The two that I will make for sure: The Andes Mint cookies (recipe from here a couple of years ago) Sugar cookies--an old C&H recipe with lemon juice in them. I roll them in white decorating sugar.

:iagree: We use Singapore and Horizons. Long division in 3A has been the hardest topic in our 5 years of home schooling. We took an extra week to practice the algorithm and then dd was fine. I also think that Horizons pushes algebraic equations too early. And I'm a former high school math teacher. You could spend a lot of time and effort trying to teach the concepts now and totally frustrate your 3rd grader. Or you can wait until your child is in the logic stage when it will be so much easier for them and they will learn it with ease. I think pushing it early will make many kids decide that they hate math or aren't good at it. And there is no reason why these skills need to be pushed down to 3rd grade--middle school is fine. We do some simple equations, but I usually cross out anything that takes more than one step to solve.

I don't typically skip whole lessons, but sometimes I'll skip some sections of a lesson that I think are more repetition than we need. And anything that says repeat 3 times, well we usually don't. We're not trying to finish at a faster rate than our current pace, so I don't feel a need to skip lessons entirely. If a lesson has a lot of review we have an easy day of it. Oh and I do usually skip copywork and dictation since we're doing WWE.

Wonderful! Praying that all goes well Monday and that the chemo wipes out all traces of cancer.

I've always liked The Light at Tern Rock. I think it was on the Sonlight K list when dd was 5, and we re-read it most years. I also like Max Lucado's The Crippled Lamb, but probably largely because I have a crippled lamb (disabled dd). That one always makes me cry.

8.5 pound turkey breast for 5 people (3 small eaters). That is still too much, but that was the smallest they had. We can handle leftovers for one day but then we're sick of turkey. And we only eat it once a year.

Another thank you. Just from a quick glance today, I think this sub-forum is going to be very helpful.

Agreeing with others that if you want him to be able to just be a kid, bring him home. I also want to tell you about an interesting school board meeting I went to. A middle school principal was presenting data on how his school was doing. A big push statewide here is to "close the gap" between the poor performing and high performing students. There is no incentive to help gifted students do better. A parent was wondering why there was no honors math (students can accelerate to a higher grade's math, but it is not taught with higher expectations). There is no interest at the staff level in offering such a course. Finally the principal presented testing data where they can track individual performance. He was excited that the lowest performing students improved while at his school. He noted that something to be addressed, maybe with some enrichment activities, was that kids in the top quartile in elementary school showed no growth in the middle school years. This will be different in different parts of the country. I know that where I taught in CA there were honors classes in the middle school. But here, the elementary schools are strong, the high schools have honors and AP classes, but the middle schools don't offer anything to gifted students.

Oh so glad to read this! Now you can all have your lives and plans back!

I would also recommend Latin for Children. My girls enjoy the DVD, and I have learned Latin right along with them. I like being able to watch a grammar lesson--even though the same information is in the book, I like being taught by a person. It would be difficult to know where to jump in if you have had some Latin. My guess is that you would still want level A even if a lot of it is review. You could skim or cover quickly the topics you have covered before. And if your dd appreciates review, it might work well to just start at the beginning. Look at samples for any program you are considering. LfC focuses more on grammar and vocabulary. Lively Latin does more history and culture. LfC is ready to go (book and dvd). LL needs to be printed and extras may require using the computer. LfC may be a bit faster--good match for my kid with a good memory. LL has more writing--not so good a match for my kid. Those are the two programs that I looked at closely, so those are the ones I am more familiar with. But if you can get samples for the programs you are interested in, you will be able to make a better guess at what will fit your family best.

We are using Town level with my 5th grader this year. She had a strong LA background (FLL 1/2, Writing Tales 1/2, R&S 3&4, 2 yrs. Latin) and I really did not want to begin at the beginning with her. I got the Town package last January and we went through Grammar Town last spring. This year we are using everything else. I absolutely love Paragraph Town. This is the way I want to teach writing--he explains the idea of a paragraph and its structure so beautifully. I love the emphasis placed on academic writing. And I really like Building Poems too. We just read in Paragraph Town about how excellent writers pay attention to the sounds of language, and that is all explained in the poetry book. I do think that doing the poetry component will make my kids better writers. And more appreciative readers. They are really enjoying reading poetry, which I have to admit that I never really did. Now having fallen in love with Paragraph Town, I think I will have dd go through Sentence Island also. If he has done such an amazing job with teaching paragraphs and designing paragraph labs that develop the skill of writing them, I can only hope that Sentence Island might help with writing powerful sentences. Other than that one book, I think we have done just fine skipping the Island level.

We did LFC A, Writing Tales I, and used R&S 3 in third grade and it worked well for us. I think seeing the same grammar rules in slightly different ways reinforces those concepts. We tend to take a more "skimming" approach to R&S and do a lot of it orally. When we hit an idea we have already seen in a different subject, I point out the similarities and any differences. So for example we learned about predicate nominatives in Latin first. I think they were called predicate nouns in R&S. We're now using MCT and he uses the term subject complement which includes both predicate nouns and predicate adjectives. We have a fuller understanding of the idea from the different approaches different curricula use to describe it.

Maybe the definition of a true introvert is someone who enjoys shopping alone. And that is me. Black Friday is one of the few times I can shop without 2 or 3 children to keep track of. I can dawdle if I want to or I can cruise through a store quickly without worrying about what a shopping buddy would rather be doing. For the record, I never get up before 6 and I buy very mundane things like socks at the Fred Meyer half-price sale and DVDs of good movies if there are good deals at Target.

Can you make microwaveable heating pads? Not sure how cold your nights are where you are, but we love heating up our individual heating pads for 2 minutes in the microwave and then taking them to bed with us. I make mine with millet (aka bird seed) or a lot of people use rice. Basic pattern: start with a 10"x20" piece of sturdy fabric. Fold it in half so it's long and skinny (5"x20"), sew one short side and the long side. Turn right side out, add a couple of cups of millet (not all the way full), and sew the other short end closed. I also make a little flannel pillowcase for it that is washable. They are wonderful!

Wow. I would not have a problem paying a little interest for the privilege of borrowing money so easily. Especially if I might need to do so again in the future. My dad put 4 kids through college. Grad school was up to us. I borrowed I think about $5k from his retirement account. I was PROUD to make my payment with interest every month. I was a grown-up, with a teaching job, and was very thankful that his loan helped me pay for my graduate degree and teaching credential. I believe that I paid a rate that was below what I could borrow elsewhere, but still more than he might get from investing it in a bank or CD, etc. If the interest would really only be $50-$60, it's just not even worth agonizing over. That's the cost of borrowing money. And it helps take care of a family member--better than interest going to a bank. I made payments that covered about half of the loan and my dad then forgave the balance when I got married. Oh, and here's how my kids make money. They have cash reserves in their bedroom. When I am short on cash, I borrow from them. I write an I.O.U. If I borrow $20, I pay them back $21 as soon as possible. They are learning about how interest works. And sometimes it's just more convenient to borrow from them than find an ATM. Works well for all of us.

For a craft idea, I just got my girls this Klutz kit to make fairies. I saw a friend's and thought it looked cool. I think my girls will have fun with it. http://www.amazon.com/Fairies-Petal-People-Yourself-Klutz/dp/159174802X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1289708318&sr=8-1 Oh, and for board games Blokus is lots of fun--one of our favorites. My girls are just getting old enough to play Boggle successfully too (we don't cross out any of their words that are on someone else's list--they get credit for all of the words they find).

She sounds like a strong student. I would encourage strong students to complete algebra 1 before 9th grade so that they will have the time in high school to reach the highest levels of math. Even if they say at age 12 that their interests lie elsewhere, keep their options open by giving them a strong math background in high school. Where I taught high school math, top students were all on track to take calculus in high school whether they favored math/science OR humanities. I don't know about current algebra 1 programs (my kids aren't there yet). I would look for a solid program for her 8th grade year and plan to go on to geometry in high school. If AoPS is too much, I'm sure there are several other programs that will still provide a complete algebra 1 experience for her. Haven't seen AoPS--maybe it is something that you can use to supplement a different program?

I'm going to suggest that a lot of this depends on the age when you meet. If we had been in our twenties, we would have got married a lot faster. But we met my first weekend in college when I was 18 and dh was 20. We started dating immediately, but didn't get married until almost 7 years later. We sometimes wish we had married a year earlier, but while we were both focused on education and getting our careers going, we were content to wait.

Praying that all goes well with your treatment so that you will be cancer free when it is done. And praying for peace and strength to deal with each day's challenges.

A can of Pediasure has about 250 calories (8 oz). I think Carnation Instant Breakfast in whole milk is similar, but it tends to give my dd diarrhea. Either is a great easy way to get more calories and lots of nutrients into a body. Pediasure, unfortunately, is expensive at about $10 per 6 pack, but we do use it occasionally. Now that dd is a bit older (13), I should look at Ensure again to see if we could use that. It's several dollars cheaper per six-pack, but dd's ped didn't want her on it as a child--too much of some nutrients. Pediasure or the like is also easy to set aside as one child's food--everyone else has to keep their mitts off of it! When my dd was a toddler the doctor prescribed Haagen dazs milk shakes--guess who had a little trouble keeping her mitts off of it!

We have the Zeman books which we used our first time through (1st grade). We read them for fun this year, but my 5th grader and I also read McCaughrean's book. Zeman is great for 1st-2nd grade. Older kids will get more out of McCaughrean I think.

We started with SWO and switched to R&S when my oldest was just finishing 2nd grade. Much prefer R&S. I'm using it a year ahead with my youngest, so she's doing the 3rd grade book in 2nd grade. My older dd eventually was working a year ahead too. The words may be a little on the easy side, but the activities are not. Anyway, my older dd finished the 5th grade book last year and we have transitioned on to vocabulary (we are using MCT's Caesar's English). That has all gone very smoothly. Dd is a natural speller; I think it is working out fine to have her in vocabulary studies now instead of spelling. HTH.

Is there someone coordinating meals for the family? Are you close enough that you can just call up the mom and ask her if there is anything she is craving? Or that the family can't eat? My sister went through chemo this summer for leukemia. It made her anemic and between rounds she just craved red meat. She loved it when someone brought them fajitas. Her dh does not like beans--that would not have been a great meal. She had no problem just telling people what they would like or couldn't eat. Flowers would have been a big no-no. She could not be around them when her blood counts were down. Chemo is different for different cancers. People react differently too. If you can call either the recipient or someone close to them who has the scoop, you can provide just what they need and your meal will be a huge blessing to them. Thanks for reaching out and caring.

:iagree: We started out with SWO and switched to R&S. I much prefer R&S. The activities teach students about the English language. SWO activities often seemed like busy work and could be frustrating for my child who is not a puzzle person. I remember activities where she was supposed to unscramble letters to form a word on her list. If you don't like puzzles, this is time-consuming, frustrating, and doesn't do much to reinforce the spelling.

Definitely one story here, but we have a dd in a wheelchair. We moved from a 3 level home (garage on bottom, living areas up half a level, all bedrooms and bathrooms up another half level over garage) which would be very difficult for anyone with mobility issues, though we loved the house. Single levels are so much easier for everything. Laundry is on the same level where you are, no matter where you are. Easy to run trash or recycling out to the garage. No carrying vacuum cleaners up stairs. Being on the same level promotes family togetherness. And dh and I know that we'll never have to move due to our own health issues later in life. Single levels do cost more per square foot. Around here they are in short supply probably because of that. A very high percentage of homes built in the last 20 years are two story, I think because builders can make more money off of them. When we needed to move to a single level, we couldn't find an existing one and had this one built for us from the builder's plan in a neighborhood of mostly 2 stories. So single levels hold their value well here and are pretty easy to sell--there are always people out there who want a single level (like older folks who can't do stairs as well as they used to).