First 1 was epidural: didn't work at all and it was excruciating 2nd birth was pain less, at home, using hypnobabies. Obviously no drugs involved and absolutely pain free. I've had sunburns or paper cuts that hurt worse. In fact it was so painless that my midwife did not make it on time and dd was a surprise unassisted birth on my bathroom floor :eek: Dh barely had time to come running in to help catch her. Midwife showed up about a half hour later lol.

Does that set come with everything? Or do you need something to go with it? That looks like something we would love here. As for BA, omg, yes! It's hard! Admittedly I am good at math, I was a math minor in college, I'm "science-y" however I am terrible at geometry. It never clicked with me. So I am finding the shapes section quite challenging for myself. As for my ds, who's in 3rd, he's finding it challenging as well. We have always used Math U See and only MUS and since it's a mastery program he has not been introduced to any geometry as of yet (and since I'm so awful at it myself I was never able to introduce any of it to him either). So this is quite the challenge for him as well although he often figures out the answers before I do.

I didn't read through this entire thread so I imagine it's already been said a million times over but food dyes are an issue for my kids and it doesn't take much at all. In fact we were eating totally unprocessed except I was letting them eat junk cereal for breakfast. I didn't see it causing any major issues. Well it bothered me, just because we try to eat very healthy/clean, so I took out the junk cereal and started making breakfast. About 4 days went by and I suddenly realized that my then 2nd grade ds hadn't cried over his school-work that week! The more I thought about it I realized my then 4 yr old also hadn't thrown one of her usual kicking, hitting, biting, going totally insane, can't even hear anyone tantrums. It had never occurred to me that any of those things could be related to food since generally we eat so well. So I let them have some junky cereal again and boom, back to the crying over everything and my dd's tantrums. Took it back out and the crying and tantrums went away. Even my ds noticed the difference. He said he felt more in control of his feelings and that things didn't make him cry anymore like they used to.

MUS is our main program but we're supplementing with BA this year because ds is pretty far ahead math-wise and I thought it'd be a nice change of pace. I like it because it actually makes ds think. He just buzzes through most math programs. It actually takes him more than 10 minutes to complete a worksheet which I think is fantastic.

Yes I live in a small town but no it doesn't feel weird to me. The town is small enough that the people we see regularly during the week (the librarians, cashiers, etc) know that the kids are homeschooled.

I totally agree except my 8 yr old has loved watching NOVA since he was about 5. He likes some of the other documentaries on PBS as well. Actually I was surprised that at the bottom of the quote that OP posted they referred to PBS, Nicklelodian, and Disney Channel. As I was reading I assumed they meant educational as in documentaries and nature-type shoes. Not cartoons.

The ones we get are from a guy who sells them on the side of the road - I think they're from CA but they're always firm when we buy them and then in 1-2 days they are absolutely perfect for eating/baking. You can also put them in brown paper bags to help ripen/soften them up a bit.

It's not even that he doesn't like it, he just "checks out" as soon as the book is opened. In fact yesterday I told him that perhaps it just wasn't working out for us and we might look into something different. I said it in a normal tone of voice, not upset, not disappointed, just matter of fact, and he started to get upset saying that he liked it. But it's obvious the kid doesn't even hear it. Even when I have him read it he doesn't "hear" himself.

Ok maybe I'll give it a try, thanks! It looks like you and I have similar curriculums this year. Ds is doing BA as well & I'm using WRTR style for spelling but using the LOE phonograms and games instead.

This was only our first week so we'll keep chugging along for awhile but my gut right now tells me this is not the right curriculum for ds. Right now all we're doing is reading through grammar island and he is totally checked out. You know that look when you know they're just sitting there politely but absolutely no knowledge is seeping in? That's how he looks the entire time. I tried starting off the day with it, ending the day with it, putting it in the middle and it didn't matter. It's as if the opening of that book makes his whole mind shut down! Today I read 1 sentence, and then basically asked him what it said, and he said, "uh huh" as if I hadn't even asked a question and he was on total auto-pilot. This is totally unlike ds. Usually he's totally engaged, even if it's something he's not enjoying or doesn't want to do. I've never seen him this checked out before. I'm getting worried this is not the program for ds which makes me sad because it's the curriculum I was most excited about for this year. Plus he has dysgraphia and I loved that he would still be learning grammar and doing some writing but not so much that it would lead to tears.

:iagree: I don't see any other way to do it. My ds just started it. He's doing Delta in MUS (basically it's division all year, did multiplication last year) and Beast Academy so far has been very challenging for him since he has not had any geometry exposed to him previously. He's been moving very slowly at about 1 page a day (just 1 side, not front and back). However looking ahead I can the parts he'll zoom through.

Personally I think history & science are important, even in kindergarten or 1st grade. It took us awhile to find what worked. Right now I'm trying to figure out what works for my kindergartener because what worked for my ds doesn't work for her. For my ds we don't do any science reading but we do loads of science and we read very little for history. For science we do BFSU. We start with our experiment, we discuss what happened, we use new words we just learned, and then apply them throughout the week. For history we follow the BCP which has free lessons and follows the Core Knowledge Sequence. Again we talk/discuss the topic for history, sometimes we find some books on it and read through those or look at the pictures, and sometimes we're also lucky enough to find a documentary on it as well.

I really waivered on this because mostly I'm using WRTR and it's going pretty well but I've incorporated LOE cursive writing and the games with great success. What I'm doing seems to be working. I stared and stared at the beta thing, walked away from it, came back, talked to dh, decided against it, came back and stared at it again, and then it was 8 a.m. here (beta opened up at 7 a.m. here) and it's still available so I took it as a sign and ordered it lol. My rationale is that once I get the hard copy teacher's manual I can sell it for prob the same price and break even.

Ds & I always watched the video together but now he's in Delta (we started with Primer so we've done them all so far) and I'm HSing dd as well so he now watches the video on his own and then does his worksheets. He asks me if he needs any help. My dd just started with Primer. She's a young 5, her birthday was less than a month ago, and she had no focus whatsoever for the video. So I just watch it while she's playing around me and then I teach it to her.

I've got various things on my blog linked below. The biscuits are just simple drop biscuits and like many GF things they're great the first day and not very good after that. Every 2 weeks or so I make a double batch of my GF yeasted waffles (they are the waffles pictured in my avatar). I freeze them and we just take out 1 as needed, nuke it just a touch, cut it in half, and then toast it - then use it for sandwiches, for eggs & "toast", or other similar things. The kids and I just had waffle-wiches tonight actually after the dinner I made turned out horrid lol.

I don't have a food mill so can't answer your question but if you're going GF for gluten intolerance or celiac then I personally would not use a mill that's been used for gluten flours previously. It would be mega cross contamination.

Oh I LOVE The Count of Monte Cristo. I read it for the first time 2 summers ago and it's now my all time favorite book. It took me about 7 weeks to read it which is pretty darn good because while I used to read 2-3 books a week before I had kids, now it takes me about 3-4 weeks to finish 1 ordinary sized book on average. One thing I wish I'd done when I read it the first time was keep a little list of each character and just a brief description of who they are. Maybe it's just my old brain but with all the characters and plot lines going on I was sometimes left wracking my brain trying to remember who exactly certain characters were - especially when it's been 500+ pages since I had last read about them! As pp noted, there are a few drug references but nothing I would personally censor.

I'm starting to realize this is kind of like when your kids finally give up taking naps and you think to yourself, "omg, how will I do this without going crazy?" lol but then after a bit you get into the swing of it and it's all good. We were done by 1:30 so not too shabby - we started at 8. First day though so there are plenty of things we didn't get into that will become part of our regular day later on. Now we're going to treat ourselves & go out and buy some ice cream to make shakes :D But wow, I am mentally exhausted! I think the kids actually learned stuff today though so mission-accomplished.

This is my first day HSing 2 kids and while it's going well it's also taking forever! My ds and I used to be done by noon. It's noon right now and we're not even close! Dd is in kindy so she can't really do anything on her own. And maybe it was not well thought out on my part but ds's stuff is pretty involved too. He can do his math on his own and that's about it. I'm sure I'll get in the swing of it eventually. How long did it take for it to all fall into place and get "comfortable?"

I think it is that "easy." I mean that is basically WRTR in a nutshell. Memorize the phonograms, start writing out the words & decode them learning rules along the way, and then start reading books.

The goldfish crackers actually don't have artificial food dyes.

I just got the game book the other day and read through most of them. Some of them I think older kids would like - there's one that's just like battleship.

:iagree: You can't do or have anything in boot camp. They even issued our shoes to us. In fact, when I was in, the men were even issued underwear lol (the women were given a stipend and taken to the BX to buy it themselves). Our stuff from home was stacked in a closet that was locked - we did not have access to it until a day or two before graduation. That being said, after boot camp, in tech school you get more freedom. I was in the AF and the first few weeks you had to stay on base but after that you could gain more and more freedom and eventually could go off base mostly as you wished. A gift card for the BX is a great idea. Or cash for going to the on-base movie theater.

My dd has celiacs so when she eats gluten she gets sick immediately and then feels terrible for 1-2 weeks which in turn causes behavior issues. Dh has celiacs as well and before it was diagnosed he had depression and very OCD-like behaviors. Once he went GF all those cleared up in just a few months. Food dyes also tend to make my kids emotional and not do very well with school. Ds would sit and cry at the drop of a hat regarding so much of his school-work. He would get frustrated super easy and get very defiant. The food dyes I figured out by accident. We eat almost all whole foods and I make just about everything from scratch. The only thing we had was that I would let the kids eat junk cereal for breakfast. I decided to stop it and start making a good breakfast for everyone and within days I realized the kids were so much better behaved! Then we ran out of stuff and I let ds have some of his junky cereal again and boom, he was crying and being emotional again! And it's definitely not the sugar in the cereal - I have a major sweet tooth and I bake a ton. We always have cookies, cake, etc in the house and they eat that stuff without incident.

I'm jealous. Our insurance is pretty good but it won't cover genetic testing at all which is why we haven't gotten our one and only gluten eater in the house genetic testing yet. For now he's stuck with the yearly blood test which they do cover.