oh, I am right there with you. My in-laws aren't quite as bad as yours but man, it drives me nuts. We've tried talking to them and it doesn't seem to matter. They bought dd her first tricycle, after we said we were going to get it. So dh talked to them and told them no more bikes, we wanted to get them their first bikes. So FIL found a 2 wheeler at a garage sale, and since it was so cheap, bought it, and gave dd her first bike. :cursing: We bought ds a bike (at a garage sale :lol:) and now they've both outgrown them and I told MIL we were going to be getting them bigger ones, and so FIL found some bigger ones at a garage sale for them :banghead: There's more but that's the most recent and therefore the most irritating to me right now :tongue_smilie: my MIL has even made comments about how she has a right to help parent the kids, since she's their grandma. :blink::blink: It is a constant emotional battle in me to try and not get upset, b/c I do understand it a little bit......but when she is trying to buy the girls their christmas and easter dresses - things that I want to do and get to do as a parent.....it gets hard. And I get that she never had any girls and is happy to do girly things now, but still.

I was going to say the same thing PlaidDad did......they're in his excellent book! and I read them to my dh last week and he jumped on the latin bandwagon with me :hurray::hurray: I even got him to agree to learn latin with me :thumbup:

cut out high fructose corn syrup!!

I just bought Trail Guide. I don't have it yet so I haven't actually seen one :D:D but it got great reviews, and I love the notebooking aspect, but what really sold me is that it has questions/activities/whatever for all grades. So, if we like it, which I think we will, then I can just use this over and over - I'm not going to have to search for a new curriculum every couple of years. And, I like that it has all the notebooking pages so I dont' have to make my own or search around for some online.

really? nice! This has been driving me nuts. I thought it was just finding the right recipe. Real good bread is so expensive - it will be nice to not have to buy it. Now to convince myself to turn on the oven in 90 degree weather :lol:

most of the time it's b/c they are tired. I've noticed it happening more since the days are getting longer - they are waking up earlier with the sun, and they won't take naps, even if I make them lay down, and they don't go to sleep until late. We put them to bed at 8, 8:30 - and they won't fall asleep until 10. I can't force them to sleep - I can make them stay in bed and be quiet, but I can't make them sleep. So I don't know how to solve that.

I finally got my whole wheat bread to turn out b/c I ended up using half regular flour, half wheat......my problem is that it doesn't make for good sandwiches. Does anyone have a good recipe for good sandwich ww bread?

ok - so what do you do when your kids are having a bad day?? Do you take the day off? Do you school through it and ignore the crying fits? DD had a bad day a couple of weeks ago -she had woken up early and was just ornery and crying at every little thing, and I couldn't take it, so I just stopped and she had to lay in bed for a couple hours and then got the rest of the day off. It doesn't seem like that would be the best way to handle it long term b/c then they'd just cry to get out of doing school :tongue_smilie: I just don't have the patience to deal with kids who are crying for no reason, or stupid little things. It's happening again today. Ds is being a stinker, and is moping and crying about everything, so he is laying in bed right now Right now it's not that bad b/c we're finishing up at a slower pace and so missing a day here or there isn't a big deal. But next year when we are on a schedule and I have my weekly plans going - it's really going to be a hassle to just drop stuff out of the blue for whiny kids. I can make them stay in bed in the morning, but they never go back to sleep, so I don't know how to handle it when the problem is just getting up too early. Boy it would just be nice if the kids obeyed all the time and life ran smoothly :lol::lol:

that would be a tough position to be in. We're not really involved much in our homeschool group yet, but when we are, I can see how that would be awkward. I would be one of the ones that wouldn't be talking much to the dads beyond very surface-y comments. Dh and I have a policy that we're not friends with people of the opp. sex unless we are both friends with them. And even then, we don't have a lot of one on one conversations with them. It's just a way to protect our marriage. There's no guaranteeing affairs won't happen - emotional or physical, and they always start with friendship, so we just cut that off at the pass. We're only friends with people of the opp. sex as a couple. But, I'd still feel badly for you that there were no other dads there for you. :closedeyes: and I think there is a seemingly double-standard with men and women b/c men and women are very different sexual ppl and men are very visual whereas women are emotional. Men mean something different than women do when they are commenting on a person.

I was going to get these things for ours, but they got cut out of my final list. Too bad money has to run out :tongue_smilie::tongue_smilie::tongue_smilie: Leonardo Da Vinci for kids Leonardo Da Vinci - Diane Stanley RR sells both of those, too. I was also going to get art stickers/art prints, coloring books from Dover that had him in it.

:lol::lol: same here. I bought our curric. with the stimulus check - I thought we were getting it in May, so I had everything all planned out....then I realized it would be coming in June, so, goody for me, I got to spend another month looking and picking :D:D My dh couldn't figure it out. And now that I have it ordered, I'm still perusing the for sale board :tongue_smilie:

we went to Laura's house in MO. That was cool, and not pricey at all. I really wanted to stop in DeSmet last year when we drove out to Mt. Rushmore, but it's so far off the highway that we didn't. I still want to someday. The kids are listening to the audio books of LHOTP now and they both love them, so maybe someday we'll make it happen.

I would ditto that, even though I haven't seen it :D:D I just bought Scotland's Story by Marshall, and it is awesome. I'm going to get the rest of her books.

most of the time, my kids are in the grades they would be in ps. But for the summer reading program at the library, their starting grade is 1st. Ds would be a K'r, and that's what I'm calling him, even though next year he is doing almost all 1st work.....but he can read very well and would love the presentations they are having at the library, so I called him a 1st grader so he could sign up for it. That just seems a silly thing to have a restriction on - if a kid can read well, then why can't he sign up for a reading program?

I saw on another thread where these were mentioned. If you've used them, how do you like them? Are the songs annoying? :D It looks good, and looks like a ton of information. Do the kids like them? Do you think they're worth the $$?

I'm going to have all my kids doing the same rotation, no matter how old they are. I've read that kids this age don't really 'get' the timeline of history, so I don't think it would really even realize that they are starting in the middle of history.

a couple more great websites - http://www.eduplace.com/ss/maps/ http://www.worksheetworks.com/geography.html - that one is great b/c you can customize what you want on your maps - and there are other worksheets to reinforce the geography

as far as the disjointedness goes, you can fix that. You don't have to read the book in order. The jumping around really bothered me too, so I just group the topics together, no matter what chapter it is. Like right now, we're in ancient Rome. Ch 27, 28, 29 are about Rome. Then it jumps to india and china for 4 chapters, and then back to Rome for the rest of the book. So, I'm just ignoring those 4 other chapters for now, and when we're done with Rome, we'll do India and China, and I'm actually including the chapters on them from SOTW 2. So far we have really liked SOTW. The activity guide, not so much. But my kids love it, and it is very informative and not boring or dry to read at all. I'm buying the rest of them on CD as well, so we can listen to them in the evenings as a family so dh can learn, too. And as far as accuracies go, I haven't noticed anything major. But public schools teach inaccuracies, too. What was that book called - Lies my kdg teacher told me, or something like that.....we all grew up thinking Columbus discovered America. I was floored to learn in high school that the Vikings were there first.

:iagree::iagree:

how many days do you do it? I just got my Astronomy book for next year, and I see that her suggestion, and the schedule on a file in her yahoo group, is to do it in 2 days, for 2 weeks. That just seems like a lot. I know I can do it anyway I want :D:D But ideally, I'd like to just do it 2 days a week.....so is it that much work on those 2 days? Do you find it easier to spread out the work more? Or maybe I'll just do it 2 days a week for 3 weeks....I don't know.

just to give you a silver lining :D:D I'm 26 and have 5 kids.....I love the young mother aspect, but it is so so hard having a big family, with my dh only out of college for 2 years. He is in a good field, so eventually he'll make good money :tongue_smilie: but raising 5 kids on a starting salary is very difficult. Especially now that we're in a situation that we need a van and can't afford it and have to drive 2 cars to church :tongue_smilie: So in some ways, it would have been nice to not have kids until we were 30 and had saved up money for several years. But, this is where we're at!

I just got an email from a friend about it. no way! that is so sad. I really liked him.

and at the beginning you said there were several...if you name more than one, it won't sound so bad ;)

we didn't watch many....PBS had a few that were ok. We just watched one on Peter and Paul and Rome that was interesting - a little over the heads of the kids, but I liked it. But we just watched one on Alexander the Great and Tyre/the catapult that both my kids, and dh and I really liked. DS watched it twice and wanted to watch it a third but I had to send it back. It's a history channel one. - The History Channel: Alexander the Great & the Devastating Catapult oh, we watched Ben Hur, too. They liked that. Next time around we might do Spartacus.

The Memoria Press one sounds a lot better....someone gave me all of the greenleaf ones except for one. And MP is cheaper at RR :D:D Thanks Plaid Dad!