I have....none I did have a BIG one, DH broke it (lesson learned, don't let DH near my kitchen babies :tongue_smilie: ) I am hoping to get two, big family sized stew/roast one, and a little/med one. When I had the big one I noticed a lot of recipes I planned to use would barely cover the bottom of the pot (these were for soups, stews etc) so a smaller one is definitely needed for me, but you also need a large one that will fit a leg /rack of something or a chicken etc.

Riding a bike is quote weird, unless it was a larger hunting one with a strap (so he had it across his back) if he was holding a gun in one hand and maneovouring the bike with the other, then to me thats scary and weird (unless giant snake/cougar/whatever is near him and he's stopped said bike). I'm from Aus, but I have a friend who moved out to the US ages ago, she lives in the boonies (i.e. middle of pretty much nowhere, town is pretty much 1 bar (which doubles as corner shop/PO etc & sheriffs office) her son frequently either has smaller gun in backpack or larger one strapped across him when riding, as he meets his father sometimes for target practice (after her DH has finished work) and its a fair distance to walk. She prefers him to carry some sort of weapon on him at all times, as their is dangerous local wildlife that tends to wander too close to some of the farms, or even on the roads. And she was quite anti-gun before she moved out there :D But she saw in full the practicality of it when an un-armed teenager was attacked, and ended up with quite severe maulings to his leg, he only got lucky when a farmer was close by and heard the shouts. And as OP said - Any sort of toys are looking more and more real these days. I live semi-rural in Aus, but I could go to the $2 shop in the nearest town and come out of there with a pretty darn good replica of a handgun, as well as some scary looking fake swords. In the actual events - I probably would of done the same thing. New town, new situations, its one of those things where you live and learn. Whenever I show my blonde-ness or make a mess of things, the next thing I concentrate on is trying to fix it up, so for the neighbour, I would either decide if I don't actually mind him, to befriend him and make it up to him, if he's not a nice person in general (aside from being grumpy/upset over the situation) then I would figure out a way we can avoid each other but still be civilised adults.

Really? You can borrow mine if you want. It'll give me time to clean up the tornado of mess they create. They got ahold of styrofoam today and the ENTIRE large lounge looks like christmas, every time I try to sweep/vaccuum it ends up just blowing up into the air before settling again, and the cats have been making snow angel races through it. I very, very much, dislike styrofoam....its worse than tinsel. Original Poster: We're doing preschool for two this year, so we have loads of resources available, heres some quicklinks for you: Health, Safety & Etiquette DIY Curriculum: http://missedumacated.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/health-safety-etiquette-diy-curriculum.html Disney Cars Birthday Party (5 part series with lots of photos & links): http://missedumacated.blogspot.com.au/search/label/Events Literature/Books List: http://missedumacated.blogspot.com.au/2011/08/litbooks-list.html HWOT - Handwriting without Tears - Cheap DIY Alternatives: http://missedumacated.blogspot.com.au/2011/08/handwriting-without-tears-cheap.html Letter of the Week Resources: http://missedumacated.blogspot.com.au/2011/07/letter-of-week-resources.html World Geography Links: http://missedumacated.blogspot.com.au/2011/07/world-geography.html Story of the World Correlation Chart: (Not useful now, but useful later on) http://missedumacated.blogspot.com.au/2011/06/sotw-correlation-chart.html And of course: Mums time to get creative http://missedumacated.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/mums-time-to-get-creative.html I am also on Pinterest and I tend to put a lot of craft ideas/curriculums/resources/fun stuff etc on there: http://pinterest.com/missed/ Hope this helps you some! :grouphug: EDITED TO ADD: Saw your interested in young elementary as well, so theres a lot more useful things on my blog & pinterest too, as I have a 1st grade this year as well.

We used Core P4/5 last year with Grade K LA, ETC Phonic Primers and Singapore Maths K. Most people I know seem to use P4/5 as kindy. The way I see it (going by the age guides) is Core A would equal Grade 1. So would be for an average Grade 1 student, an advanced K Student or a remedial/slow Grade 2. Thats just my opinion though :p. We used Handle on the Arts Supplements for Crafts and extras (they have supplements for Sonlight cores). We would be using Core A this year, but it wasn't for us, we have enough literature that buying more books just to have r/a etc was pointless to us. Heres my "Honest Review of Sonlight" from another forum I am on: So you know I have lots of links etc on my blog for resources :) I love Sonlight, and wish it worked for us (I continually stare at the website) but it didn't, this doesn't mean you wouldn't be happy with it. And I adore Sonlights customer service, So I tend to try to make a big order of items they have that I need every year (few lit, maths etc). :grouphug: Good Luck with your decisions

I was doing okay for the first.....sentence lol. My mother told me she loved my stepfather more than me, right to my face, after my bio dad dumped me on her doorstep. I think her saying that hurt more than anything else, so I very much disagree with her thoughts. She paid attention to her husband, little attention to me. After always receiving A's, making art projects, reading upsidedown in kindy, constantly being honor-roll in high school, everything I did was followed with a "thats nice dear" whilst not even looking in my direction. But anything her husband said she held onto with every word. This made me rebel, see how far I could go before I got attention and some kind of twisted love. But somehow in the midst of all my childhood tragedies (a lot are horror stories) I seem to have turned out okay. I have a wonderful husband who adores me, 3 beautiful, bright, eager children, 2 sappy dogs, 2 fluffy cats and a sparrow in a willow tree (sounding a bit like days of christmas LOL!) So I think the whole idea on there is a generalisation that isn't true. I have many people who have had messed up childhoods and turned out to be wonderful members of society and a lot of people that come from good homes who turn out to be bad apples. You can't generalise how a child is going to turn out by following a checklist of ideals for the perfect 50's marriage. Nurturing, paying attention, loving your child, and most importantly listening to them every step of the way, would be a good way to start.

I would say take him for a physical too. It could be an underlying condition or possibly something to do with acne or an overabundance of hormones or even a sweat gland problem, best to get it checked out.

For some reason, it was the first word that popped into my head :001_huh: :tongue_smilie: As other OP's have said, its the one place I believe my children to be safe. Now I even have to second guess Youth Groups & Sunday Schools. :confused: We currently don't attend church (my faith is a little out of the ordinary, so closest church for me is 3 1/2 hours away) DH is more of a general christian, and we would be attending church if not for C (he has some problems, and can get quite loud/insistent/demanding and scream/shriek. But its even made me look at other options now :( Luckily we currently use a bible curriculum and after that we'll probably stick with an at home Godly Play type thing. Youth group was a mainstay in my life growing up, I counted it as a place where I could re-affirm my belief, and have understanding people surrounding me...if this had happened to me, I would be having major issues that would probably continue into adulthood. This is not preparing, as OP said, its more like hazing, and even hazing your usually aware anything could happen, in this case, you believe you were in a safe haven.

I am not sure exactly what grade you are talking about. You are aware for Grade 1 & Above their is Singapore Math CD-Rom games? If those aren't for you what about Mathletics? If grade 3 or above you could look at using Teaching Textbooks, Chalkdust Math or Math U See as more interactive type supplements. Mathtacular is another option for video based, there is also the Mathtacular Kit which comes with a special DVD and manipulatives, that would work as a good supplement. As for the two you have mentioned, sorry, haven't heard of them :001_huh: xxx

If my son wanted to learn the drums, I would allow him if we were finacially able to do so. Because of the type of person he is, I don't think the piano would necessarily be for him, he's more of a hitting/banging child :D Our daughter is learning the piano/keyboard through MusIQ homeschool program. I agree with the OP in the case that it is one of the more nicer sounding ones even with the in between stages (if your using a keyboard, there is also a handy volume function :D ) But given that my children can learn any instrument they want to, with the following criteria: - We can afford it/swing it financially (some instruments cost a lot) - Use piano first, if the child does not want to go through 1 year (20 lessons) of piano course, then they must wait 1 year before they can look into/begin whatever instrument they have in mind (this stops purchases that aren't used or them changing their mind several weeks later) - No recorders, flutes, trombones, saxophones or anything where you blow into the instrument to create a sound. If you must do this, lessons away from home, and no practising unless I am not at home. (those type of instruments bring on an instant migraine, yet for some reason I can handle someone "building a shed" with a drum kit :lol: ) - Once you are master at whatever instrument you take on, you will allow requests from me for song choices.....its only fair, after I have allowed you to have the instrument in the first place. I may not know the name of the song, and may hum what I want out of tune, it is your job as instrument master to know what song I am talking about and duly play it :lol:

We use iodized. Because of our health diets here, we may not get enough iodine from other sources, so I always get this. If DH puts the salt in the trolley, he just gets regular table salt. We also have sea salt rocks (or as DD calls it "Edible Diamonds/Crystals") So I suppose all of the above lol. But for everyday use its the iodized.

Bright Beginnings Preschool Curriculum Little Acorn Learning Wee Folk Art Curriculum Seasons of Joy All About Reading Pre-Level 1 Oak Meadow K (gentle K, could be suitable as a pre-k) Galloping the Globe Elemental Science Pre-K Umm...basically check out my pinterest boards, lol, saves me writing. I have curriculums, homeschool ideas, craft ideas, all sorts of stuff on there: http://pinterest.com/missed/

That is completely and utterly wrong. Its wrong that it happens elsewhere in the world and they know it, so they do it here. So according to them, 2 wrongs DO make a right? :001_huh: To follow that line of thought "You live in a world where this doesn't happen, we thought you were missing out, so we made it happen" The LEAST they could of done is said "Sometime during the next 2 months of youth group, you will experience what it is like to go through persecution of your beliefs, there will be no real harm involved, and if anybody does harm you, say the safe word "beetles" ...or something along those lines. They still would of been "surprised" and shocked that it happened. And the parents SHOULD OF BEEN ADVISED IN FULL, and the exact date it would happen, and give their permission. This would allow the parents who did not wish to allow their children to participate to disallow them from going that week. With NO notifcation of the parents, bodily proof of harm, and transferring, and a real gun. All parties involved should go to jail. It WAS kidnapping. I noticed how they made sure to say its unloaded like that should get them off. If you rob a bank, and your gun is unloaded, does that make you innocent? What they did to these children is awful and the fact they did it as a church/under religion, is just :001_huh: I am completely bewildered and :glare: quite annoyed. If it was my child, there would be no end to my wrath.

We don't really have "relaxing evenings". All we do is drop the schoolwork if Daddy is home. If he has a day off work, we have a day off school. We base our schooling round his timetable. 1. Because he is a distraction, the kids don't pay attention, and he actually distracts us from schooling! (asks questions, fiddles with things, hes like a big 3yo LOL). And 2. because Daddy time is more important. If they need a bath, we both bathe them, he tucks them into bed and reads them stories (and usually falls asleep at the same time :lol: ) I use the evenings to spend a bit of alone time with him, and when he plays his playstation or works on his computer or conference calls etc, I plan stuff on my computer (meals, school, banking etc). We know how precious time with Daddy is, so everything revolves around that. He has the final say in things (unless it certain stuff, like the kids schooling, clothes, bills etc, I mean more like final demands, or decisions on weekend activities). The kids and I are going to start up a morning and evening chore routine to lessen the stuff on Daddys plate (I have CFS and a bending problem that makes it hard to pick stuff up from the ground). We usually work together on stuff like fixing and cleaning up the house. We take turns in laundry, I have been a bit lax lately, due to not feeling crash hot, but he has taken over and made sure the laundry has kept moving. Basically its just schoolwork stops, but we have to concentrate more on cleaning throughout the day, the littlies get into things that I just don't have the energy to fix during the day and usually fix in the evenings after hes put the kids to bed (stuff like emptying out the laundry baskets, messes around the bathroom sink from their water play etc) but this has made Daddy stressed to get home and see this, so its something we have to rememdy, otherwise hes a grouchy bear all evening :D

:lol: Now theres a natural science experiment in the works! I have to often clean out the shelves, DH tends to throw stuff back in there like a quarterback. I picked up a bag of pasta last night only to find misc powder coming off it in clouds. I refuse to currently look at the bottom shelf of the pantry, thats where he's been throwing his cordial back into. I can only imagine the syrupy stains down there....I think it may be time for some "life skills" for the kids. Soapy Buckets and learning to clean the pantry :D

Ten reasons NOT to buy Tapestry of Grace: 1. Your children are 4 or under :lol: just wait. 2. Your are not religious - Tapestry of Grace is the biblical interweaved with history. If you are using this secular, it takes quite a lot of work, and supplements, time, money etc. Most of Yr1 & part Yr2 is biblical. Its really not worth the dollars, except possibly in the rheotoric stage 3. You require an open and go curriculum. TOG requires planning and forethought. 4. You want more of a hands-on arty styled curriculum. TOG concentrate more on the logical spock side :D it does have hands-on activites/items but these are mostly from Classical kids that are available in other programs or lapbooks (which seem to be similar to Hands of a Child type) 5. You have a one room house. :tongue_smilie: Tapestry of grace requires a lot of room 6. You are on a budget, and no library near you. TOG is quite literature based, use of a library or lots of moula is required. 7. Its mid-year (if it is when you buy it) I would caution against starting certain years mid-year. 8. You already have a curriculum that works (this is called TOG envy, wildly known, and its best to research more into TOG before insanely purchasing because "its TOG!") TOG Envy is a disease that can be quite catching, please try to avoid any thread marked with it :lol: I have caught it myself 2 or 3 times and have to mentally calm myself down (which may take upto a week or more). 9. Information Overload. Some people like simple curriculums, TOG has a LOT there, you may pass out from sheer bliss just being near it all. 10. You already bought it whilst I was typing this. Well, no point in buying it again :D :lurk5:

How far does customer service go in playing a role to what you purchase? I have had numerous bad experiences with companies, as such I actually dislike purchasing from the homeschooling companies directly, preferring to purchase from a retailer (Christian Books, Amazon etc) I have found "department" type stores to actually have better customer service than the "homeschooling mum" or "homeschool company" trying to sell the products themselves. Against my better judgement, I purchased off a well known lady for a product (it was cheaper directly off her than getting elsewhere), there was no tracking sent with it, and when said I did not receive $100 item, she basically said, well she sent it, I would have to find it my end. Considering I am in Aus, and its US mail, unless its in my box, there is no way to follow it up my end. I was not offered a refund/replacement item, partial credit or any sort of sorries, and I was under the initial impression it was to be sent tracked, as I refuse to purchase stuff without knowing that. Now, no matter how much people rave about this "curriculum" I am completely turned off it, when it was my initial impression to use her curriculum throughout the 3 kids schoolyears. I instead found a lovely mum with a more homemade type curriculum whom has been nothing but lovely, and plan to loyally stick with her. Now another company/curriclum with well known controversy surrounding it, I looked into it and gave them the benefit of the doubt. I tried to purchase from them ages ago, wanted to ask a few q's and never got a response. Tried again, and again, no response. But they seem to have time to flitter all over the web blogging, but no time to actually provide customer service or sell their products :001_huh: which is a pity, as I really truely liked the curriculum. Yet I have found with places like Sonlight, Book Depository, Christian Books, that they have the most excellent customer service, seem to remember all sorts of details about me, try to help me wherever possible, never act like I am annoying, and they make it so I WANT to purchase from them. We moved away from sonlight cores, but I still loved the customer service and "feel" I got from them, so went ahead and purchased $300 of maths books & manipulatives from them. Do you think people (even homeschooling mums) have forgotten how important customer service is? Its really hard when its a curriculum that you adore, but you just keep getting turned off by their customer service, what would you do if it was your favourite curriculum? Customer service used to be a given. If you worked in an industry that required customer relations, you gave service. You helped. Now it seems to be very rare to find a place that actually gives the customer service. :001_huh:

pretty much anything broken. Although we did have a very old computer, its specs were awful, so we let the kids take that apart and look at all the circuit boards. So - old phones (including the ones with the wind up numbers), cellphones, Nintendo DS (it broke big time, lol), laptop, Playstation controller, so yeah mostly electronics, and they are always supervised by either me or DH. DS "helps" Daddy with his projects too, so gets to help change the tire, fix the engine, service the car, fix up old stuff for selling (like strollers etc). I usually don't do anything thats in "working condition", only stuff beyond repair. Although they help me with my vaccuums, but one is an ergorapido and its meant to come into many parts, and the same with the Kirby. In cases like that, I also allow them to have stuff like flashlights and magnifying glasses to look at everything more closely.

Yes, it is offensive, yes he has apparently done it before. But I honestly can't believe he was expelled for that. We live in Aus, and before we purchased this house, in our previous one, I had to keep the kids inside most of the day. There was a PRIVATE CATHOLIC school directly opposite us (K-12, its oval backed onto our laneway). The reason I couldn't take my kids into the yard? Well it makes that guys swear & ribald tweets looks extremely tame. The stuff I heard coming out of 3rd & 10th graders mouth have to be "heard" to be believed. And there school obviously didn't care even a tiny bit about it. Why would you put lots of money towards your childs education just to get them to sound like a bawdy back alley? Ridiculous that this guy got expelled, but these children are basically encouraged. If he accessed the tweet page on the school computer I can understand though (not wrote, but accessed), the school probably has net nanny or something to pick up swearing on any pages the computer accesses, if he didn't access his twitter at school after writing that tweet, then I do think its 100% wrong, but its a sadly true fact. A lot of companies/schools etc watch peoples blogs, hence the case a while back of those two teachers getting fired for what was in their private blogs.

:lol: This thread is too funny for words. My DH would do the opposite. He'd go somewhere to get a chicken and come back with posts/wiring instead. I don't know if I could raise "food" poultry. The killing and plucking I would be fine with, getting the innards out is a whole 'nother story :ack2: but then again, I have never done it, so maybe its not as gross as it sounds. DH wouldn't step foot near doing anything like that, and I'm the one who is the animal softie, quite ironic lol.

We use MusIQ curriculum. Its loads of fun :D My daughter adores it

LOL. I see both sides of it, but thats hilarious! I do suppose they need to clear out their "old" stock, so sales, and urging people to buy before then makes sense. I can imagine on April 2 though, I think toy sales day before christmas pretty much sums it up. I love sonlight, but it doesn't work for us. I still keep looking at their stuff with loads of envy (same with TOG though).

Lessons Done - Yep, we don't continue once DH is home, whether we have finished a full day or not Chore Done - Not at the present, but hopefully in a few weeks we'll be in this situation. But there will still be chores the kids and I do just before dinner Dinner ready for him - NOPE, not a chance. :lol: He does the dinner. *big giant shocked face*. We made a deal quite a while ago. I am HAPPY to cook dinner and have it ready for him, only thing I ask in return is either of the following a) he has a set time that he will be home each day or b) he can advise me in the morning/lunch of the time he will be home. In the 3 years since we made this deal, he has consistently done neither. Whenever he whinges about it, I just bring up the deal, and he goes quiet. Unfortunately, yes, I'm mean, but considering I put a LOT of effort into making dinner, there is no point is making it because it gets burnt because he shows up an hour or two after dinner would of been ready, with no phone calls, emails, nada. I spend most evenings paranoid hes gotten fired, had a car accident or anything, because his home times are sporadic and he doesn't have the decency to let me know. I believe one time I had worked myself up into such a state by the time he got home, thinking that he was dead. So yes, when he learns the decency of telling his wife when he'll be home, I'll give him the decency of cooking a 3 course meal. :tongue_smilie: It all started a while ago, when he ended up in hospital for an on the job related injury, I wasn't advised he was in the hospital until he actually was ready to be discharged from the hospital in the evening. No-one bothered to call me.

I'm getting that sort of way. I still have a little bit of time left before I have to start narrowing it down/looking at things. But whats currently sitting on my pinterest board is mostly wishful thinking I would say! I can usually tone it back, and still be happy, BUT it would be really nice to have some extra dollars to get the literature, I really dislike using the library, number 1, its not close to us, and number 2, I prefer to have my children be able to re-read through it at their leisure and be able to actually "touch" the books. Because of E's temper and C's destructional habits, library books are kept locked away, and only I'm allowed to "touch" them, which is sad, but unfortunately, a neccessity if we don't want to owe the library money. We used to have this HUGE charity shop (more like a department store LOL) and most books were 99cents. Everytime we went into town, more books would somehow end up saved from the charity store and be on my shelves, but now we don't even have that place to get books from, I actually counted on that place A LOT (from books, to cookie sheets for magnets, dress up clothes) to keep me within budget, so I have no idea what I am going to do now.....possibly a road trip to the next closest of that chain? *roadtrip!* :tongue_smilie:

Coming in a bit late here, but I have a wiggly boy too. He's much more a "charggggeeeee!" with a sword type boy, LOL. He also until about 1 year ago, mostly communicated in shrieks and screams. Wtih my kids, I tend to pull in a more interactive type program, and I try to include all of the children wherever possible. Videos, games, computer stuff, arts & crafts are all my top priorities for "type". There's a book I have heard of, called something like "Get your child off the refridgerator and on to learning" that was recommended to me a couple of times, I have yet to look at it, as we found the niche that suits us, but it may be a worthwhile read for you. What about focusing (not necessarily buying) on Oak Meadows Kindergarten? They tend to use nature to find the letters, so instead of your son sitting down with worksheets, he can be out collecting and making letters from nature. This is way I am looking into Oak Meadow for DS for next year. I have found for Wiggly's, literature based programs like Sonlight (even if you add the hands-on stuff from Handle on the Arts) usually do not go down well. Before one story is up, the child has disappeared to build and knock down blocks or terrorise his sisters. Don't underestimate the value of role play/dramatic play either. Children learn a lot from play i.e. Grocery shop - Maths, Tea Party - Manners, Post Office - Alphabet, Police Station (with "experiments" like fingerprinting etc) - science, Museum - History. The best thing I have found is to have a period of about 1-2 weeks, where you just "watch" the child, figure out the sorts of things that hold his interest, and what he ignores, then you can tailor the program to his likes/dislikes.

All About Reading The prelevel is very crafty, not a complete phonemic awareness program IMO, but good as a starter, fun supplement to keep kids engage and interested. We are doing it with all 3 kids this year (eldest is joining in just because she can LOL) Explode the Code Primers - These to me had too, too much writing for my girl, but I have heard that people just get their kids to fingertrace the pages, rather than write. An interesting option would be to get the wall chart (we have this) its a felt-y pocket wall hanger with plush items for that letter (apple for A etc). And just get the teachers guide for the primers, and not the actual books. The teachers guide has ideas etc in it. Or there is all about reading Level 1 (so not the pre-level) you could s-l-o-w-l-y go through this. Another option is Happy Phonics which is very game based. Hooked on Phonics seems to be quite popular