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Lady Marmalade

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Everything posted by Lady Marmalade

  1. Square Foot Gardening really is an excellent resource for a beginning gardener. Whether you just do tomatoes or branch out, it gives great tips on starting small, as well as fixing up your soil. I'm an avid tomato grower- I grow a lot of heirlooms from seed, and they are my favorite thing in the garden. I'm not sure about growing tomatoes in Tennessee though! I'm much farther north than you! Do you have a local garden center you can go to and ask questions at as far as the best varieties to grow for your area? That would be my suggestion- that or a master gardener program where you can ask questions of the members. Seed catalogs can be a good resource of free information too- request catalogs and they will give you good advice on planning your garden, as well as giving you glorious pictures of tomatoes and other veggies! Some catalogs I drool over are Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, Seed Savers Exchange, Johnny's Selected Seeds, Territorial Seeds, Seeds of Change and Botanical Interests.
  2. I'm surprised this is new news? Last summer/fall when they announced that Cuddy had left the show they were talking about the changes coming for the final season of the show. It was a good run. :)
  3. Thank you, I bookmarked this one. I also found this site, which looks great and has a TON of worksheets! http://www.dadsworksheets.com/
  4. We've just been introduced to Khan Academy, and we're going to be using it for DD's math for awhile. She's working through the Pre-Algebra subjects, but the practice on Khan per subject is very minimal. I would love suggestions of where to look online for printable worksheets for more difficult math. There are tons out there for basic math facts and principles, but I'm not coming up with much for more advanced math.
  5. 1. fake sweeteners 2. fake butter 3. pretty much anything that says fat-free or low-fat on the package. 4. added nitrites (migraine trigger) 5. partially hydrogenated anything I've been working for years on eliminating processed food. I make as much as I can from scratch, though an occasional box of mac-n-cheese will make it in the cart for a lunch for the kids. We used to have chips around a lot- I think we all ate some daily, and then I just stopped buying it. Now the only chips I buy are tortilla chips for scooping up homemade salsa.
  6. I would have no trouble eating it. Especially since it's a hot dip- get it all bubbly and gooey again and dig in.
  7. Not familiar with TT5, but TT6 had the 115 lessons and then another 3 weeks or so of "bonus" lessons that rounded out our year just fine last year.
  8. I don't know if this is okay to post here or not, but at the SL forums, there is a public thread about this very thing- comparing MFW to SL. I haven't used MFW, so I am not qualified to compare the two at all, but here's the link to that particular thread. Maybe it will be helpful to you... https://forums.sonlight.com/topic/314344-can-you-compare-sonlight-and-my-fathers-world/ SL also has a money-back guarantee, where if you don't like the Core for any reason, you can send it back for a complete refund- and it can be used, scribbled on, whatnot up to one year from the date of purchase, or up to 18 weeks in the IG. As to cores you might look at, I'm assuming you want to combine if possible? Regardless which core you would end up with, you're either going to have to adjust up for your oldest or down for your youngest. Core D is really easy to adjust down, as it's American History and there are scads of materials out there to work in for the youngers. Your 9 year old is the perfect age for Core D, the middle child might struggle with some of the more advanced readers. I did Core D with a then 9 yr old and a 5-6 year old K-er. It was my favorite year of HSing, as they both really enjoyed learning about early American history. Core B would be perfect for your 6 year old, but would be too light for the oldest without adding materials- which would be fairly easy to do too. Greeks, Romans, and Ancient Egyptians make up the bulk of Core B history- it would be fairly easy to add in age-appropriate books and projects for the oldest one, and the middle child if he seemed to need more as well.
  9. Well, we don't do any sort of co-op or anything with other homeschoolers. But, we do have other activities that keep us busy and outside the home. We do quite a bit with church, and my kids are both competitive dancers, so those are their social outlets. We're just not interested in adding something else to our list of commitments/outside activites.
  10. Wow! Just... Wow! The details, and look how much it sold for- with quite a few bids going on. I would definitely say there is a market for this kind of thing.
  11. But the point of this new sales strategy is that it won't need to be on sale, because the everyday low price IS what you would have paid for it on sale. So a shirt that was regularly $50, and frequently on sale at 40% off, you would buy on sale for about $30. Now, instead of being marked up to $50, the everyday price will be what you would have paid at the sale price- so the $30 for the shirt all the time. You won't need to wait for a sale to buy it. I think the whole strategy is very interesting, but I'm concerned about the quality declining. I love JCP, and our wardrobes contain a lot of clothing from there- but if the lower prices lead to lower quality, I'll be very perturbed and will likely shop elsewhere.
  12. Sounds like it's time for a good weather unit study. Dig deep- find some videos at the library, tons of books, all kinds of things that explain what the weather is actually doing. My DS was a run-to-the-bedroom-in-a-thunderstorm kid, and now he's utterly fascinated by the weather. He loves watching it do it's thing and running and grabbing his weather books to find out exactly what's going on. Personally, I don't see any problem in turning on the TV during a weather event- you can see the radar and images, and the meteorogists generally do a good job explaining exactly what is going on in the atmosphere.
  13. I wonder if you would find the books written by Eliot Coleman helpful. He wrote The Four Season Harvest, which gives a lot of great information about extending the harvest beyond the normal growing season. But then he also wrote The Winter Harvest Handbook and talks extensively about greenhouse/hothouse growing and how to be successful at it. It was a pure day of joy for me when I realized our 25 mile move south was moving me out of zone 4B and into zone 5A. Not much of a difference, but a difference nonetheless. I hope you're able to figure out gardening in Zone 1A! Maybe you'll have great success and be able to write a book about it to help gardeners in the future.
  14. Swiss Chard is definitely the biggest bang for the buck. Plant once and harvest all season long. There's nothing else like it! A close second is Pole Beans. Growing beans vertically is a great way to maximize space- AND reap a great crop. Most pole beans will put out successive crops if you can keep the beans harvested. Tomatoes are good- if you look for heirloom and indeterminate tomatoes, you'll get a harvest of tomatoes until frost (or disease) kills the vine. Determinate tomatoes will set a glut of fruit over a short period of time and then be done for the season. If you have the space and resources, learn to start your own seed. A packet of seed costs 2-3 dollars, and usually contains about 25 seeds. That's way more cost efficient than buying plants. With many garden veggies, you can extend your season by planting different varieties. Check the days-to-harvest on the seed packets and pick a few varieties to give you the largest span of time.
  15. For my DS in second grade, his school day is about 2 hours, we start at 9:00 and he's usually done by 11:00. For my DD in sixth grade, her school day is 3 hours, and she's usually done by noon. There are days we take longer, but for the most part, we're almost always done by lunch. There are definitely moments where I wonder if we're doing enough, but they're just efficient workers, seldom stopping even for a bathroom break.
  16. Definitely a scam. I got almost the exact same e-mails from someone for curriculum a few months back. After I replied to the first one that asked "still available" and got that lame reply, I just deleted them all and never heard from him again.
  17. http://www.classical-homeschooling.org/celoop/1000.html This website has great book lists. Maybe the reading suggestions on there will at least help you find something new for them to read.
  18. Here's another one if you want to compare recipes: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/01/monkey-bread-sticky-rolls-bubble-loaf-recipe.html
  19. Well, if this was in Cores D or E, we didn't get it- or at least it wasn't in them for 2009 and 2010. I don't think SL has something to specifically teach the states- we've just been doing it on our own. Last year, during Core E, I had DD memorize the locations of all the states, as well as their capitals. We also spent time watching a few specials on Travel Channel, "How the States Got Their Shapes" and "How The States Got Their Names". At least, I think that's what they were called. :tongue_smilie: Our map of the US is always out, and anytime something comes up about a location in the US, the kids head to the map to find it on their own. They're learning a lot about the US simply by paying attention when different states or places are talked about- even on a TV show or something like that.
  20. We're doing Biology II- though I use "we" lightly. DD pretty much does it all on her own. She follows the guide four days a week. The experiments for Biology II are severely lacking. I don't think she's really done any since she studied microbes and such with the microscope months ago. She's coming up on plant science now, so maybe then she'll get an experiment or two? She could easily double up on the materials and go through the week of Science much faster, but she enjoys Science, so wants to stretch it out throughout the week. I'm using Biology I with my DS, and the readings are so light that I take one week's worth of material and we do it in two days instead of four. Honestly, we could do it in one day.
  21. Well, when I used Core D, I did it with my then 4th grader and K-er. I added a whole pile of American History focused picture/easy reader books for my DS for his reading. We had a very rich and wonderful year of learning. There are some mature subjects, but my DS at the time had no troubles with any of it. Quite a few characters in the read-alouds and history deal with death in a myriad of ways- some of our favorite characters themselves die too, so if the kids are at all sensitive in that nature, the books might need a closer going over. Many are available at the library these days, and you can see the book lists on the SL website, to give a good idea what all it involves. I think this core would really be geared best towards the 3rd and 5th graders, actually, and then she can send the 7th grader on bunny trails and tangents to really beef up the history. The 1st grader, really, as long as they're getting the 4 R's, anything they glean from the history and RA would be icing on the cake. My DS still looks at the books from that core fondly and tells me that he can't wait to do them again in two years for his turn through the core.
  22. I can't imagine combining a 7th and a 1st grader in anything other than Bible, and maybe read-alouds. The 7th grader is middle school age and really needs a more rigorous education, imho, than what could be gotten when combined with a 1st grader. And that doesn't even begin to touch on the 5th and 3rd grader. That being said, if she were really set on trying Sonlight and combining everyone into one, Core D, (followed by E) would be the easiest to adjust up or down to meet the needs of individual kids. As it is the first half of American History, there are zillions of resources out there that could be added to the core- such as picture books and easy readers for the youngest one. SL suggests a few mini-reports throughout the year, and for the oldest I would take those and turn them into full-blown research report. I don't use SL Science, so I can't really comment on what would work in that regard, but I would lean towards finding a curriculum like Real Science 4 Kids so that you can have them learning the same subjects with different levels of difficulty. NOEO would probably work too- that's what we're using. I have the kids working separately, but the schedule could easily be shifted around to get topics to line up.
  23. We are doing Cores B and F right now. :) It is actually very surprising how many times these cores have bumped into each other, content wise. Not by much, but enough that when the kids overhear something from the other core, they'll pause what they're doing long enough to check out what is going on. I should add that we're doing an older version of Core F from 2008, and we are not doing the EHE at all. WE are doing the 5-day version though, and it seems that quite a lot of people who do Core F end up switching to the 4 day at some point. Not us, the 5 day is working great. I'm having DD do daily readings in the World Book, and she highlights what she thinks is important. That's good enough for me. Core B is SO light compared to Core F, and I imagine it would be very similar vs.Core G. DS and I get his complete school day (including 3 different math programs) finished before DD is even ready for me to go over her History and RA with her. As far as actually lining up the cores to work together, B & G would probably be your best bet, content-wise, but what I have heard on the SL forums is that actually combining the two cores is a huge load of work. Their timelines don't mesh up very well at all, and you really need to do a lot of adjusting and tweaking to get them to even line up a little bit. That's purely anectdotal though, as I have no personal experience with it. Actually DOING two cores is way easier than I had anticipated it being before we did it. It was much more work for me to make one core work for two children than it has been to run with two cores, where the work is already done for me.
  24. Wow! You've been very lucky. I lost 6 quarts of pickles... oh, my, the mess! The boiling pickle/glass shard soup was enough to cure me of never trying to can without a rack in the bottom of my pot.
  25. The only issue is that you need a rack or trivet or something on the bottom of the pot, otherwise the heat is too great for the glass jars and they WILL burst. You need a buffer on the inside of the pot. Any metal rack will do, and if you don't have something that can fit, you can also use metal canning rings tied together in a pinch. Your pot also must be tall enough to cover the filled jars by two inches in order for them to properly process in a BWB canner. The National Center For Home Food Preservation is a great resource for beginning canners.
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