I enjoy cooking and despise grocery shopping. It makes me really happy to place a weekly online order and have it delivered. When I get out of this habit, I have to walk to the store every day. Sometimes I make DS walk with me so we can carry more, but I prefer to be out by myself. Eta: I love to go to grocery stores when I am traveling. That is fun.

BTW, I also really like Fundamentals of Piano Theory (Snell). This is what I used to learn theory, and would probably be using it if I lived in the U.S. I don't know how helpful it would be for non-piano instruments or voice. If you go with ABRSM, I would try out lewlema's textbook suggestion. It sounds better than ours. I might buy it, actually! I looked at the Alfred TOC that you linked above. Given that your daughter has completed that book and is a serious music student, she would surely not need to begin at Level One. We spend only smidgens of time on theory - that is the only reason that we move along at a snail's pace :) There are a lot of terms to know, and they are cumulative. You can see lists of them here. We made an Anki deck for them. We are only casual music students here. Serious music students probably already know most of them from performance. If she is not familiar with the British notation (semibreve, minim, crochet, etc.), she would have to learn it. Not a big deal at all. Sometimes switching from one curriculum to another can be tricky! And the exams are cumulative. Maybe you could take your best guess at a level and try the practice exams. Then you would know where the gaps are. This website, musictheory4u , would be another option. Oh, and I think that the ear training falls under the aural exams !

(I can't make links at the moment...sorry) I have the "other textbook" that lewelma linked above, The AB Guide to Music Theory, Part 1 by Eric Taylor It covers everything from Levels 1 to 5, but it is not organized in a way that matches the levels. For instance, in the workbook (Music Theory in Practice), there is a worksheet called " Degrees of the scales and intervals." Underneath the title of the worksheet is a note directing you to the textbook Chapters 2/2 and 7/1. You would have to draw from part of Chapter 2 and part of Chapter 7 in order to complete the worksheet if the textbook is the teacher. I teach the theory. My student would get frustrated trying to jump around in the book like that. It frustrates me! Maybe the other book is structured differently. lewelma, can you comment on that? We are finishing Level 1. If you have specific questions please ask. We are on the slow theory boat, but I am ok with that. Is the Alfred book that you linked above your course or is it part one of three? I would be happy to attempt to compare its TOC to ABRSM Level One for you. I used: The above textbook Music Theory in Practice (workbook) Music Theory in Practice (model answers) Theory of Music Exams ( 4 practice exams) Theory of Music Exams (answers) I expect to go through Level 2 much faster. There was a bit of a learning curve for both of us.

Another nod for ABRSM music theory. If you are not interested in the actual exams, you can buy practice exams and just use those. They are called Past Papers.That is what we are doing - at least for now. You will have to adapt to a bit of British notation, but it is not too much. I am not 100% sure about this, but I think you can sit for any level exam that you are prepared for - you don't have to start by taking Level 1. Grade 5 theory seems to be an important threshold, and I read about a student not taking any of the theory exams until Level 5.

I don't know what the WTM says about the memory work, but I am really happy with the memory work that we do / have done for middle school. I think that being able to memorize is important. Since we do not do much testing, memory work can build that skill. DS memorizes poems and Shakespeare passages. Next year, I would like to add in a speech or two and move on to longer passages. The elocution is as important as the memorizing. We have some Anki decks. He knows how to set one up and maintain it now. We made Anki decks for the things that we want in long term memory: for example. ABRSM music theory terms and U.S. Capitals. The spaced repetition means that once you have learned the deck, maintaining it takes very little time. We are working on memorizing some KEY history dates. Just enough to have an internal framework. We have an Anki deck for math that has been neglected. It is on my to-do list to bring it back to life:)

Tress, I am sorry. Next year might very well be my last year of HSing as it is likely that my rising 8th grader will not HS high school. We only started when he was in 6th grade, so that means that I would only get to enjoy this magic ride for 3 short years. Sniff. So...I am not looking forward to dwelling on that. Nor am I looking forward to the pressure of placement test preparation. Everything else is good:) Oh, and yay for a thread where I can mope a little w/o feeling like a party pooper :)

Thinking of you, Luanne.

OK, here you go! Before we moved to Denmark, I studied with the Beginner's Danish course. Danish courses online: Dansk her og nu is a nice free online course. The English button doesn't seem to work at the moment, but I think that is just a temporary glitch. Another good (and free) online course is Netdansk. Lexin is free. It is just vocab, but there is a ton of it. Copenhagencast: The podcasts are free but you have to buy the pdfs. Danish Verb Study: Subscription site with a free trial. Speak Danish is not free, but it looks pretty good. I have not used it. Good stuff online: Nyheder på dansk: Danish news in Danish specifically designed for foreign language learners. Ligetil: Danish news that is written at a lower reading level than standard newspapers. You can click on "Læs op" and the article will be read aloud to you. DMI Vejr: This is the official weather website. I love this site! You can read the weather and then click on Læs op and have it read to you. But the best part is to then watch the daily WebTV portion. The meteorologist usually uses many of the same words that are in the text, so it is easier to comprehend than a random TV clip. Grammars and Dictionaries: Online Grammar book Online Grammar book. I have yet to find a Danish / English dictionary that gives the pronunciation of the Danish words. They all seem to be written for Danes learning English. If you find one, let me know :) BUT...if you can use the phonetic alphabet you can use Den Danske Ordbog. Once you can listen to Danish without intense frustration, listen to the Grammatik for Dummies videos. They are quite entertaining :) Min første røde ordbog. I LOVE this book. Each entry has a sample sentence. Print books: I can recommend two, but I will have to go dig them out... Textbooks and workbooks: We use the textbook series that is used in the adult Danish courses. for Book One is På Vej til dansk. When I went to Danish Language School, this is the series that my instructor used. We use the Alfabetas grammatik workbooks. Both series have support material available on the publisher's website. Note that these series are completely in Danish - there is no English. I don't know if you can find the textbooks / workbooks / Min første røde ordbog in the USA, or if it is only available from Denmark. I gave you the links to Saxo, just in case you would want to go that route. Hope this helps your research :)

I will come back later and begin the inundation :) Like previous poster mentioned, Finnish is unrelated to the other Scandinavian languages. It is actually closer to Hungarian. Here is my completely anecdotal assessment - based, ahem, on the boxes of cereals and other foodstuffs sitting in my kitchen. All of the information is written in Norwegian, Danish, Swedish. Some items also include Finnish. I read Danish and can therefore easily read the Norwegian. I can kinda sorta make out the Swedish. The Finnish is incomprehensible to me. For fun, I just now looked at a sample of Icelandic. I can only make out a few words. edited for accuracy

Thanks to this thread, I spent my free time last night watching YouTube videos on Bullet Journals...which led me to Midori Traveler Notebooks. Put either term into YouTube search...if you dare :) Seriously, I am now feeling excited to revamp my system based on what I have discovered in the last 24 hours. Yippee!

Written Danish and written Norwegian are so close that if you can read one, you can easily read the other. This does not apply to pronunciation. If she chooses Danish, I will gleefully inundate you with ideas for resources :)

Moxie, I would like to gushingly thank you for this post. I can't wait to read through the site.

I remain thrilled with my purchase. When DS finishes an assigned novel (which takes several weeks), we turn to this set before starting the next novel. I assign things from various volumes, looking for pieces that go with our history or interests. We do not read through in order. I am going through all the volumes and making an annotated Table of Contents to hasten the process of finding what I want.

If When I get my Danish where it needs to be, I am going to turn my attention to Dutch. I have already bought the books :001_wub: We frequently travel to the Netherlands, and I have always loved "everything Dutch." I wonder if Dutchophile is a word like Anglophile or Francophile?! I guess that it would be, even though I have never encountered it, LOL. edited for clarity

Thinking if you...sending hugs.

We no longer do a spelling program, but once or twice per week I give him twenty or so words from lists of frequently misspelled words. He doesn't get to study the words in advance - I am just trying to pick up gaps.

This is only our 2nd year homeschooling, and we have only done the timed work day. I have sporadically tried to switch to the scheduled lessons method, but I despised trying to sit down and figure it out. So far, making lesson plans is literally the only thing that I dreaded about homeschooling. So take my comment for what it is worth... DS is in 7th. He has a weekly schedule showing subjects but not lessons. He likes the roadmap and gets some satisfaction about highlighting things as they are done. But it is pretty generic. I don't have to adjust it much from week to week. We have a predictable rhythm: Morning Work Math Literature (reading) All the other English stuff Lunch History / Science / Religion ( usually 2 out of 3) Foreign Language Piano I think that the time-on-task structure is working well for us, and it lets us have impromptu discussions without too much of any eye on the clock. edited

Nervous here, too. I am also torn about pedal-to-the-medal vs. last-year-without-the-pressures-of-high-school. I don't know what country we will live in for DS's 9th grade year, and I want to keep all of his high school options open: (1) Kolbe (2) the private, highly competitive school that my older boys attended or (3) IB in Denmark. We started with Kolbe this year, but primarily used our own plans. I have really underutilized the Enhanced Evaluation Service, and I would like to rectify that. Very happy w/ Kolbe overall.

We go with a set number of hours for the school day. I agree with everything Regentrude said above:) Most days, I set the timer for math. That is to keep ME in check and make sure that math doesn't go much over an hour. But it is just the two of us here, and it is very easy for me to nip dawdling in the bud. If I had more kids in my homeschool, I might have to do things differently. Also, I am nearly always in the room with DS. I have my own work / studies to do while he is working independently. That also makes it easy to keep dawdling to a minimum.

Rose, do you have a link for the new MP unit? (why oh why did I click on this thread...)

Ah, I love stories like that. Thanks for sharing it. When I was diagnosed, my primary care physician told me that he had patients who has been diagnosed with BC so long ago that they couldn't even remember which side it had been on. At the time, I thought "yeah,right...like that could ever happen.". Eight years later, I do forget once in a while. I had a double mastectomy, so I look the same on both sides. I do have once extra scar on my cancer side that I use to remember. ETA: I hope that these small stories of survivorship bring you some comfort.

Congrats, MeaganS. I hope that you will love NC. Our stateside home is in the Triad. (Nice to know that I have so many Hive "neighbors" that could help me transistion from HSing in Denmark). ETA: The area (Greensboro/ Winston-Salem/ High Point ) is called The Triad. I had no idea what people meant by The Triad when I first moved there!

I think that I have everyone's input moved to the top of the thread. If I overlooked one of your recommendations, please let me know. I tried to catch everything...I still have a few links to hunt up. And I added a few things, including a section for literary journals. The next time that I get a bit ambitious, I would like to go through and make the list within each category go (roughly) by age level. :tongue_smilie:

Does your hospital / treatment center have a BC support group? My treatment center has two groups- one is dedicated to younger women, whose challenges ARE different. Participating was invauable to my journey, and I made some wonderful friends. Also, feel free to PM me:)

Sending you healing thoughts and prayers. (I had breast cancer eight years ago)