Various random things. I sort the categories I'm looking at by price, and the free and $0.00 stuff show up first. They're mostly 1-2 page things, like a study on hurricanes, or a mini-book on nutrition. Or I think some are samplers taken from bigger books.

I just bought a bunch of ebooks, mostly grammar stuff, history and the read aloud plays. I got the Grammar Tales series, and the Punctuation Tales Teacher guide. For some reason the Grammar Tales Teacher guide was not on sale, neither were the Punctuation Tales books. There were some math and science stuff I wanted, but were out of stock. That seems strange, but they all seemed to be the same sort of item. Like Make and Learn, and Algebra Readiness. Other that that, there weren't any technical problems. So I got all dollar items, and was able to apply the 30% discount. And found a few free items to throw in too.

I was thinking I want to start by 9, but in practice we get started no earlier than 10. Dd and I stay up late, so waking up early is hard for her. Since she started ice skating, and we're trying to get to the public session at 1:40 for pre-class practice, we have to start by 10 on those days, or at least not waste so much time :glare:

Can they still be printed? Aren't most of their books workbooks? And if they can be printed, have you tried printing as a pdf?

If you're willing to make a drive to GA, Ocmulgee national park : http://www.nps.gov/ocmu/index.htm shows evidence of continuous human occupation for 17,000 years. Native Americans first came here during the Ice Age! It's neat to see the changes over the milennia years, especially since the day we went it was over 100 degrees. We did it as part of a camping National Park road trip. We also went to Jimmy Carter's Home, Andersonville (not a place for little kids!), Chattahoochee River, MLK site and Kennesaw Mountain.

I got the algebra readiness book grade 2 from Scholastic. It was pretty simple for dd. We are doing RS C and MEP 2. MEP has algebraic thinking problems which do challenge dd. And RS has a whole series of geometry problems that aren't in any other program, otherwise I would drop it in favor of MEP only.

I have a nook and have been slowly getting rid of the paperbacks, but I keep the illustrated books. We were reading the lemony snicket books on the nook, but we went to the library and dd found the books and that they had illustrations, so now she is all about the physical books. Especially since the illustrations have all sorts of hints about the story.

I've been thinking this too. I see a lot of moms spend a lot of time on LA, with Grammar, Spelling, FLL, and WWE, and it seems so redundant. We only do WWE consistently, and I'll do a spelling list once a week, but she always seems to get at least 90%(but generally 100%) correct from the first dictation. Grammar is reinforced tremendously when you learn a second language, especially Latin. We didn't do any grammar or spelling for 1st grade. And this year, nominally 2nd grade, late in the year, I found a 3rd grade grammar workbook and we're doing whatever pages correspond to suggested topics in WWE. It's still not very challenging. Now I have her reading the Lemony Snicket books for its vocabulary. I take the narration passage from whatever book she's on, because she'll finish one in a couple of hours. Her main problem is learning to not include all the details.

I haven't started it yet, but just looking at the topic titles kind of implies microscope use - at least for the 3 cells lessons and the Microscopic organisms. I'm on the hunt on craigslist, there are lots of used options there.

You could just say you don't know the answer, and that's why people learn and study, to find out the answers to the things they don't know.

We have both an inkjet and a laser printer. The laser printer is cheaper by far, so only special projects are printed on the inkjet. Also, before I got the nook and ereaders, I would print 2 to a page, double sided for things to be read, and full size, double sided for worksheets. Now I use the ereader for teacher reading materials or color, and the nook for b/w stuff. I figured the nook was $79, ereader was $99, and toner is $50, plus the cost of printer and paper. So now I print out the MEP worksheets, but I keep the lessons and answers on the ereader. I'm trying to go paperless, so once I find the right software/device for filling out the worksheets, we might convert completely. My dad said he'd give me his HP tablet, so that's a candidate.

If you have the right software, you could strip the text right out of the pdf, but then you'd have to go in and format it again which is so time consuming. And there are ways to print a locked pdf. The security on those files are screwy. It would make more sense to me to lock content download and allow printing. No one would know if you just do it for yourself, but sending copies to other people(posting it!) would be a copyright no-no.

I do the text. I started my second grader at level 1 and do two lessons per day. It takes us all of 15 minutes, which includes the time I spend writing out the text for the copywork. Most of the time I just make up sentences, because once you take them out of context, it doesn't make much difference. Once you get to level two, the narrations take some time, but we take the narrations from our literature readings, so it's seamless. It doesn't really seem like a whole other subject. The level two samples are spread out to about once every 12 weeks.

I wouldn't even bother printing the completed work out again, unless you wanted to show it to someone. Usually if you want a portfolio a few pages would be sufficient anyway.

French and Spanish are similar enough that you will end up confusing them. They (and Romanian!) are Latin based languages, so if you learn Latin, there are enough cognates that you can understand things(but also enough to confuse, again!) Japanese uses Chinese characters, so if you learn Traditional Chinese characters, you will also have a lead on reading some Japanese. Verbally they are completely different. Chinese being a tonal language will also be the more challenging of the two Asian languages, although it's grammatically much simpler than Latin. No declensions or word genders to worry about memorizing. I would do Latin and Chinese together, they are so dissimilar that there really would be no confusion. Then you would have the basis for learning a lot more languages more easily.

You're making it too hard. Direct quote: Sam said "Today is too hot for me to work outside." Indirect: Sam said it was too hot for him to work outside. Note the tense change on the verb and the pronoun also changes.

Google is your friend. If you don't know the grammar, there are plenty of sites to look at for examples. I don't use the workbooks and a lot of times I'll just make up a sentence related to whatever topic I'm trying to use, but mainly from our literature. We'll read something, do a narration and then I write down something for copywork or dictation. She doesn't even think it's a separate lesson. We get through 2 lessons in about 15 minutes, only 5 of which is her writing stuff.

Yes, oral sex is not considered sex due to a certain president, so kids will do it and still claim that they are virgins. Frankly, a lot of the better off kids have the time and money to mess around more, so just because it's a good school doesn't mean much if you get the right set of kids in it. Many of the kids with wealthy parents have access to money and little parental supervision.

To me, middle school is when puberty really starts nowadays. Kids are emotionally unstable, and are taking it out on friends and family. The rebellion and sexual experimentation start. I'd rather let dd have shelter from all the craziness to be able to deal with her own transition without bad influences. Kids have generally settled down by the time high school starts, their personalities are more developed. My plan was always to hs through middle school.

I have one cheap($99) android ereader and one e-ink nook touch. For reading and battery life the nook wins hands down. It's light, no glare, can read it outside, battery lasts forever. I thought about rooting it, but I use the color ereader for whatever apps/videos/browsing I may need. And I can trust that my dd is reading and not playing games or browsing when I hand her the nook. She does seem to focus more on the books on the nook, where if she gets the android device, she jumps around the various apps a lot more. I've actually been reading more books now that I got a nook.

I have a Nook touch and a Cruz android ereader. I have downloaded books to the Nook for my dd to read, and I download teacher pdfs to the Cruz for my use. Although the Cruz has a color screen, and has a bunch of apps for the dd to use too. So we swap devices around a lot. The Nook is much lighter and the battery lasts so much longer. I think I've had the Nook on for a week solid of reading and it was only about at 60% battery. I ended up plugging it in to download stuff, which also charges it at the same time. The Cruz on the other had lasts about 4 hours. Pretty much dies on me everyday. And there's too much glare on the Cruz to take it outside, unlike the Nook. We could do readalouds outside at the beach with the Nook and it's easy to read.

I find it funny that Christians like calling on the name of the Egyptian sun god. There's so much paganism in the things they do. :tongue_smilie:

Accelerated probably wouldn't work for every child. There's a school here that has a dual high school-university credit so that by the time you graduate high school you also have enough credits to graduate the university or pretty close to it, so essentially college is free. But it has a pretty rigorous entry process, since they have to make sure you can succeed at a university level. I also think the NE US is skewed towards the higher priced schools, so it's no wonder people there are petrified. There are good schools all over, but they certainly don't cost as much as the NE does. Also there are certain fields that are pushing back on the young kids in college. Specifically in the medical fields, since we know one kid that's doing this program but wants to go into medicine. The medical school won't accept him since they feel he'll be too young and the general public won't want a 21 yo doctor working on them. Probably a certain liability too. This definitely has changed since I was in college, since I knew 2 17yos graduating from college going to med school. Probably if they went into research it would be fine.

It's too sunny here during the middle of the day, so we manage some schooling. We have a public pool we use that doesn't open until 10, so we go there until about noon, come back for lunch and some schoolwork. We leave the house about 3 ish for friends or the park.

I have the Handbook of Nature Studies by Anna Comstock in pdf, it's a thousand pages of studying plants, animals and some earth science. It seems there are two versions digitized, one saying for teachers and parents which I found on google books dated 1922. I don't remember where I found the first one which is dated 1911. Books like this makes my ereader worth it!