If you have a Star Wars fan, you need to go to MGM on a non early entry day. You need to be at the park before opening and run straight to the sign up for Jedi training. This was the best thing for my little boy. He learned a light saber routine and then he got to fight Darth Vader. Oh my word, the look on his face was priceless. Do Epcot first, unless the crowd calendar says to stay away. At Epcot, there is a Kim Possible mission that send your family to different countries doing things to complete your mission. Makes visiting the co untried much more fun for the kids. Do not miss the soda tasting station here. It was awesome! Or favorite ride at MGM is Toy story Mania. Go straight to it first thing in the morning to at least get a fast pass. If not, go there when everyone else is going to the big fireworks show and you should get to ride it twice. If you happen to get a bad car or gun, tell them and they will put you in another one so you can go again without waiting. Get an app that gives you updated waiting times for rides. Follow the crowd calendar!!! You will spend lots less time in line. Lines are the source of crankiness.

Zooloretto is awesome for kids. You are building a zoo and only have so many places to put different kinds of animals, so you can collect them all. When you get a female and a male animal in an enclosure, you get the baby animal. The way you build the zoo uses strategy and logic on a level younger kids can understand. Target is selling this in th eir stores now. Don't forget the Logic of English Gamebook and cards. There are some great games in the book. Sleeping Queens uses basic addition, numbers 1-10, matching and memory work. Rat-a-tat-cat uses numbers 1-9 on their cards and you are trying to get the lowest sum possible in your hand. I love many of the other games already mentioned.

I signed up my seventh grader here: http://www.excellenceinwriting.com/online This is the IEW curriculum. I chose Pamela White since she can highly recommended. The course is $199 per semester you enroll. You do choose a class time and attend then. You will need to buy the books appropriate for you child (SWI A,B, or C).

We went last July and I learned that I will never go tent camping again in Yellowstone. We love tent camping but it was too much for us. Here are the reasons why: 1. In the end of July the temperatures at night were 33 degrees. We froze. We brought wonderful bags that kept us warm but the condensation would make the bags wet by morning. Having to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and the morning was torture. 2. The mosquitos were a freaking nightmare. Deep woods off did not work. You have to spray everything! They would bite through the clothes and our faces were the most bit part. It was awful. No one wanted to cook because they would get eaten the worst. The bites lasted for weeks. However, if you can get past this, here are the parts we loved. 1. Canyon Campground (There are very nice cheap cabins here, highly recommend it). It was central and made the daily drives fabulous. 2. The Hot Springs were our kids favorite and the early morning wildlife viewings.

Tangrams a favorite!

I will be doing Logic of English, I will let you know how this goes.

K-12 runs its own virtual private charter as well as virtual state charters for some states. TN has created one that really is for only up to 8th. If you do a search for tnva you should find some recent posts.

Video it everyday and show the time stamp. Then create a Youtube video of the issue, showing the consistent attempts at running you off the sidewalk. Then share it on Facebook and make it public on Youtube. The video will go viral (you already have all of us), you make lots of money and maybe, just maybe, she will see it and stop. If not, you can make some cash for college.

I am using a timeline app on my iPad. You can add and delete timeline events. No cutting and pasting or wishing I had more room in a book or wall.

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Hello! I am looking for a respected life science textbook for middle school age. Secular is preferred. Any recommendations?

You need to reduce the amount of stuff in your life to make it manageable. Box up 90% of the toys (rotate monthly), give the kids only enough outfits for 4 days of clothes, create a weekly menu plan and stick to it. Lock doors to rooms the kids don't need to be in all day to keep messes from spilling over to those areas. Discover the Flylady method. http://www.flylady.net

You can get through Logic of English in 8-16 weeks. I agree wit the previous poster that you could just pick up with RS 4 after you finished LoE.

My son is 11 almost 12. Do you think continuing with the spelling journal and regularly reviewing the rules will be enough? I don't expect him to have complete mastery after the 8-16 weeks. I imagine we will go over all the rules once a month with the games and the journal. By learning the spelling rules myself, I hoped I would help him see those rules in his vocab words in the future.

Thanks for that clarification. I will try my own journal then. I think having him write the rule down will help him learn the rule better anyway. Any words we find that follow the rule, he will write in that section. As far as what we are going to do after this. I am hoping that this is intense enough to only do once. I can see us playing the games later as a refresher though. The biggest thing I plan on doing is to keep using the spelling journal. My idea is to have him put words that I find that he has misspelled in the journal. Vocabulary will replace spelling after I feel he has a firm grasp on the rules. I am doing Wordly wise, but I am considering switching to Vocabulary from Classical Roots (I believe that is the name). For me choosing LoE was easy because I have no other homeschool products. I am brand new at this. I was debating between Apples & Pears, AAS, and Phonetic Zoo as well. If I didn't go with LoE, I would have gone with Phonetic Zoo. Apples and Pears didn't have the rules which I feel my son would work best with, AAS was too long in the length of the program. I need my son experiencing success with his spelling as soon as possible so his confidence can carry over to his writing. He takes so long writing something because he erases and erases words that he is struggling to spell. I chose LoE over Phonetic Zoo because I feel like I need to know the rules so that I can help him as he spells a word wrong in the future. I love the independent nature of Phonetic Zoo and I will miss that. However this program is only for 8-16 weeks which is manageable. The other reason I went with LoE is for the grammar. It seems integrated quite nicely to me and I don't have to worry about pacing a different grammar program with the spelling part. Since the program is so short, I can move on to another grammar program later. I love customizing curriculum to fit the needs of my child, but it can be overwhelming.