There are just so many things WRONG with his article, it's hard to know where to start. Here in California, a new law was passed in July that takes effect starting Jan 2013, where gays/lesbians/transgenders/sex change/cross dressing must be taught as a positive lifestyle, this is mandated curriculum from K-12 and there is NO parent opt-out. The public school system is opposed to Biblical principles, there is another agenda here other than education, it's a fight for the minds and hearts of the children. Yes, Christians are to be salt and light, but sacrificing my children to the world's agenda is NOT the way to do it.

I've read that one of the nice things about some CLE math is that there's built-in speed drills. We don't have that in our math program, and I'd love to have my kids practice speed drills to improve their recall of math facts (addition, subtration, multiplication). How do you do a speed drill? Dumb question, but it's been decades since I've had a speed drill in school and I'm not remembering the details. Do you have the kid sit with a sheet of 100 problems, say "Go!", and watch the clock for 1 minute? That doesn't seem right, they'd need more time, but how do you know how long to give them? Where can I get speed drill sheets? Thank you in advance!

Thought others might have the same question, so posting it here for Rosie of Education Unboxed. I love the whiteboards your girls use in the videos! They look perfect for putting down their rods and writing right on there next to the rods. I'd like to buy them for my 2 kids so that we can do math lessons the same way. What are the sizes of the whiteboards that you use? Are they magnetic? Also, did you buy another one for yourself? I saw some online at Office Depot and they're pricey so before buying, wanted to check to see if they're similar to the ones that you're using for your girls. I'd hate to spend the money and find that they're not the right ones! Thanks Rosie!

boo, it's gone!

May I also see these? Thank you so much! My email is HannahPTL@yahoo.com

Thanks for the reminder of what's really important!

I think Penny Gardner has some youtube videos showing her style of italics, which to me, looks close to calligraphy. My kids are learning italics cursive for their everyday writing with the Getty-Dubay workbooks and I think it looks fabulous, calligraphy the simple way is how I think of it.

Yeah, the handmotions were KEY for us in memorizing and retaining the timeline this year. For DS8, the weeks that he had to learn the cards without handmotions first, and then later added them in, were much harder to get down pat.

:iagree: I haven't done much planning this year either, which worked out okay, but it sure would've been better for the kids if I had looked ahead to what see supplies we'd need for history, science and even math manipulatives - instead of just getting to the activity and having to skip it. Hope to do better with that sort of short-term planning this year.

I own Singapore and had my kids try it on and off but my kids seem to learn best, most thorough and systematically, from Math Mammoth - very clear explanations of the concepts (better than I can explain it) are built right on the workpage with more than enough practice problems to solidify the concepts. Maria Miller, the creator, also has awesome videos on her website, to flesh out concepts more, which are extra reinforcement, but we've rarely needed it since the workpages have been very clear thus far (we're in MM2A for DD6 and MM4A for DS8).

Check out this thread on BB's: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/showthread.php?t=404751

Funny, I really didn't like the looks of the The Egyptology book at all. It seemed to have a lot of focus on their worship of different gods, which is probably accurate to describe the period, but still it was off-putting to me and I gladly put it back on the shelf at the library sale. To each person her own!

"The DK Eye Witness book: Weather" is our go-to book on all things weather. I bought this book after seeing it in the Sonlight catalog (I love almost all their science book recommendations). Here's the description of it from the Sonlight catalog: "Loaded with facts, dramatic photos and helpful graphics on all things weather. Learn about the formation of hurricanes and tornadoes, how we harness the weather as a power source, and more."

We did CC last year and my son memorized cold the entire history timeline with handmotions, the handmotions REALLY helped solidify the memorization. What I found most helpful were the VP cards (the old ones - we liked these really well but then again we had no other choices :D), the foundations guide, a CD put out from a CC mom that has all the cards put to familiar songs, and the youtube video showing the handmotions (some weeks our CC tutor forgot to teach the handmotions, or we forgot them, so we regularly checked youtube for these). This year we're doing CC at home. My son recites the timeline once a week or so to not forget it, and we're going to focus on the science this year. We're not planning on buying anything new.

We've had success with Marblex self-hardening clay from Rainbow Resource. Used it to do some fun sculpting projects with the kids (son made a pot by coiling a long skinny piece of clay). It hardened when we air dried it overnight, then the next day we painted it. It was $12.95 for a large heavy block and we only needed a tiny fraction. It seems to keep well too. The rest we wrapped back up and plan to reuse later.

Bumping this, because I'd also like to know how to implement CK for our homeschool. I love the books but unsure how to use them.

My kids and I have the same problem - our bookmarks keep falling out of our schoolbooks, losing our place and precious time is lost trying to find where we left off. This applies to our math binders, history books, reading books, Bible, you name it, we've lost our place. We've tried regular bookmarks (that fall out), dogearing the last page (mars the book pages), using a sticky post it (loses it's stickiness and falls out). They've started just leaving the books open flat and face down, which drives me crazy because it gets stepped on and breaks the binding. I'd love it if all our schoolbooks came with those ribbon strings sewn in at top of the book, but none do. What do you do to keep your place in your schoolbooks?

This is awesome, thank you for sharing! It is so hard to find italics printables and these pull from great sources.

O shoot, there was a sale? I had no idea, when was it? I'll have to keep my eyes open. Thank you for all the great information, ladies!

This is a topic near and dear to my heart, as I have been teaching my kids piano for over a year. I took piano lessons for about 6 years from elementary to jr high, so there's some foundation there but not much. We started out with Alfred's basic piano books, and the pros were that it's extremely easy to teach and the kids love to play the simple pieces, it was very gentle and fun for them, with colorful pages and kid-friendly instructions written right there on top of each page. HOWEVER, after about 6 months, I noticed the kids were very weak on reading notes on the staff, and had developed a strong preference for "C position" and were afraid of other positions. Theory is a bit weak too. I've heard better things about Alfred Premier. But at the time, we switched to Faber and Faber Piano adventures, and I got the whole shebang, theory books, lesson books, technique and artistry, performance, popular repertoire. Figured it's still cheaper than piano lessons. By the way, the absolute best place to buy piano books that I've found is http://www.sheetmusicplus.com - cheap, low shipping, great customer service. Anyway, Faber was definitely better instruction than Alfred Basic, but I just couldn't keep track of ALL THOSE BOOKS. It got to where it was a major job each day to find the book we wanted because we had like 20 piano books floating around. But if you're more organized than me, you could probably work out a good system to keeping the books in place and making sure you work on each level of each book. But for me, I just kept going to the performance book and teaching out of that, since I didn't want to deal with getting out the lesson, theory, artistry books. So THEN we switched to Suzuki piano school books, which I love because the pieces are just GORGEOUS to listen to, but is VERY hard on the kids to learn the difficult pieces. They work on learning a new piece for about 2-3 days for about an hour each day, and by around the 4th day, they can start to play the piece with both hands. I love the results (beautiful classical pieces in their repertoire), but it's meant more work for both me and the kids. And I still have to add more theory, from the Faber books! So depends on what you want. For me, I want the kids to be able to play classical pieces from Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, even if it's simplified a little, but to get those melodies memorized in their heads and in their fingers.

Thank you so much! Just a couple more quick questions - how many pages are there? I'll be manually photocopying the pages one by one, and wondering how big a job it will be.

Similar boat here! The extent of our Latin exposure was Classical Conversations last cycle, cycle 3. This summer we've started doing Minimus book 1 in our small co-op with 3 children, ages 6, 8 and 8. This is our main Latin program, and we cover 1 chapter per week, going through all the dialogue, memorizing vocabulary, verb conjugations, quizzes. It's been a lot of work for the kids, I feel like their brains are getting stretched, in a good way. The thing is, they love it! I'm learning along with them, and while a chapter a week feels a bit fast paced to me, the kids seem to be absorbing it better than I am.

Thank you for your reply, Katie! That's very helpful, I'll plan on ordering the worksheets then. Anyone know if the worksheets are legal to photocopy or not? And if it's ok to do so, is it a major pain (lots of pages) to photocopy? I have 2 kids and if photocopying the worksheets is allowed, was thinking of just ordering one set of worksheets for 2 kids to save our pennies. Thanks again in advance!

I have the AL Abacus from RightStart and the book "Activities for the AL Abacus", and noticed that the lessons in this book recommend that students complete specific corresponding pages in the worksheets book (sold separately for $25), which I do not have. Can anyone with experience with this program tell me if the worksheets are worth the expense, or can you get the full learning experience from doing the the exercises in the "Activities for AL Abacus" book? Thank you in advance!

:iagree::iagree::iagree: That's what happened here, the biggest hs group that coordinates park days and moms nights out kicked out all the hs'ers enrolled in the charter school. So then, the charter schooling hs'ers formed their own group (which I've joined) and it's very active and thriving, maybe even more so than the original group!