Not at all! I hope to get to the point when I do a subscription for 3, 6, or 9 months, but nothing like that now. If you like what your package and want to order a shipment for January, I will have a cut off date that you need to order by. I'm thinking by Dec. 20th for January.

Ok everyone. I think I've got December hammered out. There are 12 craft items in the following themes: General color/shape concepts: red, star Christmas (secular) Christmas (Christian) Bears Each activity will come with an instruction sheet and sketch/picture of the finished product. There will also be additional suggestions for activities and a booklist for each theme. Since this is a rather recent endeavor, I'm offering an introductory price in exchange for comments and feedback on the crafts and ideas for improvement for future shipments. The cost will be $15 for December (which will be mailed out Wednesday, November 27th) and most likely $20/month after. I'll be sending a pm for those that have expressed interest in this thread, but feel free to pm me if you are interested and happen upon this thread after this post. Thank you.

One thing about the activity area in the children's section. I understand the annoyance at kids not wanting to choose books because they want to play. Yeah, BTDT, but in our area, it really provides some quality toys and open ended playtime for many children in the community that do not have that at home. There are kids who come once a week and their eyes light up and they will play contentedly for hours b/c they don't have anything to play with at home. Even though it is an inconvenience for me, I do think it is a real blessing for those families that want more options for their children than what they can personally afford.

I work 70 hours a week. I run full-time in home childcare from 7am-5pm, then work at the library from 5-9pm and every other weekend. DH gets home from work at 4:30 and watches any daycare kids from 4:45 when I leave for work until they get picked up. I am usually pulling out of the driveway when the last parent pulls in. We homeschool around the dc kids. Depending on the day, I may not have a dc kid until 8, so DS and I will do most of his right when he wakes up. For DD10, math happens whenever the crazy dc baby is corralled. There is just a lot of reading aloud that happens over the chaos. Also, a lot of me bouncing back and forth tending to the kids, swapping laundry, cooking meals and checking work and keeping the kids on track. If it's a really bad day, I leave homework to be completed while I'm at work in the evening or we work on it for a while when I get home. We also have DD13 at parochial school, so there are some days when we have to take her or pick her up, attend school Mass (which taking 4 kids under 2, a 5 yo and a 10 yo was a rockin' good time ;) ) and other stuff. Yeah, I wouldn't suggest it, but we make it work because we want it to work.

Ack! With getting everything ready for a bid coop presentation, this got put on the back burner. I'll try to work on it before Thanksgiving. Sorry about the delay. Darn life gets in the way. :)

If you have a non-fiction kiddo, the Jerry Pallotta books are good Icky Bug Counting Book Icky Bug Alphabet Book Dinosaur Ocean Animals etc.

OK, I'm working on this project over the weekend. I've got a year's worth of themes figured out. Now to plan crafts for each theme. I'll post by Monday. :)

DS will be 6 in January, so he may be a bit older than some, but we have completed this list along with skip counting by 2's, and 10s (will be starting on 5s after the holidays) and the Pledge. I have been woefully neglectful of nursery rhymes and just picked up a couple CDs this weekend for the car. Hopefully just hearing them, he will pick several up.

OK, now the wheels are turning! :P If I were to give you a list for a possible December box, would you let me know if it was similar to what you would have received from Shirley's?

We use the LR blue plastic set also. I bought them used and they get used frequently at my house. They still look new.

We have these and love them. I did check the DWN Columbus book out for Columbus Day and DS loved it, so I see more of those in our future.

I haven't heard of this before. How much were Shirley's crafts? What type of crafts did you receive? I just checked a couple different sites and they were $25-$30/month for 4 crafts and a newsletter. Quite frankly, I could do what those places were doing for half the cost or less. Maybe this is a new calling! :tongue_smilie:

The Secrets of Droon or Hank the Cowdog

He will sit for hours listening to me read and will read some of the words in the books as we read them. It's sort of boggling b/c he will sit down with books and attempt to sound out words so he can read. I'll back off anything new and see if that helps. Maybe just some letter/word games that are review. I feel like I need to do something if only to keep the 10yo from whining and complaining that she's doing everything and he's doing nothing. :001_rolleyes:

DS is nearly 6. We've been working on school work at a pretty leisurely pace since he turned 5. He's ahead of where he should be "school-wise" but he's driving me crazy when we work on reading. I need knowledgeable people to tell me if this is something I should be concerned about. :tongue_smilie: DS is super squirrely in general, but when we sit down for reading instruction, he's all over the place: feet over his head, around my neck, hanging off the couch or chair, underneath the barstool, etc. If I can get him to look at the words, he can sound them out and blend without a problem, but his eyes are everywhere but on the paper. Thinking he was bored, I tried to make the work a bit more challenging and that was a flop. He was overwhelmed and ended up in tears. I've tried writing the sentences/stories on the white board or using letter tiles or word cards. It's pretty much the same regardless. I've tried doing reading at different times of day-no improvement. I'm wondering if the eye movement is an actual medical problem instead of him being bored or antsy, but I don't know much about visual problems other than it is sometimes mentioned when people say their child is having trouble reading. So, should I be concerned or not? Oh, and if it matters, he is most of the way through lesson 9 in The Reading Lesson.

Other angles are also waste water treatment and what ways poop is used other than fertilizer (we just finished a book on wagon trains and they burned dried buffalo dung in place of firewood). And there's always cow-chip bingo! :P

:bigear: DD10's spelling retention is horrendous!

We are using BFSU as well.

In general, recognizing patterns is important b/c it helps the brain see recurring patterns in other places. Eventually kids will be continuing number patterns of +3, +4, +3, +4, etc.or repeated addition (multiplication). So, it's good to practice those kinds of little things that build into bigger skills. Now, do I think the meeting book is a waste. Ummm, yep! :blushing: DS and I do some of the activities from the meeting (based on the teacher's guide), but not all of them and not every day. I would just as soon identify morning and night by seeing it during the day and not moving a hand on a fake clock. Same with patterning, writing the date, counting to 100, etc. I would say we touch on most of the skills over the course of a week though. The exception is the coin cup. For some reason DS LOVES the coin cup, so we do that every day. B)

Next week we are headed to a candy factory with a small group of other homeschoolers.

I don't because I plan to reuse with younger kids.

DD10 is on our library's selection committee for the Mark Twain award books (Missouri award), so we've been trying to get through the list of 20 nominees (must all be read and ranked before Dec.1st). We just finished The Mighty Miss Malone and we've got Chomp playing in the car. I think Liar & Spy is the next audio and either Glory Be or Privateer's Apprentice will be the next RA. Before this started, we were doing RAs for history and read A Lion to Guard Us. She really enjoyed that too.

I am so glad I read this!!! I was just coming to post about how difficult the dictation was and wondering if I shouldn't back up to WWE3 or below. I have a 5th grader and that particular dictation was murder!

Wow, great job! That's got me to thinking... I wonder what I spent on stuff for this year (I'm a pick it up as you go sort of person and I purchase with leftover grocery funds. :thumbup1: For DD10 5th/6th grade WWE4-$16 Houghton Mifflin Math-$10 Science (online)-free Grammar (online)-free French (online)-free Latin/Greek root word study (library book)-free as long as I don't incur overdue fines SWO E (with TG also)-$6 SOTW 3 (library book)-free History of the US vol 2-5 - $15 LLATL and the readers-$20 Faith and Life 5-$4 Total $71 DS5 k/1st grade Saxon Math 1 TG and Workbook-$10 The Reading Lesson-$12 BFSU-$5 Faith and Life 1-$6 Bible (gift from his prek teachers)-free A Child's Guide to Geography-$17 Base 10 Blocks-$15 Cuisinaire Rods (returned a gift that someone gave me for my b-day and the rods were slightly more expensive)-$3 Total-$58 And then we spent $406 to send DD12 back to Catholic school (so I needed to be cheap somewhere). Also, we have an awesome library that I am blessed enough to work at, so we HEAVILY supplement with library books, DVDs, audiobooks and programs.

http://www.bookadventure.com I've seen this but haven't done it yet.