You have young children writing poetry together, and one of them is acting as a writing mentor. Count it all joy! I would not squelch this in any way. It doesn't matter that the poems are similar. Your precious ones are engaged in living classical learning; i.e. imitation and modeling.

Kathryn Stout has a unit on Mayan culture.

Nan, I agree that you should work on a book. Until then, your posts are helpful and inspiring. With your suggestions and what I have found on my own, I now have direction. I do have one more question. You mentioned that you skip biology. Do you just fold that into the natural history course?

If it's any consolation, dh's company is going through closing one facility, restructuring, and spin-off. One week dh is reporting to one boss, and the next week he is reporting to another. One week he is not on the org chart, the next week someone calls to ask him for a picture for the org chart, and he has a different assignment. After months of this, I have resigned myself to accepting whatever comes. He's working hard and receiving kudos for his work. There is nothing more he can do in terms of his current job, and we know the Lord has a plan. We have discussed the game plan if he loses his job. These are difficult times for many people. A time for prayer and compassion.

We had many yard sales before we moved to our current state. A good way to have an open, but structured yard sale is to have priced tables or boxes with the option for make-an-offer. That gives the buyer a starting point. For example, a $.25 box of paperbacks, a $1.00 box of clothes, a $2 box of hardback books and a $5 table. Your sign would have the price and Make-An-Offer in parenthesis underneath. You can have one table with priced items. This has worked well for us. Depending on your location, you may need to offer give-away prices to have a good sale. However, the nickles, dimes and quarters add up.

Nan, What was your starting point for putting together the natural history course? Does this type of course get history or science credit or both? Do you think this can be part of a high school science credit if the course includes lab and field work?

"Stand and Deliver" is the movie.

Just wanted to add to this AG post. We used AG with one of our sons as prep for ACT. He had a respectable English score prior to AG, but his score soared after using AG. He worked through all parts in one year.

We are huge MCT fans in this house -- all components. However, I want to put in a plug for Caesar's English. We have used several vocabulary programs throughout our homeschool years, but dd now adores words because of Caesar's English. In recent weeks, odious is a favorite since there are many odious things in life.:tongue_smilie: These and other CE words like specious, exculpate, and tremulous are becoming part of her everyday speech as well as her writing. It's not that she has never read these words, but CE has been the bridge for incorporating them into her life. Rich words also add depth and humor to difficult life situations.

Sending you a pm.

Dd is taking a photography class and loves it. What photography books would you suggest for a teen? She wants to move forward with some good books after this semester. Also, one of her themes for the next class is "thoughts." Does the hive have any ideas for photographs that would illustrate this theme? Thank you.

Sounds great! I am sure there are mothers more experienced than I am, but I vote for organization as the first call. There are mothers who are using the teacher notebook arranged by canon, but I could not understand the teaching sequence and understand what I needed to use and when to use it until I organized my notebook by lesson. However, if someone has another idea for the first call though, I am up for anything. Also, organization might not take too long, so perhaps everyone can have a list of questions to either be answered or discussed during the next telephone call.

Help her start a Writer's Notebook for editing issues; i.e. style, etc. I've tried several approaces and this has worked well. Feel free to PM me.

Oh, yes, adjectives can only modify nouns. What was I thinking? We are in parsing fog today. Thank you!

Even if we only have 3 or 4 mothers who want to do this, I think it's a good idea. Whatever we answer or pull together can be posted for other mothers. Andrew has posted they can only make it so easy, which means they can make it easier to use, but working through the process of an LTW essay is challenging. For example, dd wrote several essays without any problems, but struggled with an essay on The Wind in the Willows until she realized the problem stemmed from the issue she had chosen.

I agree that sore is an adverb, but what is it modifying/changing? If it is modifying "vexed" the subject complement/predicate adjective, would it be functioning as an adjective?

We are using Psalm 6 in conjunction with our grammar program and need help parsing the first part of verse 3: My soul is sore vexed: but thou, O Lord, how long? My - adjective moditying soul soul - noun subject is - linking verb predicate sore - adjective vexed - subject complement (predicate nominative) Is this correct? Thank you!

I'm willing, and I think it's a good idea, but I think it would be best to have a focus for the call. Also, since everyone will be coming to the table from a different place; i.e. organizing to teaching the comparison essay or advanced elocution, mothers may need more than one call. It might be best to start with a call that focuses on organizing the materials since that seems to be a problem for many mothers. Then, the calls could focus on discussion of each lesson. I believe that most mothers will be able to get LTW off the ground after they work through the first two or three lessons. At that point, they will understand it enough to use the apprenctice yahoo group for questions or maybe someone will be motivated to start an LTW yahoo group.

Thanks to everyone for the resources.

Does anyone have a good website or resource for further information about calvinism and five-point doctrine?

Has anyone used WS above Level 4? If so, when does it teach persuasive essays? Does it teach other type of essays; i.e. definition, comparison, etc? Also, I've never worked with any curriculum that dictates sentence length other than the first two units of IEW, which are meant for 2nd and 3rd graders. What curriculum does that?

Yes, I agree about the examples, and I have mentioned this to Andrew and Camille several times. They are working on it. LTW II has no examples, so it's even more difficult. Until last year, Andrew was covering a lot of bases. The team is growing, and he has motivated apprenctices trying to improve LTW.

We just got home from McDonald's, and the young adult who took our order had a difficult time taking the correct order and putting it together in a bag. I told dd that could be her fate if she does not get a good education. I didn't get any eye-rolling since dd was about fall on the floor with frustration and laughter as I tried to deal with the situation. As we left, dd remarked, "Well, that was a Marmee moment." Using every opportunity to teach, we talked about working on proficiency with her instrument as a sideline way to earn money; i.e. the accompanist for upcoming recital charges $30 per half hour. Cha, ching! We also talked about education through a master's degree and high demand careers. The vicissitudes of life bring many challenges, and I wish I had more foresight. Btw, I hate to see the lack of focus in many homeschool families, especially for their sons. I hear of few homeschooled boys in our neck of the swamp aiming for challenging careers. While not all of our dc have or will follow our advice, we still lay out the options.

I only have WS 3 and 4, but here is my input. The upside of WS is that it is written to the student, so he can work independently with editing input. In addition, the author does a wonderful job of teaching writing with different voice, person and tense. However, there is a down side. While WS addresses organization, the curriulum uses listing and other organizational tools. Whether you use IEW-style key word outlines or SWB sentence outlines or LTW and R&S phrase outlines, I believe outlining is a good organizational tool for beginning writers. Of course, you could teach your student to outline and require outlines for all their WS papers/paragraphs. In addition, WS gives a light brush to the concept of main idea. That is one of the strengths of SWB's dictation, narration and outlining sequence. The student is always working with the main idea as their guiding light. Finally, WS 3 and 4 include assignments on story writing without enough instruction on the framework of developing the various components of a story; i.e clear problem, events leading to the problem, solution, etc. With all that in mind, I plan to use the two levels of WS that I own as a reference. If you want a curriculum that teaches paragraph skills, take a look at MCT Town level. That is the focus of the Town level - main idea, support for the main idea and various types of paragraphs. I don't own it, but read Tina's posts on WriteShop. The first level looks like it does an excellent job of teaching paragraph skills as well as writing with a different voice and point of view. It's more structured than MCT which might be a good way to start if you are unsure about teaching writing. WWE can easily be added for dictation and narration skills if you are working with older students.

I don't think you can use RC on an eReader. However, if you contact the 800 number on the website, you will get the tech guy who is marketing the curriculum. He will help you.