I have had a sansa mp3 player and I now have an ipod touch. I actually prefer the sansa for listening to music/audiobooks because the transfer was SO much easier and didn't have to involve itunes - I could just plug it in and download from my computer or DH's (from the music folder in My Library). I love all the OTHER features of my Touch, but getting music on there is a project. Before we went to England, DH wanted to put his whole music library on there so we'd have it in the car and on the plane. It took FOREVER, and itunes doesn't seem to want to play nice with microsoft. We're PC (not Mac) people in general.

My 7th grade science teacher was Mr. Patterson, hence: King Patterson Creates Order For Goofy Students.

Have your kids read the books? I think there are 13 now in the series. I wonder which books are covered in the movie. We were really excited to see 3-D previews for it when we saw Toy Story.

I'll bet there are loads of Catholics who are feeling the same way. I'm sure it's difficult to hear outsiders (those not in the faith) talk about what's "wrong" with it. Argh. There was something more conciliatory I was going to say but I've got boys running all over my house right now and I keep getting distracted to ask if they'll walk, is hockey gear packed, does guest have all his stuff packed up? etc.

I think the FLDS members argue that the mainstream LDS church is the one which is picking and choosing based on pressure from the Federal government ;) And that group still has a prophet, and they use the Priesthood structure, so I'm sure they believe (quite justly) that they are a part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints - they follow the Doctrine and Covenants of the church right up to that major chism that happened related to polygamy. Other major faiths have had similar breaks, and we still see it. I've known Catholics who don't consider a baptism at a Lutheran church to be legitimate (or any other protestant denomination). When I was growing up, a friend spent the night with us and went to Methodist church with us in the morning. When she went home that night she had to go to Sunday evening mass because she hadn't been to "real" church. While I understand that the mainstream LDS church wants to distance itself from the FLDS (and other LDS splinter groups; there are several: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_fundamentalism - not just the group at the Yearning for Zion ranch in Texas [formerly of Colorado City, AZ/Hildale, UT], and not just in the US) for MANY reasons, I think it's slightly disingenuous to say that they cannot attach themselves to the LDS church in any way. It's a bit like the Presbyterian saying "oh we're NOTHING like the Catholics! those people think that the wine turns into BLOOD!" when so many of the other basic tenets of the church are similar (and while I've named two denominations here, it could be any - the basic tenents of all the Christian denominations are basically the same with some areas of disagreement). To an outsider, the differences are pretty slight.

Yes. I will say that I have a friend in a polyamorous relationship that she entered as an over 25 year old adult. I don't think she was coerced - she's living in a small city in the eastern US. I haven't asked for details, but it's my understanding that some of these relationships are triangular (each member may choose to pair with the other) and some are Vs (one wife is intimate with each of her 2 husbands, but the men are not intimate with each other). Obviously this description only works with a triad. When you add a 4th (or more) the shapes change again. There is at least one society somewhere that practices polyandry (one wife, many husbands). More often it's polygyny (one husband, many wives). The information I've gathered from reading about the FLDS group (the most public polygyny group) is that this business of marrying off girls below the age of consent is relatively recent (under Warren Jeffs). At least one previous "prophet" wanted girls to wait until they were of legal age. That said, a tenet of that particular faith is that in order to get to heaven, a woman has to be married. That was a common theme in all the memoirs I read - this underlying current of "i HAVE to get married! if I don't, how will I get to heaven?! the end times could come at any moment!" Even if a girl was more of a freethinker, that information was being drilled into her head all the time. A girl at that point isn't giving consent. It's on par with a girl being solicited by her teacher - "even if I study, i might not do well if I don't hook up with Mr. Jones!" and case law generally supports that. While most (all?) states have statutory rape laws relating to minors, some have "Romeo and Juliet" exemptions (if the two are 4 years difference in age or less - aka my 15 year old can have consentual sex with her 17 year old boyfriend, even though officially she might be a minor since she's under 16 - AS LONG AS SHE CONSENTS). Those R&J exemptions don't apply if the older person is in a position of authority (my 15 year old daughter and her 18 year old shift supervisor at work, for example). Another problem Warren Jeffs and gang had was the business of transporting minors across state lines to marry them. I was actually really shocked by the recent decision involving Warren Jeffs - where his conviction was overturned based on jury instructions.

I don't think he needs a spelling book. My younger son finished all 8 books of Explode the Code and now I'm giving him spelling related to history or science. If you think he needs more work, you could look up the Drost (?) sight word lists. There are some lovely printable flash cards at the Jan Brett website with those word lists. They start with the very high frequency words (a, an, the, etc) and go out from there. If you want to do the reading comprehension aspect of WWE, you could just make up a couple of questions related to whatever picture book you're in the mood to read.

Polygamy is legal in the US as long as you don't involve the state. You can only have one legal partner, but you can have as many spiritual partners as you want. So, your church or religious leader can declare you and your 4 husbands as married, as long as you are all consenting adults. The Supreme Court legalized any kind of relationship between consenting adults. This means also, that yes - I could be spiritually married to my brother (assuming there is some kind of incest law already on the books in the state), but not legally. Not being legally married is a problem for things like inheritance, custody, etc. It's my understanding that in the FLDS groups there is the one legal wife and should that wife die (or leave the group), the man will name another legal wife and file the appropriate paperwork. Because of the limit of one legal wife, many of the women in FLDS communities would file for WIC/government support because legally they're single parents (with MANY children). I've read SEVERAL memoirs and other accountings of life with the FLDS group that's now in Texas (and used to be on the AZ/UT border as a direct result of watching Big Love. There are real groups upon which the families of Big Love are based (including the Greens in Mexico). I think polygyny is something that can be done well, but it is often done very poorly with great cost to the women and children involved.

It went thru fine for me just now.

What about the REAL Science Chemistry? They have that for level 1. We're doing that this year. We did earth and space last year (and have simply skipped life so far, which is "bad" on my part, but I'm building up the mental fortitude to deal with creatures as part of science).

It's going to be 98F or warmer here the next 10 days. DH has some air conditioning system so that he can keep the house around 72 and have the energy bill lower than when we kept it at 75. So, i'm cool in the house (I've been wearing jeans all week), and then I bake when I need to run errands.

I keep getting a 404 error "The requested URL /user/register was not found on this server" when I click on submit after filling out the form.

I'm using WWE 1 with my 4th and 2nd graders. The 2nd grader might be able to handle level 2, but not much more writing. He doesn't seem bored and honestly could use an easier start since he doesn't seem to understand "Tell me one thing you remember from the story" and instead wants to retell the whole passage, getting quite upset when he knows he's missed something. My 4th grader, after some initial hesitation, has quickly caught on to complete sentences and he's building some confidence in the whole process. He's my more challenging student (very resistant to change, slower to adjust, etc) and it's great to see that this seems to completely CLICK for him. We're doing 2 days in one (copywork and narration in one day) because they CAN handle that. I bought the workbook for the same reason other people mentioned - I didn't want to have to find reading passages nor make up copywork sentences. We won't actually use the workbook pages in the book, so I'm hoping the book will resell at a decent price.

DH had something similar attempted and the premise was that the buyer would send a check for more than the purchase price, asking that you wire the "change" to another address. There used to be a presumption that if you were sent a bank check (not a personal check) that it was guaranteed to be legit, so you'd deposit (or cash) the check, take out what you were owed, and wire the difference. By the time you found out the bank check was fraudulent (which could take a couple of days), you would've already wired the other funds away. So: I'm selling a book for $50 Buyer sends me a check for $200, says he owes Other Guy $150 and for me to just wire (western union or whatever) that $150 to OG. I deposit check and wire funds to OG (who is Friend of Buyer/Scammer) and send book to Buyer/Scammer. Scammer now has $150, I am overdrawn at the bank and out the book. When it first happened with us it was pretty glaringly a scam. The buyer used TTY to call (because apparently that's free for long distance calls? we assumed the buyer was not deaf and just further scamming the system), and said he wanted to buy DH's motorcycle and have it shipped to NJ. DH was concerned about how the bike was going to get from AZ to NJ, buyer was only concerned about this whole check/wire transfer thing. DH got handy with the google and found it listed as a scam somewhere, but he'd already decided to say "no" because who wants to deal with coordinating the shipping of a motorcycle (and it wasn't a rare model or anything that might attract the attention of collectors and make the shipping more understandable).

Oh right. I missed the bit about a 5th grader. For Ancients Level 2, HO recommends Ancient Greece and Ancient Egypt: http://www.pandiapress.com/images/Ancients%202%20Book%20List.pdf

We got just "Ancient Civilizations" - that was recommended with History Odyssey. It covered Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, China, Egypt and Aztec (but that section gets used in the Middle Ages block) as well as "What is History?". http://www.evan-moor.com/Title.aspx?CurriculumID=7&ClassID=166&SeriesID=64&TitleID=262&EmcID=267

But how long were you on the horse? The way this is presented, of those 2 hours, only 10 minutes will be on a horse. I think it's worth considering what you're trying to get out of the field trip: if it's a lesson in horse care, then the $15/person is worth it. If your children are really only interested in riding a horse, then the $15 isn't worth it for 10 minutes of riding.

I don't think this isn't a problem because it isn't "politically correct" but because it may set bad classroom precedent. When Jane spends the day telling people she's a princess, will she have to stop? And a teacher WOULD be involved in solving this problem because in the simplest terms, it's a classroom management problem: he's crying, other kids are reacting, there is disagreement, etc.

I don't think that's true. I just read (quickly) the information here: http://www.isbe.state.il.us/HomeSchool/faq.pdf which says (bolding mine). In this situation, the OP would be the competent private tutor. That said, I agree with the other posters who've said that you either need to have a serious "let's all get on the same page here" kind of discussion (and honestly - if your husband will back you up, if you think this child needs some kind of academic testing you can say you don't want to continue without it, or that you'll continue once an appointment has been made, and then only at the level of work you think the child can do. that child should be able to see a developmental pediatrician with a referral from her own) OR you need to bow out. And, you shouldn't at all feel guilty about either choice: you are acting in the best interests of this child.

We don't use a charter school, but I know the workbooks at Evan-moor.com have the standards listed with them (to help out teachers who need to justify the expense). We get History Pockets there and I keep considering some of their geography books.

They're really only helpful if you want someone else to make up the test sentences for you. I have them all (since I have ETC thru book 8 ), but I only haul them out for the tests at the end of the books.

A Child is a Child Plot? Lovely - a preschool book that illustrates that one day mommy and/or daddy might never come home. and while it's great that all the neighbors swoop in to raise the orphaned frogs, i still couldn't read it to my high anxiety kid when it was first given to him. thanks, mom, for sending that particular book.

I found this site a bit interesting: http://www.anitra.net/homelessness/columns/anitra/eightmyths.html I don't know how credible it is, but it says that the bulk of welfare fraud is committed by the VENDORS, not the people receiving services. http://www.mejp.org/PDF/tanf_facts.pdf - this is only from Maine, but I can't imagine that it's hugely different in all the other states "Actual fraud is found in only about 2/10th of 1% of all TANF cases—that means that 99.8% of families do not commit fraud." http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24708.htm - according to this it's 0.4% of welfare recipients in Philadelphia (I did the math, using the higher number of cases - they said 200-400 cases out of 95,456 recipients). Just to be able to use real numbers when talking about the percentage of welfare recipients committing fraud.

Here's the thing about calling the police. First, call the non-emergency number, and ask to have an officer come out because your son is being harassed at school and you want things on record. This doesn't mean you want him charged with anything, this doesn't mean you want him arrested, etc. Talk to the officers. Explain that you want the incident (and any previous ones, if you have dates, and go back thru your old posts if you've mentioned them here to get the dates straight in your mind) documented. This is not just to protect your son. It's possible this boy will never do anything else to your son after this suspension/meeting with his parents. That doesn't mean he won't do it to someone else. You providing documentation and an incident report (or whatever they call it) to the police can help establish a PATTERN OF BEHAVIOR. That way, if this jerk does something else and those parents call the police as well, it's possible some serious flares will go up - it will no longer be isolated incidents, be recurrent negative behavior. Yes, I know the most important thing is to protect you and yours, but perhaps knowing that you could also be protecting someone else might help you and your son make the decision to contact the authorities.

This book: http://www.amazon.com/Something-Might-Happen-Helen-Lester/dp/0618254064/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_11 pretty much sums up life with Thing 1 much of the time.