I loved Value Tales as a kid so much, I have slowly accumulated the entire series for my kids. They aren’t in print anymore, so you may have to eBay them, but they are good!

Title says it all. We did biology and chemistry for the past two years (middle school), so I’d like to do something other than those two sciences.

We have this cage for our lionhead bun, https://www.amazon.com/Living-World-Deluxe-Habitat-X-Large/dp/B007BNE1YA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1505784933&sr=8-1&keywords=indoor+bunny+cage which we leave open all the time into this octagon playpen https://www.amazon.com/Summer-Infant-Surround-6-Panel-PlaySafe/dp/B000G1YW98/ref=sr_1_1_a_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1505784985&sr=8-1&keywords=Octagon+playpen It gives him a lot of room to run around when we can not supervise him. We take him out twice a day when we are in the room with him because he likes to chew. In the cage, we have a regular sized cat litter box, and he always goes in there. I put the wooden cat litter pellets. He also has a small shallow box for the carefresh fluff to nest in. He gets as much hay as he wants in his hayrack, day and night. A small scoop (1 tablespoon) of pellets twice a day, and a handful of assorted lettuces, herbs, and an occasional baby carrot, apple slice, grape, cucumber, sweet bell pepper slice, etc. whatever fresh veggies we have on hand, I'll give him a tiny bit with his 'salad'. He's the best little pet, so sweet, super easy to care for. Other than nail clipping, my six year old does all his care. We change the entire litter box every 2-3 days and it never smells. Under the octagon gate, I put one of those desk chair mats to keep him off the wood floor just in case he ever has an accident. It's never happened though. When he roams free in the room, he's never gone to the bathroom. Once he figured out the litter box, we've never had an issue. I'm hoping to take him outside into the chicken coop for some supervised outside time soon.

I'm so terribly sorry about your loss. Gentle hugs.

This! I stay home and negotiate peace talks between my kids...close?😂

We have to take something like it every year for foster care, but it is free.

I'm hosting a debate class for middle school kids this fall. I'm really excited as this is a fantastic group of kiddos! One thing I'd like to address with them is how to research online. Things like how do they know they are reading a reliable source and not an opinion webpage? How will they cite internet sources? How do they deal with plagiarizing as it pertains to graphs/charts? Is it allowable to just print those and put them into their paper? Any other advice you have for me to address with them before we start? Thanks!

Almost every weekend, we are gone at least one day. We have sundayfunday with our best friends-at the lake or pool, or just at each others houses. We travel a lot, last year we went out of town about 8 times. Then there are gymnastics meets. We probably have a full weekend at home only a handful of times per year.

Is there a thread for this already? I searched but didn't find one... What is on your shopping list this year as far as school supplies go? Where are you finding good deals? I'll get glue (for slime actually, not school🙄), tape, and some binders. We have most everything else I think...

We finished official school at the end of April, so we took all of May off. We had a bunch of stuff in May-travel, respite care with extra kids, and our own foster son going home-so we needed time to just be together, reconnect, and breathe. In June we are doing 2 hours or so of school. One hour of math/LA seat work, and one hour of reading. I have planned a world geography year, and it will take us a whole year to complete...maybe even longer. It's morning basket stuff-me reading aloud, crafts, map work, music, poetry, art...My older girls also read on their own for some time. Their gymnastics schedule has increased, so we are at the gym M-F, 4-8. I'm trying to fit in lots of pool, creek, lake time with friends. Every weekend is packed with parties, bbq's, play dates, etc. it's been super busy!

I'm looking into this for two of my children... One is 12 year old dd, who is a voracious reader and a terrible speller. We've done phonics and tons of spelling methods. She just can not 'picture' which phonograms to use in which words. She can memorize spelling rules, but doesn't apply them all when writing, or mixes up two sounds when spelling (for example, spelling black as balck, even in the same paragraph she has previously spelled it correctly in!), and never mind all those words that *could* be spelled with several phonograms and still follow the rules! I'm wondering if having some visualization methods would help her, at least with the 500 most common words. This child did vision therapy for six months at age seven because she was unable to read despite her desiring to, and me trying various methods to teach her. VT made all the difference in the world, and after six months of only VT and no instructional reading, she picked up a Magic Tree House book and read it. She's been buried in books ever since, reading for several hours every day. The second is 6.5 year old dd. We have been working on phonics and reading for almost two years at this point. She is still at the sound it out, CVC words stage. She has zero retention of a word from one page to the next...heck, most times she will have to sound out the same words in every single sentence! At times she starts sounding a word out with the middle or last sound, and at times she guesses a word that could be used in place of the word on the page, (for example, she said sleep instead of reading nap), even when the letters are not at all the same. I'm doing CLE learn to read with her, but we did try Phonics Pathways prior to this. I switched because she likes predictability, I needed something that I could step away from, and I felt that the writing included with the reading would help. She is VERY wiggly. This child does 8-9 hours of gymnastics a week. She's kinesthetic. She loves tactile experiences. She has SPD, the seeking kind. She struggles with emotional regulation. She gets frustrated very quickly, and shuts down completely. I took her to a highly regarded tutor for an evaluation, and she said she is doing very well with phonics, but gets overwhelmed visually and suggested this curriculum and a way to help her learn some of the more common words quickly and more easily. I do have an appointment to have her evaluated by a COVD this week, just in case. So. With all that. The program is $500. I'm more than happy to invest in this program if it will help. However, I don't want to buy it and have it not work...it's quite an investment. I also am wondering about just purchasing the teacher's manual and using the method for our own list of words...does it work like that? They sell a word list for $4, so I could buy the TM and the word list and we could make our own flash cards with index cards...the TM is about $100, which means the bulk of this program is for flash cards. I don't need anything fancy if index cards will work. If you've used this and this it would work for my girls, would it also work if I ONLY bought the TM and word list? Thanks so much!

Contact with his family is in their hands. Up until this point, I had only briefly met some of his bio family. We got along and everything was very comfortable, but no information was exchanged. I did give them my phone number at our last drop off, and I heard from them last night! He's doing well, settling in, and they've said they will send us pictures soon. I'm so happy to hear he is ok.

We take a ton of long weekend/visiting family vacations...I still count them lol. Last year- w We went camping in our RV 4-5 times. 3-5 days at a time, at the lake right close to home. Total vacation for us. Once was with over 50 other people who all belong to a hiking group. We also went to visit family 3x for a week each time. We stay in a timeshare resort, with pools and fun activities. Our "room" is a two bedroom/two bathroom, full kitchen and laundry apartment, so it's not stressful and cramped like a hotel room would be. Friends and family come to visit and play there daily. Not only that, but our "best friend" family has also gone with us and gotten a room next to ours. Their kids and ours have grown up together and are best friends. And the parents are too.😉 Total vacation. We took a three day vacation 5-6 times also. For one of our girls birthday we went skiing. For a gymnastics meet, we extended our stay and made it into a mini vacation. We visited friends for a few days. Shot up to NYC for a three day weekend to see the girls cousin in a Broadway show. Those were all a little more stressful than the longer RV/Timeshare weeks, but still a whirlwind of fun.

I'm hanging in there. I still cry at random times...when I found a pair of his socks tucked away in my car, or when I glanced at he time and almost went into his room to wake him up from a nap...stripping his crib to wash the bedding was hard. When I walk through the store and find myself in the baby aisle, looking to see if there is a sale on wipes. Any time a friend texts to see how I'm doing, their kindness brings me to tears. And yesterday I got a reference form for another friend who will be doing foster care, so that made me cry...happy tears because her family is incredible and they will be an amazing foster family, and also because it will break her heart. She is just like me-she will love fiercely and with wild abandon, and will also experience a huge loss. Last week one of my very best friends made me a beautiful wall hanging with the quote "Grief can only exist because love lived there first" and a space on the side to add our foster children's names. I can't hang it yet, but it's a comfort to know that all this terrible sadness is worth it because there was so much love for him. My kids are doing ok, they are tip toeing around me...they totally sense that mommy isn't ok. My oldest gave me permission to go hole up in my room whenever I needed to and she said she'd watch the other two. She's a great kid. Every night, the girls and I sit in their room and watch old videos and look at pictures of him. It's good therapy. My hubby left for three weeks the day before baby left, so that kind of stinks too. While we haven't been super close lately, it would be comforting to have him here at this difficult time. He has been calling or texting multiple times each day to check in on me, so that's a good thing. It's all surreal. He just....disappeared. I keep having moments of anxiety that I'm forgetting him when we load up the car or that I hear him cry, and I realize no. He is gone. I really wish it would have been more gradual. We went from a 2 hour weekly visit to completely gone, and I am so worried about how he is handling that. Does he think we abandoned him? Is he crying for us?

Thank you all for the hugs and kind words. It means a lot, really. I cried on and off all day, but tried to hold it together for my kids sake. They are so very sad. Tonight is sure to be long and hard, and I don't think sleep will come. I'm imagining him, in a totally new place for the first time, and wondering what his little brain is thinking...that is breaking me right now. I'd never left him, all he knows is our family. He is really easy going, and I know he will adjust and be ok, but I wish he could understand what was happening. His bio family has our contact info, and I'm hoping so hard they will keep in touch. It would mean the world to all of us. I think this is the hardest thing I've ever done.