I'm reading the reviews and it mentioned using eggplant in place of bacon. How do you prepare that?

I've been a vegitarian before, but not when I was responsible for cooking every meal for a family. I just picked the meat out of my food. I would even go to McDonalds and order a big mac without any patty in it. My husband has high cholesterol, and my son is complaining that meat comes from animals and doesn't want to eat it. My husband doesn't like a lot of bread or pasta or tofu and I don't like eating beans every meal. We already buy a lot of fresh produce and eat a variety of fruits and vegatables. I already use vanilla almond or rice milk in my coffee, and the kids keep drinking my milk and say it tastes better than theirs. I think I need a good vegan bread recipe for sandwiches, and vegan tortillas. Are the corn ones vegan? What do I do about breakfast besides oatmeal every day? The rest of my family doesn't like a lot of soup. That's why I've been putting this off, without a lot of pastas, soups, bread, and beans I'm kind of at a loss for what to cook three times a day. Also, my husband is tex-mex and he doesn't like a lot of other ethnic foods. A lot of vegitarians I know eat a lot of Indian recipes, but my husband doesn't like curry (or coconut, or olives). eta: It would be easier to quit buying meat and be vegitarian, but since one's got cholesterol and the other's got ethical issues I think I'm trying to figure out a vegan diet.

Last year my now 3.5 yr. old did the kumon mazes and colored a little bit in coloring books.. but the toy that has got the most use ever is the whiteboard easel. At first I had to watch close to make sure she didn't put the markers in her mouth. That girl is on that board scribbling every day since we got it. Now she draws a lot of people with faces and fingers and toes and stuff on paper, and she's almost through with the hwt k, and about half way through the singapore k, A. The other day she wrote several neat clear letters on regular notebook paper, but she still scribbles all over her whiteboard almost daily. I mean scribbling, just with one color, scribbling until the board is completely covered after a couple of days. I keep it in the livingroom so I can watch the markers. Sometimes she gets carried away and marks on the wall, but my paint is high gloss and it washes off real easy with windex. I wonder if you couldn't get a regular whiteboard and put it away, and bring it out for her to play on while the other kids do their work. My son learned to read with the reading eggs website. Last year I sat with my daughter on the reading eggs playroom. The nursery rhymes are great, and there's a simple game to string beads that taught her how to use tbe mouse (with my help). This year she has her own reading eggs account and she also pokes around pbs kids independantly. If you want her to learn to use the computer look for a promo code for reading eggs. Find the beads in the playroom. At first you'll pick them up and she'll put them on the string. She'll be using the mouse on her own quickly. I often put on reading eggs or pbs kids when I need her to not bother my son during his schoolwork. It tough when they're used to playing togeather all day to say, "stay away from him and let him work." Honestly, teaching her to use the computer has helped. Just in case you haven't seen it, there is a pre-k board in the curriculum board.

Woo-hoo!!! I ordered the Evan Moore art book!

I had put a little straw under it (well, tall dried grass clippings). I suppose I just didn't put enough. I'll go find me a bale of hay. Thanks for helping.

I'm trying (for the second time) to grow pumpkins. The first batch, the bees didn't fertilize much of them and only one pumpkin tried to grow. I looked at YouTube, so this time I'm looking for the girl flowers to hand pollinate. The one pumpkin I got last time grew on a vine that was dangling from a tree branch, apparently pumpkins climb trees and fences. I cut the tree branch and put the pumpkin and vine back on the ground. We got one little rain, and the side of the pumpkin touching the ground rotted overnight. Are pumpkins not allowed to touch the wet ground? If I put a board under any of them that grow this time will that save them?

You can't go wrong with Rachel Ray! Anytime I google a recipe, if her name comes up I try her recipe first. Never been disappointed, and she does stuff with food I would never have thought to mix togeather on my own.

If you're already meat and taters some good ones are homemade sweet potatoe fries, not deep fried just a das of olive oil in the pan and rotate on all four sides of each fry. Time consuming, but served with ketchup it's a family fave. Butternut squas, cut in half and bake on a pan with cut side down. Frozen veggie faux stirfry, a bowl full of veggies with those johnsonville cheddar sausages cut up on top, put in the micro. One sausage for kids, 2 for adult.

I'm very sorry for your loss. {{hugs}}

DP

favorite-homemade-housecleaning-recipes Vodka and cranberry juice is my favorite recipe for housecleaning.

Beast Academy 3A is teaching multiplication, measuring, and geometry but it's playing with it instead of memorizing it. Today it had a grid of random numbers that made a sort of maze you solved by skip counting. None of it is straight forward, but it's fun and seems like at least it wouldn't be "more of the same" over the summer. I hate to recommend a new book when you already bought new books. Khan academy and sumdog also have multiplication lessons and practice. There's a lot of skip-counting songs on YouTube, like schoolhouse rock's "counting by fives". There's a video on YouTube called "turtlehead multiplication" that helps with multidigit multiplication. At first, with smaller numbers, I rephrased everything like: 3x4=?, three plates of four cookies, how many do you have? Three bags with four pieces of candy in it, how many do you have? For a while we used a lot of Bedtime math word problems. I would look at the daily problem and if it was beyond my kid I would just make up a similar problem. Everything but the Beast Academy in this post is free.

http://www.youngvoicesfoundation.org/youngvoiceshome.html Hmm., think I found one. I put the same request on facebook and a friend said to add "summer" to my google search for kids writing contest. This one ends June 30th. He would have to extend his story because this contest needs a time travel theme. Luckily it's already sci-fi because it's about an alien and an astronaut.

My kid wrote and illustrated a funny short story, about 200 words and 5 illustrations. I thought the PBS kids writers contest ended in June, but the deadline was March. I've called the closest library and there's nothing happening locally. I've googled childrens writing contests, and varations on the phrase. There's a lot of results, but nothing that's not past the deadline, or most are for much older than 6 yrs. old. I'm guessing it's too late to find anything because it's the end of the school year. :(

I followed the recommendation to use the Singapore textbook and every other problem from the Singaporre IP, and all the word problems and challenge problems from the Singapore IP. It's going well.

My grandmother told me I should always pick the simplest, plainest white sympathy card available.

I'm so glad to hear that!

I was going to post a couple of things earlier, but second guessed myself because I'm only in the "figuring stuff out" stage. Because OP was talking about Facebook posts, I would assume many people just find it more interesting to talk with gifted kids about NOVA, other documentaries, and advanced math concepts than it is to spend time working on the mechanics of grammar and spelling. Also (not here) I've seen people express the sentiment that they fear direct instruction will squash a gifted kids "spark". I know I seem to take the most boring parts of school and bring them to our homeschool. The other day I had my kid looking up his spelling words in the dictionary and copying definitions. It's because in the future I'd like for his to be able to take what's in his head and bring it out in the real world. It's why I had him doing those "how to draw pictures step by step" real early, before he was writing letters. I deleted my post because all I have is plans. I haven't done it yet. Well, we have been doing The Complete Writer, and he's on level two. We're about done with MCT Practice/Sentence/Grammar Island. I just bought the public school version of the Shurley Grammar textbook. Then I plan to buy the Killagon series. Good writing comes from having something to say, and from reading good books. But this plan comes from teaching form before content. I know we're not talking about prodigies, but I've seen discussions that it's more common to see a nine or ten year old performing music or math on the level of a talented adult than it is to see a kid that age publishing novels because they don't have the life experience to write at that level yet.

This is not as weird as the rest of this thread. I saw the recipe on here, and I thought, "this is going to be great or AWFUL." Best salad ever! Avacado, mandrin oranges, diced serrano pepper, lime juice, and, was it salt or pepper?

I wrote a post saying something like that, but deleted it.

It's cool! I just typed for my kid to do his first lesson. He had to pick his favorite constellation. He read a book he has at home and picked one. Write one paragraph telling why. Retell one creation myth about it. (I googled, he retold.) And write a third paragraph with a myth he made up about the constellation. His writing and retelling both sound like a little kid. I guess it's okay because when we signed up it asked his birthdate and there wasn't a limit.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/can-homeschoolers-do-well-in-college/ I've read/heard that there are millions of homechoolers, and that the numbers are exploding. This link says that there are 1.5 million. Are these numbers right? I've read on here that the college stats are bogus because it's self reported and the ones who don't go to college don't answer the polls. Are these "millions" of people homeschooling nowdays accurate?

Ha! I got to the end before I realized it was an old thread. I was going to say I would totally get her to try some "how to draw horses" step by step stuff. And also that I just ordered "trumpet of the swan". I hope it's as good as the cartoon.

Oh pooh! I thought, by the title, this would be a new curriculum to look at. You know there's manipulative based, art based, history based, literature based... I thought this meant there was a curriculum based on feelings.

Plenty of people are starting to think homeschooling is a good option. My husband listens to talk radio at work and he says the issue comes up on the radio. NCLB and other problems with the school are watering down education. Now there are millions of homeschoolers. It's a growing trend. My husband still has things to talk about our kids for light conversation at work. My son just won a ribbon for art at the county fair. I'm coaching t-ball this year. It's my daughter's first year in t-ball. My son just lost his training wheels. We still get invited to birthday parties from the neighbors and family. Homeschooling doesn't mean never leaving the house. When the kids get older they'll have more time for activities because they'll have less homework from school. Right now they have a lot more playtime than they did last year when my son was in school, and he's doing better academically.