Yes and no. Dd9 loves to read, reads for hours a day, but is entirely incapable of picking up spelling from her reading. However, she learns words she is explicitly taught to spell with just 1-3 repetitions. She *does* notice patterns in words, but she has to be explicitly taught a pattern first before she starts noticing it; once she *has* learned to spell a given pattern in a few words, then she automatically starts applying it to other words (and gets frustrated when what she thought was a pattern doesn't apply). (She was the same wrt learning to read - had to explicitly practice each and every possible CVC pattern to learn it, but one or two repetitions was all it took to stick. At some point she had enough patterns in her head to generalize.) She can read any word in her spoken vocabulary, no matter what the length, but long words that aren't in her spoken vocabulary are invariably mispronounced, but generally once she learns the correct pronunciation it sticks. She definitely feels frustrated and confused about spelling and I've suspected stealth dyslexia and dysgraphia. I was a natural speller, and it's taken me a while to wrap my brain around a kid who loves to read and has a phenomenal visual memory who just *doesn't* remotely pick up any spelling beyond CVC words from her reading. (Her auditory discrimination is bad, though, and it shows when she tackles words she hasn't explicitly learned to spell; also her ability to order things in time is bad.) So while I've done bits and pieces with her (and attempted LiPS, which did help, but was hard for me to keep up with), we haven't done anything truly systematic. She is very visual and meaning focused, which is why I thought to do morphemic spelling. So, basically, she's complete crap at spelling - she naturally sees words as wholes and has to be explicitly taught to break them down and see their parts, with fairly small steps and no implicit assumptions - but once taught she remembers it easily, she doesn't need much repetition. And if her spelling is anything like her reading, once she gets a big enough storehouse of patterns, she can start to figure out the rest on her own. I'm thinking of starting StM and seeing how it goes - it's very explicit, and has a moderate amount of repetition - see if it works or if it goes too fast.

In a fit of winter-induced spending last year, I impulse bought Spelling Through Morphographs, because I could get a used copy of that cheaper than buying all the levels of A&P new (and threads here seemed to indicate they both do more or less the same thing and end up in about the same place). Haven't used it yet, but was planning to start it with dd9 this year (who needs some intensive spelling work). However, Apples & Pears keeps calling my name, probably because it seems somehow to be easier to implement - more open & go. I mostly want to be talked out of getting the shiny new program to replace the probably-perfectly-good one I already own ;), but open and go is a real consideration here - if A&P really shines there over STM, it might be worth considering. TIA :)

I got an older edition of Rewards used on amazon for $8, and the accompanying workbook for $4. Per reviews, sometimes you have to double check with the seller that the teacher's guide really is the teacher's guide, but I had no trouble there, and there's a lot of cheap ones available right now.

:grouphug: Wanting to stop people from writing fraudulent checks using your lost/stolen blank checks is totally different from wanting to stop a check you wrote from getting cashed (because it got lost or stolen or you no longer are willing to pay it). That $25/check fee is for putting a stop payment on a check *you* wrote but now want to "unwrite", so to speak, not to prevent other people from fraudulently writing checks on your account. The bank will deal with your lost checks like they do a lost credit card - you will want to be able to tell them the last check *you* wrote, but you don't need to put a stop payment on each of your blank checks :grouphug:.

I'm not sure it has to be an either/or - that *either* it was us *or* it was God - rather that it's more of a both/and. Because all good comes from God - so, in addition to every other good we are given, *every* good choice we, or anyone, make is through God's gracious work. Yet, we aren't deterministic automatons - as justified and sanctified Christians by grace through faith in Christ Jesus, we are capable of cooperating with God's will in doing good works in this world. While our refusal to do God's will is 100% on us, and any good we do or experience is 100% from God, the good we do through the Holy Spirit is actually in a real sense done *by us*. (It's not meritorious - it doesn't save us or contribute in any way to our salvation - but it is genuinely good and genuinely done by us even as it is also completely God's work.) And even civil righteousness (following God's moral law while not following God) is a good thing, even as it is still sin (because everything done outside of the righteousness of God is sin) and is neither sufficient nor merits salvation. So if Abimelech, even as a pagan (I'm not really sure from the context of the post if he feared God or not), didn't touch Sarah because God worked through the integrity of his heart - I think that can be to Abimelech's civil-righteousness-credit even as it is also and ultimately to God's credit. We do have some degree of free will in this-worldly matters, even as God is both the only source of salvation and the only source of all good, period.

We're doing SYS level C right now. It doesn't really have any rules, per se - you mark various phonics patterns (generally certain kinds of multi-letter phonograms, plus y-as-a-vowel), but there's no discussion of why one phonogram versus another. It ought to fit in with any phonics or spelling program, particularly ones that teach phonograms - OPGTR ought to mesh just fine (you could even mark the OPGTR words with the SYS markings - I do that with WWE copywork and dictation). As far as I know, FLL doesn't have any spelling component - it's grammar and pre-composition work (narration, memorization, and also copywork iirc), so it ought to fit just fine with any phonics/spelling program.

I think the whole age of accountability thing is wrong (so this is an outsider perspective), but in a discussion online I saw Numbers 14:29 referenced wrt age 20 being the age in question. That's where, after the Israelites were led out of Egypt to the Promised Land and spied out the land, they were scared of the might of the the people of the land and didn't want to attack - didn't trust the Lord to give them the victory He promised. And so the Lord declared that they would wander in the wilderness until all the men aged 20 and older died - aka until all the men of military age (who refused to fight) died (excepting Joshua and Caleb, who trusted the Lord). Anyway, for reasons having to do with not being held liable for things you were too young to have had a hand in, and seeing a parallel between entering the Promised Land and salvation, some people have applied the age 20 thing to the age of accountability.

I've done 3/4 of Day 1 so far. I got the One Year Bible for my kindle and am reading four days' readings each day (technically that's 91.25 days, not 90, but I'm not sweating being exact ;)). I like how the readings are divided (2-3 ch OT, 1 ch NT, a psalm, and a bit of proverbs) and I like the convenience of having all the readings in order, so I don't have to do any flipping but can just open and go. Plus it's easier to read on my kindle - smaller and more portable - I can hold it with one hand and take it anywhere, and it starts up right where I left off :thumbup:. And if (when) I miss a day, I can catch up gently, reading five or six readings per day until I catch up - or I can easily read ahead, too. I sort of figure I'm aiming to average four readings a day, but will read more or less on some days as circumstances dictate - hoping it will work out to being done around 90 days, plus or minus a bit. I've never gotten anywhere near finishing one of these plans, so we'll see how it goes - my main goal is to just keep plugging along till I am done, but I'm going to try to finish in 90 days :).

:grouphug: I'll go ahead and answer here just in case anyone else is interested (it's a really awesome book :thumbup:, especially if you are Lutheran, or a Protestant Christian interested in Circe and educating for virtue): The Case for Character: Towards a Lutheran Virtue Ethics, by Joel Biermann (he's a professor at Concordia Seminary); he also has a website with videos for the book: http://acaseforcharacter.com/ .

I've experienced the cycle of alternating feeling ok with life with feeling like nothing matters and everything is pointless in a blah sort of way :grouphug:. (I also alternate between feeling like I am doing well at life and a frustrated raging at how I am fundamentally failing at life.) The frustrated raging and the everything-is-blah reactions can overlap; the main difference between the two is whether I have a concrete idea of what life I should live that I'm failing to reach (and I hate myself for my failure) or whether the problem is that I have *no* idea of what life I should be trying to live in the first place - I just have this aimless sense of fundamental boredom and absolutely no idea what to do about it. For me the low parts of the cycle correlate with feeling depressed, but the depression is more a symptom than a cause of the problem - the depression is my mind and body's reaction to being spiritually and morally adrift. (Although the depression isn't the root cause, there's a feedback cycle - feeling spiritually adrift causes me to feel depressed, and feeling depressed brings on feeling spiritually adrift.) From a Christian perspective, I've come to see seeking fulfillment as the wrong goal for life. Fulfillment is only the highest good in a life that has been drained of the transcendent, that has been drained of any sense of a reality beyond the material world - a life that has been drained of all transcendent meaning and thus is desperately seeking whatever crumbs of this-worldly meaning might exist. It's a horrible, impoverished life - yet it is the dominant life in the modern world, where any hint of the transcendent, including how life should be lived in light of transcendent reality, has been banished from the public square and relegated to the inner, private life. And the sad, ridiculous thing is that even Christians, who believe in a transcendent God who orders all creation and life, end up the same way - with faith relegated to strictly otherworldly matters (however important they may be) and with daily life dominated by the impoverished search for something to give it meaning. Last year I read a book on how American Lutherans (my tradition) have turned into practical atheists - how we lost the ability to let our faith inform our daily, this-worldly lives, and instead turned to the world for this-worldly wisdom. It really convicted me and opened my eyes to the complete moral and spiritual impoverishment and *meaninglessness* of my life. Since then I've read several books by other American Christians talking about the same thing in their traditions - how both American Catholics and evangelicals have become severed from their theological roots and are adrift. It's a huge crisis, and so many pastors and theologians are following the secular world and grabbing onto the (false) hope of fulfillment with both hands, declaring that the point of Christianity is to find this-worldly fulfillment - only *in Christ*. Idk, it's a mess - but it explains so much about my chronic nagging sense of meaninglessness - because my life *was* fundamentally meaningless. I still don't feel like I know anything, but I've been going back to my theological roots and trying to recapture what has been lost - to get reconnected to historic Christian orthodoxy and recover what the Bible teaches is our purpose on this earth. Idk if this is any help, but hugs :grouphug:.

I've a lot of Amazon orders, but not *quite* that many: 44 in the last six months (47 in 2015), and 137 in 2014. I buy most of our homeschooling books and Christmas presents through Amazon, and I buy most books used, so one order of six books gets recorded as six orders because they are from six different sellers - but yeah, any which way you look at it, we buy a lot from Amazon ;).

The side of the square is the radius of the circle, and the side of the square is given as 10cm. It took me a minute to figure out how the curved lines formed two quarter circles - it helped me to visualize putting four of the given squares together into a big square and making one big circle out of the four quarter sections to see it. Does that make any sense?

Yes! She does that! As she gets into a word and it's not looking right, it's really like she just gives up and slaps something down just to get it over with. You can see it with "inrteuering" - the beginning is fairly reasonable ('r' for 'er' is a bugaboo of hers, and neighboring sounds being switched is a common problem for her) but then it starts to fall apart in the middle - increasingly random till she gets to the "ing" ending. And she generally *knows* it's wrong, but she's got no idea how to fix it.

She can't break a long word into syllables on her own (but if I break it down for her, she can spell each syllable phonetically), and on her own she spells visually rather than phonetically - I don't know how much is that she *can't* hear/order sounds in words at all, versus that it's hard for her and so she doesn't try unless I walk her through it. Her mistakes tend to make no sense phonetically, but they make sense *visually* - she gets the first and last letters right, plus the word looks the right "shape", and often she has all the right letters, but in the wrong order. She generally she knows which words she guessed on versus thought she knew (and she pretty much gets all the ones she guessed at wrong, and mostly gets all the ones she thought she knew right), and when she re-reads she can tell which words are wrong. My guess is that her visual memory on those is good enough to tell if what she wrote matches the word, but it's too hazy on the details to be able to produce it herself (and she can't or doesn't use her phonics knowledge to supplement her visual memory without my prompting). I taught her straight phonics, and the auditory, step-by-step-ness of it all was the opposite of how she tries to learn (visually and big-picture-focused). She would have been the poster child for whole language - she naturally and automatically used context clues and grammar clues and picture clues to read - that was natural to her in a way that phonics was *not*. Now she *can* use phonics to attack an unfamiliar word, but if it's one not in her spoken vocabulary, she generally doesn't get the syllable breaks or the accent right. Absolutely loves to read, though.

Spelling is a very hard thing for my 9yo, but I thought we were slowly making some progress. Then today, in her own writing, she wrote "inrteuering" for "interrupting" (which looks even worse typed than it did in print :eek:). All I could see was how she still can't break words into syllables and still can't hear/order sounds all that well, and is still weak on multi-letter phonograms - feels like the progress I thought we made was imaginary :(. (Although she actually writes on her own frequently now, so there's that, and that's not nothing.) But honestly, that word is a lot longer and more complicated than anything she's learnt explicitly, and it's nothing she's tried to write before - so I was wondering if some of my freaking out is premature - that being able to spell a biggish word she's never spelt before on the first go is the *end* goal of spelling instruction, not something to hit early on. And also, would even a "typical" rising 4th grader be expected to spell that right? - that dd9 may have her troubles, but maybe that word is complicated for anyone her age to get right in their writing? And also, again ;), is it expecting too much out of a struggling speller to *ever* expect them to spell a word right without having practiced it before? (ETA: I'm a natural speller, and dd9 is my oldest - this struggling spelling thing is new to me, and while I'm learning how to work on it, I don't know how to calibrate my expectations.)

I don't know what our limit is (or even if there is one) and I haven't found out the hard way yet ;). I wondered if it might be 200, but I went over that once, so apparently not ;). I also haven't found out our hold limit yet - thought it might be 10, but I had 13 once, so apparently not. We do have a DVD limit of 10 - they have that posted in several spots. I'm glad I don't have to worry about juggling multiple cards to deal with low limits - I put everything on mine and it's never been a problem yet.

Thank you again for helping me :). Thought I'd post an update: I ended up keeping Singapore Math and just doubling down on doing every. single. problem. in the wb before tackling IP. It took about two weeks of having to walk her (or drag her, some days) through everything step-by-step but then something clicked and she settled in and was able to work more independently and without nearly as much fuss :thumbup:. She even liked the wb most of the time. Then when we finished the tb/wb and went back to the IP for that level, it was another two weeks or so of wailing and gnashing of teeth and me dragging her through it (she hated how "hard" it was - hated having to think :sigh - and was begging to go back to the wb) before she settled in and found her groove. We even went from her arguing with me about *verbally* putting the answer into a complete sentence to her voluntarily *writing* out the answer in a complete sentence herself :svengo:. So consistency ftw ;). For spelling I did buy the Wild Tales level of Spelling You See, because she wanted it so much. It was very pricey for one level (to me anyway), but the open-and-go factor is pretty awesome, and as I'm learning the marking system, I've been able to apply it to other copywork and dictation. The first week was disheartening, as after three days of marking and copying she still misspelled everything with a consonant blend during the dictation, but I added blends to the marking system, and that plus familiarity seems to be helping - the last two dictation days she got everything spelled right :thumbup:. For composition I got WWE level 2. (I had the overall WWE build-your-own program guide, but that had been staying on the shelf because it was too much work - got the already-done level for it's open-and-go-ness, and it delivers there.) It hits right at her weak point - putting thoughts into words in general and summarizing in particular (plus the complete sentences thing) - but she mostly doesn't mind it. And it's done wonders for her overall willingness to put thoughts into words (see answers to math word problems). And just in general her handwriting has improved quite a bit - she can write smaller and more legibly, and she's pretty thrilled about it :). And she getting more words spelled right in her own writing. For the summer we're just doing the three R's, and the above takes about 1-1.5hrs, and we are consistently getting it done. (Even when I have to drag her through it.) Thanks again for the support and the ideas and the kick in the pants ;). (Oh, and wrt me, since it's gotten light and warm again, I've been doing so much better. I spent a month sleeping 10 hours a night, which seemed to help me turn the corner on feeling draggy; I still aim for 8-9 hours a night, but now I can handle a day or two of short sleep. And I've gotten into a good exercise routine that's done wonders for my stress level and energy level (and overall sanity level ;)) and I'm making plans on how to keep it up once it gets dark and cold again.)

I wrote that way sometimes in high school, because it looked a lot neater than my cursive, and my teachers warned me not to do that on the state tests, because the graders would count me off for not capitalizing "properly".

Dale Grote is a Latin professor who wrote a guide to provide (iirc) more explicit English grammar help for working through Wheelock's. His first version was what he put together for his classes and is freely available on the web in several places; here's a link: http://www.warmenhoven.org/latin/grote/ . Later he revised it and turned it into a book; here's the link for that: http://www.amazon.com/Dale-A.-Grote/e/B001KIJ9TE/ref=dp_byline_cont_pop_book_1 (there seem to be three editions, none of which are in print atm, but they are available used on amazon).

I made a standing desk (for me) by putting a computer table (that I already had) on two step stools (made for adults, not kids, with a 250 lb weight limit) - $20 for a standing desk versus $800 (what my cursory search for standing tables came up with at the time), plus I can easily make it a sitting desk again.

I knit and crochet. I learned to crochet first, and I found it easier than learning to knit - crochet was very intuitive from the beginning for me, but it took longer for knitting to click. (I learned them both a few years ago, from videos online, followed up with books.) Now they both make sense and I enjoy them both, although crocheting is faster for me, and so I tend to pick crochet when there's a time limit.

If I understood her correctly, the idea is that she could use all their income to pay down the student loans while putting all their living expenses on a credit card, and declaring bankruptcy to deal with the resulting cc debt. I'd definitely talk to an attorney first, because I don't think it's a given to have all eligible debts forgiven in bankruptcy, to try to prevent just this sort of deliberate running up of debts you plan to not pay. But it really does suck to do the responsible thing and feel like you got hosed because of it :grouphug:.

I got bifocals at 19 - it took a few days to adjust, especially wrt looking down, but it wasn't too bad. I had progressive lenses, which was supposed to be a little harder of a transition than lined bifocals.

In St. Petersburg, dh's family went to the beach at Pass-a-grille and the north beach at Fort De Soto.

I used Good Nites Tru-Fit underwear - http://www.amazon.com/Goodnites-Trufit-Underwear-Girls-Starter/dp/B00I1ZDGYS/- with newborn prefolds instead of the disposable inserts. It worked very well :thumbup:.