I would agree with listing here but since the revamp of the boards the Classifieds have been a waste of time for me. Things I have tried to sell for many many months here sold in just a few days on ebay. I have also had no success selling on Homeschool Classifieds. The IEW Yahoo selling site is good, I sold my IEW there quickly, so I would try there first.

I use the Quarterly Grading sheet from Master Planner http://www.themasterplanner.com/

For little ones (1st grade and younger) I would just read from a Bible story book. 2nd I teach how to use the Bible, look up scripture, and memory verse work. For 3rd through 6th I would use Discover 4 yourself series. We are using this and have found it to be a very good in depth study of scripture. Typical book takes about 6 weeks to go through if you follow their schedule. I find it takes 8- 9 weeks because we move through it slowly.

I never used NOEO, but have used ES and for Biology and Astronomy and the experiments pretty much used normal household supplies with the exception of balloons and food items that spoil. I am not sure about Biology but ES is now selling supplies at least they are for chemistry which might be an option to buy the supplies from them.

We do science 5x a week. Actual reading and working on science 4x a week and 1x a week we do nature study.

I use to do all BJU (textbook and workbook format) then I switched to doing mostly SL and now I do a mix. Doing all one or all the other did not work for us. With the mix we get literature work, workbooks, and notebooking plus mapping and timeline and it keeps a variety of work type on the plate. As far as "fun" , you can do some of the workbook pages oral. Add in some hands on things. I think the newness of the workbook curriculum will be enough to keep your children interested. Then if you continue with MP you can tweak it to add interest where you saw it not working.

This is our 21st yr using BJU math. My children have used it from K-Algebra 1 and it is not behind. What it is is a gentle math program at first making sure the basics are established and then it begins to speed up. If you compare it grade to grade or lesson to lesson it will give you a false reading of being behind....look at it over the 7yrs (K-6th) and you will see the scope and sequence is equal or advanced in the long run. With Bju you get: mental math fact practice word problems both given and made up by student as well as written and oral different ways to approach a problem logic study problem solving techniques review

Up until recently I bought the washable Crayola Markers. But with dd being the youngest and she is my art girl I am now buying her markers from the art store. I find these have more vibrant colors and last longer. She is one who can spend hours painting and not get any on her, so i do not worry about her getting the markers on anything other then what it is intended to be on. As for crayons I buy regular ones and never had a problem even with the boys using them. My biggest problem was from white board markers...these are permanent. I learned a very important lesson about that when dd was 2 and in a very expensive dress.

Book burning, really! Too much to say on this....I must walk away before I loose it.

I look at it this way....if you bought workbooks and the kids refused to use them what would you do? Notebooking is the same way. My children know what I expect and are required to give it to me just like writing a paper, doing math work, or any other job. I go over how many sentences and size of picture (i use to get postage size pictures). I even let them know if it needs to be fully colored or just highlighted. I do however take into account if they enjoy notebooking or not and the next year we either continue or switch to something else. If they just complain about the work and are too lazy then I will pick the method I prefer. Another alternative is lapbooks...small amount of work and you can buy theme lapbooks with pictures already drawn. Use them in a notebook instead of a lapbook to make a more notebooking type of feel. Also you can use pictures from the computer to print for notebook pages so they do not have to draw. Or trace drawings from the book if any are there.

I ship everything with insurance. You get tracking with that so no need for the extra on tracking. It is well worth it too. I say refund. The item is your responsibility to get to the buyer.

It has been a while since I read the book but (as far as I can remember) CG was alone when he was found, no parents. Maybe instead of thinking about poaching and dwelling on badness, maybe the Man with the Yellow Hat saved a baby monkey from death since he had no parents. Instead of forcing your children to come to a negative conclusion let them know it was a good thing for George otherwise he would have died.

The Mensa list is great but not perfect. So are many other lists. They are a tool and nothing more. For someone like the OP to say they should tell Mensa to change a book because they personally did not like it seems wrong. There are many children books I think are odd and have no redeeming qualities and those will be different from everyone else....why should I expect my opinion to be the one Mensa uses? Check out the banned book lists...it is surprising what some communities/schools/people have banned and the reasons they have done it.

High School English credit I give is based on the books I assign and the writing they do. The first 2 years of HS was getting them to write different pieces based on the literature they read as well as making sure they had basic grammar and writing down. The last two years are for writing a large term paper and other types of writing not literature based (letter writing, resume, scientific writing, blog,taking notes, and so on) as well as continuing reading assigned literature.

He will not get one since the media has made it such a frenzy, people want his head and unless they get it there will be hell to pay...even if he is innocent (which I believe he is).

I have the child take a few tests and work as fast and as accurately as they can while I time them. This gives a base line for how long they need. We then will do timed tests based on that time but with a goal of beating it. I found this to be better then just starting them out with a time the timed test says, my kids got too flustered. However by using the time the child created, they know they can do it in that time so no frustration, and trying to beat your own record is fun.

My husband just read Masterpiece to my dd 8 and both loved it. Have you also tried Audio Books for car rides? We get a lot of books listened to this way and keeps the mind active while sitting in the car. Currently we are listening to the Percy Jackson series, which is another book good for read aloud.

Meh...no problem with George or Barbar. Have no problem with them being PC or not PC. I do have a major problem with the rewriting of children's books to make them PC though. What will happen in 20 yrs when todays PC changes to something else? More rewrite and then the books are not even the story they once were. I say leave the stories as written and discuss if something bothers you or your child. Changing the originals is a form of censorship in my mind and I am against censorship.

Depending on where you bought it, if what you got is not what is shown then you should get a refund. This happened to me and I had no trouble (ebay purchase) getting a refund.

BJU Spelling, at least the old spellers did. I am not sure how the new spellers are, I have not looked at/used the new ones.

Well we started next years school in May so for us it will be a matter of changing some things after we started. SL LA D (I lasted only one week) is now Mailbox Magazine LA activities SL Science D is now Elemental Science Chemistry and BJU Science 3 and creating an interactive science notebook

Just to answer the "Literature, real literature, history experienced through living books, writing... How do you do these things with textbooks?" I have used textbooks in the past as just textbooks and I have used them recently as bouncing off points allowing me to throw the rest in with them. Textbooks become the spine but the books bring it to life. You can do narration, notebooking, timelines and whatever even if you use textbooks. They are simply a tool.

We tried IEW and it was good for half the course, then it just got ridiculously monotonous. All his pieces had a forced feel, sort of like a controlled reader. Way too much $$ for what I felt we got out of it. My favorite writing for the 4-6th is Wordsmith Apprentice. Easy and fun and cheap.

:lurk5: Another adult who loved Twilight and wants more like it.