Purchase?!?!? The horror! This is a homeschooling forum! You should be making the litterbox hat as a unit study!!!

Oh! Hopefully it will come soon! It really is amazing. :)

:lurk5:

:iagree: soft and comfy!

:lol: I hear you. I live in Wisconsin. I LOVE Wisconsin from April through December. It's January-March that just kill me!

Speaking of neutering bulls, I was reminded of: The Softest Substance Known to Man :scared:

:smilielol5: That will be my quote of the day!

:mad: I am highly offended that your theology is so terrible. Buffalo angels indeed!

Us, too. But, that's because we use a literature approach and want to build up our home library.

:iagree:

I do not take that into consideration. Whether they buy it from me or the company, they would have to buy the student pages. If it is in pristine condition, I would put it up for $65.

I'm a lot more crampy-ish with this pregnancy than I ever have been before. I get braxton hicks whenever a girlfriend gets me laughing, too, LOL. This is pregnancy #6, and hopefully my 4th healthy boy. I'm 20 1/2 weeks. If your stomach is iffy-it could just be yucky stuff going on with your lower gi track.

Training Hearts Teaching Minds by Starr Meade. It is fantastic!

Here is an awesome related thread on the high school board: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=134979

No, you don't want one. I really, really, really wanted one as a youngster. I grew to really, really, really dislike that poor little guy. He was loud and stinky.

I didn't watch her show and don't particularly care for her, but I think she looks much prettier now.

FLL 1 and 2 take 5-10 minutes, FYI. :-)

We used their level 3 advanced reader books & schedule last year. I wanted everything planned out and the books ready to go. It worked very well for us!

Gosh, your dsd sounds like me at that age. Except that I chose to live with my bio-dad. You sound like a wonderful step-mother! Just keep the lines of communication open with her. My mother was able to always "be there for me" without condoning my lifestyle. I actually grew to respect my mom and step-dad more because of their standards. And, at the age of 22, after years of atheism and then dabbling in New Age philosophy (among other things), I became a Christian! There is always hope. :) A book you might consider for her is A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue by Wendy Shalit. I thought it was a fantastic argument for modesty from a feminist perspective.

My husband was against homeschooling in the beginning, too. Since school isn't required in our state until age 6 (First grade), I had K4 and K5 to prove it to him that I could succeed at this. 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. :lol: My biggest advice for a hesitant spouse is to take their concerns seriously. 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. :D So, to address his concerns, I made sure to schedule plenty of playdates, signed the boys up for swim lessons, and took advantage of other extra-curricular type classes and activities. Another concern was that I would flake out, not be organized, and not have a general plan. So, I made a weekly schedule of what I planned to do in Excel the Friday before each week. A HUGE selling point on homeschooling was having him read various chapters in The Well-Trained Mind. 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. ------------------------------------- This is a blog post I wrote concerning our K4: Our family begins K4 very slowly. Our first few weeks of K4 consist only of Bible, Phonics, and piano lessons. We do Bible together as a family. We read one lesson from Leading Little Ones to God by Marion Schoolland or The Child’s Story Bible by Catherine F. Vos, and also practice our catechism question for the week. This takes about 15 minutes. For Phonics, we use Phonics Pathways. Phonics Pathways is no nonsense, and if you want my honest opinion, it is somewhat boring. But, the lessons are *very* short (maybe 5-10 minutes a day) and it gets your child reading within a few weeks of consistent use. We found these teaching tips helpful. I highly recommend buying the first three levels of Bob Books -- Set 1-Beginning Readers, Set 2-Advancing Beginners, and Set 3- Word Families. There is nothing like the satisfaction your child gets from being able to read their first book *all by themselves*! They sell higher levels of the Bob Books, but I found that after getting through the first three levels, our boys could transition smoothly into the more interesting "early readers" at the library. For piano lessons, we have a wonderful teacher, Miss Patti, who comes to our house once a week. At age four, our children start with the Music for Little Mozarts piano series. The actual lessons are about 15 minutes a week, with daily practice taking about 5-10 minutes a day. After a few weeks, we add in math and handwriting. We use Saxon 1 for math in K4. The accompanying Manipulative Kit is a *must* buy. It is rather expensive, but considering you will use it almost daily for two years (three years, if you use Saxon K for pre-school, like we do) it is not that bad. Math is our longest subject and takes about 30 minutes to do from start to finish. For handwriting, we use Zaner-Bloser Handwriting K and the corresponding Grade K handwriting paper. It is *super* simple to use. Do *not* waste your money buying the teacher’s manual!!! If you are nervous at all about teaching handwriting, buy the Self-Instruction Book for Grades 7 & 8 . Handwriting takes about 5 minutes per day. And, that's our four year old kindergarten! Bible, Phonics, Piano, Math, and Handwriting. HTH!

P.S. It isn't just you. That poster did the same thing to a bunch of threads.

I just looked for the thread you were referring to -- that indeed looks like a spam post. I just reported it. The mods are pretty good about deleting things like that.

No, we don't use a separate reading program. I like this from The Well-Trained Mind: We strongly feel that "reading texts" (books with snippets of stories and poems followed by comprehension exercises) turn reading into a chore. Books, even in the early grades, ought to be sources of delight and information, not exercises to be mastered. A good classical education instills a passion for books in the student. "Reading texts" mutilate real books by pulling sections our of context and presenting them as "assignments." Even worse are textbooks that profide selections designed especially for textbook use, which means that your child spends his time reading generic prose produced by textbook writers instead of stories written by masters. The section goes on to outline TWTM reading philosophy & 'how-to". FWIW, we use R&S spelling, and I believe it does cover those things. For example, lesson 16 of Gr. 3 covers dropping e to add -ed and -ing.

Hi Sherry! I just plugged in your curricula into my own second grade curricula matrix: Math -- CLE Math 2 Science -- Gods Design science or apologia elementary science History -- SOTW 1 with AG Spelling -- Grammar & Writing -- WWE & FLL Silent Reading 30-45 min. -- library books Bible -- 15 min each day together Penmanship -- handwriting workbook The only thing I would add is spelling, but it looks like you have a fantastic, well rounded program planned. :) ~Heather edited to add: in addition to the 30-45 minutes of fun literature reading, don't forget about the reading done for history. If you have books for both of these, do not worry about a separate reading program! :)

Boo. I'm going to rate this 1 star. :D GO PACK! :D