Thanks, I knew their had to be a better option then the EBO packs. So...is an EBO really worth it? Do your kids enjoy it? Can a 8 yr old do it by alone or parental supervision needed?

I am looked at the samples but cannot get a feel for the Prairie Primer, so can you give me the good and bad and anything else about this curriculum?

:iagree: on what Hunter said...if you use it, use the older books through-out. Can you look at the contents page and see what is missing if anything, you can then teach the missing parts on your own. FWIW I am using a 50+ yr old curriculum with my dd for Math.

Dd has been wanting an easy bake over for a few years now but we looked at the price of the mixes exclusively for EBO and they were $$$. Is there a way to use a regular cake mix and make the cakes? Much cheaper and easier to come by.

Bumping for you. Peeked at the samples and it looks good.

I can see how some parts will take longer then others, but I am trying to get an idea on an average schedule. Since it is meant for 3rd grade I figure it is intended to be completed in a year (understanding it might take some longer) so some sort of schedule on how to space it out for the year would help. Anyone else?

History Odyssey with SOTW. The HO guide will be similar in a way to BF guides.

Is their an official schedule for BA? If not, how do you schedule it? Right now we are just using it on Fridays as an extra, but we are enjoying it more then I thought. I might be making some changes to our schedule and make BA a daily thing. If it was up to dd it would be the only math she works on.

:iagree: Nothing comes to mind, but we read it a while ago. It is on my Audio book list for dd (7) for this year.

Anyone else?

Good to know. Will the dehydrated food taste just as good once it is hydrated again?

We might be getting a food dehydrator and plan on doing lots of dehydrating of vegetables and things like parsley not to mention fruits. Lat year I froze a lot of those things but it took up too much space in my tiny freezer. I am wondering though...what am I loosing besides water when dehydrating? Will my soups be just as good with the dehydrated ingredients as the fresh or frozen I normally use?

Taking notes ... We are thinking of buying the 100yr old we are currently renting. We know it has not had decent TLC for many years and the current owner thinks a screwdriver will fix anything so there will be lots of work to get it all right.

Interesting. I also thought it was funny the title has a grammar error in it.

We used BJU for many many years. The History is very easy to use with short lessons if you plan to use it all year and it includes activities. BJU math is also extremely well done with the teacher's manual being a big part of the course. It will show you different ways to achieve the shill being learned with many examples to work through with your child, review, oral word problems and enrichment work. The workbook reviews the days lesson. Just mentioning it if Saxon does not work out. BJU reading is good for a reading curriculum but with any reading curriculum will get tedious. I would look at reading lists from companies like SL or TOG and use the library. I like to get some books that go along with the history we are studying, folktales, poetry, and non fiction books too.

Hmm...we must of had an odd pug. He was extremely smart. House broken in a week or two...actually we used a litter box for dogs and he got it pretty fast once he got use to the crunching sound the litter made when he stepped on it. Kids taught him all sorts of tricks. Our only problem with him was he shed more then I classify as normal. He was great with the kids. Best dog we had and would get another one if it wasn't for the shedding.

I would not worry then. He is still trying to decode and reading for pleasure is not there yet.

Is he still sounding out the majority of words when he reads? If so he is still in the learning to read phase and not the reading to improve phase. This made a difference in my children's desire to read. The "Learning to read" phase is work, hard work. This is why you only do it for a few minutes at a time. If he is in the "reading to improve" phase then he may not realize books can be fun instead of work. Just keep offering him books. Vary the type...funny, sports, joke, animal, etc. There are some children that just do not like reading and this is normal too. One of my four did not enjoy reading. He did enjoy having the story on disc and following it with the book, sometimes that motivated him to pick up books and read, just an idea. The rest...spelling and letter reversal...is all normal at that age.

I would spend the time waiting to review math facts.

:iagree: We used this one year and I found it to be very good. Also the Around the World in 180 is good. Used this with my oldest and he enjoyed it. If you can get your hands on an Eastern Hemisphere Explorer pack from SL, they have it included in the IG now, but the stand alone pack, it is great. I used the EHE with youngest son. He was required to fill it in completely and the project work was increased. Even though the core this is associated with from SL is said to be Middle School the amount of research needed to fill the EHE pages completely is appropriate for a HS student.

I would not wait till you are burned out before moving on. A chapter in one, then a chapter in the others and rotate that way.

We will be using GTG this year for dd 7, soon to be 8. We are using it lightly as a semi guide along with the book Children Just like Me and this web site http://homeschoolcreations.com/Geography.html The activities in GTG do look like busy work and we are not using the Bible or Science ideas.

We do several things for reading. They have an assigned book they read and write about. This is usually a more challenging book and read slowly. The writing is a paragraph or two of the chapter they read. At the end of the book we type up the pages, add a beginning and ending paragraph with review. They have another assigned book which is usually not hard but applicable to the area being studied. These usually get discussed every few days or weekly. Dd gets a read aloud we do discuss as we read. Vocabulary is picked up from reading quality books and getting words from a vocabulary workbook. These workbooks are not used as workbooks but as a list of words they use to write sentences for to show the word in action.

Sonlight and Elemental Science are others that use books. Burgess story books are great for nature stories and the Let's Read and Find Out Science are great books to read on all topics of science. If you scour ebay you can find I Can Read Books, science editions (called A Science I Can Read Book). These are wonderful. Full of info in story form. Most are out of print but a few are still in print, Greg's Microscope is one.

The dog was taken to see the vet when the aggression started getting worse, sometime in May (maybe April) and was said to be in perfect health. I was told since she is a terrier mix the aggression was due to being territorial. Over the last month she has started to refuse commands when first given. She will not take any from dd now. Yesterday she pooped all over the deck because she wanted to come in and I would not let her. :glare: