We love: Word World on PBS Team Umizoomi on Nick Jr Super Why on PBS Diego on Nick You've already mentioned it, but DD seriously learned her letters and their sounds from that Leapfrog video, The Letter Factory. I'd worked on it and worked on it with her and nothing. She watched that video a few times, and suddenly she knew them. Lol.

Hahaha...this made me smile. I just bought a gorgeous hard back copy of a collection of "D*** and Jane" books. It is seriously perfect. And I got it at our library book sale for $2. I could honestly get addicted to the pretty books. :)

This coming school year, I plan to use a combination of Story of the World volume 1 and Mystery of History volume 1 with all of my kids at the same time. I'm confident that it will be fine for the first grader and the fourth grader but I'm afraid that it just won't be enough for my seventh grader. I'm using this plan made by someone on here, according to the notes: http://www.redshift.com/~bonajo/sotwmoh.htm Any thoughts? I'm thinking I'll add some biographies for him to read on some famous americans...just not sure. Thanks!

Thanks for that link! Checking it out!

Taking notes as we could use some American History around here for next year...

Taking notes but wanted to add that we are using MOH 1 this year with SOTW... found a list to mix them online somewhere. I'll have to find that link. ODS is going into 7th grade.

Taking notes...

What a great idea! Checking it out...

Thanks for sharing that! Love it!

We clean the AC filters, change the air filter in the furnace, change the filter in the water/ice dispenser in the fridge...if I think of more I'll post them...

Very nice!

Can you call your hospital and ask them for ideas? Do you have a husband who could stay with the other kids? I know it's not ideal, but if it's the only option...

Haven't read through the other replies, but when I hear that I figure that either they are about to say something totally judgemental OR they are already judging the speaker for their comment without voicing it aloud. It always sounds like they are trying to remind themselves...

:grouphug: Glad you're feeling better, sorry you had a bad weekend. But good advice about giving to others to improve your own mood!

We really liked Flips and the inserts for those for a cheap route. I agree with the others who've posted links to cottonbabies.com as a good place to look! I've gotten bunches of things there!

This exactly. :grouphug:

Oh, thanks! Saved this! :)

Oh wow! Thanks for that!! Very helpful!

I think this is good advice. I too have thought about trying out ambleside but haven't been able to bring myself to jump into it. Maybe next year...

Thanks for sharing! :) Sounds interesting!

I think it really depends on what you're buying. For the "normal" things like pencils, paper, markers, crayons, etc I just go to Walmart for their big before school sale. I just crayons for a quarter there yesterday, but I digress... For anything else that they don't carry at Walmart, I go to either AC Moore's or Joann's with coupons. :) I find AC Moore's almost always has sales and good prices even without the coupon (is this a national store or just local to me I wonder though)...

I started assigning independent reading for my boys when they were pretty young. ODS had to read in his bed for quiet time starting around 3-4 years old but of course, he wasn't reading at that point. He didn't really start reading the books until he was finished with first grade. That summer, he really started getting it and reading what he wanted to read not just looking at pics. DS2 (he's 9 now) was probably around the same time. DD is 6.5 years old now. She will read to me when I choose books for her (or she chooses because I told her to) but she doesn't just read them to herself at this point. She still needs to read to someone and get help with words here and there. She just recently (like days ago) finally had her light bulb moment after a LOT of focus on reading! I don't know if any of that helps, hoping it will! Good luck! It'll come to him, just give him time! :)

I was going to suggest you look at a free letter of the week program if you wanted to go that route. You could also check out her budget suggestions...I know they're on there somewhere. I also read that some moms get a printer that uses super cheap ink to print on... And I wanted to second the idea of making a bunch of it into PDF's and putting it on a Nook, Kindle, iPad, or something of that sort. Obviously this will only work for the instruction portion of things and the things you don't need to write on. But that could cut down on paper and ink usage.

Congratulations!!! 29 years is an awesome achievement!!

:lol: No good suggestions for you; that's just funny! I would have died!!