The National Latin Exam My oldest is so excited to take this next year! :-)

:iagree: Yay! BTW, my oldest ds, 9, is REALLY enjoying Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma for Kids, for those who might be so inclined to check it out for their children. I don't think he can make it through a page without turning to me and asking, "Did you know they {fill-in-some-yucky-processed-food-fact}? Yuck!" I even got the, "I'm never eating at McDonalds EVER again. Did you know how they make their food?!?!?" :lol:

What a timely post! I just started Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable Than Ever Before by Jean M. Twenge. I'm only a few chapters in, but it has been fascinating reading so far. And, it shows with research that most of the posts here are right on the mark! It's not a socio-economic thing ... it's a generational thing.

Umm .... could you have shared this BEFORE I paused & re-started a million times as I furiously scribbled down notes?!?!?!?!?! :D I just found them here: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/workshops-handouts/ , btw, for others that might want to print before they listen. :)

I finished the literary analysis one a couple of days ago and just finished the Elementary Writing lecture and I thought they were *fantastic*! I can't wait to listen to the Middle School Writing lecture tomorrow night, as my oldest will be in 5th grade next year. :-)

Yep, buy the newest one for the reasons above. :-)

We view it as an intro to the subject. We do the four year history cycle, so I know we will cover the same material two more times, each time with increasing depth. We use The Story of the World series in 1st - 4th grade, so if you were starting with the first book (Ancients), we would study one country/civilization/group of people, write a narration on that topic, do a related craft and/or other activity, and read other picture books on that topic. Then we would move on to the next country/civilization/group of people. HTH!

My husband was against homeschooling in the beginning, too. (His mom (a WONDERFUL m-i-l) was a private school teacher for over 20 years. She had experience with both good and bad homeschooled students that eventually went into her school. She was not biased against homeschoolers, but after seeing plenty of situations where the children were not best served by homeschooling, she did have some valid concerns. On top of that, we have close family members who are public school teachers, a private school principal, two college professors, and one public high school principal.) Let's just say that my desire to homeschool was met with many raised eyebrows. :D Since school isn't required in our state until age 6, I had K4 and K5 as test years to "prove" it to him that I could succeed. By the time first grade came around, he was so impressed that he said we could homeschool through 4th grade. Now, he's up to 8th grade. :) My biggest advice for a hesitant spouse is to take their concerns seriously. (If you had major concerns about your children, wouldn't you want him to take your concerns seriously?) What is he concerned about? Ask him for specifics. Don't try to meet every objection he has immediately in that first conversation. Take time to think about his concerns and how you can purposefully address them. One thing my dh was concerned about was socialization. He's an extremely outgoing, friendly guy and he didn't want me to turn our boys into .... ummm ..... anti-social weirdos. (As an aside, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQoSRfu5z_4 is really funny.) To address this concern, I scheduled plenty of playdates, signed the boys up for swim lessons, and took advantage of many other extra-curricular type classes and activities. Another concern of his was that I would flake out, not be organized, and not be an effective teacher. To address this concern, I researched what our local private schools were doing and bought "real" curricula. ("Unschooling" would never fly with him, LOL!) I made a weekly schedule of what I planned to do in Excel the Friday before each week, printed it out so that he could glance at it at any time, and followed through each week. Yes, I did this for kindergarten! Is it really necessary? Probably not. But, it met my husband's concern and I'm finishing up my 6th year of homeschooling. :D A HUGE selling point on homeschooling was having him read various chapters in The Well-Trained Mind. I did not hand him the entire book and say, "Read this." As I was reading it, I would point out paragraphs or pages that were really interesting/compelling/etc. They explain homeschooling and education so well and so thoroughly that it is hard to walk away not convinced that it is an excellent method for educating children.

:iagree: This is what gets on my nerves sometimes. It happened recently on the curric. board where several posters wanted someone to post something from TWTM that would clearly be a copyright violation. (It was pages of information.) The original poster stated several times that it was in TWTM and anyone could get the info if they just looked it up. I was :confused: as to why people kept asking her to post it!

19 is not too late, so don't worry. :-) There are several people here with Service Academy experience that can help you out. Sebastian (a lady) graduated, I think, from USNA and is also a counselor for admissions. Margaret in CO's daughter is graduating this year from USNA. I forget who it is, but someone else's son from here was accepted to USAFA last year and should be finishing up his plebe year there. I would do a search for "service academies" on the boards, if they don't see this thread. I remember a bunch of valuable posts for homeschoolers interested in attending.

Me, too! LOL!

:iagree: I think it absolutely vital that my boys understand this. I went to public schools and had "sex ed" every year that it was offered, with all that that entails. Still, although they taught us a lot about sex & birth control, I never really understood my body & fertility cycle until I was an adult looking into natural family planning. I want all of my boys to have a solid understanding of this ... at an age appropriate level, of course. :-)

We just watched Gorillas in the Mist with our boys. They're earning their wildlife conservation beltloops for Cub Scouts and it just happened to be on PBS this weekend. The language was more than we were completely comfortable with *and* we had to have a talk about adultery (ahem!), but I think the strengths of the movie far outweighed the negatives on the subject of endangered animals.

I think the biggest influence in instilling a love for reading in my oldest boys (7 and 9) is *requiring* silent reading time as a part of their school ~a la The Well-Trained Mind. In first grade, my boys spend 30 minutes silent reading for history and 30 minutes silent reading for literature. In second grade, this is bumped up to 30 min. history reading, 30-45 min. literature reading. In third grade, 30 min. history reading, 45 min. literature reading. And, in fourth grade, 30 min. history reading, 60 minutes of literature reading. History reading is first thing in the morning. Literature reading is last thing of the day. Every day. Overwhelmingly, these are books that I pick, not books that they pick on their own, although once in awhile I let them pick the book if they show great interest in something. For the books I pick, I never assign twaddle, but they are allowed to pick one "junk book" (as we call it) a week from the library to read on their own time. We talk about how junk books are fun and like brain candy ... just like we'd be unhealthy if we only ate candy every day, it's not good for our brains if we only read junk books every day. (Junk books are anything like Star Wars, graphic novels, Magic Treehouse, Hank the Cowdog, etc.) But, of course, it's nice to have candy once in awhile. :-D This has led to a great love of reading at our house. My 7 year old has recently devoured: Crispin by Avi, The Chronicles of Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander, The Master Puppeteer by Katherine Patterson, Little Pear by Eleanor Frances Lattimore, and Five Children and It by E. Nesbit along with a ton of non-fiction books. I would recommend starting small if you haven't had required reading time. Start with 15 minutes of required non-fiction and 15 minutes of required fiction a day. I wouldn't allow "twaddle", but, to start, I would go down a reading level so that it's fun and not too difficult. I find the books that Susan Wise Bauer chose to excerpt from for the Writing With Ease workbooks to have been huge hits at our house, if you need ideas. Then, slowly, work your way up in required reading time and reading level.

We're going with Tapestry of Grace Year 1: From Creation to the Fall of Rome for next year. I don't know if you've considered it.

I didn't know they were available! Thanks for the heads up. I'm going over to purchase now. :-)

I haven't used it, but I always assumed Landmark Freedom Baptist Curriculum would be pretty conservative. After that, I think of Rod & Staff, Abeka, and Bob Jones.

This is why I like to read different perspectives and primary resources when at all possible. It's so easy to distort events based on our current lens. (Or fall for the distortion of a certain time period because you're reading the event through the author's lens which is influenced by the time period/philosophy of his age.) Every historian is limited by their own ideology. I love this essay by CS Lewis: http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/history/ath-inc.htm#ch_0 (CC warning. It is a Christian article by a Christian author. For the purpose of this discussion, I substitute "history" for "Christianity" when I read it. And, I only am referencing the first five or so paragraphs.) I find it especially relevant when trying to understand history and historical motivations. I like this paragraph: Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united—united with each other and against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of common assumptions. We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century—the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?"—lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Mr. H. G. Wells and Karl Barth. None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them. I am a Reformed Baptist. I know this colors my view of events. That certainly doesn't stop me from reading Lutheran, Anglican, Muslim, Jewish, Catholic, Buddhist, Confucian, Taoist, Atheistic, Hindu, or Sikh primary sources, historical explanations, or literature. I relish understanding other people's points of view and their motivations. I don't think this would be possible without taking their religious beliefs, as they see them and view their influence on the events, into consideration.

:iagree: I don't consider July a late birthday and I wouldn't "hold her back" and have her repeat 4th grade. I think this would do more harm than good socially, especially when she talks with her old friends and they're all a year ahead of her.

I wouldn't look at it as a negative comment so much as someone maybe trying to leave a constructive comment. Maybe they think you have the desire or potential to be a BlogHer-type blogger? I would just say thanks for the feedback and then proceed however you want to with your blog.

"Foremost among the transcendent values is the individual’s use of his God-given free will, whence derives his right to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force." :)

Don't feel bad, Annie. It's not against the rules. :iagree: with Aunt Pol. I'd much rather see *most* threads resurrected, like Aunt Pol, than see 50 threads ON THE SAME TOPIC IN LESS THAN TWO WEEKS. :lol: Seriously. How many, "What should I use for X grade?" threads can we have? Of course, some threads need to go to the graveyard never to be resurrected, but I find that happens very rarely.

I gained 60 with my first, 25 with my second, and 35 with my third. I'm 26 weeks and have gained 17 so far this time around. Each time has been very different for me. I hope she switches doctors.

Have you checked out http://www.eatwild.com/products/index.html ?

It is my understanding that grain = corn. Very common way to finish off beef, but you should understand that this is what you're getting. The grass fed beef we buy is 100 % grass fed, has plenty of marbling, and tastes fantastically yummy.