I haven't read the thread very well but a few thoughts for now. Probably going to be a bit scattered but I want to post something and time for bed. I don't think you can plan for what things will look like far in the future, I would think about your first year maybe first semester. I would make dh responsible for some subjects from the start. Personally I would pick things that are typically done a couple of times a week. Science, history , art? Obviously as she gets older pick an online subject he is in charge of.....raspberry pi? Put him in charge and don't second guess him. Also have him do a read aloud. Chapter a day when he is on. Bonding and special for all. I would do something like the suitcase a pp mentioned since dd and dh will have the house to themselves for the first year. I set up stations which you could do on your wayout the door if your prepare your stuff in advance and rotate. Maybe six tasks on the sitting room carpet plus an artsy type thing if dd can be left alone with little supervision while she creates. I set out things like a jigsaw puzzle, cards with words that I made to create a sentence or two, tangram puzzle (picture or two with the blocks), whatever you can think of. Things like building a pyramid out of duplo are fun to go with history. Paper doll historical figures maybe. This is the time for the creative stuff. Thinkfun brand games might perfect for this time. When daddy day is done they go away. All I can think of right now. I do think it can work. One of my good friends has kept a traditional career going while home eding 4 on a two day a week plus late night schedule. Her dh or mil covered one day when kids were little so she could be on site and she worked at home another day with dh in house. Lots oflate nights.

Ethel......My Miss Julia book came on overdrive and I read the whole thing during the night. Sleep issues, I read both Tessa Dare's also. I just wanted to say thanks for the recommendation. She is an enjoyable character and I have the second book in the series ready to go. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/77520.Miss_Julia_Speaks_Her_Mind?ac=1&from_search=true

I read both books in Jeanette Grey's Art of Passion series. Kareni recently read the first book in the series. They were quite good. Definitely had the New Adult feel with lots of Adult content. The first one ended with a cliff hanger type ending so I was forced ;) to read the second one. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25067013-seven-nights-to-surrender Not sure what I plan to read next on the kindle. I have some Tessa Dare Spindle Cove historicals and Bad Monkeys. I know what Stacia would recommend! :lol: I have started the next Inspector Singh Investigates. I have to report that the series seems to be back to normal in A Curious Indian Cadaver. I am so relieved that one of my favourite new series isn't completely ruined.

We did Erector/meccano sets pretty intensely for a couple of years.

I hope you are able to find more as audiobooks because I really am enjoying them. I haven't checked but I think I can get most from my library as audiobooks. I think ebook might be harder. I have decided not to read but to listen to this series since I started it with an audiobook. I have tried a couple of audiobooks within a series where I have read several, not successful. I don't seem to enjoy them very much because the characters aren't right! :lol: I have been reading the Inspector Singh series for the past few months and loving it but number 4, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11053574-a-deadly-cambodian-crime-spree A Deadly Cambodian Crime Spree is not a book bordering on cozy by any description. Far too much info on the killing fields which I wasn't up for. The Inspector is sent to Cambodia to be part of a war tribunal trial. That part of the description should have provided a clue. Because I have the rest of the series waiting in my stack, including the latest which I requested be purchased by the library, I skimmed it. I felt obliged. Sad, depressing.... It could have been worse but not what I wanted it to be. I wanted more of my sweet Inspector and events in the story kept overshadowing his charm.

I just finished listening to the third Amelia Peabody book by Elizabeth Peter's. The Mummy Case was the best one yet. I listened to 7 hours worth today and I generally do not care for books set in Egypt. ;)

Congratulations on your move!!!! :grouphug:

Since people are wondering about prep books for the new ACT I thought I would post this review. http://www.test-study-guides.com/best-act-books/ In general I think checking a couple of review books out of the library and running some timed exams at home where you concentrate on why an answer was wrong will improve your child's scores dramatically. We used Barron's, which dc's say is much harder than actual and Real ACT books. Good results but ds is still looking for one more question right to up his composite. Probably going to try one more time. We have used up all the practice tests we have access to so I need to buy something. Looking at the review I found Tutor Ted, Kaplan Premier, and McGraw Hill Cross Platform appear to be my best options because they might contain some of the new material. Unfortunately I think the new Real ACT is just a reprint.

Angela, Thanks for the update. Sending positive thoughts and prayers your way for next week. :grouphug: Thanks for thr recommendation for The Secret Poisoner. I just requested it for dd (maybe me). She will love it. Several years ago she took a chemistry class where she had to do a research paper on any element. Naturally my mystery lover picked arsenic and tied all sorts of murders into her paper. She had a blast! You also just reminded me about The Story of my Teeth. It's still on the list!

I was wrong about vectors. Just talked to dd about what she remembers. Matrices were somewhat expected because part of the Barrons review. Not in review material she used: There was a geometric proof that was unexpected but not hard. Dilations and coordinate geometry. Had to do with finding the scale factor.

There was at least one math question on the June exam with the new format. I think it was integrating vectors. The dc's were surprised. Eta. See post 14 for corrections. I didn't have a kid available when posting but wanted people to know that there were new types of questions on June exam. I thought they were complaining about vectors not being in review material in the car but dd says I messed up. Her comments in post 14.

I saw one of Gwenyth's smoothies being made an sampled on some chat show. Cost was huge and it failed taste wise. Think this http://www.scarymommy.com/gwyneth-paltrows-breakfast-smoothie/ is referring to the smoothie in question.

Before I forget to post about it I just finished The Royal Nanny by Karen Harper. Really enjoyed it. It followed the life of the British Royal family from 1900 on. Told from the nanny's perspective. Lots of perspective on Edward VIII personality. Interesting. I thought the book was complete fiction, rather like the Royal We when I started reading it. As I read things started falling closely in place and I turned to Wiki to verify. Itfollows the families story closely and the nanny was real. Still pretty fluffy but higher quality fluff then I intended to read :lol:

:grouphug: I sometimes feel library due dates completely control my reading choices! I have found the best way to not lose books to Overdrive is to only turn the kindle wifi on when I know my return situation for the book I am currently reading. Since I have had kindles since the beginning I now have an old one I update every week or so. I don't particularly like reading on it but at least I don't have a book that I am reading "stolen" from me completely. ;)

I read this thread and had to laugh because I never thought of writing with my frixion pen. I bought it for marking quilts. I believe your mistakes will stop coming back after a couple of heat (iron for me ;) ) and cold applications. I just buy them from Amazon.

I love the beginning and endings of the Iron Druid books. The middle drags endlessly for me generally. My advice is to speed read to the last 100 pages when it will hopefully be interesting again! So glad the babies have you to take care of them. I have been read Jim Butcher's other series in audio format and it definitely has repetition issues. I can't remember what the movement was, mght have been blinking. :lol: I am currently on vacation from the series because I couldn't take it anymore! I totally plan to go back to the series but i need a couple of months.... I think having to listen to the same thing repeated verbally many times in the course of an audio book is far more irritating than reading it multiple times. Easy to skip over when reading. I will be getting The Twenty Sided Sorceress. Thanks for Olson's list. I bookmarked it because I am not in the mood for that genre currently but suspect it's a great list. Many of my favourites are on it and a couple of series I gave up on too. The ones I quit say start reading later in series and I would have stsrted with book 1. I have been immersing myself in comfort reads, which for me means series. I finished the Linda Castillo Amish series and am waiting for the new one to be released. I know they aren't comforting in the traditional sense but I found them additive. My overdrive had the novellas so it all staggered nicely between long and short. Also read some historical romances. I just finished Mary Jo Putney's latest https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27204476-once-a-soldier Once a Soldier. Loved it. It is supposedly the start of a new series but is really more of the Lost Lords series. Just started The Royal Nanny by Karen Harper. The first 15 pages are good....

My ds did this course. It's been repackaged a couple of times but pretty sure it's the same one. He loved it. https://www.coursera.org/specializations/computational-biology

Dh and I had a rather similar relationship from age 14 on. We both dated others occasionally. The others (at least my others) hated us. I would honestly say we were just friends as I grabbed my mail from dh from my campus mailbox, then return to the current boyfriend and announce I was going to my brother's (lived near dh parents) for the weekend. Seeing Dh was always my priority. ;) During college we saw each other maybe 4 times a year. Snail mail and maybe a dozen phone calls a year was apparently adequate.

Yesterday when I read your post with Ivanhoe for the 18th Century I realised I had happily read a historical set in the 18th Century and checked that one off. I think we all need to come at this card from our own perspective. Btw the place Scott lived while writing Ivanhoe is a semi local pub. So I have read it recently but not this year. For Epic I googled and found a huge list. I looked at definitions and decided a quest was required. The list had many fantasy or sci fi books. LoR was on it, maybe Narnia was (does Wee Girl need a read aloud?). I ended up reading Terry Prachett's Guards! Guards!. It was OK. I can't fnd the list to link. Yes, VC to me classic could easily mean Bronte or similar. ;)

I will be honest and say dd only did the exercises when she knew she needed to. That being said dd was an incredibly mature student who wanted to take the SAT subject exam in Latin and be done. Her situation and what a younger male student most likely needs is probably very different! Just so you know dd does have a younger brother who is also home educated so I have done the teen boy thing! He dropped out of latin at the point we switched to Wheelocks. Wheelocks also has a book titled Scribblers.......http://wheelockslatin.com/scribblers.html which we also have. It is good. Not sure that she did much of it but a solid supplement since you have time. A Pp suggested Cambridge Latin and the Website so here's my 2p. We also have access to the Cambridge Latin website. It's fun. Both dc's enjoyed it when younger. Dd also went through the online Cambridge when reviewing for the SAT Latin exam. We have all the books in our house because I bought them somewhere for a £ each. Some HE people here use the website without the book. Cambridge is not the full package and people know it. You need a copy of Wheelocks or another good grammar to make the program work well becase it's intuitive. Combining the two might work well for a boy especially. My ds likes online much more than books. Cambridge is a huge story that people remember forever. Dd had a conversation with one of my friends about the characters. Friend did it 30 years ago. Since the Subject exam goal came up in Pp I will say dd did take it and did do well. This isn't meant as bragging but I like it when people publish the score, she got a 790. Her subject exam saga was legendary. Her 3 exams was lost by the delivery company and she had to retake two months later after having quit both Latin and German. She did her retake after a quick review and things went pretty well. :) Stressful!

I am a bit reluctant to even suggest this curriculum because it's a bit old and definitely not talked about often but I thought it worked really well. I used it to accelerate my littles years ago and the author was still alive at that time. When I would call to order new books he would tell me stories of how he taught adults who were basically math illiterate with his method. He had an impressive sucess rate. Professor B http://profb.com/ is set up differently and does teach your child to count on their fingers (the ultimate base 10 ;) ). I just looked and the main book can be purchased for under $20 used on Amazon. The workbook is handy but it is simply problems and not fancy. You could easily make your own pages of problems. It might be the perfect supplement and they look like they are meant for older people which might be an advantage. Just want to add regarding the finger counting. Ds never really took to it so never used it beyond Prof B. Dd18 can still be seen moving her fingers when she is thinking and doing math. :lol: Did not hinder her in the slightist as she is taking University Maths as a major, she simply connected and adapted. No one but her dad an I even notice as she did compete in things like Mathcounts. Both kids are scary quick with mental math probably from those drills. Eta.....extremely teacher intensive. Somewhat scripted. I worked through each lesson with student and a white board. It was mom work too. Btw, also used Singapore all the way through. CWP works best as a supplement. The problems are hard. We used it one or two levels behind the book they were working in.

:grouphug:

We hadn't thought of that. We all just sat there in shock whispering....google is good, and similar comments. Can't wait to tell the kids your idea tomorrow.

A 4th of July British funny..... Last year my family stopped at a major family dining chain here for dinner on the 2nd of July for dinner after a day out. The first clue that something weird was going on was there were big billboards by the door to inviting everyone to celebrate the second of July with them. We were sort of looking at one another at this point and asking what the Second of July was? We sat down at our table to special red, white, and blue menus with unusual ( as in no thank you, bit too interesting) BBQ type dishes. The servers were dressed in western attire. They were very serious about the whole thing. It was pretty funny but we just couldn't laugh or tell them because they were trying really hard. Someone had apparently got the brilliant idea to celebrate the 4th on the wrong day at all 100 plus locations with a huge promotion. We had the carvery like normal and felt guilty. We drove by another one of their restaurants just to check for signage on the way home to find out if it was all locations. It was. :lol:

I thought someone here had read these. The church details were accurate to the Church of England also, except we get to call both males and females Vicar. I kept thinking that the C of E way is easier every time someone asked what to call her. ;) I did enjoy it. I just got really tired of the narrator. I have now "read" six books that I have actually listened to. The narrator makes a huge difference. I love the Amelia Peabody books by Elizabeth Peter's when they are read to me but have never made it beyond a few pages. I had hoped to find another series I enjoyed listening to for my quilting.