classes that were offered I never felt confident in math. Now, teaching Saxon has made me a lot more confident in my own understanding of math.

Right now we have six people here in our single-wide mobile home full time, with an additional two children who have a claim on some space due to visitation. We have 1000 sq ft. Cramped? Nope. Two bathrooms, which is really helpful. But do we need more space? Well, right now I'm sitting on the loveseat with my husband and my five year old. My two year old grandson is on the floor at our feet. My nine year old daughter and my twenty-six year old daughter have staked out the other two chairs in the living room, and the rest of the place is currently empty........so what do people DO with all that extra space besides visit it occasionally? I'm not really interested in more space to clean! In fact, I'm pretty vocal about downsizing once my adult daughter and my grandson move out next summer.

We have been using it since the beginning of this year. Personally, I really like it. It is as thorough as R&S (which we were using up through last year) but without the heavy Mennonite vibe. I think that the explanations are better and easier to understand in Hake, for both the grammar and the composition. Hake also has more examples, which we have found helpful. The composition portion of Hake is very clear and written in a very down to earth sort of way so that the instructions and examples seem just like common sense. I suppose you could say it is 'matter of fact'. It strikes just the right tone with my daughter and inspires a workman-like attitude in her. R&S isn't exciting and interesting, and neither is Hake. There is a lot of drill. It is laid out just like Saxon math. There are no colorful pictures or designs. It isn't cute or visually appealing. But it works for my daughter who just didn't remember things very well with FLL or MCT. I'm planning to stick with this program since it works well for her, even though she isn't exactly enthusiastic about it. She does well with Saxon math also. I guess it really does just depend on the kid. Apparently my daughter does well with curriculum that doesn't dress up the fact that learning is work. She did the least well with MCT, though she really enjoyed it. She can tell me the story in the MCT island book, but doesn't remember the actual grammar parts. FLL was another hit with her, but she focused on the poems and the more interesting parts of the book and I guess her mind just didn't process the grammar parts of it. In desperation I tried R&S, and amazingly she suddenly started to learn grammar. I don't want to stick with R&S because it doesn't have the kind of composition I want, and I'm not fond of the the Mennonite tone and the bible stuff, and even if I did like that I have to say the Hake is much, much better. There is clearly explained grammar, there is clearly explained composition. There is plenty of practice. It works. We just do our poetry and 'fun' language stuff separately. I would say she could do it completely independently, but at her age (9) she still 'needs' mom sitting with her to stay focused on the work, more for the company than because she needs the help. She doesn't get much done if I try to get her to do it by herself, but that is her maturity level and not a reflection of the material. The explanations and instructions are very clear. We do the initial practice verbally together some of the time and she does the review at the end of the lesson independently. Usually it takes around thirty to forty-five minutes for a grammar lesson. She has some fine motor issues and handwriting is not easy for her, but since it is something that she can improve with practice I haven't had her do the work on the computer keyboard. If she did do the work on a keyboard it would take less time since she wouldn't be struggling with the motor aspect of handwriting. I guess a child who can write easily shouldn't take more than thirty minutes with a lesson and sometimes less. The composition lessons take longer, but most of that time is independent as she has to actually write something of her own.

We aren't obsessed.........I only have 32 different toons spread over four servers, both allie and horde. DH has only eighteen. I'm not sure how many toons the kids have all together. My younger kids learned to read so they could play too. We live to pvp. In fact, we have a video splitter thingie on the computer monitor so the one of us can put our screen on the big screen tv so the younger kids can watch mom and dad fight in the battlegrounds......... Blizzard loves us. :thumbup: We've been gaming since the beginning of gaming. I could hardly bear to part with Ancient Anguish when Wow and Everquest came out. Now I can't even imagine how immersed I was in the original text based muds in the 'olden days' when it was amazing to have fifty people on via telnet and dial-up internet. I'm not even going to talk about the D&D of my youth......played on the kitchen table with actual DICE long before personal computers were even invented, grasshopper.

We are splurging on 7" Android tablets for everyone (including the five year old) for Christmas and I'm already looking at putting nearly all of our actual curriculum on those. I DO have some picks that aren't available in a form I can use on a tablet, but if I HAD to I do have some second choices that are available in an ebook form that I can substitute. I'd also like a small whiteboard or chalkboard, please. And covers for the tablets that have those little keyboards in them. I think that would do it, except for piano..........anyone ever try one of those roll-up music keyboards? Should I add one of those?

I wonder how common that is. The director of RE at our church is a public high school teacher, and when we were talking one day I asked her about some book recommendations for dd age 9. She told me point blank "Kids don't like to read" and refused to recommend any books to me. I'm afraid the conversation went downhill right away, as I was only able to mumble inarticulate syllables from that point on as I tried to pick my jaw up off the floor. I can't help but wonder how and what she teaches. Oh, as for missing cultural experiences, around here I'm told the whole 'riding the school bus' thing is quite the experience. Just not in a good way.

Four generations worth here, that I know of for sure, and probably more. I'm a US Army vet, my deceased first husband was also a US Army vet (his dad was a Navy vet) and my divorced second husband was a Marine. My ex-father-in-law was a Marine vet and my ex-mother-in-law was a US Army vet. My current father-in-law is an Air Force vet. My oldest daughter is a US Army vet, and her husband is Active Duty Army currently. My dad was an Air Force vet and my grandfather and great uncle were US Army vets. Several of my first cousins are also US Army vets. In my family it seems more unusual NOT to be a vet. I have to say, however, that I am NOT encouraging my younger kids to sign up and since political discussions are not permitted here I won't go into that any further.

Let me echo what the others have said: don't stress over it. I basically throw all of each child's work into a box during the year and pick through that at the end of the year for a portfolio. Last year, the cat peed in one of the boxes...so this year I got nice plastic boxes with LIDS. :D I was seduced by the cool science stuff offered by a va this year and signed up my kids. They hate it. We are withdrawing after break to go back to straight homeschooling. I have to admit I really missed lesson planning........

45 cents when my mom used to send me down to the corner store to pick some up for her...... $5.65 in my corner of PA these days.

My dad actually had this his entire life and it was never fixed. It was just the one side. He had two kids without any trouble with conception. I had read that there is considered to be an increased risk of cancer, but my dad never had any problems. He was in the Air Force in the fifties and early sixties and it was in his medical record but apparently they never recommended doing anything about it either. It wasn't until he was in his mid-seventies that a doctor told him he should have it fixed......after dad got done laughing he just told the doctor he wasn't going to worry about it at that point in his life. Just another perspective.

Melamine dishes don't break, but you can't microwave them. The local Amish love them, obviously they don't microwave stuff much. I'm not sure how they would handle a dishwasher either.

I'm sure I can find a nice starter culture for you.......let me check the frig :lol:

I like the cotton for dishcloths, which are just as easy to make. You might make a nice set of color coordinated potholders (with thicker yarn) and dishcloths (with the cotton yarn). People seem to like this kind of thing better than a scarf as a gift, IMHO.

I have to keep records for our state, but we used MM and the whiteboard for the first part of last year. I took pictures with my digital camera and instead of printing anything out I added the pictures to the power point presentation I created for our homeschool portfolio that I turned into the school district on cd. I WAS going to turn it in on a Yosemite Sam flash drive, but I liked the flash drive too much to risk not getting it back. I also included in the math section of the presentation a list of the topics we covered in math over the course of the year. I'm in PA, and this apparently was all fine with the school district.........they were satisfied. Now I take pictures of some things, and scan in some other handwritten things, and save the Word documents all on a flash drive. It is much neater, easier to organize, saves space and money, and is good for the environment! :D

Well, the toxic social atmosphere in our local middle school and high school were the reason I began homeschooling years ago when I pulled my eighth grade daughter from middle school and my ninth grade daughter from the high school. Academically, both schools were below average and the social climate was absolutely unbelievable. Previously, my oldest girls had been in both public school and a private Christian school. The difference in the behavior and attitudes of the kids in the middle school and high school was overwhelming. Unfortunately, my eighth grader had already bonded with several of the girls she had met there, and my previously athletic, clean-cut, gifted daughter went 'ghetto' to the extent of racking up arrests (misdemeanor and felony) and experimenting with pretty much everything she could. Today she is 25, never married and pregnant with her third child to yet another drug dealer who is currently in jail. She works as a bartender and club manager, so at least she has a decent income, but her lifestyle! I had my grandchildren over the summer when she went to jail yet again for a parole violation.........My older girl, now age 26, is fine. She is a veteran of the Iraqi war where she served as a medic, and is a married mother of one pursuing a nursing degree. I currently have one son in eleventh grade in a different public high school and a daughter in eighth grade in a different public middle school and they are both doing fine (but I'm beginning to have some reservations about my daughter). I have two younger children who have been homeschooled or cyberschooled from the beginning. With all of this experience, my advice is to really take a hard look at the school you are thinking of, not all schools are bad but not all schools are okay either. If I had it all to do over again, I'd really want to homeschool or cyberschool all of my kids. The kids are too precious to take any chances with.

Wow, I read your post and I thought "that sounds like back home". Then I looked at your location......Northeastern PA! Yep, I knew it. I grew up in Ashley, and lived in Plymouth for a while, and the neighborhoods are exactly like that when road work is going on even back then. Once we could only afford one gallon of milk for the week and I dropped it walking back up the hill on the ice from where we had to park the car.......not good! :grouphug:

My step-daughter could have written the original post. Dh and I are in that position, of being overwhelmed by trying to take care of two of our grandchildren who have a mother (my daughter) who is addicted to drama, abusive men, and a lifestyle we don't understand. I can tell you honestly that we just don't have the energy or resources to spend the money or time with our other grandchildren as we would really like to. And as we get older it seems that our energy levels are getting lower and lower. It is very very stressful to be the grandparents in this situation, since we really have no control over the unstable mom and no real power to make sure that the kids are okay, yet we love the mom and the kids and worry about them tremendously. It isn't that we love them MORE, either. We do love all of our grandchildren. We DO think of them with love, and are grateful that they have the stable loving parents that they do. I'd suggest trying to make it easier for them to spend time with your children. Invite them over more often, and invite your niece along with them. Offer to help them with caring for your niece. Do they mind if you just 'drop by'? We love it when our adult kids and grandkids come by just to say hello and spend a little time with us (and don't ask us to babysit!). It isn't the best situation, but maybe they are trying to do the best they can.

I said that when we moved into our current place nearly six years ago. We still don't have one.....but now darn it I DO buy those elbow-length gloves in pretty colors to wear while I do dishes. They somehow makes dishwashing less annoying.

I have Hake 4. They said they will sell the school version to homeschoolers if you want it before the homeschool version is published. I got mine last week and we love it.

My dh is a social worker. He loves his job. Of course, it doesn't pay much but he is perfectly content to live on very little.

:bigear: Curious if there are replies. I've always had an interest in Buddhism.

Yurts don't have plumbing? Why not? If you can put a well on a property and pipe water to a cabin why not to a yurt? We have folks around here who have a well that is pumped by a windmill and the water is pumped by the windmill to an above-ground cistern and gravity-fed to the dwelling. Not that I'm worried about washing diapers, but I can't imagine why anyone would need to break ice on a stream. I think I'd like a yurt. We have a woodstove in our mobile home and in the winter it gets so hot in the house we have to open the windows and doors sometimes. And we live in Pennsylvania.

:lol: I think I went to college with some of those xyzschool graduates.......

Wow. I wouldn't be invited to that tea either! We had a mom come to our last homeschool get-together in what I assume was a 'trendy' outfit. She seemed nice, though. We'll have to corrupt her into our "But Land's End IS dressed up" mindset. As though I can afford LE........:lol: Oh, and any atheists, secular humanists, druids, pagans, Mormons, Islamic or Jewish folk or whatever are all welcome too! Republicans, Democrats, and all other variations welcome, anarchists and monarchists too. But no narcissists allowed.