Could you try getting the HWT cursive workbook? I know it's for a 2nd-3rd grade level though so I'm not sure how hard it would be for her? I'm using the LOE cursive program with both my kindergartener and 3rd grader and they're both enjoying it. And actually I was met with some resistance by my 5 yr old because she already knew how to print her letters but once we really got going on it and she started to learn more letters she really got in to it. Now she's excited that she's learning something the other kids think of as "cool" and aren't being taught until much later.

:iagree: I really could not agree more. I went to a a very academically challenging private school from K-8. We never diagrammed sentences although we definitely did grammar. We only breezed over things like direct objects. However we did write and write and write and write some more. My 8th grade research paper had more bibliography requirements and had to be longer in length than my senior year public school AP english research paper. I got through college and dozens of research papers (in which I usually scored an A) based off what I was taught K-8. However I have no clue how to diagram a sentence. I'm actually learning with my 3rd grader and he often gets more correct than I do lol.

We live in LCOL now but we used to live in a HCOL area (D.C. area) and my groceries skyrocketed when we moved to the LCOL. They were way cheaper in the D.C area than out here in the boonies. And I think that's the crux of it: I live in the middle of nowhere N.M. now and I'm thinking that it costs so much more in transportation to get it here that much be why the prices are higher - also I do wonder if some of it is because there is no competition. We have a Walmart and 1 Albertsons that's independent (?? I don't get it either) and their prices are a good 2-3x more than Walmart. Anyways in my LCOL town: Half gallon of organic milk: $4-something; not quite sure because the only organic available is Horizon and I won't buy from them. Whole organic chicken: We buy in bulk once a year, 12 chickens, $6/lb (which is why we almost never eat chicken). Whole conventional chicken: No idea, I won't eat conventional chicken. 1 lb. box of organic mixed-greens salad: Not sure but I can get regular spinach that's pre-washed for about $5.50 - they don't really sell organic produce here except on very rare ocassion 5-lb bag of brand-name white (wheat) flour: We're GF so we don't buy regular flour. Regular unleaded gas: $3.79 a gallon

I think at the gamma level you only need 1 set of blocks even if both your kids are working on it at the same time. My ds is on delta and dd is starting on primer right now. The worksheets are super easy to copy. If you're going to order the workbooks you might as well order the blocks from MUS as well I would think.

Another completely newbie/ignorant question: do you need to clean out the coop pretty much every day? Like spray it down or something? Do you put straw/hay in there or something? I have got to find a book that completely holds my hand lol.

So I don't get it: why do the meat birds eat so much and not walk around much? Are they bred to just get fat quickly? Do they not want to walk around and forage at all? Dh and I are moving to FL in a few weeks (or months...whenever the gov't gets it's act together since it's a gov't transfer and they told us we would be moved by June '12...). What would you look for in terms of a yard/land when thinking of raising chickens? I definitely want some layers, perhaps 3-4, not more than that. And since we pay so much for organic chicken, and I suspect even more out there, we're interested in meat chickens as well - maybe 25-30?

I have a very mathy kid who's now 8. He went to public kindy until xmas break and his teacher warned me when I pulled him out that he was behind in math and was very weak in it. 6 months later we had flown through MUS primer and alpha. (I believe he wasn't challenged in public kindy so he wasn't doing the work and therefore they thought he was weak in it) We've stuck with MUS for ds. For a little while we thought he might be going back to public school so I slowed him down some last year because I didn't want him so far ahead that a school wouldn't be able to accommodate him. He's in 3rd grade and about halfway through delta (essentially the 4th level) of MUS. Now we're pretty sure we're sticking with HSing for the long haul and I'm letting him go as fast as he wants again. I like MUS for him because it ensures he has the concepts and the facts down but allows him to go at his own pace. We've also added in Beast Academy this year (and as pp's have already said, it's a hard 3rd grade level) and we're doing some Life of Fred. I think LoF would be really great for your ds OP. And OP, I totally know where you're coming from. I still remember sitting down with 5 yr old ds and working on a word problem. It was a 1st grade level word problem but required 3 steps to complete it. So I read the problem to him (he wasn't yet reading), and then focused on the first step. He kept saying, "it's 13!" which was not the correct answer to the first step of the problem. I was getting so frustrated with him and he was getting so frustrated with me - we were both almost in tears and I couldn't understand how he couldn't do this simple step when I knew he had the ability. So I went through the entire problem with him and, yep, you guessed it, the final answer was "13." :o He'd done all the steps in his head right away. I felt soooo bad!

I cube and then boil my potatoes before adding them. Typically I've got those going while I work on making my roux. I actually usually add in my carrots to the potatoes after they've been boiling a bit and then towards the very end I add in frozen lima beans. Then all that gets drained, added to my roux, then the whole thing gets poured into the crust, topped with another crust, and baked. Here's my GF recipe on my blog but it's very very close to a classic pot pie recipe: http://glutenfree100.blogspot.com/2012/05/gluten-free-chicken-pot-pie-recipe.html

Thanks, yes that makes sense about housing them separately. And we do buy everything organic right now which is why we almost never eat chicken. We buy 10-12 chickens a year, in bulk, at $6/lb and that's all we eat - once it's gone, it's gone so we typically end up going several months without any chicken at all. Eggs I get fairly cheap from a lady who has chickens for $3/dz but we're moving soon and so far I've only been able to find them for around $7-8/dz in our new city :eek:

So if you had meat chickens and laying hens as well do you house them separately? Is there a Dummies guide for getting into this sort of thing? I think I would love it but I've never known anyone with any sort of livestock/farm animals - I'm completely clueless.

Call me crazy but I wouldn't give any child as young as 4 & 6 any electronic that costs more than maybe $60 and even that is a stretch. My ds had a leapster until 2nd grade and then he saved up half the amount for a nintendo dsi so we paid for the other half as his birthday gift. That thing has been dropped, sat on, forgotten in the (hot) car, almost washed numerous times, left lying on the floor, amongst other various ways to totally kill an electronic device. It's only officially broken one time (in which he had to pay with his own money to have it fixed) and I attest it to the fact that it is made for kids and therefore a bit sturdier. Dd has a leapster explorer and she's a bit better with things than my 8 yr old (dd is 5) but she's still dropped it at least 10x on our hard tile when she was just carrying it with her to go sit on the couch and play with it. Again, it's only because it's made for kids that it didn't shatter. I have an old-school kindle and if I dropped it on any hard surface I'm fairly certain it would never survive. Kids are rough with things even when they aren't intending to be that way. Personally I'd combine the money, take the $400 and get a desktop computer they could use for educational games, could watch shows, etc. It'd be a heck of a lot less likely to break, kwim?

My ds is in 3rd grade and he NEEDS to fidget. If he's got a little car, lego guy, small ball, or a few legos to play around with while I'm reading to him or teaching him something then he will actually absorb what I'm saying to him. If I don't let him fiddle with something then he won't really hear me at all. Dh is the same way. If we're having a serious conversation he'll typically be organizing something like a box of files or photographs or something while we talk. He can't just sit there and be focused on the conversation. I have however taught ds to sit still when needed. We talk about how it's necessary in certain situations/classes, etc.

That's actually one of the reason we pulled ds out to homeschool him. At the time New Mexico allowed corporal punishment. Ds kept coming home from kindergarten, yes kindergarten(!), and asking me what spanking was. I assumed that he was hearing it from other kids about their parents punishing them but the more he talked the more I realized he was talking about his teacher and the principal there. Then I found out spanking was allowed :mad: I talked with his teacher about it and she assured me that they never actually do it, just threaten to do it. However ds sure had quite a lot of details about a kid in his class who was supposedly spanked - and at that time ds was not prone to lying nor was he ever creative enough to come up with details to a fake story. Regardless they were definitely threatened with it often. Ridiculous.

Personally I can't stand any sort of reference book in e-book format and generally I love e-books. It's way way too hard to go back and forth and my brain doesn't have any way to remember about where something is. If I read it in a real book then I generally know where to look for something if I want to look back at it again. With an e-book I'm stuck hoping I thought to highlight or bookmark it or that a search will bring it up. BFSU is particularly one I especially wouldn't want as an e-book personally.

Oh I forgot, one of the things my kids love & I love when we travel is summer oatmeal! I discovered it a few months ago and I can't believe how good it is. Here's a link for it: http://www.theyummylife.com/Refrigerator_Oatmeal Sometimes the kids just have yogurt and fruit. I make my own yogurt so there's hardly any sugar in it.

Protein and a veggie mostly, sometimes also a carb like potatoes, corn, or rice but not too often. My dh eats plenty of carbs through out the day (the only person in the household who eats processed food) so I don't like too many carbs in our dinner. Everything I make is from scratch. I also try to keep our dinners generally small as I think it's healthier to have a bigger lunch than dinner. Oh and we do 2-3 meatless meals a week because I personally feel better the less meat I eat, plus we only buy local organic meat and even though we buy in bulk it's still really pricey.

For me I can't do high carb things like waffles, bagels, etc or I'll suddenly "hit a wall" around 3 pm and just want to take a nap. Lately though I've been having Rice Chex with a bunch of fruit in it (loads of strawberries and blueberries) and unsweetened vanilla almond milk and it is so tremendously satisfying & keeps me full for hours. I LOVE eggs but I generally have eggs for lunch so I don't have them very often for breakfast. We had some gluten free egg burritos for breakfast this morning though which were awesome.

I don't raise chickens so I could be totally wrong but I assume that you raise a bunch all at once, process them, and then freeze them. We buy all our meat in bulk. It'd be no different than buying (or raising) a cow or half a cow which you then store in your (deep) freezer for the year.

Dh and I are REALLY curious about this. Right now we buy free range eggs from a lady here in town for $3/dz and they are so awesome. We almost never eat chicken because the only free range organically raised chicken we can find is $6/lb. So typically we buy a dozen 4-6 lb birds for the entire year and once we're out, we're out because it's so insanely expensive. I won't eat commercial eggs or meat. We're about to move and from what I can tell free range eggs sell for more like $6/dz in our new city. Which sucks because I use lots of eggs! I know I can prob get organic eggs at the store for a little cheaper but I'd prefer not to. So based on the above, is it generally cheaper than that to raise chickens? Particularly for meat? I would love if we could have chicken more than once or twice a month. Can you take them to a processor and they'll do everything? Because I know in my heart that I really wouldn't be able to kill the chickens myself. Possibly my dh could, but probably not.

Ds hated grammar island. I even started a thread or two here about it not that long ago. I decided MCT just wasn't for us, I'd have to find something else, and ds agreed. Not only did he hate it but he was totally checked out when reading it, even if he was the one reading it. Because I read several times on here that it gets so much better with Sentence Island & Practice Island I decided to just press on. So we went through Grammar Island quickly - I think we did the entire thing in about 3 weeks. Then we started doing 3 sentences a week from Practice Island and started reading Sentence Island. I can't say it's perfect but it has gotten much better! Ds is no longer totally checked out during lessons. Initially he and I worked on the Practice Island sentences together but now I have him try to figure it out on his own and then we work together on the parts he missed or couldn't figure out. Hearing about it all in Grammar Island, then again in Sentence Island, and 3 times a week in Practice Island is finally getting it all across to him. I can't say if we'll use MCT again next year or if we'll even stick with it for the rest of this year but it has seriously improved for us. ETA: to me it seems that Grammar Island is more of an introduction of the concepts. I didn't expect ds to totally "get" all of it but instead to just learn that all these things exist. Then we work on mastery with Sentence Island which we do much slower. The writing assignments in Sentence Island really help it all settle into his brain as well.

So far I'm liking them for my ds. They are much too complicated for him to actually write though. He's 8, in 3rd grade, but writing is a huge struggle for him (he has dysgraphia) and therefore even though he's on level with grammar, above level in reading & spelling, he's way behind in writing. So we work on them together and he tells me what to write. Honestly at this point I'd say it's still above him to be able to get thoughts in his brain, organize them, and then to say them to me or write them on paper.

You might want to also consider rotating history & science. My ds is very science and math oriented but we still only work on one science lesson a week - usually it only takes 1 day, on occassion it'll take 4-5 days but that's rare. I have our history lessons planned out for the entire year and we do 1 lesson a week with that as well (typically done in 1 day, but sometimes 2). Same with geography and we only do art once a week on Fridays as a fun way to finish out the week. So our schedule looks something like this on a daily basis: Math (either MUS or BA, his choice) Writing (we use something called Check the Deck) Handwriting (just 2 lines of cursive practice, takes less than 5 mins usually) MCT stuff (3 sentences a week of Practice Island, we read a few pages of Sentence Island & do one of the writing activities orally, we do 1 language lesson every week) Listen to a chapter or two of our latest read aloud book Either a science, history, or geography lesson Ds has a folder that I make at the beginning of each week filled with what he has "due" each day and by the end of the week that he can do independently. It contains his math pages (he very rarely needs math help), geography workbook pages, a reading log to record his daily reading, cursive handwriting worksheets, and occasionally a few other things. If I weren't switching back and forth between my 3rd grader and my kindergartener then I think ds (my 3rd grader) would be done by noon or even earlier most days. Instead we're done by 2-2:30 usually.

First off, admittedly I have not read the previous replies. OP, we're a "science-driven" family as well. I love math and science as does my 8 yr old ds. In kindergarten we actually did chemistry (Real Science 4 Kids) and he loved it. I think it gave him a great foundation even though now in 3rd grade he doesn't remember any of the specifics. In 1st grade we floundered around looking for something else. We didn't find BFSU until 2nd grade. We did almost all of the K-2 level that year and my ds loves it and so do I. Yes, he has a strong science background and he understands concepts quickly but I love how BFSU really made him stop and think and truly understand the basics. It's amazing how much stronger in science he's become because of it. And yeah, nature study would never work for us either. I'd love it but it would never actually work with my kids. Ds would run around gathering sticks to make into pretend guns along with collecting acorns as his "bombs." We went to the park this morning as a school "field trip" to use a field guide to identify birds and it was mostly a fail for us in that the kids weren't really interested at all and finally I just let them go and have fun (which resulted in ds catching a super cool grasshopper that was not in our field guide and we examined him/her quite closely). We're just finishing up K-2 and will be moving into the next book soon. Btw, the yahoo group is pretty good & Dr Nebel will personally answer questions.

We have special days like PJ day, costume day, weird hair day, etc. We don't do it for a whole week though, just here and there. My kids LOVED spirit week so it's one of those things I have to recreate at home to keep them feeling OK about being HS'd.

Meh, I don't think we'll be watching it. There's too many inconsistencies right from the get go (if the power went out why were there still lights on the planes as they fell from the sky? Why can't they use steam to power things?) Lost was great because it didn't have all these little inconsistencies.