Not skip, because I think the lessons are probably there for a reason, but I do abbreviate. Some lessons are, for us, just one sentence. For example: "The name of our city and state are also proper nouns, OK? next chapter!"

Somewhere I have seen a page of Susan's ideas for activities to keep preschoolers & toddlers busy while you homeschool the older ones. One was a creative idea of building a boat out of the sofa, with some props. I would love to see the others but I can't find that page again, even with a search. Can anyone direct me to it? Thanks!!

Thank you for all of your replies!

How old do you think kids should be before they read Harry Potter?

We have many texts for theology from our particular church, but what I like best for Bible is just reading the Bible and talking about it, and making that a habit. DS is using Philippians for his read-out-loud to me.

Hi, We are using FLL 1 and WWE 1, but I am finding this combination repetitive. And, I don't like reading the snippets of stories in WW1-- we like to read the whole thing, so we have "gone off the grid" and are using just the instructions found in the Complete Writer. If that makes sense. You can do what WWE 1 recommends, using the texts in FLL.

I've actually had good CS with Wells Fargo-- they have seen us through an episode of fraud where our account was hacked. I would actually recommend them. It might have been a mistake. I would go see them in person.

WWE 1. But, DS has resisted the writing-- see my thread on that which got me a lot of helpful thoughts from the board. In the end we made a bargain he would write 1-2 words and make a drawing-- will hope to work up to doing a whole sentence someday. :) I am thinking of going "off the grid" with WWE, since I don't like using the snippets of stories instead of reading the whole stories, and just use the instructions from The Complete Writer and our own readings, or reading the entire story which is only excerpted in WWE.

I wouldn't.

We are also serious Christians-- we personally don't feel the need to avoid Halloween, but we do feel like we need to "baptize" it (as the early Church did with many pagan customs): 1. no scary costumes for our family 2. no visiting stores with scary costumes prominently displayed, and reserving the right to complain to the management (as I did at a hospital once-- the dept of antenatal testing had big pictures of horrifying monsters-- the last thing a worried pregnant lady needs to see!!-- after that the next year they had cute pictures of kitties with pumpkins, etc.) 3. trick-or-treating in a leisurely way so as to make it a time to chat with neighbors & participate in our community, not just grab candy 4. carve at least some of our pumpkins with Christian symbols 5. encourage neighborhood kids to make creative costumes by giving out a prize to the best costume of the evening (a friend thought of this--though I have never gotten around to it I think it's a great idea!!) 6. Trick-or-treating for Unicef-- did you know you can still do this? you can. They raise like $2 million/year. 7. take this opportunity to talk with dc about history of Halloween

I'm not the expert, but here are some thoughts: 1. I like to have DD use the swiffer mop. She loves to do this and I don't have to worry about her making a huge mess while trying to clean. I can make my own cloths for the swiffer out of rags so it is not so wasteful as using the store-bought ones. 2. Flylady has some good routines for helping kids get involved in household tasks.

What helped me was "practicing" homeschooling before we actually started: I chose a subject I knew would be interesting, made a simple plan, and set aside some time regularly on Saturday mornings. It went well, and I saw that I could do it, so this year in Sept I was all ready to go HS full time!

I used flash cards I made myself to play "Memory" or "Go Fish". DS likes these and asks to play them. ("do you have something that adds up to 6?" "No-- go fish!)

Hi! DS is doing 1st grade work but hates writing. He is perfectly competent at it: can write all the letters, lower/uppercase, neatly and with spaces, etc. But he balks at doing it, which makes all our efforts to do narration pages, notebook pages, and copywork very frustrating. He will literally leave the table 10 times, and be called back to start again, before completing a 5 word sentence. It's not that he dislikes the content: this happens even with content he loves, like planets. I tried choosing sentences from his favorite fun reading but same problem. I have looked into HWT but he already knows how to do everything in the 1st and 2nd grade books, and it seems that he last thing he needs is repetition. We looked at the books at the store today. Do I need to make a special effort to make it more fun? Do we need to start writing with chocolate syrup or something??? :) Or should I just back off on it for a while? If a child is already competent at writing, does he really need to practice all the time? Thanks in advance for all your help!!

Thanks!!

OK thanks! I just signed up for that group.

Thanks for the responses! I'm teaching 1st and preK, but I also have my eye on teaching a church class for a range of ages. The reason for wanting to study with the Greek pronunciation is simply that we are in the Greek church and have bilingual services, so the Greek pronunciation is what DC hear all the time and need to become proficient in. (It also happens to be what I was taught at a well-known secular university which shall be nameless.) There are many lovely kids' textbooks with the Western pronunciation, but I know from previewing them that I would constantly have to be correcting what is on the page, and that would become tiresome, as well as confusing to DC, and also it would make some of the techniques not work (like rhymes and reading English words with Greek letters). In that case I might as well not use a text. I just thought it would be easier if there were one. And, an attractive colorful book is more fun for DC. And, contrariwise, the Greek community has many lovely texts as well, but only for Modern Greek. I will just have to pull together some things and invent my own! I intend to use as a base a new college text by a favorite professor: http://www.amazon.com/NT-Greek-Approach-John-Clabeaux/dp/1589661869/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1286255603&sr=8-1 Best wishes to all, Alyce

It seems like you do a lot more than we do, but each child is different... Here's what we do in 1st grade: Prayers Read aloud from Philippians (1 sentence) OPGTR 1-3 lessons WWE 1 day's worth Singapore Math 1 textbook lesson and 1-2 workbook exercises Practice math facts (I invented a Go Fish game with them) -- break-- SOTW with worksheets, globe, maybe a narrative page Astronomy: 1 page from DK Universe, with narrative page and illustration We do other things too here & there, but this is our regular daily schedule. This all (including break) takes about 2 hours, since each of these lessons is pretty short. DS seems to absorb things fast, and his attention span is not that long. Hope this helps. It is so interesting to see what everyone is doing.

Hi all, does anyone know of a Greek textbook which uses the Greek pronunciation instead of the Western? Thanks!

I spoke to a PS language teacher in a social setting and she was nice but almost totally undermined my confidence in teaching language-- suggested I get a tutor--this despite I know more languages more fluently than her! I decided it's better to smile nicely & take it with a grain of salt. You did the right thing by asking this forum!

We are serious Christians, and we think we should always be ready (repenting, believing, obeying the commandments, loving God and everybody) but not over-anxious about it. "Sober hope" Whether we are in the end times or not, it should not make a difference for how you live your life-- except perhaps it would make us more serious about it.

God bless you for being there for her. Bring her something to eat, flowers, and listen, listen, listen to her story. Be careful not to judge the doctors or the care she got-- even if you are a professional, you don't know the whole story unless you were there.

Hi, our lessons last 5-10 minutes: text and workbook. DS learns fast and does the exercises correctly. Still, I am taking a few days to review all the addition with games, etc, before we start subtraction, since I am not 100% sure he is retaining it well. We are on 1A.

Hi, I am not the queen of solving whining, but I do have these thoughts... Most of the time when dc are whining, they are actually telling me one of the following: 1. I didn't get enough sleep 2. I'm hungry 3. I need a change of scene 4. I need to go potty and I haven't realized it yet 5. I need some physical activity or fresh air If I keep on top of these issues, I note a lot less whining.

I am doing a plan very similar to yours, but decided that SWO could wait until we finished OPGTR.