We have a utility sink in the laundry room.

I am trying out Mystie's binder system next school year. I am in the process of putting it all together now. Her posts have been so helpful. I have "started" memory work so many times and not followed through. I am hoping this will help me stick with it.

We live in Hawaii. My son has played in those conditions before. The game schedule sounds pretty normal for a tournament situation. We never have more than one sub because our coach only rosters that many. He does it because he would rather roster more teams with less kids per team so the kids get more playing time/game time experience. Which I think is a good policy. Usually when it is extremely hot and humid out the refs are actually the ones who will call additional water breaks. Another trick I picked up is that we mix pedialight with Gatorade for my son to rehydrate. We also put wet washcloths in a ziplock bag in the cooler so the kids have cold cloths to put on their heads and necks during breaks. Also, nearly everyone here owns a canopy tent, so we have those set up on both the parent and player sides of the field for shade. All the parents pretty much insist that the kids remain sitting and under the canopy tents inbetween games. We have also played in turrential downpours and very high winds. Sometimes it's not fun (especially for the parents) but if we cancelled soccer for weather here the kids would never play. Our club/league policy is that we only cancel for lightening or hurricanes, lol.

This is why I will only put my kids in Britax booster seats. They have a strap that goes between their legs to attach to the part of the seat belt that goes over their lap. This prevents it from sliding out from under them in a crash. ETA: Britax also has clips on the bottom to secure it to the actual seat of the car via the latch system so that it will not fly around in a crash (even if no kid is sitting in it and no seat belt is holding it in). The back does come off of it as an option to make it smaller, though I am not sure it would be small enough to fit 3 across a car. Just thought I would throw out the safety info anyway.

My oldest will start 3rd grade in August. Here is my tentative plan so far. Language Arts: AAR4 CAP W&R Fable Fix it! The Nose Tree AAS (finish 3 and move into 4) Silent reading books to go along with history and science studies Math: Singapore Standards 3A/3B Beast Academy (planning to try this out a couple days a week) Science: BookShark grade 3 science package History: SOTW 2 with activity guide Art: Home Art Studio He also does club soccer.

I just checked my email and she updated saying: "Correction to previous email: We no plans to discontinue any edition for the next 2-3 years. If and when we do, we will make an announcement plenty ahead of time. There will not be an HIG for Common Core by the upcoming school year."

I just emailed their customer service about this and here is the response I got back this morning: "The Standards edition is not being discontinued for another year. There may be a Home Instructor's Guide for the Common Core edition, but the Teacher's Guide is quite adaptable for home use. There is no problem switching between any edition, except possibly from grade 5 to 6. "

Breakfast and lunch I make for me and the kids, dh wakes up hours before we do to go to work, so he does his own breakfast and usually brings left overs for work or eats out. When he is off he will occasionally make a special breakfast for everyone, or somethimes I will, otherwise it's the same. As far as dinner goes....it used to be more even, but now it's mostly me. Monday through Thursday dh works 10 hour days with a 2 hour commute, so he leaves long before we wake up and gets home too late to cook dinner, so I always cook those nights. Friday through Sunday he usually cooks one night/grills and we usually go out one night, but it's still sort of on me to make sure there is a dinner "plan". It's unfortunate he can't cook more often because he is a much better cook than I am and he enjoys it much more than me, but our current schedule just makes it easier for me to take over the kitchen.

If you are than I am too, lol.We are 2/3 of the way through SOTW1 and we haven't done anything but read the book and do the map work. Science and art provide enough messes for me for the week. Oh well, my kids haven't complained.

It took me 1-2 weeks. The first few days were really tough, but it definitely does get easier. Hang in there!

I tell them to talk and work it out. If they can't then I seperate them. Usually this ends the conflict pretty quickly because they would much rather play together than on their own. If it's constant all day long they loose screen time. That's the ultimate worst of all punishments in our house and I reserve it for cases when no other solution seems to work. I hear you though. Some days I feel like all they do is argue! I have to remind myself that there are many other days when they play beautifully together for hours.

I give both of my kids elderberry syrup, echinacea, and astragalus when one of us seems to be coming down with something and it usually knocks it right out and prevents the other one from catching it. You can take those things as daily supplements as well to prevent illness.

Whenever possible I cook enought for 2 meals at once and freeze half of it. Usually this keeps me with a pretty good stock pile of freezer meals for days I don't find time to cook.

We eat whatever leftovers are in the fridge. Tonight it looks like a choice between leftover enchiladas or leftover beef barley stew.

My son drew a picture of a fish and wrote "Go with the flow." On it. I hung that up in our school room. I find myself saying that at least a couple times a day...I guess it finally stuck with him. Though these days I think that advice is mostly for me ;-)

My dd wants to be an astronaut chef....as in she wants to be a chef and make food for astronauts in space, lol. Ds wants to be a professional soccer player.

These are all too cute! I have one.... One day I was introducing ds to a new leap word, "hour" Me: Do you know what this word says? Ds: Whore? Me: ummm, no Lol

Dd will be an astronaut Ds is going to be Martin Kratt with cheetah powers

We use Singapore math, similar to MIF I think. Subtracting with regrouping took us FOREVER too. We could only get through a few problems a day sometimes before ds hit overload. I just had to keep reminding myself to stop when we got to that point and remember that it would be a lot more productive to pick it up again later that to force him to plow through it to get to my predetermined stopping point. Sometimes I split math into a morning and afternoon session and we were able to get in a little more. Also, I don't do this all the time, but sometimes I put worksheets on the iPad for my kids and let them write with a stylus pen...they love that. It's like this huge treat for them. Here are directions I found for doing it: creativelearningfun.com/2012/09/transferring-worksheets-to-your-ipad-plus-freebie.html Like I said, it takes some time for the technologically challenged (like myself, heehee), so I don't do it often, but it's nice when I feel like we need a little extra something to get us through our day :-)

That's a good plan, lol. My husband didn't quite seem to get what a tragedy it was ;-) So I felt the need to gather some sympathy here, heehee.

I just dropped my AAS review box and all the cards scattered all over the floor! Whaaaaaaaaa! :-(

I just wanted to say that you summed up the whole race thing really well. That has been exactly my experience living on the Big Island. I was struggling to explain it and you were much more articulate than me :-)

My experience has been that this really depends on where you are. There are for example, certain beaches here that I don't go to because they have a reputation for being less friendly toward "haole people" (aka people not originally from here). That said, where I live I have not experienced it. I taught in the public schools here before having my own kids and it is definitely an issue there, though I didn't find it much more of an issue than race related bullying and violence that went on in mainland schools I worked in when I lived in California, the only difference was that here it's the white kids being targeted more frequently. I have not, however found it to be an issue at all among the homeschool community here on the Big Island. My kids are also involved in a number of extracurricular activities and I have not found it to be an issue. It is common for white people to be a minority in places here, so that can be a bit of a culture shock for some people at first I think. I do have friends that have commented on insolvents that they have experienced at work, or just in life, so I do know that it does exist. Anyway, I haven't found it to be enough of an issue to really bother me. I am blue eyed with light blonde hair. Dh is Salvadoran, so he "blends in" a little better I guess. My kids look pretty white too and I have never felt they have been a target of prejudice.

I have lived on the Big island for 12 years now. Each Island is very different, and I have never lived on Oahu, but I have visited there several times and know people who live there and homeschool there. Rent is high, though no higher than other big cities IMO. Also, if you don't need to live in Honolulu or Waikiki you can get a bit cheaper rent. The cost of cars (and pretty much everything else) is higher, so I recommend really looking into it, it may be worth it to ship your car back and forth. We actually just bought a car in California and had it shipped to Hawaii. The money we saved on price of the car well out weighed the shipping. It cost us $1200 to ship it to Hawaii (that seemed to be the standard for all the placed I called) and it took about 3 weeks to arrive here. Cost of food is the biggest factor for us. It is just so much higher than anywhere else I have lived. As far as a homeschool community, there are a lot of homeschoolers here on the big island, and my understanding is that is also true on Oahu. I know I came across a couple of homeschool groups on Oahu when I was searching for groups here, and that was without even really looking for groups over there. So I am sure you could find stuff. There are so many cool places to go on Oahu and it would be great to have the opportunity to visit places at times of the year and times of the week when you don't have to contend with the huge crowds of tourists for sure! It is hot and humid, but you adjust. If you are beach people it doesn't get much better than Hawaii. I will second what a previous a poster said...I frequently struggle with the issue of visitor overload...even now, after being here for years. We typically have 4-5 different groups of visitors a year that all want to stay for 2 weeks or more with us to save on hotel. That's great except that we have lives and school to get done, and as ds gets older it's harder to just take off all the time. Though, since everything will be new to you guys too, playing tourist and showing people around will likely be more fun and educational. After 12 years there are lots of places we have been to over and over and sometimes continuing to show people around every couple of months gets old. It was fun for the first couple of years though :-) The best Oahu guide book I have found is Oahu Revealed. It is awesome and I highly recommend it. It gives great info on the different areas that would probably even be helpful in deciding which part of the Island to live on, aside from using it as a guide for places to visit. Please feel free to ask any specific questions you have and I will do my best to answer! ETA: there is a descent public transportation system that runs pretty long hours so definitely look into that too.

We were recently in a similar situation. My son is 6 1/2 and weighs 38lbs. We just put him into the Frontier and I love it. As far as I know (though I am to 100 percent sure) it's the only booster that connects to your actual car and has the strap that comes up between their legs to connect to the regular seat belt. My main concern with putting him into a booster being a bit under weight was that he would slide under the belt, or that the seat would slide out from under him in an accident. From my research those 2 things seemed to be the main safety issues with boosters. The Ftontier took care of both of those concerns. I got mine from Amazon for $100 with free shipping. ETA: I just looked on Amazon and it's not that cheap anymore. I guess I got a great deal when we bought it a few months ago. That said, it is really a great booster seat and I still recommend it if you are able to spend the $$.