I've never used 100EZ, so I can't speak to that. OPGTR is a very sequential curric. There's very little prep, and almost no special materials [paper/pencil, or dry erase stuff; I can't remember anything else...]. It's also VERY scripted and [we thought] dry. That said, my child was already reading before we started using it. I didn't start at the beginning, and we never finished [i switched to Phonics Pathways which I liked better though still don't love]. I don't remember how it presented the blends. I seem to recall there's a scope and sequence chart in the back, so you could see exactly how and when things are presented.

Honestly? I don't think it matters that much. As a friend of mine said, if Zimmerman had shot a white kid, he would not be walking free right now. There would have been a proper investigation, etc. etc. etc. Even if Zimmerman didn't act out of racial prejudice [which, I don't believe, but let's just say if], the legal institution has demonstrated a disgusting level of racism. And that makes this a racial issue.

If my DSs are anything like their father, no, they won't have to worry about watching their portion control as adults either. DH is almost 6'4" and barely 150. He weighs less than me on my 5'4" frame. :glare: Ask me how happy I am about that? Elder DS is stick thin like his Daddy. Younger DS is /slightly/ less gumby-like. He's not as off-the-charts tall as his big bro, but still tall for his age. And not as skeleton bony, but I still have a hard time finding pants that are LONG enough without being huge on the waist. [He just weighed himself on my scale, and it said 32 pounds, but I don't know how tall he is]. Both boys go through ebbs and flows of eating and turning their noses up. Elder DS is apparently about to shoot up another inch or so cuz he can't get full enough. I'm shocked he hasn't asked me for food in a few hours. Younger DS is taking a bit of a break right now. He eats some breakie, nibbles at lunch, maybe has a snack cuz his bro does, and then eats some of his dinner. They know when they are hungry; they don't have time to be bored.

Ok, he LOVED it. He read 6 chapters on his own. I let him choose between a B&W composition book and a spiral notebook with a cool cover, and he chose the B&W. I showed him the questions, and said he could write his answers in the B&W journal. He took right to it! The only thing he asked me to write was the chapter title [and that was just for me anyway; I thought it would be cool to have the chapter titles and all in there rather than just the anwers]. I made him stop after the 6th chapter in Apples, and said he could do more later. He said if I bring it in the car [we're driving to my sister's tomorrow], he'd do some then. Yay, I'm so happy. :D He said this is what he wants math to be. He likes the reading, and the fact that there's not much practice. I did warn him that later as he learns new things, we'll probably have to add in some practice to round it out, but we'll worry about that when we get there. :) Thank you thank you!!!

Love Wins is a book that really spoke to me. I'm UU, but not Christian, or even theist really, but I still found the book to be very inspiring and though-provoking. You might enjoy it as he [Rob Bell, the author] tries to show that G-d is a loving g-d, that Jesus would not approve of a lot of the things done in His name, and that faith doesn't have to be scary to make us good people.

I put a little honey on mine. Sometimes stevia if I really want to avoid the calories, but rarely anymore. Never plain. Salt? I'm intrigued. I like cantaloupe with salt. My mom always eats tomato slices with salt, but my dad always put sugar on them.

I'm reviving this somewhat old thread because I just found out we might have the opportunity to go to San Fran in early April. I'm wondering if the OP has done her trip yet, and if so, what she found memorable and what she wished she'd skipped. Crouse, I do have much younger kids, almost 8 and almost 3, both boys. Alcatraz sounds fun, if we can get tix, but since this is still a "maybe" trip, I can't pre-order. Muir woods was already on my list, and maybe the beach. The harbor, does it still have the sea lions? I haven't been for almost 12 years. Wow, that seems like an age ago!

Yup, always hungry. But definitely worse if he starts out with carbs. Yesterday he had waffles for breakfast. By 9:30 he was asking if it was lunchtime yet. :blink: He did have a handful of trail mix somewhere in there, but he went on to eat: freeze-dried green beans, these green pea crisps [i thought they were freeze-dried as well, but no, they were ground, mixed with grains, extruded, and fried :glare: That'll teach me to trust Trader Joe's], and was still complaining up til lunch. Then at lunch he had pb&j on corn tortillas [yuck!] and rice crackers and hummus. All carbs. Yes there was some PB in there and the hummus, but apparently not enough of either. He had another snack later, but I'm not sure what it was. Fruit strips maybe. At dinner he wolfed down the cube steak and mashed taters. If he starts with eggs and sausage, he's much more reasonable in his "demands" for food, able to be more patient, etc. Even granola with nuts is better than the simple carbs of waffles or other cereals. I appreciate all these ideas. I'd like to make one of those snack baskets. Jen, you mentioned having veggies in there; does it need to be refrigerated?

Yes! This is what I was imagining when I said a journal. L might go for that. We'll find out today when we get started!

I like Bolt's idea, but I'm not really sure where we are. :/ I admit we've been skipping around a bit trying to find a good fit, and just struggling. We were doing 2 digit addition and subtracting with regrouping, and had just started some multiplication at a very basic level. I also really like the idea of a notebook to "collect" all the answers. Or a journal of sorts. Thanks all!

For various reasons, we need to take a break from math for a bit and get the fun back in. So I impulsively ordered the entire elementary set of LoF. They arrived today, and I want to dig in tomorrow. My plan is to work our way as slowly as necessary through them to get him wanting to do math again. The first couple books will be "too easy" for him, but it's my understanding that I should go through them anyway [and after reading the first one, I think if I didn't he'd miss too much of the story]. Since my goal is to make things fun for him, do you think I should still have him write out all the answers? Or should I give him a pass on that for the first 2 or 3 books? Ultimately, I hope to get to a point that we can use Beast Academy 3A/B and onwards. Or else I need a personality transplant that will make math fun. :/

I voted other. I have patches of gray/white, not too bad, except one right at my right temple for whatever reason. It honestly doesn't bother me too much. I have my hair highlighted, partly just cuz I think my natural color has gotten bland in my old age--dark and dingy, and to blend in the gray some. I used to color it with henna just cuz I liked the color. :)

I'm not just talking about a nature table to display artifacts, but a place that you can set up experiments and leave them without them being in the way of everything else. Right now we tend to gravitate to the kitchen for science both because the light is better and there's the sink and all. But then it's frustrating if it's something that needs to sit [like growing seeds or crystals, etc.]. Our house is not small by any means, but I just can't seem to wrap my head around this. It also needs to be somewhere the cats and toddler can't disturb things. Anyone have inspiration, tips, advice? Thanks!

My father was stationed overseas when I was going into 5th grade [bro going into 3rd and sis going into 9th]. He chose to leave us behind because he could go unaccompanied for 2 yrs or accompanied for 3. They thought that would end up easier than relocating all of us overseas. To the day he died he regretted it. His assignment ended up being extended so he was there 2.5 years. He was bored stiff and ended up taking a second job just to keep busy. It was very stressful for everyone. Mom wasn't near family though we had some good friends in the area. I'd say go if you can. Go early and set up rather than relocating twice. That's my opinion only of course. ;)

I'm in MD and I've had some in my house all winter. I've been experiencing them outside for at least 2 weeks. It's going to be bad this year. :( My bro said in November that the Farmer's Almanac predicted a big storm to start the season, then a mild winter, and then finish up with a big storm. So far the first 2 parts were correct, so I'm waiting for that final big storm. But unless it somehow blankets us in a couple feet of snow that lasts for a few days, it won't kill off all the bugs.

One of our favorite playgrounds has a merry-go-round and the duckies of death. They also have swings, which are increasingly rare around these parts. It's a really nice park, and not overly crowded. :)

My mother and uncle raise Christmas trees. They do not paint their trees. :/ Seems odd.

I went through a similar "mourning" period when I was diagnosed with ADHD. There were tears [on my part, I mean]. It was very traumatic in a way I wouldn't have understood if someone else had told me it happened to them. I was angry and scared for my DSs because of the hereditary component, and of course started seeing signs of ADHD in my elder son. I read voraciously for a while trying to understand and get a handle on it. My therapist was very skeptical of me home-schooling. I did it anyway, but went into it knowing that my ADHD was going to be a challenge I needed to work around in order to keep everything going. It's hard some days, but I just keep reminding myself of where we're going and seeing what little steps DS is making in that direction. All this to say, I sorta get what you're going through, and :grouphug: :group hug: You can still do it. <3

I make a spreadsheet every year. Subject areas/topics across the top, and the weeks down the side. I mark weeks I think we'll take off in pink and weeks we might not get as much done due to birthdays or whatever in yellow. I sketch in what I'd like to see get done each week in general terms in the boxes. For example, I went through the math curriculum and looked at its scope and sequence, and filled in the weeks' topics out for the year. I did the same for history and science. For language arts, I sketched out which books I wanted to read in the order of reading difficulty. I created a column for special days like birthdays and holidays so I'd see them as I was planning more specifically for the week. I plugged in art techniques and musical composers I wanted to touch on since those don't happen every week, and I wanted to remember. I also jotted down ideas for potential field trips and ideas for things I could do with DS's little brother that might tie in to what we were doing. It changes as we delay or move ahead, and then I have to do some finagling, but I like having it mapped out so I can say, see, this is where we're going. If you really want to see it, I could probably find a way to share it with you, but it's so personalized to our situation I don't know if seeing it would be much help to you. :) Each week I copy/paste the weeks row into a new sheet, and then flesh out the lessons and plan around whatever other commitments we have. [last year I did this in a paper plan book] At the end of the year, I'll have a electronic ledger of what I'd PLANNED to get done each week. If we don't finish something one week, I can c/p it into the next week.

My gyn's office has told me repeatedly that as long as I'm comfortable they can still do the entire exam even if I'm menstruating. Last time it wasn't too heavy, but I think this next appointment might be at the height of flow. :( They do need to redo my pap, but if I understand correctly that's because they didn't get enough of one type of cell, not because of the menstruation.

Yes, that's true. And sometimes there was a time marker and other times not. :/ I'd forgotten about that.

Surprise moments? I guess I was oblivious. Can you think of an example? KinSA, the episodes were so unevenly lengthed! One week 55 mins, other weeks over 100! Weird, and a bit frustrating if I didn't realize it was a longer episode.

I just finished reading The World of Downton Abbey by Jessica Fellowes. Very interesting. I was confused by this line: "...when editing for the US transmissions had ended..." Was the show edited differently for the American audience vs the UK audience? If so, how? I mean, what was different? I'm so curious. BTW, for anyone interested to know, the book talks some about the 2nd season, but there are NO spoilers for it, really. I was sorta surprised, but I guess it makes sense for the timing of the release of the book vs. the 2nd season.

I used to co-teach with a woman who couldn't spell, who had difficulty writing complete sentences or ones that weren't run-ons, and whose punctuation was hit or miss. She was still an excellent teacher. She had a learning disability which she compensated for by extensive use of spell-checkers and having her colleagues [me or others on our team] to proof-read anything that needed to be right. She went into special education because of her own experiences in the school system. We were teaching kindergarten, so she wasn't teaching grammar or spelling beyond the most simple things. It's possible this candidate had a similar story. Struggled to learn to read and went into education because of the inspiration of great teachers [or perhaps because she felt a better teacher could have helped her, and she wants to be that better teacher for someone else]. Of course, that's all speculation; I'd be curious to know her story. Good luck!

I always got mine through HennaForHair.com. They have body art quality henna, plus directions and forums for helping you get the result you want. Good luck!