Yes! This is what I have been envisioning and desiring. We are rural as well so it gives us that leg up. Our neighbors have chickens, llamas, cows, horses, etc. I've been wanting to look into raising our own chickens. I just wish my kids could eat eggs. :glare:

Thanks for the recommendation!

I would have to agree with you. I think that goes for almost any stress just like you say. I do well under pressure and stress. Thank goodness. And really there is little I need, or believe I need since none of us need very much. My husband, it depends on the type of stress. He is very resourceful and smart. Smart in the sense that he can see a problem and devise a way to solve it and then carry through. We're both pretty good problem solvers I guess I have this innate trust and belief that most people are good, thoughtful people and that we are also very adaptable and creative and resourceful. I think when push comes to shove that many people will buckle down and do things that need to be done and take care of each other. There will always be exceptions but I believe the majority of the population are wonderful people...some of them have just grown up in a society of detachment and don't know how to connect in the "real world" so to speak.

To answer my own questions we have the following prepared for this winter: -lots of bottled water -basic stuff like flashlights, candles, etc -we always keep lots of toilet paper, paper towels and other products on hand and this has nothing to do with emergency preparedness -generator (we need to get some more gas to store with it) -working on the non-perishable food build up

Thanks. I've tried to get my husband to go this route for awhile but right now he wants to focus just on simple provisions. He grew up LDS (he is inactive now) and so we are very familiar with the idea but he is kind of bucking the year supply. I am a convert ;) much to his dismay.

I just want to clarify that neither of us are in panic mode. He's had the gun for over 2 years. He'd been planning on getting one for awhile but when talk arose that the right might go away he didn't waste any time in getting one. This whole procession has been a slow learning type one for both of us. I was just curious how average people were handling this. If you consider the homeschooling community average. LOL. We have a lot of community through our neighbors, church and otherwise and we've been working on that aspect of things too. For him the gun aspect is more a part of him being able to help and in some ways to protect his family so that not only the lawless (and government) have access to guns. Also to be able to hunt if the need ever arose. ETA: I just remembered one of the other reasons that carrying a gun became very important for him, were a few different incidents here last year (we are in Washington) where officers were gunned down and killed. Several over just a few weeks. His ideal, whether realistic or not, is that if more legally abiding citizens carried guns that criminals might think twice before opening fire on 4 officers in a coffee shop.

So I'm wondering if anyone else is attempting to prepare to be self-sufficient (to whatever degree possible) in the event of a worse case scenario either with the bad weather predicted or a more social/government type disaster? What are you doing to prepare? For those of you that are experts on food storage I need some good suggestions in a few areas. One my son has extreme food allergies: wheat, dairy, soy, eggs, seeds (sesame, mustard, sunflower, etc), legumes (peanut, peas, chicpea, lentil, most beans it seems), nuts and I'm sure a few others I can't think of right now. We are basically just trying to come up with extra non-perishables that he normally eats. However, I'm struggling trying to find protein for him. He's 2. How do you normally store protein products? Do you use can, do you dry it? Etc. What are some of the easy to prepare foods that you store? My DH wants to focus on easy to eat foods since right now we are storing with the winter in mind at this time even though my husband believes we are close to a societal breakdown. He mostly wants foods that we just open and eat. Also, we are storing foods we'd normally eat or can work in to our normal diet so we don't waste a lot of money if the bad, awful winter they are talking about never comes. Second, do any of you have any homesteading or practical skills type books that you recommend? Both DH and I would like to have access to and start learning skills that we were never taught and essentials for how to do most things if we were ever put in the position to do everything ourselves. I have the older Reader's Digest "Back to Basics" book that I forgot about that I picked up at a yard sale for a quarter a few years ago. Is there anything else worth having? Feel free to take this thread on tangents. You don't have to be able to answer my specific questions to post. I'm curious how much concern others have or don't have on this topic. My husband has really been caught up in all of this. As soon as threats of losing gun rights arose he went right out and got a concealed weapons permit and now has a lot of guns and ammo for "just in case". We both know how to use them and his target shooting skills are now very good and mine are too but that is the most extreme thing I can think of that has changed our lives in the last 2 years. He carries a gun everywhere he is now legally allowed to. I thought it was really dumb at first but I'm starting to understand it and I am proud of him now for how much he has concern for protecting his fellow citizens. I admit, I still roll my eyes at him sometimes though but I believe in the right and the purpose behind it. Anyway, how has all this talk/concern about society/government affected your family?

We are using the Getty Dubai and so far love them. We are only on book A so we're not very experienced in it. I let my daughter choose between HWOT and GB and she chose GB because she wanted her handwriting to look pretty. :)

Please don't ignore this. Please don't dismiss this. I think the false accusation is crap in most instances. There are things amiss here. You will be a little embarrassed if the accusation turns out to be false maybe it will even ruin your relationship but you will never forgive yourself if you ignore it and something bad happens. As an abused child I could say so much right now but I am short on time. Please feel free to PM me. No one knew that my dad molested or that my sister was raped repeatedly by our biological father until we confronted him when we were both in our 20's. Once, my mom found a letter that I wrote to a boyfriend alluding to what happened when I was in High School. She confronted me crying and I lied and told her it must have been a dream. That was the easier answer so she believed me. Even now, once my sister and I have come out in the open she continues to stay with him. It is beyond the normal bounds of understanding. By the way, we are from upper middle class, my parents are well known and respected in the community, bla bla bla. Don't allow anymore unsupervised contact. Seek a play therapist or someone else that can help you uncover what may have happened in a non threatening way to your child(ren) nieces/nephews and confront the family member(s) in question. Don't just quietly walk away. When you do this you allow another unknown child to be the next potential victim. This isn't fun and it is uncomfortable but the key to stopping this madness is to not allow them to get away with it. If it turns out to be nothing (which I doubt) then you still lose little.

Is it worth completely dropping Phonics Pathways (which has been going well for us) and switching to this program? We are about to take a break for the Holidays. Should I resume with this method instead? We are just finishing up the short vowel cvc words. We've also been reading from the McGuffy Primer and she has done 10 lessons in the McGuffy. Would it be best to finish up Phonics Pathways and then take this approach or stop Phonics Pathways right away?

LOVE IT! We use the bed one but I think I will introduce this. My dd loves anything about derrières

Yes, I was aware of the legume connection, she can not tolerate peas or chicpeas either but our allergist never told us to refrain from all legumes (which is a lot of foods). She has had lentils before and never had an issue she also eats a lot of beans like kidney, black bean, etc. Even though lentils and peanuts are in the legume family a lentil allergy is pretty rare in our country. All though it is more common in others where lentils are more of a staple food. My point is that once you have an individual with an allergic disposition all bets are off as to how their allergies will progress. They may stay stable, may improve or they develop additional allergies to foods that were once tolerated just fine.

It's worth it to have an epi pen. Allergies can change and new ones can develop. My daughter who we discovered peanut allergies with at 14 months has been so stable. She was prescribed an epi as at that first appointment. Other than her first initial reaction to peanut we've been able to keep her reaction free. Well, a few weeks ago I made lentil soup and we were soooooo close to using the epi pen. Her throat started to hurt, she started to lose her voice, she had chest pain and muscle weakness. I dosed her with a double dose of benadryl and zyrtec and we almost stuck her and took her to the ER. Within minutes of the OTC meds she started to get better. But it was scary close. We had no idea she was allergic to lentils. My son has had to use an epi once and that was to an airborne allergen while we were at a doctors office. We still have no idea what set it off. That has been his only reaction that could not be alleviated with OTC meds. He is by far our worst for allergies. We just sum up that he is allergic to food, in general. :( (He is allergic to: wheat, dairy, soy, rice, peanut, tree nuts, seeds (sesame, sunflower, etc), peas, chicpeas, lentils, eggs, dogs, dust mite) He keeps losing foods. :( And those are all true IgE mediated allergies that cause an instant reaction for him. He just barely turned 2. Grr.

In talking with Maria before I made my purchase everything in the blue series is included in the light blue and the problems are the same. The blue series is just divided into separate categories and excludes the things you all ready mentioned. The blue series is designed as a supplement program and the light blue as a full and complete program. So if you are supplementing another program you would be just fine getting the blue. :)

We have math-u-see and math mammoth (we just got this too) and singapore. I think that math-u-see would be the best bet for a 4 year old. Primer was a little too easy for my 5 year old who had the same skills as your dd. I'd vote you start with Alpha which covers the same topics but a bit more in depth. We will probably be fazing out singapore but I'm not sure yet. My daughter loves it, it just seems a lot more difficult to teach and I hate dealing with the three books. I don't understand why they don't combine the text and workbook.

I would get normal sized ones. My 2 year old plays with the normal ones.

No problem. My daughter did 20 mazes today and I'm having a blast learning how to play slitherlink.

Just a note to check craigslist and local consignment shops. We found a 50 piece Zoob set for $3.99 at a local consignment shop (they obviously didn't know what they were). Sometimes we've really lucked out at consignment/craigslist.

I just found this amazing free website today and printed off 10 mazes for my 5 year old that was begging for me to make her a maze. There are thousands of mazes on here with varying difficulty and fun shapes...all in PDF. There are also so many other types of games and puzzles. This is such a neat site. Please feel free to share any other free, fun, printable activities you've found for your children. http://www.krazydad.com/ here is the area specific to mazes: http://www.krazydad.com/mazes/

I've only been at this a very short while but this has been my take on this too. I'm sure we spent months on many topics in public school in my elementary years but I only remember one. For me, I learned the most and retained the most in High School and College and all of it was so fascinating and "fun". But I'm disappointed looking back because it wasn't until we picked up SOTW that history makes much of any sense. Prior to that it was introduced to me in a very choppy, random manner.

I am finding this result too!! We just started SOTW in September and it was moving very slow. We were still on chapter 4 last week. Then we picked up the CD's and we are on Chapter 26 on the audio version with only a week of possession. She loves them soooo much and always wants to listen to it even though we have other audio books available now. Sometimes we re-listen to chapters she found particularly interesting. My plan is that we will read through our book as well which will be like hearing it a 2nd and 3rd time after listening to it in the car and then she is all ready familiar with it. I'm finding so far that my daughter is not interested much in all the extra's yet. But I think we'll get through all 4 books this year via CD and then revisit the books by reading them and pausing on chapters that we want to go deeper in. No matter how we do it she is getting way more history than I was ever exposed to so I'm not too worried.

I'm so glad to hear it is helping others. I love this board so much and I've only been coming here for a few weeks. I stay up all night way too late sometimes reading on here. I don't even remember what I used to do with my freetime before this forum. LOL

So, I am rather new here and before I dive into the buy/sell forum here I have a few questions... -I have bought and sold things (lots of things) all over the net. Ebay, craigslist, diaperswappers, etc. However, I'm new to selling curriculum. What is the going rate for used curriculum. I understand this probably varies and I'll eventually pick up the knack but what is the typical percentage from retail price? 70%, 60%, 50%? -Are prices expected to be postage paid or do prices typically reflect just the cost of the curriculum and shipping is calculated based on the buyer's zipcode and calculated afterwards? -Anything else I should know? I've never had a bad experience buying or selling online but I've read a few threads on this site that make me nervous about curriculum never showing up, etc.

Thank you. This is really excellent to think about and continually ponder on. I try to make sure this doesn't become "about me" because this is exactly what I don't want. I will say it is easier with her in some ways because it is obvious that she is doing it all. Especially before we started "school" everything she learned she had learned passively and almost automatically with no effort on my part except making the information available. Now that we are doing more schooling and I am choosing curriculum and putting so much thought into what we are doing I think that your advice is very important. Once we become really invested it is easier to take more credit. I think that also goes both ways. It is easier to take credit for the positive outcomes and also take on too much guilt when things aren't working out. From my own experience if someone needs to or wants to learn something it really doesn't matter what way it is presented or if it is readily available, it will be sought out, dug into and absorbed. I had a pretty awful public school education now that I look back and see all the gaps in my own education. But as an adult I have always been able to find and learn the things that were missing (at least the ones I'm aware of, lol) or things I become passionate about. Learning doesn't stop when they leave our homes and that, I think, is what I'm going to have to repeat to myself on a continual basis when I worry too much about doing things "right".

Very helpful. Thank you. Yes, I think the best thing I've done recently is restrict computer and TV time considerably. We don't watch actual TV but we have a VHS and DVD collection that is way too big. I am actually ashamed of how much time my daughter has spent in front of the TV watching movies for the first 5 years. She is now allowed 1 movie per day, unless there is an educational movie that we need to watch to coincide with something we're learning. I have noticed that since we've cut the TV time down she is enjoying chapter books now (as read-a-louds) and many other things she didn't feel like doing before. We are doing Jim Weiss CD's and SOTW and other books on tape now every day and it is so fun. I wish we would have known about these things and started on them sooner.