Hijaking is welcome from me, fellow Wisconsinite! I lived 21 years in Whitewater, WI and am here now. I agree with you about the adventure! It is so exciting moving, especially thinking about what would be closer to drive to and visit. Virgina Beach? Just the name sounds awesome, but I knew nothing of VA until recently. I had to look it up on a map to see exactly what was going on over there. :tongue_smilie:

To be a Virginian either by Birth, Marriage, Adoption, or even on one’s Mother’s side, is an Introduction to any State in the Union, a Passport to any Foreign country and a Benediction from Above. Aw, that is warm and cozy. But I would be a Virginian by job relocation :tongue_smilie: O.K. Chris, I looked up Washington which is nicknamed Little Washington and little is right! It said it is a town that is .3 square miles. :001_huh: You are right, it is associated with the Little Washington Inn. I love hearing that there is a ton to do and I love the suburban life, that's what I am looking for. But I need to be far enough away from the big cities to afford it. Hope Culpepper takes the cake! Shoud I start drinking sweet tea now to fit in? Oh, just kidding!

The cities I'm supposed to look up are Culpepper and (Little) Washington. I suppose that is in the middle towards the north?

I am about to move there in a month or so from IL and just wondering what people have to say about it. I homeschool and my kids are 15, 7, 5, and 3. Here's what I've heard: People want out of there because the water is bad. The cost of living is 36% more than IL. There is a lot of commotion about mining. It is beautiful and I can say good bye to flatlands! :001_smile: And hello to mountains and the ocean. Overall, I welcome the change and I imagine all the new and fun educational things to do. Whoo Hoo! Btw, do ya'll have accents there?

Leap Frog Word Whammer with the refrigerator letters Leap Frog Videos Conversation Books That is how my 2 and 3 year old learned all the letters and sounds they make. For math we just did lots of counting in different ways.

We have not reviewed SOW or Science...at all. Well, at the most I will say a quick sentence or two. I'm just not feeling it :) since my boy is only 7.

We enjoyed listening to it. The songs were catchy and it was neat to hear my little ones singing. For example, counting by 3's to the tune of Jingle Bells.

COVEY ACADEMY (after the author Stephen Covey of 7 Habits of Happy Kids and 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) I was thinking it would be nice to have a name MORE FUN, especially since we don't have to write that name on anything official, but this one does have a lot of meaning.

I am seeing that Apples to Apples game pop up a lot. I'll look into that, plus other board games of course.

My list of boredom busters are all everyday things families do, you guys are right. Things to do together: cooking, cleaning, playing, exploring, watching, talking, venturing out of the house. These books look good from the library: Making Ordinary Days Extraordinary, The Book of New Family Traditions, Love Languages for Teenagers, Everyday Opportunites and lastly, Family Nights. Alright, Bill Gates spent hours on the computer. I can't use that excuse to justify my stepson playing Runescape for 12 hours at a time, taking a break to text, eat, and watch T.V. :001_smile: Wow! If he could get into some aspect of designing video games at the college, that would be dreamy for him. So, my focus is on good old fashioned family bonding. It's just that I have a first grader and it is so easy to add "enrichment" through games, songs, etc....a new teenager in the family....not so much.

Oh, no! I'm not homeschooling him. He wouldn't go for that or his mom, so it would not be worth putting up a fight. Just trying to do the best I can, with the hand I've been dealt. :001_smile:

He's coming to live with us! His life is video games, internet, texting, with no reading of books! As far as grades, I'd say he's a C student. To be positive, he goes outside a lot with his friends (thank goodness he's not totally electronically addicted). :) I homeschool first grade and under, soooo this is new territory. Any ideas to help this kid besides REALLY working on his homework? math games? board games? educational T.V. and computer games? online classes? boredom busters? family activities?

I received this last week and am super excited about it! My info may be limited, but looking over what is here I can tell you. There are 6 crafts. 1. A flag you could copy and use your own construction paper to glue on the red and green. 2. Mexican Bark Painting craft and you would need to copy the 2 pictures on brown paper, then use your own paints. 3. Ojo De Dios craft?? This may be a tricky one. I got 2 wooden dowels with multicolored yarn wrapped around both of them. I would have to watch the DVD to even know what to do. 4. Xochimilco Float craft??? Looks like all easy things to get: tissue paper, sequence, copy of the handout except there is 2 small sheets of fancy foil paper with some flower designs on it. 5. Mexican flower craft came with florist wire that is already curved specially for this, but you could do it. 6. Pinata that anyone can do, just need lots of tissue paper. Hope this helps :)

It's all you need. Although for us, about halfway through OPGTR we hit a roadblock, I mean he was really struggling. We took a break from OPGTR and did ETC and it was awesome! He is a workbook kind of kid though. In a few months we went back to OPGTR and finished it and still stuck with ETC, just because we liked it. :001_smile:

We did it for first grade last year for science, language and history. I just used folders for art and math papers. I did not put the papers in everyday, but as they began to pile up I then took the time to put them into the 3 ring binders. Although it took me a little while to actually get the papers in them, is was nice to see everything so organized. My main reason for using them is my ds can look back through them easily and hopefully really feel a sense of accomplishment seeing all the work we did for that year, and then it's also easy for reviewing.

100 fruit loops on a necklace name and list 100 animals hide 100 Kisses with number labels on the bottom have a cake using a loaf pan for the 1 and 2 circles for the 0s child guesses how far 100 steps will take them then walk it make 100 glasses (there's printout on the internet somewhere) fill in missing numbers on a 100 chart get an award, abcteach.com used to have one graph 100 jelly beans ask what you would do with $100 breakfast 1 link sausage and 2 mini bagels to make a 100 books from the library: 100 Hungry Ants, Mrs. Bindergarten Celebrates 100 Days of Kindergarten, The 100th Day of School

O.K> I will admit that I am thinking too much about age. The reason for all this is, I read in the WTM the title of the chapter, "Kindergarten Years: 4 and 5". That sends a signal in my head that he is turning 6, time to move on to first grade work. Never though, would I say he was in first grade when he is supposed to be in K, don't get me wrong; I understand he may be at different levels all through his learning. There's is just two sides, as I have read in all the answers. I don't want to underestimate what he is capable of, nor do I want to push him when he is not ready. My ds has an amazing attention span for listening (we learned that when he was just a little guy) he's known his letter sounds for almost 2 years now and can sound out the cvc words, but not much else is clicking. I may just give it a try because what if he loves SOW or MUS, maybe that's wishful thinking :), but what if? I do really appreciate all these responses, I read some of them and think I should just hold off a few months, 6 or a year. I'm so wishy washy. But thank-you guys sooo much! I love advice!

and I tell myself, if he was born just 2 weeks earlier, he would be starting first grade work anyway. I read everyone's responses carefully; I don't know what to do at all. I think he would be ready for first grade work; the only reason he wouldn't be because he would rather play more and take it easy:)

He could be 1/2 way through OPGTR by Sept., (that's 2 months) but he's not exactly breezing through-at all. I'm considering back-tracking and I orderd ETC. My DS will be 6 in Sept. Sounds like a good time to me to begin first grade work....right? I don't really see that it is a big deal to start FLL, MUS Alpha, science, SOW, and writing without him being able to read all that great. Should I wait till he's at least 1/2 way through OPGTR before I begin?

Yes, there are different ways to be uneducated, but it still means the same thing which ever way I am. I am because I just floated through high school, barely passing because I wanted to have fun, party and skip school, etc. With all that experience with the bad, my eyes are wide open :blink: to any shananigans the kids will be up to. ;) Anyways, I love not trying to fight people and say "YES, I'M QUALIFIED TO TEACH!" The answer before this one was awesome, when some of us can admit that we are facilitating learning and not teaching, but learning.

That is an awesome link!:thumbup:

I read over everyone's answers again and made lots of notes of book suggestions and whatnot. Too bad I am so wishy washy at the moment...one minute I'm fine with learn as we go, the next I feel I really need to take the time to learn way ahead. The answer will come to me. I'm better off now than this morning with all these answers from all you kind, fellow homeschoolers. :grouphug: Thank you:001_smile:

Oh, we posted at the same time Suzanne, so I just wanted to respond again. How nice to know none of you know what dodo bird I could be and you all still believe in me and people like me. What nice fellow homeschoolers and parents you all are :grouphug:

Some of you are high school dropouts :eek: Yes, I know people can make a comeback. I know all too well. I love studies though, statistics are always good to hear. That one was right up my alley. :)

All the suggestions given, I can come back too. I did read the Well Educated Mind, got pumped up and started to read the first few great books on the list (Constatine and Don Quioxte). I bailed out and quit the whole thing. Those books to me were just a bunch of rambling on and on. DQ was alright, but it was how many pages? A trillion?