I just finished Me Before You by JoJo Moyles and am feeling a bit depressed. I should have found a spoiler and read it. I shouldn't have been curious about what the big deal was. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15507958-me-before-you. It wasn't a bad book, just not a happy story with a topic I really don't want to spend my reading time on because it's sad. The first portion was just like a Harliquin romance, I knew something had to twist, it did. Sigh. I don't think I can do the white writing on my device. Trust me read one of the low rated reviews before you get sucked in. I also finished another in the Inspector Singh series. He's sweet.

Dd loves it. She has used it as a springboard to become quite fluent n French. She is also doing a few other languages.

Dd read Jackaby last winter and liked it. I asked her if it would be OK and she thinks it's fine. :grouphug: I keep thinking about how many walks we took around that lake when my kids were small. That beach was where we watched fireworks frequently.

Not going back to quote but the waterways in Disney are (or were because Disney blocks access I think) interconnected with a huge chain of waterways. I know homeowners south of Disney used to complain about Disney controlling the water and flooding them. I thought of recent rain being the cause also. Disney is usually very good about relocating gators and caring for other wildlife on property. I can't believe they have FIVE so far. I have seen them relocate ones that were tiny...under two feet.

A cozy mystery about a little library https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26240858-a-most-curious-murder?ac=1&from_search=true. It won't be available until July.

Just wanted to say I agree.

How exciting!

Well, I definitely got a taste for their site and a longer book list too! Have you tried Patricia Rice, her Magic series looks interesting........

Both of my dc's did the ACT last Saturday for their second time hoping to up their scores. They did five timed exams last week, one a day. Dd was determined to do everything possible for the score she wants and ds needs 1 more point for his goals. I think familiarity with the exams and learning to be aware of the time ups scores substantially. Now some curriculum we have used over the years that I think may have helped with English and reading scores would probably be Wordly Wise, Vocabulary from the Roots Up, and Shirley English. Not every one of these every single year. We also did one of the Reading Detective books. There was an analogy book too. From watching my kids being really good at grammar helps add points. Dd loves foreign languages and was a star with grammar books always where Ds always has simply done well enough because he dislikes it. Dd takes the ACT pretty effortlessly in those sections which points to being solid with grammar. She coached her brother which hopefully will help him on his score. For math I think one of the important things is if the student has completed Algebra 1 and 2 and geometry. Any solid math curriculum will do. There is a bit of trig also but you will get a pretty solid score without the trig. The exam is incremental in terms of difficulty so the first questions are the easiest (I believe the SAT mixes them up). What this means is your student needs to get all of the first ones right and be able to work productively as long as possible. Eta, This isn't a curriculum tip that to many will sound silly but try to give your test taker an opportunity to actually be in a school building before they take the test. My kids had been in auditoriums and cafeterias but never in a classroom which is where they needed to take their first ACT. They had to sit at a school desk which was also a new experience. They had a power outage at the school during the first exam so the whole affair was unnerving physically in general which is why we went back for round two. Personally I think being comfortable will add a point!

Test prep books are available at many libraries. We practice at home by taking practice tests, correcting, and learning why the wrong answers were wrong.

:grouphug: I am so sorry. Trying to remember the exact weeks but I know I was close 13 weeks technically once and baby was a little over 8. I had a good ultrasound at 8. I had the d and c. Will be honest and say that one was a really hard recovery even with the d and c. I had to have cerclages also.

I spent a long time this morning looking at this list of newish cozy mysteries. http://www.thebigthrill.org/latest-books/cozy-mystery/ Ethel's bird mystery series is near the top. The list is huge but it does end. :lol:

Now I know who was reading the Miss Julia books. I put one on hold during my Overdrive issues. When I checked my account Saturday morning everything had been restored plus my new activity was merged. So thrilled. An unofficial wedding anniversary surprise. :grouphug: Ethel I went ahead and read the second Deborah Crombie book featuring Duncan Kincaid https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2805871-all-shall-be-well. If you read the description it has depressing subject matter. Duncan's terminally ill friend is found dead from probable suicide. He is on the case..... Definitely not my kind of book right now but I started it more because I prefer to read series in order and ended up being fine with the book as a whole. Heavy subject for a cozy but lite for a police procedural/crime series. I also read a Flufferton book, the first one in the Hellions of Havisham series by Lorraine Heath. There was something really familiar about these characters but fairly confidant I have never read a book by this author. https://www.goodreads.com/series/152999-the-hellions-of-havisham. I really enjoyed it and can't wait to get my hands on the second in the series which I have on hold.

Good luck to all. My dc's are taking it now.

Just a cautionary tale from my family. My sil shared her dds IQ results with both children thinking it was fine because both were high. The testing occurred for entrance to a gifted program many years ago. My neice with a score in the 140's quit trying to do many things well in school because her sister's score was much higher. She saw herself as not very bright, still does I suspect. Knowledge led to really awful things. It is better not to know imo. Neither dc has been tested and hope it stays that way.

REA has been our favourite in general. We use this book of past clep exams right before testinghttps://clep.collegeboard.org/study-resources We also have access to Peterson's online via our library. We have taken several. :)

I have finished a couple a books. The first is by a prolific British mystery writer who appeared on cozy lists. I read a stand alone by Robert Barnard earlier this year but felt I needed to try one of his series. I picked the first one where I could find the first book. Well I had a surprise, a reluctant policeman is sent to investigate the shockingly uncomfortable (for me and him) death of his father. The method was by torture devices out of Shades of Grey. The good news is I still have no idea how the machine was supposed to work. I Do not want to think about it! While I wouldn't hand the book to dd (mainly because I might have to explain it) it really was handled as well as possible in a cozy sense. ://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6418546-sheer-torture. I ended up really liking the detective and have requested the second in his series. I also finished my Josephine Tey mystery. It was the first in Upston's series An Expert in Murder. Something was a bit off in the middle of the book. I lost interest but kept going because I had posted so enthusiastically about the first chapter. The book did recover it's momentum but it wasn't the 5* book I was anticipating from the first chapter. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6623754-an-expert-in-murder

I am signed up for that one also. I will be honest and say I am not planning on reading the books as I have read most of them in the distant past. I want to see the collections and what they say/ show about the houses. Two that the preview tape talks about are ones the dc's and I went to frequently for play dates in the gardens. You worked hard at rebuilding my wish list today! Most were availiable but I want to wait a couple of days before I check out more thanks to my weird overdrive problem. I think I have recreated most of my holds list. I had this book in my stack last year for awhile. I never had a chance to read any of it. I checked it out due to a positive review someplace but don't think it was from a BaWer.

Just a word of warning to those who use Overdrive seriously one of my accounts emptied itself of all information ( checkouts, holds, wish lists) overnight. At this point I still have everything that is already checked out on kindles but can't physically check out the hold that just became availiable per my email. I can check out new books so works fine in that regard. All I can say is what a surprise, never saw that coming. A little tiny part of me is actually excited to start fresh with my cluttered wish list but I am really sad about the holds list.

Someone my dc's know has enjoyed participating with this group http://www.potentialplusuk.org/about.php?id=17. Early gcse exams are easier to access as igcse through a private school. As Laura said writing skills must be good to be successful on those exams. I know kids who have used open university. I think recently. I think they pay the fee, not free. I don't think it was ever free. My dc's enjoyed this competition http://www.m-a.org.uk/primary-maths-challenge when they were younger which is open to home ed through a coordinator. My dc's placed very high so no barriers even though it could be seen as a school based compettion. There is an age cut off but the 11 yo might still qualify. My dc's have also loved this competition which is for slightly older kids. http://www.maths.manchester.ac.uk/cryptography_competition/ Team based, they were their own team. With two it was possible to get good results because great speed is required. Harder with just one to get the competitive results but ds still had fun the year he did it by himself because dd had aged out. Another friend's gifted dd has loved this group http://www.yac-uk.org/ for the history lover. Because of her serious interest it has been a springboard way above group activities.

Well we started with 2 because that is what I had ordered months earlier. I suspect 2 actually went at a pretty fast the first time because dd did level 2 all by herself with no younger brother tagging along. He was the main slow down reason but the weeks were so easy to coordinate that I felt it was to everyone's benefit to go slow. I am almost positive that dd had done Abeka grade 2 language before starting any Shurley. I don't think level 3 would be a bad choice. Take a look at the pdf parent guide you get when you google Shurley Grammar level 3. Will your 3rd grader be able to do that within reason. If so I would go ahead and order that one. I never used level one but suspect it starts really basic.

There appear to be pdf copies directly out of Shurly if you google so you can look at it before buying to see the script and the writing methods. This will hopefully help prevent the panic attack I had when my first book arrived. Figuring out how it worked was more time than I had so the books were set aside for several months. A friend asked how it worked which prompted my figuring it out. Also there appear to be youtube of the jingles, I enjoyed listening but someone somewhere found them super irritating. The week as I remember went something like this: Day one......grammar, new rule if being introduced Day two.......grammar plus punctuation Day three.....grammar plus vocabulary words Day four.......something along the line of synonyms and start of writing project Day five......complete writing using rubic Our biggest problem was the writing days took longer than the other days. We didn't always have the time. Which is another reason why the books took us awhile. This program was actually pretty easy on me thanks to the script, after I was familiar with the set up I could quickly jump in as needed really easy. I never had to look things over for a couple of minutes like I did with other curriculums to answer a question when they were working independently, as long as my book was open to the right page I was ready. I would spend 15 minutes or so at the beginning of a week looking over what was being taught that week and plan my time from that. Jingle time was 10 minutes for me to tidy the kitchen go be honest while they could be up jumping around. Normally I only sat with each child and went through the script for a couple of sentences on Day one. Later in the week it was selective script generally using it to correct errors. Things were so incremental it was pretty easy for me to just move back and forth between kids as needed. I do think it could be used with four especially as your dc's appear to be close in age. I think I would do it by 2's. It was easy enough to have two levels at a time. Remember these are levels not grades. If you are careful to call them that you can avoid the grade/age connection that many other curriculums create which can be hard as a home ed parent.

Found this blog post on my bloglovin feed this morning. http://frame.bloglovin.com/?post=4902556511&blog=3028708. Lots of fun pictures of Little Free Libraries. My favourite is the phone box. Made me imagine having a blue police box (can you guys hear the Dr. Who theme) one which would be great fun, but for many reasons including the fact I live in a historic zoning area probably not happening. ;) Also you can look at a map of where they are. I thought they were just a US thing. I was amazed to discover that someone has one registered about 20 miles from my house!

We did them as back to back. But we took some breaks along the way. We have always schooled year around and I used to run Sonlight at the same time but disliked their LA. Occasionally unit studies took over. Shurley was the primary grammar and writing at that age but we were distractable. Dd must have started Shurley around 7 and finished around 11. The levels increase in difficulty but I think every one would be overkill. The advice I think I received was every other plus grade 7 if the kid still doesn't know it. The knowing it really wasn't a problem because for mine at least there was something about those chants. We did them every day they did grammar and would sit and sing them as they did their diagramming. Eventually I discovered that they sell a separate workbook with all the sentences written out for diagramming. I bought it after that simply because it made my life easier. It isn't needed. Rainbow Resources must have had it. One additional thing I remember doing in our breaks was parts of SWB's first language lessons and it was a nice and fairly complementary change. My kids preferred the Shirley definition memorization but enjoyed the poetry memorization in fll. I know there are several more fll books now. Fll had the advantage of being one small book when we were trying to do school away from home which we frequently were then.

Even though it was a long time ago now I will jump in because Shurley doesn't usually get many comments and we really liked it. We used 3years worth at some experienced mom's suggestion. I think 2,4,and 6. Worked great, she was right! The scripting looks intimidating and painful but it was so easy for me and them to understand the expectations and do the work. The added benifit is the different levels seem to concentrate as much as possible on the same thing at the same week. Everyone does nouns at the same time for instance. The writing is similar. All your kids sing the same jingles, who cares if the littles know extras. The paragraphs etc for writing were the most direct I ever used with my ds which was great. They may not be creative but they are clear. Now that the dc'sare all grown up and taking exams like the ACT this weekend I am so grateful to Shurley. Btw, we switched to it from ABeka. Much easier with my son. Dd was fine either way.