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.

The logic class has started and I am enjoying it so far. I have already learned quite a bit. The professor is sitting in front of a computer and it obviously reading a script which I don't particularly like but it works. I am a little worried about how tech-y this class is going to get.

I forgot to mention that the use of a spelling journal is in every lesson. I don't know what the LoE one looks like. If you have one, could you let us know what it looks like. I was going to make my own. Type the lesson at the top of the page, have space for them to copy the rule and then lines underneath for the spelling journal activities in the lesson.

I love the set up. I read through the first three lessons to acquaint myself with how the lessons work. It is truly open and go and very simple. I know it seems like a lot of text but now that I have read through the first three, it is not overwhelming at all. I am also so grateful that she has separated out activities for the different styles of learning. The workbook can not be copied, which I wouldn't recommend anyway since it has so many pages. I was going to use one workbook for all the kids and have them write on notebook paper but I changed my mind. It would add too much writing in for my 11yo. At first I thought that the layout could have been condensed and printed on far fewer sheets, but I was wrong. My 11yo has far fewer reading mistakes because of the size of the print and the lines are big enough to write neatly. I only bought the workbook and the TM. I will type out the spelling rules and phonics, however, I am not looking forward to it. That will be a lot of work. I will buy the game book, three sets of cards and the reference guide next month. You can make do without the extras but I LOVE the way the lessons are laid out and I want to follow it as closely as I can. The thing I want to say that I love most is how quickly this can be done. 35-65 minutes a day and you will have this done in 8-16 weeks. We don't have years to learn spelling rules since he will be in 7th grade. This is perfect for us. I guess I can't sing the praises enough for this program.

My favorite two players are: Battle line Lost Cities Dominion Ticket to Ride Carcassonne Mr Jack Dominion, TTR, and carcassonne can be played with more than 2 as well. Board games are my go to get for weddings.

Pizza. Can have it made in less than 30 minutes. Pasta with Red Pesto Sauce or knorr pesto sauce. Sliced tomatoes on the side as a salad. Chicken sautéed in coconut oil served with roasted sweet potatoes (cook a whole bunch early in the week to have on hand). Egg (whites only) drop soup and salad. Black beans on rice. Cook rice on quick cook setting. Sautéed onion in olive oil. Season with Adobo seasoning. Empty two cans of black beans and cook for 10 minutes. Mash half of beans in pan. Thin with 1/4 cup half and half. Serve on rice.

http://www.middleschoolchemistry.com/ is the main spine. I am adding in all of the elements after the periodic table is introduced in section 3. Maybe creating a three ring binder with one element per page. Have them write in the pertinent information and drawing a tile to represent the uses of that element or just listing the facts. There are wonderful videos for almost all elements that can be tied into it. If my son learns all the is in the ACM chemistry book, memorized the symbols and placements on the periodic table, and has learned a fact or two about each element, I would consider that a very successful year.

I meant 36 weeks. I edited my post to fix that. I don't mean for this to be a co-op plan. I just prefer to have science four days a week since I will use a coop for other classes one day a week. Theses sites are great!

Hello! I am looking for people (more than one would be great!) to help me create a daily lesson plan to be put on Google documents for all to see. It would be free for all. You can pm me or reply to this thread. Even one video that matches well with a chapter would be great. I would like to make it a year long program for 6-8th graders. The guide would be for 4 days a week for 36 weeks. I think the 4 days a week would work best since it works for those who use coops on their fifth day but it is easily can be changed to 2 days a week which many do. I would like one experiment to be done each week and the other three days to include supplemental activities like library books, iPad/iPod apps, videos, vocab work, and games. I love what CHOLL does and I think this would work very well with the ACS program. You can see her student and teacher guides here. Thoughts? You could look at the course material and let me know what lesson it refers to and what supplement you would use. Also, for those that have used the program, I would love hear how you have implemented it.

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My library has started emailing you on the day your books are due to remind you. Yay! Hopefully this will remind me to renew online or bring them in.