Every year, I say that I'm going to can tomatoes and haven't done it once. What is your technique?

The guy who abused me and my brother is very active in a church near Dallas (Midlothian). He's not on a sex offender registry though. I saw on his facebook that he went on a mission not that long ago. Looks like to Africa. I almost want to ask this guy's initials Definitely creepy. I haven't read through all 17 pages yet, but I do hope you contacted the parents of the other kids. Mention the illegality of it to the minister and maybe he'll make time to discuss this with you.

I took my child's hamster to the vet and it cost 120.00, so I think I'd have to suck up the 500 and make a mental note to ask a lot of questions next time. With the hamster visit, I asked lots of questions and saved a lot of money. They wanted to do x-rays and give us breathing treatments that would have cost an extra 350.00, so the total would have been 470...for a 2.5year old hamster:glare:. Sorry about your goat:(

I started using AG a couple of weeks ago and had similar issues. The description of how to tell if something is an adjective is really incomplete. I finally had to look it up online and wrote on our board that an adjective answers several questions: which, how many, who's, what kind, what color, etc. AG just said that it answers "which" and that was hard for us to understand. I really like the format of the program, but there are several quirks like that that I've experienced and read about with AG. Nothing's perfect though:) I didn't want to backtrack to buy jr, so I write few on our large whiteboard and we do them together. I write the rules written at the top of the board and the sentence underneath it and we take turns identifying the adjectives, nouns and articles. We're going to continue doing this along with another language arts program. I'm trying out Writing Tales right now and it has some grammar in it as well.

Oh, what a great idea. I find it's kind of hard to remember to do art. Maybe I'll steal your idea and have it at the same time every week.:)

That is great!

Have you looked at Serl's Intermediate Language lessons? Also, someone here mentioned Writing tales to me and it seems to be great. There is a lot that you can print off from their website. There are several days worth of lessons from each book, the teacher's manual portion for those lessons and an appendix that you can download and print. I'm going to be trying this with my kids to see how it goes.

Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I'm used to a fairly homogenous forum and I'm new here. I'm sure I'll get used to having to provide more details or risk being misunderstood. I like seeing all of the different perspectives here. OhElizabeth, if you're still reading. I found a sample lesson of each Writing Tales and printed those off to try for a few days and see how the kids do with them. They look fun and thorough, so maybe I can do that for all of our language arts instead of trying to piece something together. Thanks for the suggestion. and PamD. Thanks for commiserating:) I wonder if it's a beginning of the year thing where we're all trying to make our homeschooling day exactly how we envision it should be. I see a lot of stressed out posts on this forum from the last few days.

Don't be concerned, my kids are really easygoing for the most part. There are some consequences. For example, if my 9yo mocks her little brother, she has to pay him a dollar. If I cannot get them to do whatever needs to be done, we turn off all electronics in the house. That kind of stuff. We talk constantly about feelings, ours, other peoples, etc. Also the natural consequence of not getting to an activity on time. My 4th grader is the only one who ever stands her ground and I have to admit that it's something I admire in her. I try not to do anything that makes her feel powerless. Whatever consequences I use with her have to be very carefully thought out and have to give her some feeling of control in the situation. This thread really helped me with that yesterday. I didn't mean to imply that you are a "punisher." I just don't really think of our consequences as punishments, so I mispoke. I think it's a regional thing. Sorry if I insulted you.

What is WT2? (nevermind..found it (Writing Tales)

OhElizabeth, you're the 2nd person to tell me that. The other one was a PM from the owner of AG, so you must be right. I was under the impression that AG was just Jr. AG but with more lessons after the first section. I guess I was mistaken about that. They've both had some grammar, but nothing that we do every day. Ad libs, easy workbooks and writing games mostly. I feel bad reading my first post because it seems like I was saying that we do nothing and that's not the case. I have a ton of various curriculum, but using it consistently hasn't happened. I haven't found a writing curriculum yet. I have writing strands 4, Un-journaling,Games For Writing, Serl's Primary and Intermediate language lessons. I'm not sure exactly how I want writing to look. We were doing phonics pathways and lessons from Serl's Primary Language Lessons last year. Maybe I should stick with that and just do it more consistently. I've been reading this forum over at the writing workshop section trying to get a picture of what other people are doing. Since I started Grad school, I've been feeling more anxious about our homeschooling.

So exciting. I bet it's hard to be a vendor and not break the bank on homeschooling stuff that you see at the conventions! I use McRuffy with one of my kids and really like it. I use Analytical Grammar too and like the method a lot. I haven't seen anything else like it. (only on lesson 3 as you saw in my earlier post). Congrats on a great 1st day.

Oh, and to clarify about what our unschooling looked like. They're very strong in history, science and social studies: Historical books on tape in the car and documentaries several times a week. Lots of museums, plays and science center visits. Piano and guitar, art classes and taekwondo. Two straight years of a weekly science experiment class. I think part of our problem was spending too much time out of the house. We've cut back on outside activities in order to concentrate on the 3R's. So yeah, it's really not as much fun. My 9yo is a perfectionist, so I think you hit the nail on the head with her being worried about not being able to do it right. And again...thanks.

Thanks. I'm not a punisher, but I do need more tools than what I have, apparently. Good ideas. Thank you both for responding. I let the grammar thing go and we did a small writing assignment that went ok. I'm feeling much calmer now. We do need to have some more talks about what we're doing and why. Thanks again. I'm so glad I found this forum.

I've been trying to be on a fairly decent schedule lately. I have a fairly rigorous grammar curriculum (analytical grammar)for my 4th and 6th grader and they've been doing well for the first 2 lessons (each lesson has taken 3 days...how sad is that?), but today was different. I've done most of the work by writing on the board and letting them do the work on the board with me. They've been having fun, but they really need to be able to work independantly, so I asked them to finish an assignment alone. My 4th grader jotted down a few things and threw the paper down and left the homeschooling area saying that she hates grammar and doesn't care about this paper. She's come back down a few times to try to gage my reaction and I haven't said anything. I feel like marching us down the street to the school and handing her over. What do you do when your kids do this stuff (refusing to do anything you ask)? I'm really relaxed most of the time (have been unschooling, but they are really behind). I hardly have them do ANYTHING. I'm pretty sure that neither of them have ever written a paragraph. We don't take tests, no grades, no assigned readings (yet). I just don't know what to think. I feel like a total failure and we've just begun the year. :confused: