Not a book but for any United Streaming/Discovery Education users there is an interesting docudrama called Royal Diaries: Isabel: Jewel of Castilla, Spain, 1466

:iagree: IP and CWP were considered part of the program in Singapore, students, mathy or not, were expected to do both. My Dd is fairy mathy but I require those supplementals and it has really paid off. I remember number 10 bonds back in 1A (I think) She grasped it quickly but when really drilled her brain trained itself to really think in bonds. So much so that her mental math is stellar. Plus, doing IP and CWP workbooks allows me to further assess and compensate. If we did only the text and workbook I couldn't always count on mastery.

Cool idea. I think I'll put some up for all of Dd's pokemon. Now what about combining gutters with the workbox concept!

:iagree: Well said! I hear about a lot of people dropping out of Singapore because they did not do the above. I was a math major in college and I self taught myself mental math. Singapore trains you from the beginning.:thumbup: That all being said I wonder how difficult it is to transfer from other programs, we started with Singapore and will go all the way.

For all those Continental knitters: I've been knitting for, well, a long time English style. I can knit continental and agree that it is soooo much faster but when I try and purl I get all messed up. Do any of you switch back to English to purl if you are doing a bit of stocking knit? Or can you continental purl faster. I really want to convert for speed sake but I feel like an all fingers buffoon when purling. Also how is continental with 2 or more colors? TIA

I noticed you are from Texas. To be a complete a** you could say "I have a higher standard of education than a state whose public schools rank 33rd in a Nation that ranks 15th in the world!". But that is if you want to be an a**.:blush:

I think it totally depends on your skill set. I think I remember you posting somewhere that you are a former teacher. ??? What about private tutoring. I made quite a bit of money tutoring math on my terms for high school and college students, goodness knows WA state students need quite a bit of help. In answer to your question, yes, we have always diversified our income. I wouldn't stick all my money in one or even two stocks so my reasoning has always been not to put all of our income potential in one basket. I think the days of company loyalty are a thing of the past and the economy, which is our capitialistic backbone, is always in a state of fluctuation.

I wouldn't take them too seriously but I understand many feel that is their only option. There are so many real accredited Universities that offer distance learning these days.

A virtue can imply a moral excellence which when I was a young adult probably best described how I perceived living a fugal life. I was raised in an environment of excess and luxury and I stereotyped that lifestyle with vanity and superiority which had me running the opposite direction, fast. While I do not have those prejudices anymore I do still maintain a frugal lifestyle no matter the bank balance. We have never had a mortgage (the prefix mort scared me before I understood it meant pledge not death), nor a car payment, nor a student loan. I worked 60hrs a week while in college and was the only one I knew of that came out of school with money in my pocket. We saved until we bought our first house with cash, same with every vehicle we’ve ever owned. I will not ever live beyond my means or put our lives in someone else’s hands; I obviously have deep rooted control issues whether from a financial institution or from parental units…. Ahmmm. :blink: If our income dramatically increased or we won the lottery we would pretty much live the same way using the same % divide of savings and disposable monies but I do not believe our COL would change much.

HST Plus all the way!:thumbup:

Ahhhh Harry Potter...... I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed tonight!:tongue_smilie:

I can't keep up. What's HP?

I live in WA and we have salmon, a lot of salmon. First by wild not farmed. The texture and color is all wrong. One simple recipe I've won over non salmon lovers with is a very simple soy and brown sugar baste baked salmon. This one here is similar to mine except I add butter to my baste too. Another variation on the same line is using honey and worchester (sp) sauce. The sweet and salt tend to take away the fishy thing. Also be sure not to over cook. Over cooked salmon is yucky dry.

Laptop all the way! I use BIG programs too, like the whole Adobe CS suite, space is no problem. I do offload backups and big projects to an external hard drive but that shouldn't be the case with ordinary use. I also have a 17" screen which is great but when I want even more "real estate" for designing I port over with another flat screen on my desk for the "nerdy 2 screen layout" as my Dd calls it. I have a beefed-up Dell Vostro because I also do a lot of accounting and it has a 10 key. Have fun, computer shopping is so much fun. But I'm a nerd :drool:

We broke down and bought a lot of books mostly used. Sometimes we would just take over a library and spend a day or two if we needed. We obviously studied a lot of U.S. geography. Dd was K and 1st when we did this so we were light but did our full curriculum of Singapore, VIE, HO, Latin, and R.E.A.L science. If we did another year we would do the southern states in the winter too. We would include all the digging spots from "Treasure Hunters" TV show. I'd want to spend a good two weeks at the Smithsonian's and all the civil war stops back east. All the national monuments from Rushmore to the Pueblo Cliffs. We'd head to Alaska through Canada and enjoy all that splendor. Oh gosh, I'm bit again! :tongue_smilie:

Yes, many years ago I did medical transcription amongst other things in the medical field. Times have changed significantly since I did it though. I was a medical assistant for a private practitioner and I would take his tape recorder home every night, transcribe, print it out on sticker paper, cut and paste them in the charts the next day. Now days most medical doctors can not afford insurance so they are forced into a group practice of some kind or worse are blanketed under a huge conglomeration. A lot of these practices have in house dictation and transcription departments. I think only a few practices use outside transcription services (the ones those ads talk about), it is less common because of HCFA and all of the compliances. Be careful, there are a lot of companies out there advertising for you to pay to take transcription courses. You can pretty much do it on your own and take an exam. If you have a Latin background you are already one step ahead. Also note when I was transcribing in the 80's I was making $18.

I agree. We have always had our pets for life, till the very end. Once I was more selfish than I should have been and a dear pet suffered more than he should of. I regret that to this day. My heart goes out to you and your family. You have obviously been very loving owners. They will know this.

Have fun! I would love to hear Adam Lambert live! Lucky girl!

My husband was log home builder (hence Canada and traveling) until he had a pretty bad accident that involved neck surgery. We ended up having to be stationary for a while for him to recuperate. We did not re buy a home because we aren't completely sure of where we will settle. We rent on the edge of a 800 acre farm and dh is slowly building the log shell for our forever home. We are very simple folks we spent 12 years prior to our adventure off the grid (although I had one of the very 1st Direct Way Internet receivers) in the middle of the Cascade Mountains. We were quite self-sufficient. We tend to view money a bit differently than most folks. We've never live beyond our means, i.g. we have no debt. I've never made a car payment or paid a mortgage. So aside from saving everything for a rainy day, we live very simple and that doesn't cost that much. There are a lots of jobs that you can do just with internet access. I was the business manager for an Emmy Award winning singer and I worked mostly from home. Web-design or graphic arts is another or even seasonal manual labor. Our philosophy is always to always utilize our available resources esp. our heads. That being said. One way to RV low cost is to dry camp without hook-ups. RV parks can get costly. Many rest stops have rv dumps now. We also used a small honda generator for power. We had an 07 Jayco BHDS which was 31 feet long w/a separate bunk house. We pulled it with a 2002 F350 (extra leaf spring) diesel crew cab long bed. We needed bed space for all my husbands tools and a portable septic tank. We also carried a small 12 volt water pump to fill our tanks with mountain stream water. We are serious off roaders; once the trailer was unhitched we headed for the hills exploring. With the big rigs, class A's, again you run into limitations on where you can park and it's an extra engine to worry about. I would want a tow behind vehicle because getting in and out of a grocery store is a nightmare. But if you needed more storage you wouldn't be able to tow a utility trailer if you did that. We only have the one child so our crew cab was plenty comfy with dogs in tow too. Those class A's are pretty darn nice though! I would recommend this experience to anyone, esp with children. We homeschooled the entire time. If not for a life time, take a year and just do it. It was liberating not being tied down. We've been talking about doing it again before our shell is done. Just to be sure before we buy that slice of paradise. :tongue_smilie:

Nope, not for us. :iagree: with Julie , it's very hard to find people using similar curriculum choices or even using your hs methodology. I tried joining in on a hs mom's group once and ending up spending half my time defending classical education. :glare:

We lived in a RV for a year and a half after we sold our house. It was a blast. In fact we started homeschooling while on the road. We had a new large trailer with double slides and two bedrooms so privacy wasn't an issue. I recommend the trailer as opposed to a 5th wheel for 2 reasons. 5th wheels have height issues in some camps, they are harder to get into some places and second, you have the full use of your truck bed for storage etc. with a trailer. We pulled with a F350 crew cab long bed. We spent 4 months in the Canadian bush while my husband was building a log home up there. People laughed when we pulled up and set up camp because out would come our Internet Dish on a tripod. We even used a VoIP telephone because there wasn't a cell phone tower for 50 miles. They didn't laugh for long when I set up WiFi and let them use our phone. There was always someone hanging out with their laptop at our camp. :001_rolleyes: We've been home based for a year know and I sometimes regret selling our RV. It was way too much fun. We kept our state residency by forwarding our mail to my mother and she would in turn forward it to us at our next stop. WA does not have a state income tax so that was not a problem. We filed our federal taxes as usual. We kept our banking in WA as well, although if we were somewhere for a while we would open something local for temporary ease. Good luck on your journey, you are sure to fill the family memory books. :001_smile:

Singaporemath.com offers some great CD ROMs that we have used and loved. We used/use Rainbow Rock and Vroot & Vroom.

Hi Amsunshine, We've been using the secular versions of VIE for 1st, 2nd and now 3rd. We do use the writing portion but we do quite a bit of other writing in the form of book reports and letters too. Dd's test scores are 3 levels above grade her current grade. I wouldn't say that it is completely due to VIE, but it hasn't harmed her in anyway. If you feel the writing isn't to your standards you could always add FLL or Writing Strands. Even though I love this program, I'm on the fence about continuing next year; the price goes way up for the upper grades and it is already pricey enough. I'll be searching all year for it used. :001_smile:

2 dogs are not allowed on the couch. But I think they sneak up there from time to time. We made an exception once when our dd was needy to let her 90lb lab/redbone sleep at the foot of her queen bed. Somehow it got weaseled into a routine, but he must lay on a special blanket.

Thank goodness I just thought my dd was the queen of Nod! 11 hours every night, we can set our clocks to her. On the safety issue, we live in a fairly rural community near a small town but DH and I, do not let her run amok at all. Even at her age if she is not in sight, she must be within hearing distance and even then must be with our two big dogs. It's way to strange of a world these days. No way she'd be out after dark with friends. Do they still make those harness things for kids with a leash....Just kidding. :001_unsure: