My dd12 likes the look of the Life Science, so we've purchased the text used. Has anyone done the experiments with this from the Investigations manual? If so, did you buy their equipment? If not, what did you do instead? Any helpful personal experience welcome! Thanks! Georgia

Your support will mean so much! I second: TWTM FIAR (or maybe Before FIAR - this was so gentle and fun for that age!) List of websites, categorized List of great books about homeschooling (you have a bunch of great selections already), which may be found at the library Catalogs How about a big binder with tabs labeled by subject for all the research she'll be doing into future curriculum purchases...and one labeled "inspirational" with a few pages from you.

Korean BBQ: Marinade: soy sauce, minced garlic, scallions, some sugar, a little sesame oil and a scoop of sesame seeds, a little lemon juice, and if you can find it, hot pepper paste ("gochu jon" in Korean), or maybe another hot sauce. The sesame oil is very important. Slice the meat at an angle to get grillable sized pieces, marinate for a few minutes, up to a couple of days, and grill. Serve with steamed rice. This is perfect for lettuce wraps, too. (Use leaf lettuce, and wrap at the table with the rice.)

Also check out online Digital Photography School - they have tons of great articles and equipment and book recommendations.

All the above... I have one pot of each of the types mentioned above (except stainless steel - more than one of those!), and I like different ones for different things. Can't imagine having just one kind, so I never buy sets. A grill pan is on my wishlist...

I've made them with olive oil - yummy and very potato-y.

are you taking any and all suggestions?

I think the cheaper ones are student guides, not teaching guides. I'm using the teaching guide for the First Americans, from Oxford Univ. Press, and really like it. I've never seen the student guides, so can't comment on those. ETA: My guide is for middle/high school. It's great for logic stage (my dd12), challenging for my ds10 grade 5.

That's a great question. I don't know how you can "inspire" technical/academic writing, except to encourage personal interest pursuits and try to write about them in a natural way, like letters to family, or keeping a journal, like a bird-watching notebook. My suggestions for more creative-type writing inspiration...the series of books about writing by Ralph Fletcher. We really enjoyed Poetry Matters. We read a chapter a week, and the kids were inspired to write poems after reading each chapter. My son continues to write poems now and then. They are also doing the NaNoWriMo program. And I recently learned of Books Bash contest. My daughter wants to polish up last year's NaNoWriMo story and submit it for this contest. We're using Classical Writing for our formal program. I'm guessing that you've already viewed many programs for yourself. Maybe you can be more specific about what you're looking for.

Here's a link to a site that was of use to me. Just click on the links in the left sidebar under How To Choose. http://www.home-school-curriculum-advisor.com/

:iagree:I guess I was trying to say the same thing without telling you what to do...:001_huh: I also think Older Beginners would be too much, too fast. (That's what I was getting at, with my very garbled explanation.) I forgot that Aesop can be done in one year...good idea! CW can seem like a too full and convoluted a schedule, but if you just relax and learn as you go, it can be very easy to make it work for you.

We're not that experienced, but, here's what I think... Just want to let you know that Older Beginners only spends about 2 or 3 weeks on Aesop skills before moving into Homer. Of course, with the Aesop core, you can still use Older Beginners and just stay in Aesop for a while longer than the workbook does, if you need to, by finding other models and repeating the same lessons, if you really want the speed of the schedule for Older Beginners. My dd is 12, grade 7, and I debated going with Homer or Older Beginners. I settled on Older Beginners, with the intention of adding in extra weeks on a skill level if necessary. There will be plenty of challenge at the later skill levels for my dd12. I'm using Aesop B with my ds10. As another post mentioned, the CW authors are fabulous over at the CW forum, and it's a great place to ask Q's. One more thing...if your dd isn't typing yet, you might want to let her. The stories begin so short that you really can do this even if she doesn't know how to type. The editing is a bear if you have to rewrite the whole thing - quite daunting for a kiddo. Mine totally balked at having to rewrite by hand. And every week entails at least one draft and a final copy. (Just our experience.) BTW, I wanted to thank you personally for the great advice and encouragement in a previous post - on "kids owning their education" - we're making progress each day and I have a new outlook on homeschooling that is so refreshing and liberating! Happy Dance!:D HTH, Georgia

We like to print out a list of poems from one term's poet from the Ambleside Online website, and read one each day. This doesn't take long, can be done indep. or together, and most uniquely, gives a feel for one poet's style. It's so easy, it can be done along with other poetry reading/study. We love poetry teatime! Thanks for reminding me of that - we've gotten away from it lately.

We're starting CW this year with my dd12 grade 7. We decided to use A&H for Older Beginners, and it's a very good fit so far. We're using MCT for grammar, but doing the CW exercises as reinforcement. I thought about just doing the whole Homer, but I liked the options you get with Older Beginners, for our particular situation. It doesn't spend much time at all in Aesop - I think only 2 or 3 weeks. But as the core manual states, you can and should stay in one place if you need to spend longer at a skill level than the workbook provides. In my mind, it seemed easier to add a week on my own "if needed" to the Older Beginners schedule rather than try to decide what to cut out (redundancy/slow pace) in the Homer schedule. HTH, Georgia

First of all, does he mean square mile? If he really means mile, then... I would draw it, using a rectangle and a line. You can measure the area of a rectangle in square miles or acres (or square inches, square km, square meters or any other squared measure of distance), and you can measure a distance (straight line) in miles (or inches, meters, etc), but not in acres. Acres has no real equivalent of distance, as miles to square miles. You don't have square acres - it's already a two-dimensional measure, if you will. It's much smaller than a square mile. I looked it up - 1 acre=0.0016 sq. miles. So you can fit many acres (lots of little rectangles) into a square mile (one big rectangle.) Kind of convoluted, but that's my 2c.

Here's what The ABCs and All Their Tricks says: "Like the sounds of most English vowels, the sounds of E are muffled beyond recognition in the syllables which are the most hurried, and are therefore the least stressed [my emphasis]. This happens mainly to sounds spelled by the simple letter E, as in telephone competition funnel basket confident confidence..." We're using Megawords, too, and this is a tricky one. My pronunciation of confident sounds like short e to me, but very rushed. I guess the quickness of the syllable plays a part. Sorry, that's not much help!:tongue_smilie:

How about the dryer vent cleaner brush thingy? Does anybody do this? Does anyone have a special tool for this, and if so, did you get it from FlyLady or somewhere else?

I agree, if the antibiotic was going to work, it would have by now. If it was me, I would see the doc again asap.

I'm just amazed at the generosity of all of you, for sharing your advice, opinions, and experiences in your own homes. :001_smile: I've got some wonderful ideas from this thread that I've already begun to put into action. Just tonight, we had a family discussion about "owning your education." We talked about what education means to all of us, why it's important, and how to own it. We talked about three components of learning with respect to planning (one way to look at it): what the govt. mandates, what parents deem necessary, and what your interests and goals are, and about the need to balance all three. We talked about asking questions and making choices, and about consequences of our choices. Something clicked with me after reading the posts here, and I can finally visualize where I want us to be heading. I'm just so excited! This is a turning point in our homeschool. I was feeling like our homeschool was a nice, pretty package with nothing inside. Now we can put the heart in it. Thanks everybody! I hope others continue to chime in. What a great discussion!

Aime, I've reread your post again, and I think I'm starting to get it. What you say makes So Much Sense. I realize that I might need to let them make some of their own decisions with success and mistakes in this area:eek:, and handle the consequences themselves (with my help if needed, of course:).) Big Breath! That takes guts. What about all those hours I've spent, all alone, agonizing over curriculum and scheduling?;) My dh told me I was taking too much on myself, that they needed to do some of this work. I just didn't believe that they could. Really. I couldn't see that. I think your breakdown of the give and take process made it more clear for me. I also took my dc out of school. This is our 4th year hsing. It has been good, but not as good as I know it can be. It can be! Thanks, Georgia

This is just the kind of thing I need to hear! Thank you so much for sharing. BTW, where's your other post? I loved reading your examples - that's how I learn, by seeing what others do and using the inspiration to tweak for us, so I'm glad you included them. I was really having a hard time visualizing how I wanted to accomplish these particular goals for them. Your comments are a big help. I'm really impressed by how you're going about including your dc in educational plans, really putting the ball in their courts, especially at their young ages. It sounds like you spent a lot of time and patience in this area, and that it's paying off. I'm going to think more deeply about what you've said...gotta run right now.:001_smile: Thanks again, Georgia

That's true. My dc are doing NaNoWriMo again this year, and while it's not a competition, my daughter wants to enter what she generates into some other competition. I guess I need to focus on one area at a time, and not the whole ball of wax at once, and hope it carries over into other areas of study and life. Thanks for your ideas!

bump - anybody else thinkin' about this?...Pretty please...:001_smile:

My dc are grades 5 and 7. I'd love to hear some discussion on these issues: I'm interested in hearing how you all encourage your dc to be *partners* in their education, including assessment, and not just "do what mom tells us." How to go from checking off assignments to looking at the big picture? How to encourage kids to pursue special interests?

I use Donna Young planner pages, too. This year I'm using the 2-column chart to plan with my dd grade 7 for the entire week by subject. Then she breaks up the assignments and transfers them to her daily plan sheet for the week, with my supervision. It's actually a weekly planner page with a big block of space and a list area at the top, and the days on the bottom half. The top space lets me add things mid-week that come up, and lets her keep track of miscellaneous things. This way, the daily page can be really flexible, but we have our weekly page as a base to work around, and even to use for catch-up on the weekend or the following week. It's a little like what I had to learn to do in university. Hopefully she will have a head start on this skill.