http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/04/the_pineapple_story_questions.html A fairly intelligent discussion (including some confused commentary from the pineapple story author regarding why they would ever use a story of his for a comprehension test) that combines both the Happy Scientist problems and the pineapple problems into one article that questions the testing in general.

I have a book - The Bugaboo Review by Sue Sommers - that covers most of the common problems of spelling and word usage. It is written by a high school teacher and has some clever ideas for remembering the rules.

:lol: :lol: Clever, but I am a little sorry I read the article :tongue_smilie: - I will never be able to read the stories without this popping into my mind, even if it was tongue in cheek. And, if you want to take it somewhat seriously, I agree with the previous poster that there is too much diagnosin' goin' on (while fully acknowledging that there are many people who benefit from the help a diagnosis brings, by the way). Silly ol' bear - we love him because of his quirks, and the quirks don't get in the way of his happy and loving and successful relationships and life.

:seeya: Me Still or Again...whatever I have never had much luck with the social groups - there isn't enough room to type much and you can't quote or directly respond very well. I know threads tend to get lost or buried but I do like the interaction of a thread better. You would just have to find it and bring it up to the top (which I guess would keep everyone posting...)

Most of the meat of the program is in the Teacher's Guide, as well as miniature copies of the worksheets in the Student Guide. If you use all of it (63 lessons), it can be a full year of science. We also used the Thames and Kosmos Milestones in Science kit for more hands on. The Quest Guides are a little more talk and write, not a lot of experimentation or demonstration (for us anyway - it might be enough for others). For all of Unit 1 the only hands on supplies are in lesson 1 - compass, camera, lesson 2 - household machines like an egg beater, stapler etc, and lesson 6 - marshmallows, toothpicks, pen, meterstick, tape. The activities are good and thorough, there just aren't a lot of them. It isn't really an experiment book.

I think it is a good gauge if you use all three. I can pretty easily figure out if what I am saying is true (from my perspective, based on what I have learned so far) and if it is going to build someone up or help them (which is what kind means to me). The last one, is it necessary, is what causes me to delete a lot of posts I might otherwise submit here. I think of this as, is it really going to add anything or help anyone, is it really necessary, is it contributing. Not that I am always successful by any stretch of anyone's imagination...

I cannot wait to get home. It is too noisy and disruptive at the hospital. With my 3rd, after a 24 hour labor, I was finally sound asleep and the nurse came in at o'dark thirty to remove my iv. I was so tired I just sort of sat there on the edge of the bed and apparently my hand, where the iv was removed, was dripping blood. It didn't hurt so I didn't notice, but she yelled at me, like it was my fault or something. Argh. Get me home where I can just sleep and have family and friends to help and can snuggle in with my family. And your baby is beautiful! Congratulations on a new little bundle of love.

They are talking about that in Florida - a little kerfuffle started by The Happy Scientist http://stateimpact.npr.org/florida/2012/04/20/feedback-loop-fcat-not-blinding-them-with-science/ We did a test prep course once, expecting to learn about what material was covered and what would need to be studied and were annoyed when the entire course was about trick questions and figuring out what the test was looking for and how to narrow down possible answers.

The Quest Guides have a lot of material to cover and it is pretty thorough, though pretty public schoolish with group activties and such, but it isn't a complete curriculum and I don't see how it could be or think it is meant to be.

One of my kids did sleep walk in a scary way and I had them sleep with me after they told me about a dream where they thought they needed to go out in the back yard to kill a bear and woke up before going out, fortunately, but did find themselves downstairs. It is a little scary. For us it helped to make sure to get enough sleep and go to bed early enough. It mostly happened when the child was over tired. Also discovered they were a deep sleeper and had a hard time waking up to go to the bathroom. A lot of times they had to go to the bathroom but couldn't wake up enough to carry out what disturbed their sleep. Sorry this is worded awkwardly but didn't want to speak too personally about my kid. We made sure not to discuss what happened the next morning because they didn't remember doing anything and it kind of freaked them out and made it hard to sleep the next night. Hopefully your dd will grow out of it soon and you can all get a good night's rest.

A couple of Cold War era books - Top Secret: Spy Equipment and the Cold War and The Ultimate Spy Book by H. Keith Melton

I think she is a nut and won't pay any attention to anything you say and it will probably just give her license to ramp it up and create drama. I think the only thing that might help is to directly confront her when it happens and tell her in no uncertain terms to stop whatever she is doing and then don't wait for a response.

Thank you! I heard about this on NPR on Wednesday in the car and spent a minute when I got home trying to Google it (mostly trying to figure out how they spelled it) without any luck and then got busy with other stuff and forgot about it. Here is the NPR story http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2012/04/18/150846845/from-silicon-valley-a-new-approach-to-education The classes are actual live classes with start dates - the Logic class begins on the 23rd, some others don't begin until September.

it is interesting but it is really more of literature and poetry and picture study book. More about familiarity than instruction. That is why we used it - narration, dictation, familiarity with older poetry and stories, picture study and so forth. There is also quite a bit of letter writing, which we skipped. It is also quite long - 301 lessons. One lesson per day would take 2 years to finish. I have used it with multiple kids and it is a good resource and a good way to cover the basics and get kids talking and writing in complete sentences but it is not a full language arts program.

Well, beside the depressing fact that I am old enough to be your mother :glare: I would say that it has always been there. I have been homeschooling since 1992 and our one and only homeschool support group had a big falling out because they required everyone who served in leadership to be the right kind of Christian. We used to have a curriculum fair, which was sponsored by our local mega church and had mostly life style presentations etc. I honestly think there are more and better resources available now, and definitely more secular resources, though still not enough for many rigorous, academic homeschoolers (see the threads on secular science for example). Mostly, I think you should call this your homeschool support group and hang out here. If there are enough of us we can influence the future of homeschooling, right? (mwah ha ha ha ha) If you search for "rigor" you will find many good discussions.

:iagree: My daughter was in an airbag deployed accident and it bruised the back of her forearm a little but it wasn't a big deal. I drive a big old cast iron Suburban that doesn't have airbags so I stick with what I learned in driver's ed and what is most comfortable - 10 and 2.

http://web.archive.org/web/20090106123651/http://www.wtmboards.com/HSboardApr202006/messages/2886.html

We used straws bundled up in groups on a place value mat. When you regroup you can see how you break up the groups to rearrange the straws - that the 5 in 50 is 5 groups of 10 and when you "borrow" you are taking away a whole group of 10 and moving it over to the ones, making it a something-teen. Our straws came with the mat and such that I bought from Learning Company but you could probably do it just as easily with tooth picks and a piece of paper with the columns drawn on it for 10's, 100's etc.

I would say it is the Spirit helping us through reading scripture that makes it alive, not the physical book itself. Can you maybe quote the reference for the living and active scripture? That might help sort out what you are looking for.

Here is the full story from his website. Just one more reason to homeschool :) http://thehappyscientist.com/blog/problems-floridas-science-fcat-test

I do. We were using Konos, LLATL, and Miquon and a few other random things I don't recall. I remember building the Konos ear canal in my kids room. It was pretty fun. My oldest strong willed child had gone to public school kindergarten and it took most of the first year to undo the intense sight word reading (guessing!) that they used and to convince her that I really did know something and could be the teacher as well as the mommy. It was 1992 and I can even remember the colors of the books and the feels and smells like it was yesterday. The intervening years are all kind of a busy jumble but that first year has clear, wonderful memories. We kept all the school work on a shelf in the kitchen. :lol:

We just do school. As someone here once put it - "if it is a weekday we are doing school". When we finish something we just move on to the next thing. Sometimes, just so I can feel a sense of accomplishment I like to plan out pages so I wrap up several things on a Friday and start with new stuff on Monday but that is as far as it goes for timing or finishing by a date. We sometimes take long vacations out of town and don't do any school work. We take extra time off if we have company from out of town for Christmas or whatever but otherwise the only end in sight is June 2017 when my last child will finish high school. Just keep swimming, just keep swimming...it is how we have always done it (Thank you Swanns)

This isn't a lit guide exactly but it does have quite a bit of information and some good discussion questions. It is a teacher's guide written for the Masterpiece Theater set of Jane Austen productions. A lot of it compares the books to the shows but it also talks about themes in the books and life in Jane Austen's time. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/austen/austen_teachersguide.pdf

You may already know this but Khan has the Singapore 3A lessons and is planning to do the entire Singapore program (according to their website). We use it as a supplement and just go through the practice questions until we come to something we don't understand and need to watch the video lesson.

Here are a couple of discussions about this with some various viewpoints and curriculum: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=98411 http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/search.php?searchid=11442693 I like the idea but used it to add to my kid's understanding of the practical, theoretical, thinking skills part of math. I made sure they could picture volumes and distances and had a concrete understanding of how numbers apply to the world. Just kept doing regular math but made sure they understood it from this perspective as well.