I also liked Shepherding A Child's Heart. Dh and I just got done listening to a fantastic book - Revolutionary Parenting. It's by George Barna, the big christian researcher/statistican that everyone has been using for 25 years. He went back through and looked at the families he had interviewed, and looked at the ones whose adult children (in their 20's) were spiritual champions. He had about 10,000 families. He interviewed the adult children, and the parents, and was surprised to see that they all basically had the same style of parenting, and used the same principles. So he wrote the book about what they did and how they did it. Some of the stuff they did was to have goals and benchmarks for each kid - not about what they're going to be when they grow up, but who they are going to be. And evaluating every night what worked that day, what didn't, and keep working towards the goals. They limited media exposure, spent about 2 hours a day in conversation with their kids (the average family only spends 15 min a day)......lots of stuff. It was so insightful and encouraging to read. I also really like Todd Cartmell's books. He is really big into practicing and training the kids to do good things, praising/rewarding respectful behavior, and negative consequences for disrespectful behavior *every* time.

So that's where Hannah's helps are!!!! I've seen several people mention them and I've searched and searched and couldn't find them for the life of me!!!

I checked it out of the library and had the same thought, and couldn't get past the second chapter.....I was really disappointed since the back of the book made it sound so good. After reading the posts here, I still think I'd like the book - I'll have to check it out again and give it another go. Along the lines of this kind of thing, (and I"m going to put Practicing the Presence of God on my list...I've wanted to read that for awhile too) is the book by Richard Foster on Spiritual Disciplines.....that is a really good book and really neat to see how people for the last couple of thousand years have really been able to draw close to God - sometimes in a retreat form, but also in daily life. I'm not Catholic, but I came away with a great respect for the saints, and how there is much much good to learn from them b/c they were such godly people.

I haven't', but it sounds good. I really think it's important for moms to really understand boys and to let them be boys. The best book I've read so far, is Why Gender Matters He has another book out I want to read about boys, too. It has changed the way I treat my boys, and I can look back at how my mom dealt with my brother, and I'm so thankful I won't do the same thing. Males actually see differently - they have a wider peripheral vision (which is why it is easier for them to be better drivers!!)....they actually hear differently - they hear on a different wavelength than females, and they do start losing their hearing sooner - so in middle age when your dh can't hear as well and we all joke about it - he probably really can't! The biggest thing for me was really learning and understanding their single-mindedness and how they only focus on one thing. So when my ds is playing or working on something, if I call his name from across the room, he will not hear me. He's not ignoring me - he really doesn't hear me. This is where my poor brother used to get in trouble all the time for ignoring my mom. But if I get up and walk over to him, and just touch him on the shoulder to get his attention, then he will see and hear me. Then he can choose to ignore me :lol: Another good one is For Women Only that's also one big reason I'm definitely homeschooling the boys all the way through. The classroom and school setting is designed for girls, and I dont' want to put my boys through that (non) learning environment. The author of Why Gender Matters is really big on single-sex education.

Here's a site that has a lot of that kind of information - I just printed out their workbook pages for vol 2 last night - I love having some of that done for me! http://www.redshift.com/~bonajo/SOTWmenu.htm

running a thyroid test is such a simple thing, and most doctors will do it - there is no way I'd pay that kind of money. Any regular doctor who is worth his salt will run a TSH and free T3/T4 test if you tell him you want it checked.

is it dry to you and the kids, or just the kids? I haven't read the astronomy one out loud yet - just to myself as I've been planning it out and printing out the notebook pages, and I've found it very interesting and not dry at all. I do think there is a lot to each chapter and I don't think, at least at this age, that we can go through it as fast as she has it scheduled. I'm taking 3 weeks per chapter instead of 2. I think if I read as much as she has scheduled, they would get bored with it each day.

it's not really saving me much money, I don't think. I don't do it consistently enough to make it a money saving thing. But it's fun making it, and I like not having any other ingredients in it, and I think - I'm not positive - but I think that homemade yogurt has more probiotics in it than storebought. And, if you make your own yogurt, you can use that to make your own ricotta cheese, too.

I loved Kite Runner. The book is even better. His other book, A Thousand Splendid Suns is really good, too. The only thing I didn't like about the movie, and why the book is better, is because it doesn't delve much into the political history and the tension between the different ethnicities. They show it adequately enough for the movie to make sense, but it is such a richer, deeper explanation in the book. In the book I really felt for the general and the father - from being these very important men to having to sell trinkets at a flea market and all the disrespect those kind of people get......it was just a very moving book. And a very very good movie. I do wish they would have chosen a different color for the subtitles, or bigger font or something - that was really hard to read, and was more difficult for my dh b/c he hadn't read the book and so he needed every piece of subtitle to follow along.

I'm crying here, too. I'm so sorry you're going through this. I'm praying for you every time I hold my baby Eli. :grouphug::grouphug:

I disagree. We're going to do the Astronomy book this next year with a 7 and 5 yo. We've already been looking through it and the kids love it. My 5 yo is already fascinated with space and I think he will get a lot out of it. I'm obviously not going to expect huge retention of facts, but I think he will learn a lot, and develop a huge love for it. The experiments are really really neat and I think if they even remember doing that, they will remember a lot.

I like them - I don't think they're dry at all. and the MP ones are way better than the greenleaf ones. Just gorgeous!!

I almost couldn't get past the first article. It's not the schools job to teach life skills, at all! Yeah Basic meals and advanced foods was tons of fun to take, but that should not be where kids learn to cook. That is the responsibility of the parents and they've given it over to the schools. But when the schools don't do an adequate job, they shouldn't be blaming the schools. They should be looking at themselves and saying 'guess I should do my job better'. Is the point of schools to educate kids for the sake of educating them, or is it to prepare kids to work? It most cases, if you are thoroughly educated, you will be able to work well and find a job and learn how to work a specific job. But if schools aren't even educating for the sake of turning out well-educated people.......what is the point? Is that all people want - to be able to just get a job and numbly do that for the rest of their life? I'm just still shocked, even though I should be used to it by now, that millions of people are perfectly happy turning over near total control of their children to the gov't, and don't even care about them becoming real educated people.

eventually it works :lol: Did you ever see the Friends episode where Rachel has her baby? She's in the labor room and that little Asian girl comes in and breaths a little bit and lets out a squeak and says 'ooh, that was a big one'.....that was how my last delivery was. no throwing tomatoes :D no advice on the OP - my first 3 measured normal, my last 2 measured very small.

I get to do it however I want!!!!! I'm going through Trail Guide right now, lining up the chapters with history, and I just love that I can flip around and *gasp* do it out of order! and I won't get in trouble :D I grew up with a *very* controlling mother.....it is so much fun doing something my own way :lol:

oh, that is so frustrating!!!!!!! Ours is on the market as well. We listed it in August and left it on until Thanksgiving and took it off for the winter. We had a ton of showings - about 2 a week. No big dislikes other than no closets. No offers. We put it back on the market in March, and we have had 1 showing since then. 1. Which is kind of nice in that I'm not having to constantly get after the kids and get everyone out of the house. But man. Our contract is up in November and if it hasn't sold by then, we're just going to add on instead of moving.

oh, I love the Weston Price site. great great stuff. a really good book about food and diets is In Defense of Food - excellent. Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

we avoid soy and soy lecithin - which is in practically everything. If you want to the good effects of soy, then you need to eat it like the asians do - fermented. Then you are getting the health benefits and not the risk. You can't just take one smidgen of another culture's food and say 'this is going to be healthy' - it only works if you consider the entire context of their food. But b/c soy is such a cash crop here, it's in everything and people see 'soy' and think it must be good for you. Soy isoflavones are probably dangerous for us - it's not a hard fact, but why take the chance?

ohhh, Harp and Laurel looks great!!! thank you!

oh, I agree. I was just hoping for an all-in-one program with it.

we had a watered down first grade b/c of the toddlers and babies......I went down to just reading, writing and math, but dd was bored, so we went back to some science and SOTW. We used that and did Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, and now we're on ancient india and china for the summer. I just did oral narrations to build up their 'paying attention skills'. We did 100 ez lessons, ETC, BOB books, Horizons math (we're switching to different programs next year), and lots of books from the library, copywork of various things, and we're going through FLL1 this summer and will do FLL2 next year.

can I say that here? :leaving: I like the short lessons and the grammar aspect of it - it is very helpful for dd. But I'm disappointed in that there are very few poems, and they aren't that great of poems....or at least not what I was expecting. I guess I was expecting more classic poems. Not one adapted by someone else, and not to have Rossetti's poem shortened....I just realized that and so now we're having to relearn it and dd isn't thrilled about that. So I'm still going to have to look up poems for memory and copywork for next year....that's what I was hoping FLL would have done for me. Oh well.

I'm still not sure of all the acronyms of programs I don't use, but isnt' HWT a handwriting program?? Could you skip doing that and just use copywork, narrations, and WWE for their handwriting?

oh no! I had my baby a couple weeks before she did so I had been following her baby posts. Poor little guy!

I'd agree with you except he usually asks when he's in a great mood and is playing and just wants something else fun to do :glare: