:eek: I've never seen a snake anywhere, let alone around my house. One of the few reasons I'm glad I live in England.. it's unusual to see them and the only venomous ones are the vipers. But I'd probably run a mile if I did see one. :leaving: If I could control the shaking of my knees enough to do so!

We only recently started HSing a la WTM, and although I had all these wonderful ideas about what we were going to do, the reality is that we're going to be moving south in the next few months and also preparing to move to Canada, so stuff needs to go into storage pro tem and there's going to be a lot to sort out before we go. So I had to lay aside all my great plans and pare our HSing down to the basics. Of course the dc don't mind in the least :glare: Ideals are great things. We aim high, and achieve some, but more than if we hadn't aimed anywhere at all. :001_smile:

I'm hoping my dc will do that too! DS5 was very particular about how he was supposed to pronounce the words.. too cute.

There's also a new one - Exploring Creation: Human Physiology. They're all good. Our dc read them for fun. I don't think it matters what order you use them in either.

I'd have to say my preference would always be for a piano, but if space is an issue a good quality, touch sensitive keyboard is an acceptable alternative IMO. And no, the keyboard won't need tuning... and can be transported a lot easier... but I'd still prefer a piano. :001_smile:

We got this a week or so ago, and all my dc love it. Even the 2yo sings along. My older dds are enjoying the writing side of it, even though it's easy (that's probably why they're enjoying it actually!) Thanks also to anyone who suggested possible programs to me when I was searching for Latin. It was so helpful to have your experienced recommendations.

I'm sure my eldest dd was still adding up on her fingers at that age. If you're ok with it, I wouldn't worry. I think they get it when they're ready. :001_smile:

Praying here :grouphug:

It depends on how difficult it is for your ds to read anything. If it was hard for him, I'd say one or two pages; easier, maybe half the book or the whole book - your call. DS5 has a 3 by 5 star chart. When it's filled, he gets an item of his choice - really his choice, not by my persuasion - up to the value of £5, or some special activity with me or my dh. In the past, that's meant something like a small box of lego, a garden spade, a box of sidewalk chalks, a funny picture/sticker book; if it's an activity, my dh has taken him to the park by himself (undivided attention), his choice of supper that day, or we've made something together. Anything that he particularly wants. As he's getting older, it's actually easier because we will see something when we're out that he really wants, so I get it there and then and he "earns" it: the latest is three soft footballs which he saw in Ikea and wanted because my dds have cushions for their beds and he wanted something like that. I've made a smaller chart for this, 2 by 5 stickers for each football.

Bribery and corruption all the way :D What are star charts if not bribery in a pleasant form?! Ds5 loves the fact that he can earn stars, and at the end of the chart, he gets what he wants. He's also done what I wanted him to do, along the way. And hopefully a good habit is being formed :001_smile: I'd rather call it "being incentivized" - it sounds nicer!

oh yeah.. definitely.. I'm not "allowed" to throw out new pieces of artwork! The inverted commas being the operative part of the sentence.. I could easily have laid down the law and moved those pictures/decorated wrapping paper, but I chose not to. I remember as a child, being made to feel that my opinion didn't matter and I swore I'd never do that to my kids. (I hope I haven't. I've tried not to!)

Yum.. and plenty of availability round here.. fish and chips seems to be a Yorkshire staple! Or would that be a British staple?!

I'm thinking of my 6th grader and 4th grader.

Looks good! Nothing wrong with your dh liking what running does for you, either :tongue_smilie:

PIH? Pregnancy-induced Hypertension? Praying here. :grouphug: Please keep us updated.

We had a slow morning today, after a very busy weekend. I mosey'd around, doing a bit of picking up, and settled down at the computer around 45 mins ago, in the middle of one of the kids' occasional art bugs. (This happens every few weeks. I'm not artistic, so we have a bunch of art/craft materials in the cupboard and they occasionally wake up with the art bug and spend the day creating.) Today they'd gotten out the brown wrapping paper, large lengths of it, and were painting it to make wrapping paper. The two littlies got covered in so much paint they had to have a big bath to get it all off, and my eldest is still at it. She's somehow managed to create the impression of little footprints all over the paper, using the side of her fist and then printing toes with painted fingers, which looks really good. BUT... there's now so much painted wrapping paper (still wet) all over my kitchen that I can't get to anything and when I suggested to move it and make lunch, you would have thought that the end of the world had come. It HAS to be there to dry otherwise it will get RUINED!!!! Ok.. we're going out for lunch. :D

:grouphug: Blessings to you.

..if there's any point doing dictation before a child can spell pretty well and knows basic punctuation? Or do you include spelling out the words and detailing the punctuation in the dictation?

Which one are we talking about - 11yo or 8yo? Depending on your kids, it might be a stretch for the younger one but the older one could probably do it fine. How did they get on with narrations? Outlining is supposed to be the next step.

мы только становимся на ноги - we only become on legs - is an idiom which means "we have only just become independent"

I think it translates (approximately at least) to this: My girlfriend and I have been together for a long time. We are going to get married shortly, I've been waiting for this [eagerly]. My girlfriend loves me, this has been proven over time. The problem is that she doesn't have [the inclination] to be a parent. I know it's still early for us to think about it ([we are 22 years old]), [we only become on legs???? unknown Russian idiom?]. But in a year or two I would very much like a child and ideally I would like us to have two. My girlfriend is afraid of children [having children?] (because of the example of the children of some good friends of ours- HTH

The script is Cyrillic. Language could be Russian or similar. Have you tried running it through an online translator?

Don't be scared :001_smile: we were all there, once! Just take it a week at a time (or a day at a time, if necessary!) :iagree: You might want to consider giving your ds a deschooling period, unless you feel that would be detrimental to his behavior. But some kind of "job" related activity is a great idea.

...Mom needs more than her two hands and one brain. Today was not the greatest day. Dd9 and ds5 started us off this morning by arguing over everything and nothing, not quitting even after I'd had a word, so they both got sent to their beds to cool off. Dd10 went into attitude mode when I told them that a 20yo friend of ours from church was taking the younger two out to a preschool play place in the afternoon (said friend had had the older two over for a sleepover a couple nights ago, so it seemed fair to me).. so that had to be dealt with.. dd2 refused to eat her egg at lunch, accompanied by a lot of messing about, made worse by the fact that a relative phoned who would not take my polite hints about children being left alone to eat and needing to get out the door. And finally, having taken the younger ones into town, dd10, dd9 and I came back to find that the dog had literally covered the kitchen floor with diarrhoea, pee and sick. :eek: Now I'm not the queasy sort and I've dealt with many a sicky bed, but this really did cap all and the smell of it made me gip. I just thanked God that she'd managed to NOT spread it around the house because I think I might just have shut the door on it all and gone up to my room to scream! Fortunately my older two kinda realised that I was getting to the end of my rope, and they were delightful for the 2-3hrs we had peacefully at home, helping me make some progress in sorting through some of their stuff in their room, ready for moving. So it wasn't all bad. But that kitchen floor. :blink: I think I'll be having nightmares about it.

Thanks.. I can always rely on The Hive for good answers :lurk5: