We're in the middle of Swallows and Amazons as an audio book. We like it, but I am glad that no one has seen me cracking a smile over Titty's name. :lol:

Ok -- that wasn't exactly what I meant -- I didn't mean that they don't care how many and you could just show up with 10 or 100...I mea you pay for X number, and then when you get there, no one has checked to see if we actually LESS than that number. Does that makes sense? It is more like, you buy 25 tickets to the zoo/play/museum, and then everyone who has a ticket comes in an shows their ticket, but no one looked to see if there were actually 10 empty seats at the show or if the group only had 20 people at the zoo instead of 25. I am just saying that places we go for field trips seemed to be more concerned about either matching tickets to people on the day of the event (not knowing how many tickets your group bought to start with) OR places that just ask the group organizer, "Is everyone coming who is going to be here today?" Then if you say "yes", they start the tour without counting first. I guess in the tour situations I have never had more than a maybe 10-15% cancel/no show rate, so maybe they would care if most of the group didn't show up...I don't really know.

That is a great idea! I haven't been involved in very many free field trips (almost everything around here is a fee!), but if I ever am I might consider implementing or suggesting this. I am surprised at the number of comments that groups were suddenly "out" the group rate or the ability to do something at all if not enough people showed up on the right day, as well as the idea that places are bringing in volunteers. Almost every place around here that we have done a field trip really seriously doesn't care how many people come if they are paid for. So even if 20 people flake out and five people come, as long as I have 25 prepaid, it is fine. They just want your admission $$. I've never actually had that happen, but that is just the impression I have gotten. They never "count" how many people show up that particular day. And it seems like every place I can think of we've been except maybe one is paying the staff to be there (hence the $$ -- they are using it to pay the staff). But maybe part of that is we are in a large metro area, and we have many, many museums and sites that all seem to have paid staff. Or maybe these are very different kinds of field trips? (We mostly do zoos, nature centers, museums, historical sites, plays/concerts...stuff like that). Or maybe I am just not seeing some of these issues because I really have not experienced a great deal of flakiness -- not nearly as much as some of you have.

A number of the copywork passages are multiple sentences/whole paragraphs long - BUT you really don't have to do all the copywork to get a lot of benefits of the program. My DD is not a very fast writer, and at her age I am less convinced of the benefit of taking her valuable school time to copy a whole paragraph. So I just have her mark the paragraphs for parts of speech in the student book, and skip the copywork all together.

They don't run a lot of sales on their site. I think the only thing I remember consistently seeing is a cyber Monday sort of sale each year (or around that time, anyway). If you join the right start yahoo group (sorry, I don't think I can easily link to it from my tablet), people post used Right Start items for sale pretty frequently.

I think accepting via paypal (or other online payment service) or checks via snail mail is a great way to go. I have done that a number of times with a field trip organizer who is a stranger or friend-of-a-friend, and it's no big deal...especially online payments (since there is the easy possibility of a refund if the person somehow turned out to be dishonest). But I can also see not wanting to bother and just going places yourself without making it a big field trip. It's a lot simpler to just go to a museum yourself whenever the timing works for your family and using an mp3 tour than it is to try and organize something for a couple dozen people.

:-( Almost every field trip situation I've been in required pre-payment, so if you don't show up it is your financial loss (unless you find someone to take your spot of course). I've organized a handful of field trips as well, and I find that most places don't in actuality care how many people are physically present, as long as the minimum number is paid for (i.e. they would be happy to schedule one family if you are willing to pay the whole $xyz minimum yourself!). On the other hand, this week I was on the other end things with someone ORGANIZING a field trip sort of flaking out. The organizer cancelled for somewhat compelling (but not exactly "emergency") personal reasons. If anyone else attending would have cancelled under the same non-emergency reason they would have just been out the $$...but instead of asking if anyone else could take her role as the organizer/liaison and being fair and square about taking the financial hit herself, she just cancelled the whole thing. We get our money back, but my kids had been looking forward to the particular class/tour for over a month. :-( My kids want to do it so badly that I will try and set up a class again and hope I can get enough people for a new date, I guess.

We bought ours on amazon -- not sure if that helps you in your situation (maybe their shipping is just as bad to your location?). The first book I had my DD do the notebook pages and it was ok. She wasn't very into it. The teacher's guide wasn't incredibly helpful for us. I have had my DD read the 2nd and now the 3rd books independently, without any notebooking. She likes the stories and and I just consider it a science "extra" -- which for the size of the book, it was well worth $16, with no extra shipping charge via amazon prime.

That's been our experience as well - lots of lability waivers, for most activities. A lot of them seem centered on the facilities the group meets in (with groups that rent a space in a church, for example)...I have always assumed it was for insurance reasons as well...so even if my kid falls of the stage and breaks a leg during our speech club meeting, I can't hold the facility liable (theoretically).

OP, if you don't have All Through the Ages, I would also suggest giving it a look, but I will say I was a bit disappointed in its coverage of Ancient History (I found it to be much more useful for American History -- more selections). Other than the book selections MOH 1 itself gives in the appendix, I have had to look through a variety of sources to find books for this year. It is definitely more work as I have to figure out for myself, to some extent, what goes with what and which of my kids should read/listen to which books. In order to make things a bit easier for me in terms of our reading beyond MOH, I am doing a "culture/civilization of the month" which is not perfectly lined up with MOH (since MOH jumps around so much), but will in time give us coverage of all the major civilizations in MOH 1. So, I this first month was supposed to be the earliest civilizations (though I failed to find very many books we were very excited about), October will be Egypt, November will be Ancient China, etc. A couple links here on the boards I found helpful were: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/315098-ancient-reading-list-chapter-books-for-5th-and-7th-grade/ http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/475511-fun-historical-fiction-for-ancients/ I also compiled a few book lists on this Pinterest board: http://www.pinterest.com/kirstenjoyhill/homeschool-history-geography/ Some of the links on that board are more specific to Mystery of History. Hope that helps a bit, even if it is not exactly what you are looking for!

I am just sticking with the modified 4 year rotation that I like, and bringing each kid in as they are ready/interested. I started with Ancients 4 years ago when DD was a 1st grader, and my boys remember nothing from that (and my daughter barely remembers it from the first time around!). When we did Medieval/Early Rennasisance when DD was in 2nd grade, oldest DS enjoyed a few related picture books, but not much else. We did US History for DD's 3rd/4th grade years, and the oldest DS listened in to a bit more the first year and quite a bit last year. Now as we come back around to ancients, DD can go more in depth with topics she is interested in while the two older DSs are learning a lot from listening to MOH and a few picture books. When we do US history again in a couple years, the DSs that are currently 5 and 7 will be really ready to dive in and I don't think it will fill like a repeat at all, even to the current 7 year old. By the time we come back around to ancients again, youngest DS will be a 1st grader! Oldest will be in high school and maybe doing something different. I figure at least during elementary school ages, everyone can listen to the same spine text, and we can differentiate in our projects/additional reading.

Thanks...It was a few years ago, I guess I forgot the title! I had that title stuck in my head from reading it here or elsewhere I guess!

I've been doing c-rod activities with DS5 from the Education Unboxed site, as well as some games/activities from RightStart A so far for math this year. He really likes the c-rods a lot, and is not a fan at all of using the RightStart abacus. I also already have Singapore Essential K book B...which we started last spring after finishing Essential A, but he wasn't ready to continue very far into B. He could easily do a lot of that now (though we haven't actually pulled it out yet this fall)..not sure he would love it though. Given his love of C-Rods, should I consider Miquon? Or just continue with the Education Unboxed videos and and maybe a hodge-podge of other things for a while? I am not super familiar with Miquon, and I don't really know what you are "getting" with Miquon as a curriculum as opposed to just doing C-Rod activities I can learn about thru the videos. I am not sure what my long term plan is for this kid math-wise. If you would have asked me last spring i would have said that DS5 showed no signs of being a mathy/accelerated kid like DS7 is...but now I am not so sure! DS5 is starting to make lots of leaps of math understanding even in areas that we haven't directly studied. I had kind of thought DS5 would do at least RightStart A-D like his siblings...but unless he decides he likes that RS Abacus, I am not sure that path makes sense. Thoughts?

I owned the HOD preschool program (Little Hands to Heaven) briefly and used it for a couple months when my older DS was about 4.5. The "academic" content is pretty light -- just letter recognition/basic sounds, basic numbers/counting, colors, etc. They are fine preschool skills but my DS had already mastered those skills at the time we started the program. The Bible stories, crafts, finger plays, etc were kind of fun..but not fun enough to keep up coming back to the program day after day when he already knew his letter sounds, etc. So, it might depend on your goals -- if you are looking for crafts, finger plays, Bible readings, simple science explorations, etc (and still add in your own reading/math content if you want to continue to pursue that), it might work. If you are looking for a list of books to facilitate your reading time together, SL might be a better choice. Or if neither of those things meet your goals, then you might have to look at something else.

Maybe you've already tried this, but because I personally don't like too much of certain kinds of tension (like, I would never want to be caught off guard by a book or movie ending really sadly or a main character dying), I somewhat often read a full description on Wikipedia (or imdb in the case of movies). I enjoy the book/movie/tv show so much more after I know what kind of ending it has. I wonder, OP, if you gave your son an account of the tension/action in the book ahead of time, if he would have a better time enjoying the book after that. We've enjoyed a lot of the books mentioned already, so I am not sure I can think of any more lower-tension books to add! I guess I will second the suggestion of the Betsy Tacy books. They are very sweet and the small amount of "mischief" they get into is pretty low tension.

Nice...I like the thread title too! This was actually our first week...due to DH's work schedule the only time we could take a "summer" getaway as a family this year was the first week in September, so rather than start and then stop again, we waited to start until after our trip. Roses: DD actually asked for help with Math when she was struggling, and let me explain problems to her!!! Sounds like a small thing, but last year she decided she was done listening to me talk about math and no matter what I said to her about a math concept, she would cry and tell me that what I was saying didn't make sense. DH had to explain things to her or she had to just muddle through and figure it out. Not really a great situation. Total turn around this year. It also looks like we did just enough math over the summer for her to not forget much over the summer. Overall DD seems more agreeable during school time so far this year. We love Treasured Conversations Kindergarten work with DS5 is super fun and he is an eager learner. First co-op went pretty well, and I think I am pleased with how things are going to go with the class I am teaching We really enjoyed the Institute for Cultural Communicators conference last night. We are excited to join an ICC chapter this year. Thorns: DS2.5 (really, almost three) is causing major issues during school time. Last year he was pretty content just to play during school time. Over the summer he played with both his brothers constantly, and now DS2.5 seems really upset that, for much of the morning, no one is available to play. I am trying just a bit to rotate the kids playing with him...but their attention span to individually play directly "with him" (as opposed to just playing and he follows along) is pretty short. I've been getting out some special toys and art supplies for him and allowing some screen time...but it feels like it is taking a lot of energy to keep him entertained. When he is not happy, he is actively making it difficult for us to work (trying to close the books or iPad, screaming at us, etc). His brothers at this age either played alone or just wanted to join us (listen on the couch, sit at the table and color, etc)...but DS2.5 has little interest in this at the moment. Still trying to figure out how to best work this out. DS7 is kind of a "complainer"/glass-half-empty type of person by nature. If he can't remember if he likes something or has any idea that he might not enjoy something he has a lot of negative things to say about it. As we get back to school work, he has a lot of negative things to say about everything. It improved a bit as the week went on and realized that everything about school was not as bad as he thought it might be. ;-) Hoping that by next week we'll have a bit less negativity. Not sure I am going to love Science in the Ancient World as much as I thought I might. Jury is still out on that though. We did the first three lessons, so not enough to really give it a fair judgment yet.

Getting out of the house for a walk or a bike ride is a big help here for DD. Too bad here in MN it is too cold or snowy to bike most of the school year, since DD really gets much more relaxation out of a short bike ride than out of a walk. We also do quiet time alone (usually this means everyone in the house needs to be quiet or noisy boys need to go outside). Noise always makes DD's stress level worse, so we try and reduce noise when the stress in increasing.

We really these songs for doing states and capitals: http://amzn.com/B002BIKI5Q Or maybe I should say, my DD found them really helpful to learn the capitals (she had learned the locations of all the states in 3rd grade for our co-op geography challenge, and had to add in the capitals in 4th). I kept getting them stuck in my head! We only bought the capitals songs. We found the book "Little Man on the Map" to be great for learning the locations of the states, but then the Little Man on the Map capitals book was pretty useless...it was fun for DD to read, but she had no retention for it, which is why we bought these songs.

I voted other since I couldn't pick more than one option - usually it's a "lunch" dish at our house - and then often made sorta-homemade with velveta or sometimes a boxed mix. Sometimes I made a totally from scratch version as a main dish, and once in a while it might be a dinner side (probably least often this way).

My DD started reading CVC words between about age 5 - 5.5. My two boys that have learned so far were both between 4.5 and 5.

From what I learned by reading these boards, there really is a lot of local variation so you'll definitely need to talk to someone involved in your group locally to find out how your group works. It seems like it many areas there are "project groups" that meet to work on a specific type of project outside of the large group business meetings, but our club had nothing like that. Our club this past year offered the monthly business meeting, some social events, and that was about it (besides a few county-wide events, which we unfortunately weren't able to participate in because they were quite a long drive for us, as it was actually not a club in our "home county"). We actually weren't even able to participate in the county fair when all was said and done, because the 4 hour window for dropping off projects and being judged conflicted with something we had committed to before we knew when the fair drop off day would be. I think the more experienced members probably knew it was always the first Saturday in August for fair judging, but as newbies, we had no idea and had made other plans that weren't easy to change. The kids were okay with it because they hadn't put a ton of time into their projects at the point when we found out. I guess the advice I would offer would be to find out about important dates like that well in advance if they can be known. We've decided not to do 4-h this coming year because our club meetings and other events were really quite a drive for us, and there aren't really any general purpose 4-h clubs that work for our schedule any closer (there are a lot of specialized Urban 4-h groups in our immediate area/county that either are only open to certain demographic groups or only do very specific projects and not general meetings). But it seems like 4-h has the potential to be a great activity if the specifics of your local club work for you!

Are you doing the workbook too for L and L? Maybe I am dismissing it too quickly.

I had been planning to add in a once-a-week Geography time as part of our "all together" family subjects -- which is kind of a "snuggle on the couch and read" sort of a time in our day. My kids love anything in the form of a story, so I was excited about the idea of the Legends and Leagues geography from Veritas press. I bought "Legends and Leagues South" and figured we would do that and one other of the books this year. I didn't read the fine print very closely, and didn't realize what a short book it would be! I skimmed the book, and compared to other "teaching in the form of a story" type books, it is pretty light on actual teaching content. I didn't buy the workbook since I wasn't really looking to add busywork or comprehension questions...but maybe all the actual teaching is in there. I am not thrilled about the idea of buying a $20 workbook to go along with my tiny $12 story, only to have to spend another $32 next semester for another L&L book/workbook. We'll do some of the map work in MOH this year to get a bit of the historical map work in, and DS7 will do Evan Moor Beginning Geography once a week to learn very basic map skills. DD has already learned her states and capitals, so I am more looking for something in the ilk of modern World Geography and geography terminology, without adding a lot of busy work or a full geography program (not something we have time for on top of ancients). Do I just suck it up and spend $20 on the workbook for Legends and Leagues and do it all together during read aloud time...or does anyone else have a better idea that fits what I'm looking for? Or should I just find a library book to read aloud each week on a geography theme and call it good?

We never experienced "the wall" either...I would say, don't psych yourself out! My DD is not a big fan of math in general and it is not her biggest strength, and she was just fine through some of those places where the double digit addition takes a conceptual leap as long as she was able to use the abacus, and eventually she got to a point where she decided for herself when she was ready to do it without. DS7 is naturally very good at math, and he flew through those "wall" sections, doing it as easily as anything else in Level B. Level B does start out quite easily and the pace picks up...but if your DD doesn't slow down in her understanding, don't slow the pace just because other kids needed a slower pace. I know DS7 is not typical when it comes to math, but he is not as accelerated as some kids I've read about here either. I have just always gone with his pace of understanding, and that has meant doubling up lessons some days or only doing one or two example problem instead of the many presented in the lesson if he "gets it" the first time. I can usually tell when he "gets" a concept, and there is no need to do problem after problem if the concept is understood (he doesn't need as much practice or review as a more typical kid like my DD does). We are supplementing with Beast Academy as well, because it presents things differently and gives DS7 more challenging problem solving opportunities than what RS offers.

Our family plays minecraft, and we limit it to local play (just computers within our house) or a private server of a trusted friend. If you are concerned about monsters/fighting, one thing to keep in mind is that besides the difference between creative and survival, there is also peaceful vs. "normal" (or other non-peaceful difficulty levels). You can play "peaceful" difficulty in either creative or survival. In non-peaceful creative mode, there are monsters, and you can kill them but they can't kill you. In peaceful creative, the monsters aren't there at all. In peaceful survival, there are also no monsters and your hunger bar never drops so you don't have to kill animals to eat (though you might still need to kill an animal to get another crafting ingredient, such as leather). Then non-peaceful difficulty levels in survival are where the monsters will try to kill you.