Olga is the one I remember most... made the most impression on me. Today's routines are a lot more difficult/athletic, aren't they? Notice how much closer the uneven bars were back then... the gymnast was often in contact with both at the same time.

Amen!! :D

Interesting comment... very true. Don't know if you've been following it or not but the current leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention is fighting to "cross" it over to reformed. The Bible churches that come out of Dallas Theological Seminary are influenced in that direction by people like Tommy Nelson. Its kind of like the new "thing" sweeping these churches.

Bookmarks! http://rainbowresource.com/search.php?sid=1219367232-677516

I agree... an issue, it should NOT be! But you never know about our mystery thread raters... once they get going and all :).

And for the record, I am NOT the person who gave this thread a one star rating! LOL

We went over for a little while. Freaked out. Came back.

For mixed gender and for all girls. I'm working with someone to come up with ideas for our junior high program. We want to create an all girls program/ministry that will be relational in purpose (fun stuff that will not be the primary vehicle for bible teaching), and we also want to come up with a couple of ideas for retreats. Right now our high schoolers get to go on a week long summer camp and a winter skip trip. Our elementary aged children get VBS and a weekend camp. So we need something inbetween for the junior highers. We need ideas for girl's ministry events (these could be one day events, one afternoon, one evening or maybe even overnight/weekend events). Just time for the girls to hang out and get to know each other better... I'm actually not a "girly" person so this one is hard for me... what do girls this age like to do? Going to the movies doesn't allow for conversation and getting to know each other better? Any ideas? We can go to people's homes, but what sort of activities should we plan that would be fun for the girls? We also need ideas for a junior high retreat. The junior highers all went to San Antonio for a week once and that was fantastic... we could do that again. Maybe to condos at a beach? Any other ideas? Criteria - can't be real expensive (we have some families with four students in the youth group - we need to make sure they can afford the things we do), and anything we do has to have close proximity to southeast Texas. Thanks for any help!! Robin

We did LitCT last year. If I had to do it over again, I'd do Latin Alive. I think it's more comprehensive, prepares the student better for the NLE (by incorporating more culture/histor) and focuses more on real latin lit instead of a fictionalized story. I found LitCT a little frustrating at times because it didn't always properly review material in the exercises. I thought my dd succeeded in the course by using her short term memory more so than by truly learning the material. Latin Alive explains the english correlation better. It also teaches more "neat" topics like state mottos, etc. LitCT is set up as 15 lessons, each to be spread out over two weeks. The TM gives you a punch list of objectives, and the website offers a suggested schedule, but you still have to figure out how to spread the entire thing out over the two weeks. Many find the exercises in the book coupled with the exercises in the drill and study sheets to be adequate. I thought the program lacked enough exercises for it to really cement with my dd. She could do the exercises in the book in an afternoon. And then the exercises on the drill/study sheets in another afternoon. It left her without any more exercises to do for the remainder of the week, and so she didn't get enough practice to really, really master the material. Latin Alive is something like 30 or 36 weekly lessons, and it tells you what set of exercises to do first, second, third, etc... all laid out. There's more to read, because it explains everything better. To be fair, I think if we had been wise enough to divide out the exercises over the two weeks in LitCT, instead of blasting through them in one sitting, we would have fared better. So we probably didn't use it properly in that regard. You can't really get around that in Latin Alive - it's already divided out into small daily exercises that build on each other as the lesson progresses through the week. With LitCT, the entire lesson is give to you at once and the exercises are all handed to you at once... no gradual building. HTH Robin ETA: PS... LitCT is ecclesiastical pronunciation, Latin Alive is classical (if that matters to you)

I'll take either the peach or the apple! :)

I hear it's for younger. Have you tried posting this on GHAH? The people there would know for sure. Robin

Okay, I just reread that post and want to say that I do know to compose a sentence without the words "right now" in it! LOL

I know that you know all that stuff I said... sometimes it just helps to hear it from someone else... an encouragement to keep on. It's a shame, though, that this is happening at the same time, because it sounds like you could sure stand to be on the 20% side of the relationship right now. I'm sorry that things are strained such that you don't have her there right now. I'm sure it would be invaluable to have your best friend propping you up right now. Okay, now I'm wondering if there's any way I can get to Oklahoma in the next week or two! I wonder if Mamagistra would be interested in going on an extended field trip with me :). Here's the next best thing to a real life bear hug - (((((JILL))))

((Jill)) Bless your heart!! All that at once? Man... I am so sorry about your paw paw. All I can do is offer you a big ol' hug, because no words in the world can help at a time like this. I'll be praying for your paw paw and for you, too. As far as your friend goes, how about sending her a thoughtful card in the mail, and just express how unconditional your love is for her. You know, if being her whipping boy right now is what she needs, then so be it. Be her whipping boy. Do it with grace and wait for the storm to subside. Your friendship will be all the stronger afterwards. I had a "friendship killer" episode once with my best friend, but we got beyond that, and when my dad died she is the one who rushed out of the crowd to stand by me next to the casket, to physically prop me up. Best friends are worth the effort. And friendships usually aren't 50/50 all the time. You gotta take turns at the work... that's how you know who your real friends are. They take the turn when its theirs. The nephews are the easiest... they'll be gone tomorrow so yeah... in that case, tommorrow will be a brand new day!! Whew, won't you be glad? Just came back from strings camp with a family whose Asperger's son is the top cellist at the camp. The girls were all over him. The boy has a very normal life, and will be studying statistics in college next year. You don't strike me as the type to want your children to be perfect... just to have the best opportunities for a good life... and I know you will approach it from that angle - how to provide for the best possible future. God gave you this child for a reason, Jill. It's because you can do something for this child that no one else can. Whatever the outcome of your doctor's visit, I know that YOU CAN DO THIS!!! Becuase you love your kid. When is the doctor's appointment? Let us know so we can be praying for you. You need peace, sweetie. I will pray for your peace and for the protection of your marriage throughout this. Love, Robin

If I were starting with Latin I with a child that age, I would definitely do Latin Alive. I saw it at our conference last weekend and it looks fantastic. My dd has already done Latin I, and has a preference for what text she wants to use, so I wasn't able to talk her into starting over with Latin Alive... but I can assure you that's the way we'd go if she were a little younger (she's 13) and/or we were starting Latin I from the beginning. Good luck! Robin

Ugh... past the 50 mark here... And believe me, 50 is *not* the new 40. It's like, maybe, the new 48.

Something that might help with your decision... BJU has an extensive TM that you really should use to some extent to get everything from the program that was intended. Notgrass is written to the student. Do you need something that gives the student opportunity to work independently? Or do you want something with a TM that follows along page by page? HTH Robin

My first reaction to your subject line was if the problems could be solved by someone here on this message board, they would have been solved a long time ago. I think we can talk about how to improve our health such as to avoid healthcare needs, but let's face it. We're all going to die. And most of us will not die suddenly or tragically. We'll be ill for a long time first. That's where most the money is spent - on the last days of life, trying to prolong it, trying to improve the quality. I don't know how to "fix" that, to be honest. I'm glad that fixing it isn't my job.

((Kathy)), Thank you for letting us know. I will be praying for you. Please let us know how you are doing as soon as you can. Much love, Robin

Exactly. You said it much better than I did :).

Yeah, but... they just crop up now and then (speaking of the ones that are "hot"/inflammatory). It's not like the focus that discussions take on during an election. I think that SWB has made it pretty clear what her intent for the boards are... as a matter of fact she's done so very specifically in recent months... but she allows off topic conversations so long as they don't become inflammatory. When they become inflammatory, she shuts them down. And when a particular topic is the root cause of repeated, frequent inflammatory threads then she shuts down the topic altogether. In other words, she would prefer our topics stay homeschool/parenting related, but she doesn't mind the other topics as long as they remain civil and don't unnecessarily tax the moderators... and highly inflammatory topics that are particularly troublesome to monitor are simply nixed. Am I the only one who sees this as very simple and straight forward? I mean... come on... they've already had to lock down at least three threads already and it's not even September. To keep up with it all would require either increased man hours or a decrease in monitoring standards. I don't want to see a decrease in the monitoring standards, and I wouldn't dream of asking them to work overtime just so I could have my off topic debates, kwim? Maybe I'm more comfortable than others with banning the debates because I'm so used to it... she's always banned election debates in the past...

I would imagine that the topics that give them the most headaches are the topics they shut down. Just a guess. They've been doing this for eight or nine years and it never has parlayed into disallowing hot topics altogether.

Oh, how fun!!!! Here's mine (I'm sure many of you haven't heard it): And I grew up to marry into an Italian family :)! How cool!!!

I see what you're saying... but it's probably not just *a* poster (or even just a couple of posters)... there are some topics that seem to bring out the worst in us all, kwim? The spamming might be the effect, but the thread is definitely part of the cause...

But what's the point of having a moderated board if you're going to quit moderating it when things escalate?