I agree 100% with Lori D--that kit seems pricey to me. You can get a lot of rock kits for $119. Other cool rock things (with a much smaller price tag)!: for $25 at amazon: ROCK ON! Geology Game & Gem Collection http://www.amazon.com/ROCK-Geology-Game-Rock-Collection/dp/B007R6E8SK/ It contains 18 rocks (cool colorful rocks), cards with a picture and description of each rock, a bunch of small polished stones, and a "rock bingo" game (bingo cards with pictures of rocks) and a case to store the whole thing in. Ellen Mchenry has some free earth science stuff- including a cut-and=assemble mineral crystal shapes from paper. http://www.ellenjmchenry.com/ for $49 at Home Science Tools; The Washington School Rock Collection http://www.hometrainingtools.com/washington-school-rock-collection/p/RM-WASCOLL/ is nice because the rocks are bigger than the rocks in this this 75 rock collection http://www.hometrainingtools.com/rocks-minerals-premium-set-75-specimens/p/RM-ROCK75/ (I like the 75 rock collection also, the rocks are just smaller) A nice thing you can get to go along with the Washington School Rock collection is the 5.95 Washington Student Rock Pack http://www.hometrainingtools.com/washington-student-rock-pack/p/RM-WASPACK/ which is 40 very small unlabeled, unidentified rocks that you can use to practice identifying the rocks you are studying in the Washington School Rock collection.

Did anyone try to get them to stop using the worksheets-- to stop requiring reading from student? Did anyone ask them to try to be more 'immersion' style? thanks for any further info!

Are you well stocked or bare shelves? Neither. Human.

Books that you can't put down After that first trip to the emergency room to get the book surgically removed, I started to wear gloves while reading.

So sad. Praying for all.

Praying :grouphug: :grouphug:

There are tons of videos on youtube to get ideas for practices/drills. Practice hitting off a tee--even advanced players still practice off a Tee (wish I'd figure that out sooner) Get a bucket of balls so he can hit a bunch of balls off the tee in a row and then he can go collect them all at once. Easy practice (for a non-baseball playing adult to do) is to roll "ground balls" to him so he can learn how to field these. Start easy-- roll them straight to him. Then get the rolls faster/harder and not straight to him. If you don't know how to catch and throw, learn with him! I'm learning softball with my athletic daughter so she can have someone to play catch with. (Actually she is way ahead of me ;-) have fun!

.... Unsocialized [homeschoolers] .......

Unread

I need to start using that red pen. I'm one of those people who always have too much food. Now I have too much curriculum, er, the right amount of curriculum for me to look at to educate myself-- but too much curriculum to use it all with the kids. Really helpful thread. Love 8FillTheHeart's focus on goals. I have a goal of stretching/challenging/developing DS's (3rd grade) mind. I recently read an email from Sal Khan with the following : "Researchers have known for some time that the brain is like a muscle; that the more you use it, the more it grows. They've found that neural connections form and deepen most when we make mitakes doing difficult tasks rather than repeatedly having success with easy ones. What this means is that or intelligence is not fixed, and the best way that we can grow our intelligence is to embrace tasks where we might struggle and fail." So I am deliberately adding in the study of Latin for him (plus I serendipitously scored a nice deal on Prima Latin DVDS) on top of our study of Spanish. I am going to try to remember that my goal for Spanish is to REALLY be able to understand spoken Spanish and speak it. (And some day several years into the future we will learn to read/write Spanish). But my goal for Latin (for ds) is to challenge him. I don't really care if he learns Latin--I just want to challenge him and give his brain a workout. (Well maybe I care in the sense that it might be fun to brag about my son studying Latin and Spanish :coolgleamA:--naughty me :glare:, now that I've 'fessed up, I'll have to watch out for my bad motives....) So if Latin creates a melt-down (a little too much challenge/failure) that can't be over-come by celebrating his "brain growth" with him, I'll back off. Or if it interfers with something else, I'll back off. Or if it costs too much in terms of time... I'll back off. Or if its too easy, I'll add something else in (Greek she said with an evil laugh, or maybe a few harder math problems .....) On the other hand, with Spanish, there is no backing off, just deeper and different.... like maybe at some point all our entertainment videos might only be played in Spanish?) I also believe in providing a rich environment and planting seeds and then letting go-- just watering and weeding. Yesterday my 2 third graders (ds and dd) played with the advanced snapcircuits for a looong time. My son just reads tons. Junk books _and_ other 'good' books I have lying around. The other day I found him out in the car, sitting on a cooler in the car, reading a book of poetry--he just couldn't wait to bring the library books in the house -- he had to sit on a cooler, squashed against the roof of the car in the heat and read the poems. My dd has taken up studying birds, so we bought bird feeders and bird food (kind of silly as we live on a farm....) but it creates a rich environment for her to study birds. At the same time, though, heeding the warnings from several posters above about 'less is more' being an excuse for doing nothing, sometimes I really have to insist on certain subjects/work. My daughter would never read (other than studying reference books about nature--and I'm not sure she's actually reading them--maybe just studying the pictures) if I didn't insist on us reading together everyday. And neither would just off and go do some math. (Though dd is starting to independently do old math workbooks I have lying around-- she paints the answers in-- she loves workbooks and checkboxes--different personality than ds) ... right now, for me, less is more might _really_ mean, "less time on WTM board" :lol: - I've gone berserk reading things here the last few days. ... and some people are probably thinking... less words typed, PLEASE!!!!

If you've solved the Legos everywhere problem... How about tackling cancer or world hunger next?

Have any flea advice? flee while the house is being fumigated

Dads at playdate is a lot better than kids at dad-and-mom-dates

"Your opinion--babies in checkout lanes" I'm shocked the store has them shelved there right with the candy and magazines.

I don't think paying off a mortgage will hurt your credit rating. If you need to have more items on your report, get another credit card and use it and pay it completely off monthly. Also, IMHO, at some point it is better to actually be financial sound rather than to "look" a certain way on your credit report. If you belong to a credit union, someone there might be able to explain the factors that go into creating/keeping a good credit rating. I'm pretty sure that having credit cards improves your credit rating -- but I would never ever ever ever pay interest on a credit card (and that means paying it off every month). (Did I mention never ever pay interest on a credit card ? :laugh:) Is downsizing to another house, but staying in your area a possibility, so you only make one change? (or is that not really enough?) My approach is that if I can't increase my income, to try to reduce my expenses. Wealth is spending less than you make. When my income changed, I wrote down all our expenses and then starting cutting -- even the stuff I thought I needed (like a cell phone). I was ruthless-- I decided to pay the cell phone company the charge for ending the contract early. At first I resisted that as I was "losing money", but then I started to see it as just a cost to help save money. I have one of those pay as you go emergency cells now (which I hardly ever use). Now I can't believe how hooked I was on a cell phone. This is just an example, and if it is not helpful to you, please ignore it-- you seem to have a lot on your plate! I'm sorry you are in this fix. You don't have to solve it all at once. Sometimes when I am overwhelmed I pick just one small thing to do that is clearly right and then do that. And it might turn out that the 'clearly right' thing to do isn't about jobs or money. I agree with the folks who recommend writing down the various options and putting money figures (plus and minus on them). I also would guestimate certainty-- in other words, spending xxxx in hopes of gaining yyyyy might be certain (like spend 100 to cancel a cell phone but not have to pay 500 for the rest of the year), or uncertain (spending xxxxx for education in hopes of gaining yyyyy in salary could be very uncertain). Try to keep this task becoming overwhelming -- and when you finish it you still don't have to do something immediately. It sounds like by thinking about your tax expenses, etc you are already doing some of this-- so that is great. Jotting down the options on paper can free your mind to think about the next idea/expense/option. As far as schooling--sometimes once you have a job the job will pay for some schooling. I hope it goes well for you and your family. And pat yourself on the back that you are facing these issues squarely and thinking about them. That is a huge plus right there.