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unity

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Everything posted by unity

  1. You're only a day past the length of your other 2 PP cycles? I would not worry yet!
  2. I know you say you've used this at a higher grade, but why not use level 3 for your son? It's cheap, grab-and-go, and seems to be more or less what you're looking for.
  3. I use it on and off when I need a review page. I like that I can subscribe for such a short time and not pay a lot.
  4. I've got one in GDI, one in RFH, and one in HWT. I did allow them to choose because as someone else said, there are so few subjects they can have a say in, and it is after all their handwriting. I don't really care what style they use, as long as it's neat. I choose when they are really little, but at a certain point (around cursive, I'd say), I will let them choose.
  5. I've moved across country a few times and done it both ways, but I have to say the buying worked to our advantage. When we moved to San Jose, CA, we couldn't have afforded to buy, but renting worked out well because we did move 6 months later. Also, renting worked out well when we moved to AL because we were living on base which turned out to be a good thing for us at the time. BUT both times we moved to NH (different parts of the state) we just bought a house--once sight unseen (but my mother scoped it out for us). The first time I got a good real estate agent who helped find what we needed. We made money on that house, even though we sold it mid-market crash. Even though I did not feel, when we were living there, that it was the most perfect house imaginable, it was OK, had most of what I wanted, and, did I mention we made money? ;) The second time we moved back to NH it was to a town I'd never been to before, but thanks to the Internet I learned a LOT and we took our time scoping out online listings. I Googled how far the YMCA (only plausible swim team in the area) was, researched churches, gymnastics places, everything. I viewed topological maps of lots (to avoid the drainage issues common in NH), scoured floor plans, and studied pictures of the houses like a detective. Now, we've been in this house we bought sight unseen for about 2 years. It works extremely well for our needs. Yes, sometimes I regret that I didn't move to this or that location, but then I remember the tradeoffs that a move like that would make. Because there are always tradeoffs. We thought very hard, researched very carefully, and bought a house that suited our needs, and it does. In 2 years I have never seen a house that was "better" across the board than our house, taking into all factors like price, privacy, and other things important to me. Time will tell, but I am pretty confident we will make money eventually on this house, too. So if I had to do it again, I would definitely buy and not rent. Especially in a market like this one.
  6. for my kitchen/foyer/hallway area and it has been a disaster. It cracks so easily. If I drop a heavy plate, the plate AND the tile will both break. There are so many broken tiles on my 2-year old floor that the whole thing would need to be redone to look right. It cleans up fine but it's hard to make a broken tile look good, kwim? I remember looking at numbers of brittleness but I don't think I accurately predicted how hard a family with 5 kids would be on a tile kitchen floor. If I had it to do again I might choose either hardwood or make sure I got a tile with the highest hardness number possible. And no, it's not that it was installed incorrectly. The subfloor or whatever was above standard. Just saying that expensive does not always mean better for a family. Look at those numbers!
  7. No one has mentioned noeoscience.org. There's also msnucleus.org (which is a free K-6 curriculum). I also have tried Bite Size Physics, available from Lulu press.
  8. I read it to my 2nd grader last year and a few of the stories were too mature for her. None of it seemed particularly babyish. I think a 6th grader would do fine with it.
  9. And I bought 2 copies of the hardcover, when we already had other editions, just so that the page numbers would line up. I'm VERY irritated. That was $50 spent for nothing. :-(
  10. According to Bruno Bettelheim that fairy-tale violence serves a purpose for little kids. Obviously, some kids/families don't want it but I totally agree that it's unfair to imply it should be withheld from kids under 17 (like an R rating indicates).
  11. I used Calvert's program with the first 2, 100 Easy Lessons with the next, and Hooked on Phonics with ds4. Calvert was fun but not systematic, 100 Easy Lessons was systematic but not fun, and Hooked on Phonics was so easy and systematic that it didn't need to be fun (although my son thought it was). Of the 3 I've used I prefer HOP. I also use computer programs like Reader Rabbit and Click-n-kids.
  12. We lived at Ft Rucker near Enterprise, AL for about 20 months. Beautiful lake there open to the public, and 2 hrs to the ocean. Good community in nearby Enterprise. Lots of churches, lovely park in town. Friendly people everywhere. Way more affordable real estate than I was used to in NH. Dothan is much bigger and might offer more opportunities, although we found most of what we needed right in Enterprise. The whole area was very nice.
  13. I think you may be right that CAW might be a lot for a 3rd grader. The good news is that there is no way that WP has even looked at your order much less shipped it so I'm sure you can cancel and change it. Depending on the interests of your child, I think you could have a happy year doing American Story 1, Animal Worlds, or Hideaways in History. It's ok---even good---if your child is on the upper end of the suggested age-ranges of the programs. I have personal experience only with Animal Worlds and Quest for the Middle Ages, but in both there is plenty of work to do and it would be tough going at the youngest of the age range. That's why, for example, I think HIH would work fine for 3rd grade. Check out the resources used (MLK's Microphone, for example)...they are good for 3rd grade, imo, but not so good for Kindergarten. Since this is your first year homeschooling, I would suggest you not overload with stuff to do. Give yourselves plenty of time to explore and do child-led learning while still hitting the basics. You might also ask at the WP forum.
  14. If my kids ever tell me they are bored they get a cleaning assignment that takes about a half hour. That is non-negotiable, even if they then claim they were "kidding" or not really bored. I almost never have to hear that particular whine. :001_smile:
  15. I have the one with 3 inserts, too. It is awesome. My last one broke, too, and when I had to get a new one I got the 3 inserts. For our family of 7 I sometimes use the largest, and sometimes the smallest, depending on what we're making. Plus I just put whichever ceramic insert I use in the dishwasher to clean, and it looks good enough to use as a serving dish.
  16. Tapestry of Grace has younger kids reading about Corrie Ten Boom while high schoolers read The Hiding Place. For Upper Grammar (about 4th-6th) they use Corrie Ten Boom: Keeper of the Angels' Den, and for the youngest kids they use Correi Ten Boom: Shining in the Darkness. For a family read-aloud, maybe the first book would fit the bill as gentler than The Hiding Place but giving you some real substance.
  17. Based on the samples of the textbook, I bought a level a few years up from my daughter. The textbook (old level 4) looked so basic and easy, I thought she'd be fine, especially when I read that in Singapore kids don't start studying science until 3rd grade. What a disaster! She seemed to understand the text just fine but the workbook and some of the lab questions required thinking skills that she hadn't yet acquired and she was immensely frustrated. I agree that this is true to Singapore style. We had the same issue with NEM--they presented how to do a certain kind of problem, and then it was like, ok, if you can do that, then you can do this really heinous 15-step problem of the same ilk. Anyway, I think Singapore science is good, but I would caution against choosing a level based on the look of the textbook.
  18. :bigear: I actually came here looking for the exact same information! Anyone? There's a pretty scathing review of the first edition on Amazon; I was wondering if the second edition fixed any of those perceived problems...
  19. From what you've said, it sounds like WP is a better fit for you than SL. I can't speak to Oak Meadow. If you're planning to start school soon you had better get your WP order in ASAP as it can take a while to get all the components.
  20. :iagree: I made the HUGE mistake of buying all my books with the year plans (I wanted a big "box day"). If I had waited until I had the year-plan in hand I could have seen that I did not need all those books. One textbook can replace many other books, and in our family at those levels, we could easily have skipped "history in-depth" and just stuck to Core. And it really is true that you can substitute what you have or what your library has for the lower levels.
  21. My gym charges $60 for a 1 hr class once per week. But generally, the more time you spend in the gym, the better deal you get per hour.
  22. I say offer the harder ones and help him through them if he enjoys them. I went through the exact same thing you're going through and it drove me nuts. Sometimes the child can decode the CVC word but have no idea what it means...like may not know what a "jig," a "fib," or a "pal" is. I've always had to teach those words to my new readers, since they are not words we normally use around here in conversation. But sometimes it gets tiresome and I just know they could more easily figure out the word "dance" than figure out yet another word like "jig."
  23. ROFL! I have changed 4 lightbulbs this week for the same reason. And one of my hard-wired smoke detectors was blipping for 3 weeks for a low battery before a firefighter friend came over for another reason and insisted on doing it immediately. But in my defense, that darn detector was too high for me to reach even with my tallest ladder. Sometimes it's the little things I miss--like how tall he is!
  24. The kids make up their own activity to work with the words they missed, though, so it's kind of like using the cards. There are ideas in the book, and if they are having an uncreative day I look on that page for inspiration.
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