I've used bits and pieces of Memoria Press and it didn't seem disjointed. The only thing that we're still using is their Latin, but when we did D'Aulaire's (that looks wrong) we read the text aloud and used the workbook as a source of discussion questions.

When we were looking for our current house we laughed for days over a listing that showed a bedroom with what looked like a big blanket thrown over a teenager who didn't want to move off of his bed for the picture. We wondered if the kid was included with the house. :D

I love house tours! I didn't know that people didn't like them. I wonder how many people I've bored out of their minds by giving them a tour of our standard family house? lol

I love the idea of one subject at a time--my college had a January term--one month, one subject, and I loved it. If we didn't need to keep our slow and steady pace for math, spelling, and Latin, I'd be in. I'm hoping that the byl unit study will be a good happy medium--we can keep at our core subjects at a steady pace, and spend the rest of our time in the deep past. :)

We're past the Februarys, and into the MUST CHANGE EVERYTHING phase of the year. This spring, my dream *this is finally the thing that's going to fix EVERYTHING that's wrong with my homeschool* curriculum is Build Your Library. I'm trying to keep it manageable by starting with one of the unit studies. I'm just about to go search for ALL THE BOOKS at the library and local used book stores. Does anybody else do this? I know educational new beginnings are supposed to be in the fall, but hey, BYL is my current squirrel.

Yes, it's messy. It's exactly as messy as my bedroom. I tolerate more mess in a bedroom than in a "public space" in my own house, but wouldn't think twice about it in somebody else's house. After growing up with a mom who was immaculate, I thought that my space was hopelessly messy--until I visited other houses where young children lived, and realized that my mom was the weird one. Now I think I'm right in the middle of the house messiness spectrum. :) We still run around and do some "smoke and mirrors" cleaning before my parents come over, tho. I agree with some previous posters that it has that "temporary" look about it--nothing on walls, things kind of thrown together. In that way, it's also like my bedroom, which is kind of a catch-all room in my house--It has our bed and dressers, but also the computer and printer, a rolling cart of craft supplies, a small chest of tech flotsam and jetsam, etc. It reminds me of my male college friends' living rooms.

I didn't know that there was another option for narrator! My kids like Jim Weiss, but my dh thinks that he sounds sarcastic about everything. He (dh) now questions everything he thought he knew about history. :lol:

He might want to look at the winter sowing pages on FB. They use milk cartons as miniature greenhouses, plant seeds all winter, and the seeds germinate as the temps get warm. I've started it this year with good results so far, but I'm in a warmer zone. There are plenty of people on the fb pages with good results in zones 3, 4, 5 tho. :)

Fortunately, the Milk is good for all ages. It's short but cute. All of my kids loved it. :)

I'm so glad to know that I'm not the only one who used this method to teach states of matter. lol I taught my kids the jingle bells batman smells variant. We were stuck in traffic during the middle of a move and they were tired of being stuck in the car and were whiiiiiiining incessantly, but then they were so delighted by the song that they sang it for the next 45 minutes. Which was better than whining, so I guess it worked.

Maybe you could buy one of the industrial salad spinners used by farmers/produce packers to wash salad mixes before sale? It seems like they must be on the "indestructible" side.

This is so important. It's easy to let anxiety take over decision-making, but kids need to be able to take reasonable risks and develop competency in basic life activities before leaving the nest.

Well, SWB knows what she's doing, and her books are good, and that goes a long way... :D My 10 y/o would read Kinsa's book. He still asks about the lady who lives so far in the middle of nowhere that it takes hours and hours to drive to Target. He really got a kick out of the recent ice cream story. And he suggested that she buy an ice cream machine, because he can't imagine living without regular access to ice cream. :)

I got to start over last year because we moved. The entire yard was grass. Just grass. So I dug up a lot of sod. lol. Because of the way my property is oriented, I have a small vegetable garden with raised beds on the south side of the house, but most of my gardening is in the front and visible side yards. I didn't want to have a "farmy" look so I made regular garden borders and planted edibles and ornamentals together. Some plants do double duty, like evergreen blueberries (although they are looking kind of crummy right now, after we had a late deep freeze). I am realizing that this approach will make rotating crops a bit difficult, though--a kale plant here, a chard there, and a squash over here-type planting doesn't lend itself to an easy rotation schedule. As far as fruit trees, last year I planted a multi-graft cherry tree, and yesterday I planted a multi-graft pear. The owner of the local nursery doesn't sell fruit trees on dwarfing rootstock; he's had the same problems mentioned above and prefers to keep trees a manageable size by pruning. I also planted a couple of columnar apples in giant pots to go on my back deck. Our "soil" is glacial debris--mostly rocks--so digging a hole for a tree is a major production. I went a bit overboard with blueberries--9 varieties--and they are doing great so far, but our area has naturally acidic soil. I picked up a couple of huckleberry plants at a native plant sale, and they are not doing as well--I think that they need more shade than our yard provides. If they can last a few more years until our new little trees and bushes grow a bit, I think that they'll do better. Raspberries are doing well, and strawberries are okay as long as we get out there before the crows do. I'm attracted to the food forest idea, but since my fruit trees are in front, the "forest" would need to be a bit more cultivated-looking than most I've seen. A planting bed "anchored" by a fruit tree and filled in with flowers and herbs is nice-looking, though, and I've received lots of compliments from neighbors, so I guess my yard isn't offensive. Fortunately, we're not in a HOA neighborhood and there are a wide variety of garden styles on the block, so I don't feel too hemmed-in on my choices. Zone 8a, btw. But PNW, so a long chilly spring and a warm but not hot summer.

It depends on the type of fruit tree and where you live. If you choose varieties that are hardy and resistant to the local pests/diseases, it shouldn't be a lot of work. It's when you're pushing zones and fighting pests and diseases that fruit trees are super needy. Also, it's less work if you don't care if your fruit is perfect and you lose some to critters. I'm not willing to individually bag each apple on my trees, so I accept that I might have some loss to coddling moth.

This put me in the right general area of the country, but culturally a quite different spot. I blame my grandparents--I know that I picked up some of the terms in the quiz from my midwestern grandmother and my West Virginia grandfather. :)

Wow. When I moved into my first apartment in my area, rent was $650. Now they start at $1290. And we're the cheap option, compared to the next county over.

Huh. I've never considered prudes to have an air of superiority. I've always thought of prudes as being somewhat naive, rather than condescending. I've jokingly referred to myself as a prude when something like 50 Shades of Grey comes up in conversation and I'm the only one who hasn't read it.

Our social skills group is run by a whole group of people--I'm not sure of the titles of all of them, but there is a psychologist, several OTs, and maybe even a PT. It's a diverse group of kids, and a diverse group of leaders. It's at a local hospital-based clinic that provides lots of different therapies. It's going pretty well for my ds. SaveSave

I understand. I've struggled with this too. I'm having trouble articulating my thoughts atm, so I'll come back to this. Okay. So ds is in a social skills group. He is learning to categorize behaviors by the impact they have on others--does the behavior make others feel good about you, feel okay about you, think you're weird, think you're annoying, or is it just plain against the rules. Reasonable enough, especially when he's dealing with the general public. But it seems exhausting to me to analyze everything you do to determine its impact. And he doesn't. When he's with his buddies, he can act a little weird, and they're all okay with that. He is learning when he has to be especially careful--say, on a playground with kids he doesn't know well--and when he can relax a bit--when he's playing with his friends who know him and won't shun him for his little odd habits. It helps that he has several friends who are also on the spectrum, so they either don't notice or don't care about atypical mannerisms. Pop-culture wise, I think that now is a good time for kids who have geeky interests. Minecraft, Star Wars, Doctor Who--they're all acceptable interests for kids. Actually, my kiddos are more pop-culture attuned than I ever was. Somehow they learned about dabbing, and every time we listen to music in the car they're all dabbing like mad. I won't pretend to understand that one. :)

The homeschoolers I've met who are this way tend to follow a particular approach/philosophy, and I'd be willing to believe that this approach/philosophy fails 90% of its adherents.

My favorite thing about old cookbooks is when a curry recipe for 8-10 people calls for 1/4 tsp of curry powder, "or less to taste." Now I understand why my Nana still had nearly full bottles of 50 year old spices. She offered them to me when she moved to an assisted living facility. "They're still good--spices last forever!" :lol: I should have taken her up on her offer--the bottles were probably worth something!

My favorite site for this subject is the Gallery of Regrettable Food. Old cookbooks and snarky comments. :)

I'm not seeing this in the PNW. As an aside, when I lived in the midwest, the best place to get bananas was QuikTrip. Is that still the case? :drool5:

Sitting outside and drinking coffee until midnight with neighbors sounds lovely. :)