Real Science 4 Kids is great. It is very secular and very easy for mom.

4-5 frozen chicken breasts 1 bag frozen corn 1 can black beans rinsed 1 can dived stewed tomatoes 1 can red enchiladas sauce, pick your favorite, we use hot 1-2 cans chicken broth 1-2 cans dived green chilies Sat, pepper, garlic powder, cayenne pepper, and cumin to taste Dump in pot Cook on low 6-8 hours, high 4-6 hours When nearly done, remove chicken and dice or shred, replace and let cook 30 minutes Serve with cheese, sour cream, and chips You can add or take away anything you like and it still comes out great! This is my favorite. We got it from all-recipes originally, bit we make it different Everytime.

I used the Kindergarten book as our spine for school last year. For each topic we got a couple books from the library on that topic and sometimes on a related topic. For example, I felt like we should cover Jefferson in the presidents section, Qi we added books on him and John Adams to the presidents already in the book. We added a lot to the geography and loved it. I the.k the lit selections are amazing! This year we are using the first grade book as a supplement for most things, but we will read all .of the literature alound

Found it!!! It is the free letter of the week program that was listed above, it is the preparatory program! I was looking at the letter of the week program under the 2-7 section. I want to do the preparatory program first. DS is a smart child, but has no interest in "learning." I thought this looked like fun for her....especially week 9 when you are supposed to make cookies!!! That is her favorite thing to do. She comes out of the kitchen with 2 sticks of butter and says "let's make cookies!" :tongue_smilie:

I use the What Your.....Needs to Know Books from Core Knowledge. I use a lot of other stuff too.

Thanks! I like both of the other programs, they just don't have a few of the elements I liked from the other program! I am so frustrated, I should have saved the link in my bookmarks, but I did not :glare: I may just buy the $10 program and use that, it is a lot of printing and I don't have a printer at home. I have to use my studio printer.

The other day someone posted a link to a "letter of the week" curriculum. It was a free curriculum with the following: a letter, shape, and color of the week activities for gross motor and fine motor skill development for preschoolers the page had links to letter printouts I cannot find it and I forgot to save the link! I found two other "letter of the week" programs, but one is $10 (not bad) and the other is free, just not what the other one was! I was so excited and ready to print the first few lessons for the year, and now I can't find it!!! Please help me! Thanks!

We have curriculum, I have a plan for what needs to be done everyday (or at least by the week), it is all entered in EduTrack; but we don't do grammar for an hour a day, then math, then....and we don't start/stop at a certain time. We wake up, eat breakfast (or not) then do schoolwork. Somedays we watch a movie then do schoolwork, or play outside. We have had days where we did not do school until I got home from dance class (9 pm). We are very flexible. We even finished everything early last year (a month before I intended to stop for the summer!)

I had planned to paint the living room/school room for months. We put it back together tonight! When we bought the house the walls in this room were three different colors! Hmm... I can't post a picture....I will try tomorrow!

Only 9.

Any history book you get with have aome errors, or what some may think are errors. With pre-history, we really just don't know. Maybe people dis not bathe. If the did not live near water, that is highly possible. History is also full of opinions and interpretations. You must approach any history text that way. I think SOTW is great! It puts it in a full story that kids can enjoy. But, you cant just hand a history book to your child and say, "go, read this." Greek mythology is an important part of history. It has helped influence and shape a lot of modern arts and literature. If you know the story is based on legend or a myth, preface the story with a mini-history lesson about what a myth or legend is. It is a great teaching moment. I think kids as young as 6 can understand what fiction is. They understand that cartoons aren't real. My 3 year old gets that. You just have to find what works for your family. My kids love story time...this is perfect for us. We have the Kingfisher Encyclopedia and will be reading the pages referenced in each section of SOTW as well as other books and some documentaries from Netflix.

I am slowly turning our dining room into a school room. It has my desk, Aidan's desk, the dining room table that we will use for puzzles, our keyboard for piano practice and my elliptical :)

Singapore has placement test on their website. I gave them to my son to determine placement. He is in first grade and we will be doing 2A and 2B this year. I think we will go faster than suggested because the first part of 2A looks really easy, but I also got the IP, and CWP books.

I had 2 deliveries this week so far! Now I'm just waiting on 3 packages not from Amazon.

The Story of US by Joy Hakim is written in story form. It is 11 books. It is the closest I have found to Story of the World, for US history.

I have Real Science 4 Kids PreLevel 1 Chemistry and Biology. My son wanted to start science the day they arrived because of the fun books! I LOVE the illustrations and the explanations. It is enough good information for kids that age, they will learn more than what I ever learned in elementary science, but it is fun. We are doing Biology for the whole year. We will do two days a week: read one section a day, after last section (not the summary) do lab, next day, do summary, review and take the quiz available online and/or do a lapbook page for the chapter. You can do 2 subjects in a year, but I wanted to be able to spend more time with it and supplement it with book from the library. With our schedule, I felt like trying to do one in a semester would be cramming it in too much. Plus right now they only have 3 pre-level subject...that gives us one a year.

I put cayenne pepper, green tobasco sauce, or jalepenos in almost everything!

I used to love my jeans. But recently I have started wearing skirts and casual (knit dresses) more. Other wise I wear my capris. I spend most of my time in work out type clothing that works for teaching dance. Plus, since having babies, I cannot find jeans that fit right!

We had Recital in May, Camp Rock The Musical the first week of June, I had a preschool dance camp the second week, Jane Eyre: A musical drama the third week, competition team auditions and summer dance classes started the fourth week, dance camp the first week of July, music and dance camp the second week, and we started two weeks of musical theatre camp yesterday (we still have 3 weeks of summer classes and a competition dance intensive in August)....and we start school August 1st!! I wanted to paint the inside of the house! After tonight I will have one room done! We finished school in April for this exact reason! And I started buying curriculum in March. I had most of our year planned in May so that I could be ready after the madness. I am SOOOO ready to start school and get in a "rut":)

I never iron, but I selected the option of when something needs it because I steam anything that is wrinkled. I LOVE my Conair steamer! It is so much easier than ironing! If I take clothes out of the dryer and hang or put away quickly, they don't need ironing.

I used a paper planner last year and just wrote down what we did, as we did it. DH wanted to ne able to give DS work to do while I was teaching at night, so I planes the whole years ahead this time. I bought EduTrack. And I love it! The repeating activity feature made it easy to enter everything quickly! I set to the class and only entered a day at a time for most things, but it was so fast (30 min per subject). I downloaded the suggested lesson plans for Singapore and Shirley English. They have rewritten plans that match what is suggested by several major curriculum companies, amd you can earn credit to purchase more by submitting your own plans! If we miss a day, move faster, or get confused and need to repeat an assigned or chapter, I just sort by chapter, highlight and hit the plus and minus signs to bump lessons. I can print out lessons by the week, day, or subject. I can enter grades (or not ) And it will track grade and print report cards, and tracks the high school work and makes an official transcript. You can print award certificates, diplomas, a periodic table, writing tablet paper for various ages, graph paper and much more that I have not played with. It also works for enter as you go and as long as you set up your course names, it will track grades or time for each course. I tried HST and did not like the interface. I love EduTrack!!

27,100 but I did not check words that I recognized from reading and understood, but could not think of a definition while taking the test. Time to start playing Balderdash some more!

I have a ton of Mortensen Math manipulative. All of their pieces have single units marked. The 10 rod has ten squares on top that show how many ones make 10. Do the Cuisinare rods have that? I would think that with out those markings it might be a little harder for little ones to differentiate the numbers, they would memorize the colors first. We love our manipulative. But I also see the value of learning to group by 5s and 10s. (Mortensen does teach addition by grouping 10s.)

I LOVE Disney. I grew up with friends who could watch nothing but Disney. So to me, it seems like the better choice. I would rather DD watch a Disney princess cartoon than iCarly or some of the other kids and tween programs with REAL people. The cartoons are fantasy, and we don't let it take over (except for the one week a year we do Princess Dance Camp! :)) DD and I really enjoy the music, too!

Like others have said, the leotards and tights are necessary for teachers to ensure that students are executing the dance steps correctly. Without this dress code, students could injure themselves. However, I am a very modest person and living where we do, we tend to have a lot of modest and conservative students. I do allow students to wear dance skirts or dance shorts if it makes them more comfortable. What would they wear? Anything else and it really would be quite immodest. Shorts and t-shirts are more likely to be revealing in a ballet class that tights and a leotard. In a kick, everyday clothes would be more likely to reveal underwear. While stretching, a t-shirt will more likely lift up and reveal the stomach. Jeans or other stiff pants are more likely to rip while leaping (I know from experience :scared:!) Some dance costumes are NOT modest, but most everyday dancewear, is actually the best clothing for the activity.