My mom had this done in her old house. I don't know anything about what primer or paint the guy used, but it turned out very nice. Like another poster said, it looked like wainscoting.

Unless they've changed something in the last couple of months, Imo's is still serving their pizza in squares. I *love* Imo's pizza. But Ted Drewes? Meh. Tastes like a DQ Blizzard to me.

:iagree: I could have written this post. I remember feeling exactly the same way.

First of all, I have no idea whether or not the young woman who wrote the note is dyslexic. I'm certainly not an expert. Most of those errors do look like those of someone who was either very careless or very ignorant. The "could of" in the place of "could have", though, is something that I could see my dh (or dyslexic ds) doing. And, I do realize that often written communication is the only thing we have to judge someone by. So is my husband. That's why he might agonize over making an error that I would shrug off as minor. He has no concept over what are the types of mistakes that anyone could make, and which are the types of things that everyone should know. I realize that my initial reaction was overly sensitive. It just hit a nerve. Nobody knew my dh was dyslexic until an in-class essay he wrote in college tipped off his professor. And I realize this girl is never going to know how her note has been critiqued. But the idea that someone could take a note that he has written, show it to others, and pick apart all the mistakes is a very real worry of my dh's.

But living with him the last 15 years has opened my eyes to what it must be like to be unable to see things that come easily to other people.

My husband is brilliant, but a dyslexic who wasn't diagnosed until he was in college. It's reactions like this that make him very reluctant to write anything, ever.

:iagree: My dc regularly play the piano for their grandparents. In my opinion, there's little point in learning to play a musical instrument if you don't share what you've learned with others. I obviously haven't been in your shoes, and I'm sure I'd resent the feeling that my dc were being checked up on. But if mil is a teacher, she's been taught that only trained educators are capable of teaching children. (Is brainwashed too strong a word?) Wouldn't you be worried if your dc started raising your grandchildren in a way that contradicted everything you've ever been taught in your professional life? Letting your dc read to her and play music is arguably something they'd be doing regardless of your school situation, so I'd allow it. Extensive quizzing as an effort to find holes in their knowledge is where I'd draw the line. My mother was wary of homeschooling when we started. But once she saw that my dc were not just learning, but thriving, she relaxed and became a supporter. I've used lots of words to basically just reiterate what Abbey said. :tongue_smilie: Best wishes to you.

:)

It's hard for me to say because I spread everything out during the day. Not including the daily chores (empty dishwasher, laundry, cook dinner, etc.), today I am to vacuum the upstairs, clean out my purse, clean the bathroom mirrors, dust the office, and change hand towels. I don't know - thirty minutes, maybe? As for stuff you normally do on a different day, just keep doing it on the day that works for you and check it off. I do stuff like that a lot. For instance, mopping day is Thursday, but if someone spills a bunch of apple juice on Tuesday, I mop a day early. Or, if I know I have a busy day coming up, I work ahead. Motivated Moms is the best thing I've found to keep up with the house. The only thing it's lacking is someone to follow me around and make sure I do what I'm supposed to. Hope it works for you, too.

When I was a kid, I read a book where this happened to a family. They put the parakeet's cage in the middle of a big white sheet in the back yard. It was said that the bird can easily see the cage that way, and so they'll go back to the cage. This was a fiction book, mind you, but that's what they did. Hope your bird comes home, soon.

But haven't used either one. :blushing: It's been a while since I've looked them over, but here's what I remember. The first level of WWtB does a good job of getting dc to think about descriptions, what makes them good, and choosing strong verbs, etc. There's work on writing descriptions. The second level works on essays (there's other stuff, like poetry and newspaper articles, too). Jump In doesn't do quite as good a job on teaching them to analyze good writing, but there's much better and more explicit instruction on WHAT to do. For instance, it walks you through the essay (introduction, supporting points, how to order your points, etc.). WWtB just kind of says "Here's an essay. Now you do it." I may do WWtB level 1 with my 5th grader this year. I had originally planned to do Jump In with my 7th grader, just because I feel that he needs the "check off the box" type approach that Jump In offers, and also he needs to get started on essays. Jump In would have been good, but I've decided to go with the Lost Tools of Writing instead. If I hadn't found LTOW, I would have done Jump In with him.

I know it's been a long, long, time ago, but I really believe I would have felt the same way at that age. Best wishes to you!

;) I would shut it down, mostly for the fact that they did sneak away from church. And although I realize that you do run the risk of making the relationship more attractive by forbidding it, I don't think kids that age have the wherewithal to maintain those emotions for that long. In fact, the romance would likely fizzle out on its own soon enough, but I'd be more worried about a pattern that is being set than anything else. My first love was Donny Osmond when I was about four. I know all about young children developing crushes. I know it's real, and I know it feels real to them. But, I still think it's appropriate for parents to step in and say "You're just too young for that. Period. When you're older, but not now." I do think that some kids that age develop feelings for members of the opposite sex earlier than others, but I also that when kids that age start forming boyfriend/girlfriend relationships, they're doing it because they've been led to believe it's the "thing to do." For example, little Suzy's big sister has a boyfriend, so Suzy, who wants to be just like sis, gets a boyfriend, too. Suzy's tells her friend Janie that Janie should "date" Bobby. Richie's older brother keeps asking Richie if he has a girlfriend, so Richie starts "dating" Janie's friend Sally. Next thing you know, the entire 6th grade class is a mini Peyton Place. On the other hand, if Suzy, Janie, Bobby, Richie, and Sally had ALL been told from the start that they couldn't date until they were sixteen, they would have admired each other from afar, sent each other sweet, innocent Valentines in February, and then grown up to write songs like "My Eyes Adored You." Instead they sit around and watch "tween" shows on cable and it just feeds it all. And they have NOTHING to look forward to, because at 16 they've "been there, done that." Don't you see how much better it would be if I ran the world. :D Sure, I liked boys a LOT at age twelve and thirteen. And I felt a LOT of pressure to "have a boyfriend." It did me far more harm than good. If my parents would have put down their collective foot, I would have stomped and rolled my eyes and dramatically told them I was the most misunderstood teenager alive. I might have even tried to sneak around (again, out of pressure to conform). But in the end I would have been a bit relieved. I also like to think I would have started a Great Books study on my own in all my free time, but perhaps that's pushing it. And besides, even though they did let me date, I still stomped and rolled my eyes and dramatically told them I was the most misunderstood teenager alive, so it's not like they were spared any drama by letting me date. I think our society gives "emotions" and "feelings" way too much weight these days. Yes, they're real. Yes, they're strong. But no, they DON'T have to rule you. Our teens are going to be feeling pangs of attraction to other people for the rest of their lives. The sooner they learn that they don't need to act on every romantic feeling they have, the better.

I also like "Do Hard Things" by the Harris brothers.

We must have used the combined Algebra II/Trig text (copyright 1980). I remember that cover. I have a vivid memory of her passing out separate trig books, and the exercises in my Trig notebook are labeled "Chapter 1, chapter 2", etc., so perhaps there was a separate trig book she liked better. I don't know. I've been wrong before. My Calculus text, I think, had a white spine. The cover was dark blue? purple? The white on the spine extended over an inch or two onto the left side of the front cover, and I think "Calculus" was printed sideways on the cover. FWIW, it was the same Calculus text that the University of Evansville (in Evansville, Indiana) used for their Calc I classes, because several students went there for college. It was cheaper for them to pay the fee to keep their public school text than to buy it from the college bookstore. Why I remember all this, but yet can't keep the names of my dogs and my children straight, I'll never know. :)

This has become a bizarre labor of love, but I'm trying to piece together my high school math texts. It all started when I started investigating all the fuss over old Dolciani texts, only to realize that the 1981 Dolciani was my high school algebra book. I was in a four year accelerated math class. We started in Algebra I as freshman and went through Calculus our senior year. I originally thought I had notebooks from all four years, but after thinking it over further, I only have notebooks for Trig and Calculus. The teacher didn't require a designated notebook until that year. Anyway, here's what I remember so far: Fall of freshman year through early spring - Dolciani Algebra I (1981 copyright) Spring of freshman year through fall of sophomore year - Jurgensen Geometry (1983 copyright) Spring of sophomore year through sometime in Junior year: Dolciani Algebra II (I think 1981 copyright) This is where it gets fuzzy. According to my notebooks, we started trig in March of our Junior year. We finished trig and moved on to Calculus in October of my senior year. I remember having a separate trig book. Wouldn't I have done additional algebra between Algebra II and trig? Isn't the standard "Pre-calculus" class a combo of College Algebra and Trig? I can't seem to find a separate trig book from the early eighties. Was there such an animal? Any of you have any ideas what other algebra would have been used to fill in between algebra II and trig? Thanks for all your help. My husband loves math and even he thinks I've gone off the deep end a little bit. I just thought everyone was taught algebra the way I was, but as I compare Dolciani with other texts, I see that it just isn't so. I'm curious as to what other gems my teacher might have used.

But neither of my dc's cursive looks like that. They each have their own style. I chose HWOT because I like the way it teaches the student to form the letters. I think a lot of the ugliness is the fact that the letters are not slanted and a little far apart. That's nice for teaching, but it's not something that comes through in my dc's handwriting. I learned Palmer Method cursive. My handwriting doesn't look anything like Palmer Method, either.

It wasn't so much that I didn't like it, but it's just that I discovered Megawords and liked it much better. Sequential Spelling did help my ds spelling improve a bit, but I think Megawords has helped him a lot more. SS doesn't teach the rules the way Megawords does, SS teaches patterns. Both schools of thought have their supporters and detractors, but I personally like Megawords. Others prefer Sequential Spelling. I personally got tired of dictating the lists to him each day. I *really* disliked doing this. There is no rational reason that I disliked it so much, other than I'm getting old and crotchety. :D

First of all, the numbers on the books are not meant to be grade levels. Sonlight divides them up over 1st through 3rd grade: Books 1 - 3 in grade 1, books 4 - 6 in grade 2, and books 7 and 8 in grade 3. My dd got through all 8 in first and 2nd grades. My oldest boy took until 3rd grade to get through them, my younger ds is probably going to take that long as well. I combine Explode the Code with easy readers. I try to keep the readers just a bit easier than what they're working on in ETC. This isn't an exact science, though. If we run across a word in a book and they haven't learned how to sound it out via ETC, I tell them the word and we move on. Right now my 7 yo ds is reading through Sonlight's "I Can Read It" books. I usually move on to "Little Bear" and "Frog and Toad" after the Sonlight books. The Sonlight "I Can Read It" just happens to be what I have on the shelf. You could use Bob Books, Animaniacs (I think that's what they're called), any of the easy readers. I use the workbooks (didn't even know they were online, to be honest). We do two pages a day. He's still young, and he's a boy. A lot of boys are not going to learn to read at age six. I think that ETC is an excellent way to teach phonics. My dc all loved the pictures and silly sentences. Just make sure he's making progress, even if it's coming slowly. My dd is the only one who read quickly and easily. Reading really didn't click with my oldest until 3rd grade, and then he was off and running.

I agree with what the other posters said. There could be many reasons, and I wouldn't take it personally. If they truly didn't like your dc, they wouldn't be coming over so often. I also noticed that you have three ds close in age. That could be part of it, too. When same-sex siblings are close in age, I usually feel like I should invite all of them so someone doesn't feel left out. But if the parents have told their dc that each could invite one friend over, it might be harder because they may think of your dc as a "package deal." :) If my oldest ds invited three brothers, and my middle dd invited three sisters, and my youngest ds invited three brothers, I suddenly have twelve kids in my house. :eek: I really think it's just a matter of your house being the fun house. Enjoy it, it's a compliment.

When I first took it, I was thinking trade winds, ocean currents, water cycle. No problem. Pfft. Boy, was I wrong. My one semester of college physics was barely enough to get me through it. So, like the other said: physics. And to do physics, she'll need a good grounding in math.

And yet for years I was confused about how to spell words like "mailable" is it "mailible" perhaps "maileble". I would solve such dilemmas by writing sentences like: "That envelope can't be put in the mail." :D I've also heard parents of students at the local private school talk about how impressive the curriculum is there because the spelling lists contain lots of big, difficult words. If the spelling these kids are using on Facebook is any indication, it's not getting the job done. How many times have I had to write "hors d'oeuvres" in my life? I would have been much better served is someone would have covered the basics about adding suffixes. I guess I'm getting a little off topic, but I think that spelling list is another example of how our schools think that teaching difficult things early equals a better education. It's just not true.

This was the situation in my dh's family. My dh is 3 years younger than his brother, and they were the same height growing up. When my dh hit his growth spurt, he shot up and is now probably seven inches taller than his brother. It did cause a lot of tension with them, but you know what? I think there would have been tension regardless. The height thing was just the thing that they happened to land on. And I don't think it was the height per se, but fights over whose shirt was whose, etc., since they wore the same size. FWIW, they're good friends, now. I know a man in his fifties whose younger sister was always taller than he was and he's one of the most well-adjusted people I know. I know another family where the younger brother is quite a bit bigger than the older brother. The parents have done a good job focusing on each boys' strenths: G is faster, but C is stronger, etc. This could easily backfire, too, but the parents have done it in such a way that they celebrate what each boy is good at, instead of turning everything into a comparison or competition.

:iagree: When my dc were little, and still napping, etc., I much preferred morning classes. But even though my dc *can* get their work done before noon most days, even trying to get somewhere by 1 pm can feel rushed - especially if I'm trying to get housework done, too. Another thing I've noticed, and I don't know if this is a homeschool thing, or just people in general, is that people just don't follow through. In every homeschool activity I've been involved in, a good portion of the people just stopped coming after after a couple of months. I've always been involved in things that could easily be adapted for smaller groups, but I could see some situations where it would be frustrating (and expensive) to have a lot of people sign up and then not show.

I had to make boulders once for VBS. I ended up taking cardboard boxes and covering them with brown shipping paper. (I'm not sure that's what it's called. It's the same paper that paper grocery sacks are made from, except it's in a roll). Anyway, I kind of of crinkled the paper first, to make it look more "bouldery". Gotta love VBS for stretching your creative abilities, eh? HTH