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chepyl

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Everything posted by chepyl

  1. I think it is creepy. I have a friend who is a photographer who has a whole storyline and blog going for hers. They just had a baby last month.... If it is your thing, it could be fun; I would not spend the money on it, or the time to do it. I don't need anymore mischief makers at my house.
  2. I do use dictation to practice spelling, but it is a part of our spelling program. We use Spelling Plus, it has an accompanying dictation book. The sentences only use words from the list they match (they are all numbered) or the previous lists. You can get just the dictation book, it has the lists in it as well. Then you can check the lists for the words you KNOW he can spell and use those sentences. Each list has 20 sentences. As they get more advanced they become paragraphs. It also slowly adds various writing conventions. The first sentences have periods and capital letters. Then they add questions, exclamations, and eventually commas, etc.
  3. We listen to each chapter at least 3 times. I try to play through it every day. We do a chapter or two a week. We fill out the test as a worksheet together. Sometimes we discuss. I have them color the student pages.
  4. You could also buy frozen juice concentrate. Sometimes they are quite a bit cheaper than a bottle of juice. But I think the biggest help in your budget will be to cut the precessed snacks in favor of fresh fruit, carrots, celery, etc. A kid will only go hungry for so long before they start to eat what you buy. We used to eat out a lot. My kids stopped asking after the first month of not eating out at all. They stopped asking for the fruit snacks and crackers eventually. They are all happy with a piece of fruit now. I just try to keep a variety in the fridge.
  5. Plant a small garden, make it a part of school. We don't grow everything we need, but we grow enough to have good veggies with dinner and some snacks. I would cut the processed snack foods. We buy Nutragrain bars and granola bars as snacks when we are running out and in a hurry. Our snacks are fruit, carrots, cherry tomatoes and cucumbers we pick from the garden, and popcorn. Fruit is tasty and so much cheaper than other snacks. I did buy some animal crackers, wheat thins and cheez-its this week. The kids divided them into snack bags with one serving in each baggie. $6 and I have snack bags for most of the month. I make my own granola when I want a sweet snack. You can make it cheap. We make homemade cookies a lot. At Christmas Walmart put most of the baking chips (nestle, ghiradelli, and hershey) on sale for $1 a bag! I spent about $30 on various flavors. It takes 10 minutes to mix up some batter. We bake a 12-16 and put the rest in the fridge. That keeps us in fresh cookies for 3-4 days. Cook whole chickens. We buy frozen breasts weekly, but I also do a whole chicken almost every week. We eat it for dinner, I make broth, and the leftovers are turned into some kind of soup the next day. Cheap lunches: grilled cheese, PBJ, and boxed mac and cheese. We spend and average of $120 a week on groceries (including toilet paper, paper towels, shampoo, etc; but excluding diapers). I have recently started doubling meals. I made a chicken enchilada casserole last week. I doubled it and put the extra in the freezer. We will eat it in a couple of weeks. I plan to do the same with lasagna this week. I have also made a bunch of pizza crusts and froze them - 5 minutes to top and 15 to bake - cheap and easy. *I do agree with a previous poster, you have to change your ideas about food and try some new things. Ground turkey and cabbage is something I never would have tried, but DH made it and it is delicious! You never know until you try. My kids must try every new meal we make. They usually like it :)
  6. My 8 year old does 2-3 exercises in SM 4 each day. With instruction and work time, we spend 20 minutes a day on math unless he is goofing off or the new concept is tricky. For harder concepts I still try to stay at 20 minutes a day, we just do a few practice problems a day until the concept is easy rather than drill for an extended period of time each day. When we hit long division we had to slow way down. We did 4 problems a day. 2 on the board together, 1 with me talking him through the steps and him writing, and 1 alone that I checked. It took a month, but we had no tears and no fighting. Once mastered he started flying through again and he loves it. If I try for longer math lessons, he starts to hate math.
  7. TWSS is for teachers "Teaching Writing with Structure and Style." Get that and watch it, learn how the program works. They actually don't suggest starting until 3rd grade. After you watch the TWSS, you can teach the program without anything else, just pull selections from your history, literature, and science studies. I went ahead with SWI-A for my son. He loves watching the teacher, he is much funnier than mom! My son hates to write! HATES! But he LOVES this program and will get up and start an assignment on his own in the morning :) His writing is great and we are only 6 weeks into the year. Get the TWSS this year and study it, then you can decide if you want to pull your own selections or go with the video lessons and student pages.
  8. Our pastor mentioned something similar in his message this week. He said that God WILL give you more than you can handle so that you will learn to lean on him. I have always heard the opposite, but I also had Philippians 4:13 drummed into my head throughout jr high and high school "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." And also Proverbs 3:5-6 "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight." Those two verses outweighed the popular saying in my mind and heart.
  9. Look at Spelling Plus. It is a great spelling program and $15 (approx) for 6 years worth or word lists. No work book. There is a dictation book that goes with it. A lot of the suggested spelling practice is spelling aloud, tracing the words with your finger, writing it in the air, we don't do it all, but it has been great for us! You can also just stop with the worksheets. Get a white board and let her do math problems there, do as much as you can orally. Then you can slowly start to add the writing portions back in.
  10. I totally understand!! There have been many times I wanted to say something on FB, but I have held myself back because I would sound mean...
  11. DH is about to plant some greens. He did spinach last fall and we picked it through the fall. Radishes grow fast. We are also going to put more potatoes in the ground. OSU has a lot of information on what to grow where and when in OK. I don't know exactly how to find it....I am NOT the gardener in our family :blush:
  12. I used the School Zone Big Math 1-2 book for Kindergarten with my son and I am now using it with my DD. It was cheap. We went slow. Sometimes we did 4 math problems a day, sometimes 2, somedays he would do pages. I move at my kids' pace. For DS that means that he is in 3rd doing 5th grade math. For DD that means being on grade level.
  13. Wait!! You can watch Who's Line online!! Is it on Hulu? I LOVE that show!
  14. I picked up a math workbook at Walmart, Big Math 1-2. It came with a computer game. It was cheap and we filled a year with it. I was comfortable with teaching addition and subtraction. I used things around the house for manipulatives (beans, crayons, pencils...) We finished the book in K and the next year my son tested into Singapore 2A. I just had to teach a number bond - but he knew the math facts, the number bond was easy.
  15. I play pretend with my kids. We have tea parties. My real life friends do to. My mom played with us. I am surprised to learn that others do not....where is this other thread, I am genuinely curious. My favorite time of year is when I teach princess camp where I get to play pretend with lots of little girls (including mine :) )
  16. I handle spelling the same way. We spend two weeks on every list. The first week he spells all words aloud on Monday. If he gets them all, we have a week of no spelling. If he struggles or misses some, we respell those daily. The second week is dictation that incorporates all those words and a workbook on homophones. We spend 5 minutes a day some weeks and 10 a day other weeks. His spelling is excellent. For vocabulary, he reads aloud almost daily from a McGuffey reader. If he gets to a word he does not know, we discuss and look it up. Most, he can get from context which is a more effective method of vocab than copying definitions. I did that for years too! I hated it!! I have even caught him using some of that vocabulary :) We also go through Latin derivatives each week as part of that lesson. I try to think of ways to combine subjects whenever possible (science or history and writing; spelling and handwriting; writing and typing; vocab and reading) subjects are not compartmentalized as much as they were for me in school.
  17. I don't count the peer interaction, crafty stuff, and extras as school. Because we homeschool my kids can play soccer, do competitive dance, theatre classes and performances, co-op, hang out with their friends and cousins and play together building a lifelong bond with each other rather than the kids they are placed in class with. So the 2 hours is strictly academics - that is where I think some of the issue is. Some count music practice, gymnastics, etc in the school day. If I did count all of the extra things, we would be schooling 8 hours a day.
  18. When we do a math or grammar lesson, I explain and then we discuss. We do the oral examples or work problems together. He gets to answer ALL of those questions, not maybe get to do 1 while classmates do the others. I know immediately if he does not get it, we correct it and do it again. MUCH more efficient than a classroom model where time is spent on a lesson, you don't know that kids don't get it until the written work is turned in and then you must either move on whether they get it or not, or go back and do the whole thing again. This efficiency allows us to move through our material at a faster pace with less lesson time. 1 on 1 tutoring is so much more efficient than a classroom setting that it should not be surprising that a motivated and focused child can cover: math, reading, spelling, writing, grammar, history, science, Latin (or another language), and Bible or another elective class in just a few hours as opposed to 6-7 hours in school. Is seat work all we do? No! We have dance, theatre, co-op (lots of socialization!), robotics club, pe, free time for art, lego play, swim time, museums, zoo, and lots more. Our time is more laid back. If we spend extra time flying through some math my son loves, we may skip grammar for a day. No problem, next week we will pick up an extra grammar lesson somewhere. We also always finish the text. We had some unfinished history last year, we did it over the summer. I have so many holes in my education from not finishing a text book! I never made it to WWII in any formal school setting (and I went to a highly ranked private college prep school). Our highly ranked, blue ribbon award winning school district uses Everyday Math. My 7 year old is more advanced in math than many 9th graders because he can do math in his head or on paper, he does not need a calculator for long division. Tell me that I am not out doing this "great" PS in a few hours a day.
  19. We did Prima Latina last year and are using Latina Christiana this year. I got the CDs, it is so easy to teach and he is retaining a lot!!
  20. We spent 30-45 minutes a day in K; my son could already read at a high level independently and he was well past learning basic addition facts. So that 30-45 minutes was spend memorizing poetry, and studying basic history/geography/science through him reading aloud to me (I always try to tackle two subjects in one activity if I can). First grade took an hour. That was grammar, handwriting, reading aloud, spelling, 1-2 Singapore exercises a day, science twice a week, history 3 days a week, and Bible. Second grade took 2 hours. We did everything above plus we added Latin. Third grade takes him about 3 hours. We have added a writing program. He is a quick and motivated worker. He wants to get his work done and be free to play. He is required to read everyday. My DD, is not so easy. She easily spends an hour on K. She tags along on memory work, science, and history. She is retaining a lot of that. She listens to the Latin lessons on CD. She does not yet read independently. She is working on learning basic addition facts. If we spend 30 minutes on reading, the most math I get is counting to 20 or 30. If we spend 20-30 minutes on math, I can get a few words read and copied. So her focused seat work time never exceeds 30 minutes. I work to my kids focus level. I have found what I was told by many local homeschool moms - 1 hour per year/grade level of school - to be very true. They retain more, when I stop. Are they learning? Yes. Are they getting a better education than if they were in PS? Undeniably! Do I need to spend 6 hours with my 5 year old? Not on "School" work. They both dance, do theatre, play a sport, watch their dad gut fish, help in the garden, cook and bake with me, and they play! They learn through exploratory play. Yes, I believe it is possible to provide an education superior to the PS, with only 2 hours of seat work a day, for elementary school. Jr high ad high school is different. But, I don't think all kids will need 6 hours a day. Especially a student who works more than 180 days in a year.
  21. YES!! My kids won't eat rice if they don't have capers in them :)
  22. I have tried a lot of their meat. I do not like the beef brats. Everything else has been great. Anything you would use to cook from scratch has been great. I don't like the processed stuff, but I don't like most of the name brand stuff either. I forgot to mention the non food stuff - I have found some GREAT deals on thing I wanted there. I have a laminator and pouches from there and we purchased an above ground pool with pump for a steal! It lasted us two good summers :) I also picked up a tortilla griddle. I have walked out without getting a lot of things I thought looked cool - a pancake bottle to draw pancake pictures...then I regretted it when I had 10 little girls over for breakfast :(
  23. I can shop for a week's worth of groceries in under 30 minutes, with three kids, and spend less that $100. I cannot walk out of walmart spending less than $100 and I still won't have enough food for a week. I don't buy everything there. I get ground beef, frozen chicken, whole chicken, pork tenderloin, hams, and whatever the meat special is for the week. The usually carry ground chicken, no one else does. They always have all the ingredients for lasagna :) I buy all of our canned goods there. They are significantly cheaper than Walmart and Target. I have had good luck with produce, cheese, milk, eggs, sausage, bacon, etc. They don't always have the same produce, I go in knowing we will eat what they have. If I need something they don't have (cilantro, parsley, etc then I make a quick run in walmart.) The 2 I have been to always have a full stock of baking needs, with the exception of whole wheat flour. I only use that for bread, cakes and cookies, etc - the white flour is fine. They have some GREAT candy! I cannot wait for truffles at Christmas! I don' t buy cereal there. We don't like most of the crackers - the animal crackers, however, are amazing!! The frozen and fresh pizzas are good for quick and easy meals. I am not a fan of the frozen dinners and kids don't like the chicken nuggets. But, we don't buy that stuff as much since we started going there. We have been eating more homemade and less processed. LOVE the money we save!
  24. We finish the books. We skip a lot of repetition in math because DS does not need it. But we cover every topic to mastery. We finish history, but we use SOTW, you can't really skip and start the next book.....well, you could, but you would be missing a time period.
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