I saw Annie at the drive-in when I was 3. It's the first movie experience I remember.

We moved to PA from northern VA 3 years ago....we're about 30 minutes from Mechanicsburg (there's a Wegmans there, so we head that way about once a month.) I absolutely LOVE living here. Beats the snot out of my NoVa commute any day. ;) It's worth coming up for a weekend and just driving around. Lots of beautiful places to see and things to do, and you could get a better feel for the area.

As a newbie, I'm interested to know what the "norm" is (ha! like there's really a norm for anything in HS.) Field trips really float my boat, and I know my kids love them nearly as much as I do. We live in an area that is loaded with great field trip possiblities and looking over my list, we may not have time for all of them. I'd like to try, though....one of the reasons we were so drawn to homeschooling was the opportunities our kids would have to get out of the classroom and see and experience things in person.

My favorite has been My Publisher (mypublisher.com.) I've used them several times and the finished product is very nice.

This is a good question. DH and I have both felt like we weren't "doing enough" at different points in our lives. We had to figure out that our family is #1, and like all of you, raising our kids to be good, kind, productive, intelligent people is really our important work. We do other stuff, too. Since we moved here 3 years ago, we've been able to find a lot of ways to get involved in the community. I work in the ER part time, which for me is a way to serve my neighbors (well, I get paid, so it's not really service, but it's providing a vital service for my community.) DH and I coach soccer and DH is a cub scout leader. We are active in our church and do a lot of service that way. DH volunteers with our homeowners association. We donate a little every month. I think that homeschooling will count, too. Really, though, everything we're involved in somehow benefits our family. We volunteer with things to be with our kids or to improve our neighborhood. It's kind of "family-centric" community service. Back to the idea that our family is our priority. Hopefully, though, by doing what we do we can be of some good to other people. My goal is as the kids get older, we can do more to help them learn about the good they can accomplish.

Nothing new to add....we do bananagrams, scrabble, and hangman around here. DS likes bananagrams the best, we have made up several variations of the game.

Ours is in our savings account. At some point I'd like to have some cash in the house as well, but I would need to find a safe place to put it.

I have memberships to all 3 (holy cow, that is embarassing to admit) and Costco is the absolute winner.

Congrats, I know at our house that would be a reason to celebrate! We have appointments for everyone next Monday, I'm keeping my fingers crossed....:tongue_smilie:

Put it in my signature. :001_smile:

Looks great! I love seeing school rooms!

So far I've spent about $400 for my 7 and 4 year old (mostly for the oldest, fewer things for the younger.) This is our first year homeschooling, I know that I will spend more as the year progresses, but that's what I've spent to get the basics set up plus a few extras.

Three cheers for Fisher-Paykel! We got rid of our front loader of terror after two horrible leak incidents (Think holes in the ceiling. Yeah.) Bought a Fisher Paykel Aquasmart and I am in love with it. We've had it for 18 months and it is fabulous. Easy to use and there are settings for every laundry situation and they really do work well. The "muddy cycle" is a big hit around here. My favorite feature is the ability to switch between high efficiency and conventional wash settings. If you need the extra water, you can push a button and switch the setting to conventional. When I bought my washer, I went to the appliance guy and asked him what he thought of FP washers....when he told me that's what he owned, and offered to call his wife so I could ask her about it, I was sold.

Wegmans is my favorite store. I could live there. Seriously! Glad to hear you found the love!

That was fun. :001_smile:

I just found the scotch laminator at BJs for $21. So I had to buy it (obviously.) This board is very enabling. :tongue_smilie:

I haven't tried this, per se, but it makes a lot of sense to me. My DS#2 (just turned 4) learned his letter sounds before the name of the letter. After watching "the frog" a few times, he would look at the letter M, for example, and say "oh, that's MMMMM." I thought it was a little weird, until I realized he could sound out words very easily. I only wish I'd taught him lower case letters first. Oh, well. We'll try that for #3. ;)

Well, we haven't actually started HS yet (I feel like that makes my opinion pretty worthless at this point....) We're in the process of putting together a dedicated school room. It was one of DH's HS "demands". I am <ahem> organizationally challenged and he was concerned (rightly so) that school stuff would end up everywhere and get lost/broken/bent/destroyed/eaten/flushed. Our plan (ha!) is to use this room for school, but at least to keep all our stuff in there and somewhat organized. My DS is easily distracted and I think that having a special spot will really help him focus. Right now he does his homework at the kitchen table and it takes a lot to keep him on task. We'll see how it goes. The idea of bedschool sounds really good....not sure how much I would get done, but I sure love my bed!

I have the same problem. I have a feeling this will only be a bigger struggle for me as we delve deeper into homeschooling. When my grandma passed away, the only thing I wanted were her children's books....the ones I read as a kid, and now I read them to my kids. (How's that for enabling you? Whoops.)

Yes, that's roughly the going rate for our area. (I don't ride but my parents do.)

I work two evenings a week (Fri and Sat) so DH is in charge of dinner those nights. However, I do the grocery shopping/meal planning, so I usually have something planned for those nights. (Usually something simple.:tongue_smilie:) That said, he is free to make that or not. Sometimes he does something else, sometimes they go out. Occasionally I will make dinner for them and leave it in the fridge, but only if I'm feeling really generous and have some extra time.

I was thrilled to see the American History outline on Guesthollow (and so appreciative of the author for putting it together and giving it away!) It looks like a great fit for my DS for next year (age 7.) He's a living books, field trip, hands on kind of kid. I'm excited to start, he's excited to start, it's going to be completely awesome.... HOWEVER! I'm having a serious problem finding all the books. And let's face it - they're kind of necessary. Our library is lousy. Interlibrary loan is limited to 2 books per household at any time. I priced out the books I would want for the first half of the list (leaving some out, replacing, etc., pricing used when available) and my DH would have a heart attack if I bought them all. And we'd probably have to stop eating for a month. :tongue_smilie: I can look for used books in a B&M store, we do have one used bookstore in the area. Any other suggestions? Do I just suck it up and buy a bunch of books? (Trust me, I'd be okay with that, books are my weakness. And I do have 2 youngers that could use them.) Is it worth that kind of investment? How does everyone handle this? How do I talk DH into it, given the other curriculum purchases I'm going to be making soon? ;)

I've had an ultra power KA since 2000 (when I got married) and it's been fine for our level of use (mostly cookies/cakes, sometimes bread but only 2 loaves at a time.) We're not industrial strength bakers. I love my KA...my MIL has had a classic model for nearly 20 years and it is still going strong.

How exciting! We're working on a room right now....there's no way we have as many books as you do, but hopefully someday!

Huge Disclaimer: We haven't started homeschooling yet and our room is a work in progress (read: not even close to finished yet.) That said..... We have a weird "study" room in the front of our house that we're converting to a HS room. (I say weird because we've never had a good use for it, it has it's own french door and doesn't connect to anything else.) It's only 12x12 but should be plenty for a school room right now. I'd be happy with school at the kitchen table, but one of DH's prerequisites for starting to HS was having a special space exclusively for school. Okay by me! We hit Ikea and have a big desk for one wall (seats 2) and a smaller 1-person computer desk for the other wall. One "leg" of each desk is a set of drawers. I have a rod thingy for the wall above the big desk with little buckets that hang on it - for pencils, scissors, etc. 3 bookshelves. We'll have showerboard on the wall, and a couple of maps. I would have loved to have a big worktable and individual desks, but with the space we have, that was a no-go. I've drooled over so many pictures of HS rooms online that I'm hoping what we came up with will be functional for us (and cute, too.) I'll post pictures when it's all put together (hopefully soon?)