Mommy2BeautifulGirls
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Posts posted by Mommy2BeautifulGirls
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Pictures... I really need to start using more pictures in my blog...
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I let dd pick most of her school materials for 5th this year:
Science: her choice from the library (animals, dinosaurs, and now inventions)
History: SOTW 1 and self interest library books
Writing: weekly essays from science and history reading
Did this work well for you? Did you have guidelines for the essays?
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Basically. He has to pick at least 2 events from each period in history. Nothing from US history. So far he wants to do Ancient Egypt and Greece from book 1. He is leaning toward Robin hood and the Crusades and something from Japan in book 2. He has also already picked WW2 from his last year studies.
I am working on Ancient Egypt right now. We are going to use the Dorothy Mills book from Memoria Press. We have the Jim Weiss myths. We are going to raid the library and just find everything we can on Egypt. There are some cool documentaries on netflix. So we will do that for 6th and 7th. I am really going to follow his lead and see where his interest takes us.
Then 8th grade we will do state and American history.
This is brand new to me, so we will be making it up as we go.
That sounds awesome! Maybe I'll do something like that. I was going to get History Odyssey for her, but maybe I'll have her read the SOTW books over the summer and see where her interests lie. Just today for her summary she wrote that she learned "that history and kings (especially King James) are boring, and King James made a version of the Bible." Of course, she was being really difficult throughout most of the school day today, too! :D
Thanks for sharing this!
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I don't use it myself, but I thought most people followed up Math Mammoth 6 with prealgebra or Math Mammoth 7?
MM ends with 6. I have read before that MM 6 does a good job of preparing for algebra, though the author does recommend pre-alg. I may opt to go from MM 5 right into pre-alg with my oldest, but I'm not sure yet.
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That would be more than I, personally, would attempt, but it all depends on how organized you are and how focused he is. I also have a toddler, so getting the basics done is a good day around here! :D
It looks good, though. :)
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History is what we have really been changing this year. After Christmas we came up with a new plan. He is re reading all 4 SOTW book (he is just finishing the middle ages) He is picking at least 2 events in each book. Then, next year we are going to start a 2 year cycle of going in depth in his favorite areas of history (6th and 7th) Then 8th grade will be US history.
Let me make sure I got this straight. He will pick 2 events from each SOTW book, which will be the topics for in-depth study for the next two years?
If that's right, can I get more info of how this looks? Do you plan on finding all of your own materials?
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Mine is in my signature. While I do blog about homeschooling, it isn't the only topic I write about.
That's why I have three blogs! I tend to really only update the homeschooling one, but eventually I would like to keep them all up. One of them is solely for showing off my digital scrapbooking.
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Here's my blog! I go through spurts with my blogging. I'm really trying to get better, and I'm also starting to do some reviews on there. Welcome to blogging!
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My daughter loves to write, but we don't do a lot of formal writing. We have been using Writing Strands 3 a bit this year, but writing is not usually high on my list of priorities, since she loves to do it on her own. Since she will be in 5th grade next year, I will want her to start doing some outlining and writing reports. I assist in an IEW class at our co-op, so I decided to try a KWO with her. We used a book about horses, and just went with the first introduction page. Here is her composition:
A horse is a creature with four legs and a mane. Horses are herbivorous animals. That means they only eat plants and no meat. Horses are mammals. That means they feed their young milk.Horses have three groups--ponies, heavy, and light. Ponies are small horses that are less than fifty-eight inches tall. Heavy horses are used for pulling carriages and riding for work. Light horses are used for racing and pleasure riding. Arabians are light horses used for saddle-riding. Light horses also do harness racing where the horses pull the driver in a two wheeled cart.Obviously, we haven't done any of the dress-ups yet, and this was just her first draft. How does it sound? I think she did about as well as I expected her to do, but I'm her mom. :D
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Calvert was a great fit for me when I was in that situation. We may have stuck with it for more than kindergarten, had my daughter been linear in her academic growth. However, I found that I had to piece my own stuff together because she was all over the board level-wise. It was a super easy program to use, though, and I felt like it had the perfect mix of activities.
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I have not used those particular lapbooks, but we really like lapbooks here. I do get emails from Knowledge Box Central a lot, and their products do look thorough. If you get it, let us know what you think!
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I'm interested to hear from anyone who has started using this, or at least looked through it thoroughly. I am thinking of using it with my rising 3rd grader.
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ouch
You took the word right out of my mouth!
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At the risk of beating a dead horse, I would suggest that if you are upside down in your current home ....and yet plan to hand it over to an agency for long term rental so that you can build a new home which will take 35% of your take home pay....well....that all seems highly risky to me.
And that is why we're not building a house that takes 35% of our take home pay. :D
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Unless times have changed, Pulte was well known for building large new homes out of cheap materials. Just mentioning this in passing.
I agree with you there! They used to be our "big client" when I worked at a title company. I never cared for the way they did things. My dad worked for a builder until the crash, and he says the same thing. Honestly, I'm not a fan of any big builders. They get big and they get sloppy, trying to rush through the build process. Too big for their britches!
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So glad we homeschool! My dd doesn't know anything about bra sizes or VS, etc.she wants a bra, just got buds at 9.5 and I said yes at 10 we will get you a tank bra, by 11 you'll need fitted. I'm not buying sassy bras for a girl under 16.
It's my younger one I need to worry about - my oldest (just turned 9) takes after her mother! She has a few years before she has to worry about such things. And, even then, she'll have to wait until she has kids before she has any kind of a figure!
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maybe it's where i live or maybe i'm just confused. when i think of someone paying 10-15% of takehome pay on a mortgage i'm thinking you must live in a REALLY cheap (price) house or have a REALLY high income. what am i missing?
We currently pay 14%. When we purchased 8 years ago, it was probably closer to 40-45%, but I don't remember what hubby's income was at that time. We had a 5/1 ARM when we purchased, and when our first 5 years of fixed interest were up, it dropped to like half of what it was. I think at the time, it was like 4.x%. Now, we're at 2.x%. It has continued dropping every year, and is now at the lowest it is allowed to go. Also, our taxes keep going down slightly. Overall, it has dropped our payment about $400 from what our max was.
In addition to that, my husband has received a few promotions in the last couple years. That has helped tremendously. (There was also a job loss and a 25% pay cut thrown in there, but due to the interest being down, we were able to handle it.)
Now, the down side of the whole situation is that the house is worth about half of what we bought it for.
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I know you are all trying to be helpful, but I assure you, my husband and I are not naive, and we have done our homework. We have also been planning this for a long time and have sought advice from several people from all different peer groups. All parties involved have been around for some time and have A+ ratings on the BBB-no scamming involved. We know what we can afford, and we know what we are doing.
My original question has been asked and answered, and as I stated before, I appreciate everyone's take on the situation.
To whoever posted about the builder/rental company: They are not the same company. The builder is not involved in any way in the rental of our current home. They are two separate entities. In fact, we have been working with the rental company for a while now, and have just finally decided on a builder. Also, big name, national, trusted builders like Pulte also have a deal with this company.
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How do you get 6 years of guaranteed renters?
Yeah, as a landlord for well over a decade, I can certainly tell you that this is not guaranteed. I once had a YEAR's vacancy on one house, because I will not accept any but the most stellar applicants, because I need a low maintenance operation. Others' views many vary, but I don't want nonstop calls and complaints and unpaid rent.
Even when I rerent quickly, which I did last time, there is still a month's rent missed, most of the time, because there is work to be done between tenants and it always costs hundreds, at least, and sometimes thousands.
Just something to keep in mind.
We have a 6-year lease agreement with a company who leases our home from us for 72 months. They have to pay us a set amount each month regardless of whether or not they have renters. Each year we (not the company) have the opportunity to NOT renew the contract, but they are locked in for the six years. The rent amount may or may not change, due to average rent price in the area, but it never drops below a certain amount. (Sort of like how with an ARM loan, the interest can't go up more than x percentage.)
The company also gets paid a commission of our new construction home purchase by the builder, sort of like a real estate agent's commission. It's a deal that a lot of builders are beginning to offer their prospective customers who cannot reasonably sell their homes in the current market.
We have already received a copy of our lease, and they will be paying us more than enough to cover our mortgage with the higher tax prices. The six years do not begin until we have moved out and turned over our keys. That allows us to stay in the home until our new one is built, rather than having to sell and then move twice.
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I know that a good fit is very important if you need support. However, if she is that small, she can get away with some very cheap bras and they'll serve her just fine. A teen who is an A cup or less doesn't need a selection of padded, underwire bras. She can get away with whatever soft cup bras that they sell in multi-packs at Target and close enough will be good enough with the sizing.
Do people really get measured then NOT buy a bra at the place that measured them? It wouldn't occur to me that this was socially acceptable.
I was in VS a few weeks ago, and I told the woman that I was just looking because my girls wanted to go into the store and have a peek around. She whipped out her tape measure and measured me anyway. I felt no obligation to purchase.
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Hmmm..... We used to be at about 15%.
Now? It varies. After an 18 month layoff, dh is working at half what he made before, but double unemployment. BUT, he's a piece worker. Sometimes the pieces are plentiful! Then our mortgage is 25% of our income for the month. Bad months? 50%-70% of our income. It just goes that way. Luckily, we don't have many bad months.
Some factors that have helped us:
We bought a "starter" house that was our dream house. We love it and have no intention of ever moving, even though everyone kept calling it a starter.
We bought before the boom in 1999. We didn't upgrade when all our friends were.
We refinanced to a 15 year after 4 years. We have 5 years and 2 months left on our mortgage.
We own only 1 vehicle and it's paid off.
The down side is that the layoff wiped out most of our savings and retirement. We're starting from scratch again. But, with the house almost paid off, we're hoping to save big time.
We almost have our main vehicle paid off. However, our other vehicle probably doesn't have much life left in it at 230,000+ miles.
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If the housing values are so low, have you considered a short sale? It would ding your credit though. I'm kind of torn on this. I understand the desire to leave a bad or declining area, but I would probably suck it up, cut my budget until it screamed, work extra hours until I fell over, pay the difference in sales price vs the mortgage price that you morally obligated yourself to pay (instead of a short sale i mean) and walk away happy as a clam that it won't come back to haunt me in 5 years if the market decline further and you are in the same position except with 2 mortgages to pay.
Btw: we did the budget/extra hours thing for a year to be free of our consumer debt.
No way would I do a short sale. That makes you unable to purchase a house for three years. We're putting our current house up for rent for a few years while the market turns back around. Rent is easy to get in this area - everyone around us short sold or walked away from their homes. We don't care about losing money in the long run, as that's pretty unavoidable at this point, but we don't want to have to bring money to the table to sell. So - we'll take advantage of 6 years of guaranteed rent and then see what the market does in the next 4 years or so. By that time, we should have our principal paid down to what the current market is.
ETA: Oh, and the extra rental income we'll be receiving will be nice, too! We plan on throwing it into savings for any repairs before we sell.
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I'm always confused about the actual time spent on a subject. Sometimes we can get through a grammar lesson in 5 minutes or a math lesson in 15. I know the guidelines are more than that, so I never know if I should just set a timer and let them keep working longer or just do the one lesson. (And maybe the solution depends on the age or the learning style of the child?)
Literature for 5th Grade
in Accelerated Learner Board
Posted
We've recently started using Moving Beyond the Page literature units. They are right up my daughter's alley! After years of searching for a good literature program, we have finally found one to suit our needs! I could probably use the 9-11 level, but I'm using the 8-10 with her because the content of many of the books are things she will be interested in. She really likes the format of the program, though. I think it's probably because it's not the same exact thing every single day. Although writing is included, we also do formal writing in addition. She's currently reading Little House in the Big Woods.