My 4th grader is loving: CHOW Calvert Grammar and Usage Science (Calvert stuff) Hating: Composition (Calvert) He has a love/hate realationship with Spelling Power. He cries when he misses words, but when he takes the review tests, he is astonished and proud of how much he has learned and how well he is doing. My K'er loves his Calvert curriculum. He is really enjoying the ETC online that I supplement with as well. He does not, however, love doing ETC in the book, but he is starting to get over that. He has little choice. Me, I have decided that, while I do LIKE Calvert, it is a bit boxed. Some of the stuff, I would totally NOT do and see little need to do so I often omit it. 4th grade Science bores the crap out of me, but my son likes it. The experiments do not have enough detail and the material seems a bit hard for a 9 year old...even a pretty smart one. There is a lot of vocabulary and the tests crack me up. They are way over the top, IMO for this age. Thank God we are not doing ATS.

If I were you, I would just pick up a math workbook type thing at Wal-mart and start teaching him numbers and number writing. If he already knows that, then the workbook will probably go on to harder things. I am not sure I would start doing something like Horizons just yet. I did it for a few months with my almost 5 year old and it just went way too fast for our taste. Now we are doing Calvert math, and it is going a bit slow so I am skipping a lot and moving ahead at his pace. No matter what you get, you will most likely have to tailor it to his abilities. I think, at his age and with him going to preschool at the same time, what you are doing is fine. When you start really homeschooling him, you can choose curriculum that fits him and go from there. Best of luck to you!

Mine's up, but I can't post my blog here...much too much personal info there. Suffice it to say that since we took last week off, and we have my mom here due to her having a broken arm, this week has been rough. Composition just may be the death of my 9 year old...at least in his little world, anyway!

My 4th gr ds is reading Robinson Crusoe right now and he is enjoying it.

We love our little room and it works great for us. Thanks for sharing all your pics here too. You ladies sure have some GREAT rooms!!

We are "white" - but have origins all over the place - My grandfather was German, my grandmother was dutch Irish, my husband's family is also German. My dad's side has a lot of Cherokee Indian mixed in as does my husband's family. His uncle is married to a Cherokee woman. My sister married an African American man and they have two daughters who are mixed race...so we are a little melting pot all on our own over here. :)

I would buy all the Calvert Math Manupilatives as well as all of their other enrichements that i think my kids would love. :)

We do. Originally, we used Horizons K, which my son caught on to quickly, but after some time, it seemed to be leaving large gaps for him. Then we switched and are now using Calvert K math. We had to skip - oh - 40 lessons or so, but now my son is in the perfect place for his skills and he is learning at the right pace. :) We are really enjoying it.

We are a Republican voting household - McCain will get our votes. That said, I fear for the future of this Nation.

No words of wisdom...just hugs for you and prayers for your brother. It sounds like you refer a lot of what he is going through onto yourself too. It is not your fault! It is not his fault either. Poor guy.

I am so glad that you have found words of wisdom and grace here. And peace be with you as you forgive this woman. The only way that you can heal the wound that you have inside from this situation is to forgive her and God knows this. I do want to respond to the subject of "forgiving God." When I was 11, my grandfather, who was like a dad to me, died. He suffered 9 long months in a hospital, having one surgery after another, after another, etc. It was horrific. My mom told me to "just pray." So, that I did. So many times, I folded my little hands and I begged God to save my pappy. But it was not in His plan. I don't know why this was God's choice and it totally changed my life and the course my life took. To say it hasn't touched every single area of my life would be a lie. For a long time, I was angry with God over this. I will be the first to admit it. When nothing else could help, I prayed for Him to give me a miracle that never came. In the years since his death (17 years now), I have struggled in my relationship with God for this reason. I have had to beg Him to forgive me for being angry. I had to, in a sense, accept that His will was divine and ask his forgiveness of me. But, I could easily say that by accepting His will, I forgave Him. I lessened my anger at His not saving my Pappy and asked Him to forgive me in turn. I see what the poster is saying - I have used those words myself. From the outside looking in, I think you are both speaking of the same thing.

God love her. Her faith is so stong. I pray this is not breast cancer. I have a friend whose mother died of IBC when she (the friend) was just 16. It is a scary and fast advancing type - but it is good news that her doctors do not seem to feel an extreme urgency. This is the 3rd breast cancer scare in a mom I have heard of today!

Just put this book on reserve at my library. I have been looking to scale down Christmas for YEARS. More than just spening less on all the hooplah, I want to bring back into our celebration the true meaning of Christmas based on our beliefs. It gets so commercial and stressful. I also suffer depression during the holidays. Part is seasonal depression, part is because my oldest son leaves on Christmas day to go with his dad for a week. Never fails. You would think, after 6 years of it, I would be used to it...but it never gets easier. :(

Send him to public school for about 20 minutes and he will know. LOL Obviously I am kidding! My oldest was in ps and HE told ME there was no Santa/Easter Bunny, etc at Easter 2 years ago..."Mom, there is NO WAY the Easter Bunny is real!" and then proceeded to tell me all the logical reasons it just wasn't possible. I do credit that one to public school (and in a way am very thankful for it! LOL)

Have you thought of getting the whole Calvert curriculum? That is what we are using for 4th grade and for Kindergarten and we are really enjoying it. I am not sure if that is the best choice for you and your family right now, but thought i would throw it out there just because you said it had really stressed you out and planning is definitely a source of anxiety and stress for me, which is why Calvert has worked so well with this being our first year homeschooling. That said, I thought i would share my son's story briefly...just to let you know how God sent this really is. :) My son was a straight A, testing into the "gifted program" student in ps from Kindergarten until the end of 3rd grade last year. At the end of the year, they had an awards banquet. My son finished his 3rd grade math, and 4th grade math before the end of 3rd grade. He is not advanced in math. My son was one of 3 students out of 40 that pulled straight A's all year long. He is a struggling spelling, reads very "average," and couldn't write a sentence at the end of last year to save his life. I am not kidding. It is AMAZING how many gaps are left by the ps. And the grades baffle me! Straight A's. As a parent, I thought he was doing GREAT. And he was...when you compared him to 40 other kids. But in real life, he wasn't doing "great" at all. He was working on his own. His school did not take an active role in teaching the kids to write because writing wasn't part of the state test at the end of the year. They said, "Oh, we don't do that till 5th grade." WHAT??? I absolutely know that God called me to homeschool my kids. I had no idea what was going on in ps - I had no idea he was behind and making all A's and being tested for the Gifted class. No idea! He has learned so much and grown so much in his abilities just over the summer. I am so proud of him. It is incredible what a different education a child has when they are homeschooled! Welcome to the group. :)

I will also add that I, personally, can't stand a TV that is too loud. I also have a habit of touching a metal door with my knee before touching it with my hand so it doesn't shock me as bad. It is now just a habit of mine.

I think it can be totally normal for some kids. My oldest son, who is ADHD, was afraid of the vacuum until he was about 6. By that, I mean he would ask me "are you going to vacuum" anytime I got out the machine and if I said, "yes," he would run and get on his bed and not move until I was finished. But he did eventually get over it. I think some kids are more sensitive to certain things than others. If the TV is the only thing that bothers him, then I wouldn't worry too much. If he is doing this with other things, like fireworks, crowds in the mall, music in a store, and so on, then I would ask the doc about it just to be sure all is okay. My youngest in almost 5 and it is amazing the things that get him going. LOL He was afraid Bigfoot would come get him after he heard of the recent "finding." Kids just sometimes get crazy things in their heads that won't seem to go away!

Calvert is pretty well scripted. I read it first and if I think it is of importance or if it is stated clearly and concisely, then I use it. If not or if it is over worded, I simplify. Often times, I read it and then just let the conversation flow as it will after that. I guess I should say that Calvert says, "say: blah blah blah" and sometimes it will tell you what the child should do, or may have in parenthesis the answer they are looking for, but it doesn't have a entire dialogue in there for you. But still...I would call it scripted. I think that, in a way, it helps my son to see it in the manual or to know I have read something from the manual because then he feels more like there is someone else involved and I am not just teaching him from my head. He is still in ps mentality that I am mom and couldn't possibly know enough to be a teacher. LOL

This was week 2 for us, but it went great - especially as compared to the attitude I got LAST week from my oldest. This actually ended week 5 for youngest ds, but he is a piece of cake! Anyway, I feel like all you other mommas...soooo ready for the weekend to come! :) Worn out!

On the subject of porn (LOL...not sure how this got there, but okay) - my ex was a porn fiend. I didn't really care. Notice I said EX. The only time it really made me angry was when I was at work and in LABOR and he was downloading Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee vidoes off the internet and tying up the phone line (back in the days of dialup!) Now THAT made me angry! LOL

I can't imagine that every going over here in the US - but it says at the top that it is a European ad. That makes total sense. In the Halloween one, it shows a "Scary Movie" type character hacking a tomato to death. Not my taste and not something I find amusing, but, at the same time, I am not offended by it. Just seems awfully unnecessary. The sexual ads are not much unlike the sexual overtones in many kids movies or on kids TV shows. Spongebob, for instance, has a ton of stuff geared toward adults that flies right over kids heads. That said, I don't want to give my son a happy meal and when he looks around it for the next greatest fast food chain toy, he sees a pickle preparing to cavity search an onion with splays of porn on the floor surrounding him. Just something I wouldn't particularly want my kid to have when he was expecting a toy...and not really the last image I want to see before I bite into my burger.

I would definitely un-bury yourself first. I have to un-bury myself every afternoon, otherwise, in a week, I would have piles like that. Calvert is all planned out, but if you want to take full advantage of it, you have to plan ahead, read ahead, underline and so on. I spend hours a week doing just that! I'd say school can wait - or maybe like the pp said - let them work on something from last year while you take however long it takes to get out from under the piles. Good luck!

My oldest travels to see his dad several times in the summer, so my little one started on July 14th and my oldest didn't start until August 4. :) Hopefully I can start them more "together" next year, but I assume the older will still take longer to finish since he visits his dad.

Canned curriculum sounds like the way to go...but I wouldn't call up Calvert just yet. I find that I am doing a lot of daily stuff to get ready for my kids' lessons and such. I am not sure it is an independent type thing...unless maybe 3 of your kids are 6th, 7th, and 8th graders! LOL (Calvert writes the manual to the student starting in 6th). Good luck to you though...I would, personally, put off school until you are settled, the maybe condense the lessons a bit, and finish the year maybe a bit later than usual, then get back on track next year. That is just me though.

We are using CHOW and I really like it. But I also know a lot of people who like SOTW.