Yes. My child is allowed to go downtown and it is handy in case we need to contact each other. It is not fancy; it is a disposable phone. We use it for convenience.

I would say pull him out, because the money you save on tuition could buy all sorts of great homeschool-y stuff! Just think of it!

I accidentally caught a glimpse of the response above mine, but it didn't affect my choices. Lenin, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Hitler. Lenin for his role in the Russian revolution; Wilson for his League of Nations idea; FDR for his economic ideas; and Hitler's killing of millions was certainly very influential and still carries consequences to this day.

According to the Beka video manual for K5, the penmanship class is scheduled for 20 minutes. I imagine the regular homeschooling manual has a similar time frame. I can't honestly understand why it's taking your friend so long to do it. Is the child young for doing school? Not ready for fine motor skills? The mother too overbearing? I don't worry too much about penmanship at that age, and spending 1.5 hours a day on penmanship at any grade -- especially K -- is excessive, IMO.

Don't feel that you must begin schooling your child when local kids go to school. Do it when the child is ready. One of my kids wasn't ready to do a K4 program at the age of four, but then suddenly the K4 work wasn't challenging enough. I started doing K5 with that child and it was great. Penmanship is behind academic skills but that's okay. This is the beauty of homeschooling. Do what works. Since 'average' children are mythical creatures, you don't have to do what the 'average' child does. Just because most kids are ready at a particular age to do particular things doesn't mean every kid is capable. Some are slower, some are faster. Even if a child starts out slowly the pace may change and will catch up to 'average' before you know what happened.

If I have nothing taken out ahead of time, that's where fettucini alfredo, pasta carbonara, mac & cheese, etc., will come in. That or dial food.

As a former Army wife, my first reaction to the thread title was to wonder what the Judge Advocate General had to do with homeschooling. My mind has been taken over by milspeak.

I know how it can be, Cyndi. Thank you for your service. It is so very difficult, especially at holidays, for families of troops who are overseas. Hang in there.

This sounds like something my kids would love. Where does one buy rosewater? I've never seen it at the grocery store. Is it expensive?

I'm surprised that no one has said the most Canadian food of all -- BACON!! I just had to say it.

My oldest kids are doing R&S 5. They had been doing Beka at a private school up until last year. A lot of it is review for them, and I go through two-three lessons at a time, two or three days a week. I skip the writing assignments because we use IEW. Most of the work we do orally. It saves time and paper! Occasionally they diagram on the whiteboard. If this was new material for them I would not go so quickly. If they get bogged down later I will slow down but I don't see that happening.

"We" is in the nominative case; "us" is in the objective case. We do things; things are done to us. Just substitute the pronouns in question in a sentence and see which one makes sense. This will help your daughter understand it better.

The Best Years of Our Lives is my favorite movie. It deals more with what happens to the troops when they come home than the war itself. It's about three hours. TCM shows it periodically; I don't know if the movie is on video.

What if they are handcuffed to each other?

Taxes are high, winters are bad, roads are worse. Lots of cultural things to do, like SPAC, etc. Berkshire County (Massachusetts) isn't far and you have the Williamstown Theatre Festival, Tanglewood going on there. The tri-state area is very pretty, plus you're not far from Canada. If you really like winter and the occasional dose of decent weather, Saratoga County is a great place. Go to WTEN.com or WNYT.com and see what goes on; you could check out the Albany Times-Union, too. Good luck and enjoy NY should you venture north.

I like Beka for younger grades, but for third and above I don't care for it. It's very repetitive. I'm using it now for my oldest kids but only because they came out of a private school a few months ago and I didn't want to switch midstream. Beka curriculum in general is good at teaching students what to think, not how to think.

WOOT!

I am not a good mom either, I guess. I play with the kids sometimes but generally speaking, I am not the entertainment committee. I have four children and I would much rather they amuse themselves.

I was clear to tell them that not only should they not allow it to happen TO them ILoveLucy, I would humbly suggest that statement be rephrased. Sometimes a child is too young, too afraid, too startled, etc., to stop it from happening. I realize that this is a difficult subject to discuss but we must be careful not to word anything in such a way as to impute blame should this actually happen.

Have you found a way to contact them?

I would buy flash drives, printer ink, and fancy paper.

Oh, and FWIW, I had internet from Verizon. Notice the word HAD. I constantly was getting dropped and would have to reboot the modem several times a week.

Can you get sat internet? I thought some sat companies did that. If you have a cable company you might try getting internet from them.

I fold my kids' clothes and make them put everything away. It's to be done neatly. If they don't keep their drawers neat I dump everything out and they have to do it right. My oldest doesn't like dealing with that so most of the time it's not an issue; kid #2, on the other hand, not so much. That child doesn't like to even wipe tables properly, let alone take care of clothes. That child receives more drawer dumpings than the others.

Anybody?