Thanks! I'm pleased as punch because he's agreed to a blog giveaway AND a review copy, so we get to read it, too... :-)))

Heard an interview with the author of this book today (Lauren Ipsum by Carlos Bueno) and thought it might be a good intro to logic / computer programming concepts for dd8. (listen to the interview on CBC radio here- click on Download the MP3 for the whole show or this link for just the clip) Does anybody have any experience with this? I thought it might be somewhat analagous to the Life of Fred books for math, at least from his description of the storyline. Am I way off-base? Is this really helpful for a kid who's never programmed before?

I know this is an old thread, but it's actually simple so I thought I'd mention how I do it to read free Kindle books in ePub form on my Kobo and Playbook. You'll need the Kindle Cloud Reader for PC (not the online browser-based one!), along with free eBook reading software called Calibre (I've used this for years; it's very stable and reliable and converts between formats easily). You'll also need ePub reading software on your tablet or whatever other device you want to use. Open the PC cloud reader software (once it's installed). Download the book you want to convert. The book is now on your hard drive under: C:\Users\{username}\Documents\My Kindle Content (mine's C:\Users\Mommy\Documents\My Kindle Content) The file will probably have a "code name" (I think its ASIN #), such as "B004TS2B4W_EBOK.azw" Open Calibre, import the .azw file you want, and convert it to any format you like! Hope this helps somebody! Here's a free Kindle edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales to help get you started. :-)

Bumping this because tomorrow's the deadline for earlybird (read: cheap) registration! I just signed up today and I'm getting super-excited. The lineup of speakers and sessions is also available now at the eventbee page (link above). I also want to allay fears that this is a "super-Orthodox" event. It is all about homeschooling from a Jewish perspective, but in the last 2 years I have attended, I have seen people there from a wide range of Jewish walks, and although I am not one of the organizers, in my experience, anybody is welcome who is serious about offering their homeschoolers a Jewish education, regardless of the level of practice currently in their home. Yael can jump in here and correct me if I'm wrong. Go on, I dare ya. :-D

Generally, at the beginning I have added things as my kids are ready, and then just replace the curriculum whenever we finish. If you want to do a couple of new things at once, just pick an arbitrary "start" of your school year. September is as good a time as any, but you're not tied to it. Summer might be easier if you spend a lot of time indoors with air conditioning, for example; that depends on where you live. If you're somewhere that has cold winters, January is a good time to break up the blahs with new curriculum. Homeschooling sets you free to think outside the box and do whatever works for you and your kids!

Yes!!! SOTW isn't going to overlap with much of their school-oriented history curriculum in any event and will hopefully broaden their interests far beyond what they'll get in mainstream schools... I recommend making it super-fun and doing as many of the activities etc as you want, while going easy on the mapwork and the academic side of it (unless, of course, they love that as well!). You can still do narrations etc., just keep it light so it will be a nice break from school and they won't realize how much they're learning.

Next week - because I sign my kids up for city-run March Break camps every year. So their "break" is getting to be out of the house all day every day! (and my "break" is having to get to camp by 9 am every morning... sigh) J

Is the cost of MM actually much less if you're still having to print stuff off, yourself or professionally? Honestly, I'm just not sure. And for me, having it printed so we can just grab it and go is worth something, too. We love Singapore right now! In any event, you might want to look at JUMP Math. You could probably go straight into their 3.1, because there's a LOT of review of concepts at the start of each level. It began as a remedial program and has blossomed into something much greater than that... but is still great for helping kids (and their parents) who've gotten discouraged by math. I've done their in-person workshops, but they also have webinars if you're not local. The Teacher's Guides are extensive, designed for teachers without much math background, have lots of ideas for games etc and are FREE online. More information here: http://jumpmath.org/cms/publications

I'm going to ditto TRL even though I never used it. They sent me a sample and it's great! I passed it along to a friend and her dd is loving it! Plus, it's short, simple and affordable... why waste money on something most kids do naturally with no problems?

(bump?)

Bought this because we're travelling, but I figure while it's here, I may as well milk it for any educational value we might get out of it. Any suggestions? I already know you can get Starfall on it. Reading Eggs? Any others??? :bigear:

Last year, my 1st grader was dying to learn cursive... BUT I kept in her in HWOT with printing for another year and I honestly believe it's paid off. She's in the HWOT script book now and her handwriting is absolutly BEE-YOO-TIFUL. Can't be a fluke, because even ds5, who was relatively late to drawing / writing, also has gorgeous handwriting for about 10 minutes after he's finished working in HWOT and whenever he puts his mind to it. ;-) So I'm sticking with the program and I'm glad I didn't let myself be swayed by her request to do cursive. I honestly believe immaculately neat cursive will serve her in better stead, longterm. One reason I think they respond so well to HWOT is that the repetition isn't mind-numbing. I haven't seen another handwriting program that has such strong skills reinforcement with so little repetition. It's very well-targeted, so there's no busywork. We do copywork a couple of times a week on top of HWOT, by the way. But I don't think it's a substitute for lessons on character formation, even at the first- and second-grade level. SWB says about grammar that it takes years for lessons they "know" to actually sink in and show up in their own writing, and from what I've seen that's true with handwriting as well.

SOTW has been a good fit for us... we also enjoyed Child's History of the World (just as "fun" reading, not our spine, and make sure you get the updated one!), and I noticed this year that they have other workbooky type materials to go along with it at Rainbow.

We like DWN, so I looked into D&W through History, but the creation one was YE Creationist and that turned me off. There may be other religious nuances as well...

Look, since nobody has answered, I will jump in and tell you that EVERYTHING is okay. Montessori equipment is beautiful, but honestly, it is geared towards schools with budgets. Few individual families can afford to buy ALL the materials, so your choice is to buy them, make them or skip them. And it sounds like you have other materials that work for you already - so why double up??? (Here's a tutorial to make your own red/blue rods - looks easy enough! Making the bead materials is probably tougher, but I have seen tutorials for approximating them out of golden pony beads and pipe cleaners) From what I understand from a lot of reading, the multiple modalities of teaching and the different methods with each of the materials are designed to reinforce the same concepts from slightly different angles. If you have other materials, and your children are learning these concepts, then they are just fine. You have raised more children than many mamas here, and certainly longer than I have been. Your kids are okay and will probably be just fine without all the math toys in the world. On the other hand, if you do buy or make them, they'd probably get lots of good use... ;-) (one more edit, however, to add that the red/blue rods are HUGE, so probably far more tactile and better for younger kids than C-rods or MUS materials) So! It's really up to you, which is perhaps why nobody else has wanted to jump in with a reply. :-o

It's not exactly a series, but we love Jeanne Bendick biographies, including: Archimedes and the Door of Science Galen and the Gateway to Medicine Herodotus and the Road to History and Along Came Galileo However, this isn't a series in the sense that it doesn't try to comprehensively cover a huge range of characters throughout history. And... what I have found is that if you want good literature, ie something you and your kids will enjoy reading, the "series" books may not be your best bet. For instance, this was a great book about Copernicus, but I don't think the author has any other similar biographies. With individual books, I find you get more of a living book with an author who is passionate about the subject matter... but the trade-off is that they are not always easy to find. :-/ That said... We have enjoyed most of the "Getting to Know..." books, about art, music and now science, by Mike Venezia... like these ones: Artists Van Gogh Picasso Composers Johann Sebastian Bach Ludwig Van Beethoven Inventors & Scientists Albert Einstein: Universal Genius Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak They're a bit "meatier" imo than a few of the other biography series books I've seen... but there are cartoons and other stuff that make them fun. There's also a corresponding video series, but I think only artists are available. Claude Monet Vincent Van Gogh For older kids (or yourself), Genevieve Foster books are weird but good imo. Hope this helps!

I smiled when I read this. We're Canadian and I think this is the same curric. my dd17 used in school, like Grade 2. And even now, sometimes, I'll hear her break out into song at random... "Alex... Zoe... et compagnie!"

To me, EE is geography, with a living-book, people-focused approach. IMO, "social studies" is the education system's way of watering down formerly rigourous content areas - history and geography, offering instead an "all-about-me" focus that is distasteful once you've read some really good history and geography for kids. In schools, kids learn about police, firefighters, their neighbourhood, bakeries, grocery stores, etc under the rubric of social studies. Homeschooled kids, also just imo, get those things just by hanging out with their parents and other adults from day to day. If you want to visit a bakery or a dentist, that's great, but then go home and learn history at their own level. :-D (btw, guess which is easier for poorly-qualified half-asleep, discipline-hassled teachers to teach to kids???) Sorry - just the words "social studies" make me grouchy sometimes. :-P

I can't imagine doing Book 4 in K, if that's what you mean - ?? In any event, ETC has their own series for K: Get Ready, Get Set and Go for the Code (levels A, B, C) Ds5 did them last year. They are VERY basic - he was already able to read himself all the instructions, then find the sounds etc., which was very silly, but he felt cool and never commented on the irony that he was doing this "baby" phonics book. I did those with him because he wasn't up to the level of the writing in Book 1. Now he's past that and onto Book 2. We love ETC around here! :-) (I use it as a very informal spelling program, by the way... we do each lesson in 2 parts and quiz my dd7 on the lesson words before she goes on to part 2, so about once a week or so)

There was another thread on here recently. It seems to me that the social support is one of the strengths of CC. You could get her book out of your local library or used online and read through it to see if it's the sort of you can do. To me, it seems WAY complicated, especially compared with the DIY/simplicity approach of SWB/WTM. Okay, WTM isn't necessarily simple, but if you listen to and read SWB alongside, you'll see that it's not nearly so structured as it seems at first. CC seems totally structured and imo, that's a weakness if you're trying to do it at home. But that's just one opinion. There are other ways to do memorization. Have you checked out Andrew Campbell's Living Memory? A bit expensive, but all the memory work you can shake a stick at for every year of education. ;-)

This is on my wishlist at the moment: A Child's Introduction to Poetry: Listen While You Learn About the Magic Words That Have Moved Mountains, Won Battles, and Made Us Laugh and Cry If you want something a little off-base... Poetry Classics to Funky Hit Beats You can sample the poems at Amazon or they have a YouTube video: weird!

Just wondering why you've ruled out FLL? I hated it initially and thought it for sure wouldn't work for us. A year and a half later, we're in book 2, and I love it. Yes, none of our other subjects are scripted, but we both love the fact that the lessons are so short and... finite. Totally different from everything else we do, but it has become a very welcome part of our day. ETA: Yes, I felt totally stupid doing the "reading the script" thing at first! I only stuck with it because everyone on here told me to and it was easier than starting from scratch and shopping around all over again...

HAve you used Starfall??? Great reading reinforcement anyway, but they have a silent E song that will stick in your head, um, forever. http://www.starfall.com/n/level-a/learn-to-read/load.htm?f

If you're thinking of MM, there are TONS of sample pages that you get for signing up. Actually, whatever program you're considering, print out as many pages as you can find (Christian Book often has quite a few sample pages) and try them out with your kid. Forgive me for asking, though... if you're using MUS and she's learning and thriving, why consider switching?

I'd never heard of this so checked out the website... it looks, um, too BUSY for me. And they send you the materials; I think you have to make all the manipulatives yourself. The stuff in the binder looked wordy - I like my math to be sleek. But for those who are interested in Waldorf, it may be ideal, I don't know. Here's someone who got the binder and claims to have liked it (they are now a sponsor of her blog, so not completely objective, perhaps): http://www.lifeasasc...th-by-hand.html Previous WTM thread: http://forums.welltr...-something-new/ p.s. they also have videos HTH! :bigear: