My phone is set to vibrate with the ppl who send me work set to a really obnoxious alarm. So, if, for example, the pizza man can't find our address and he calls to find us, we get cold pizza. last night But I work on call and the ppl who call have the most ghastly alarm so that I can't sleep through it or not hear it in the bottom of my purse. When my family is separated and my daughter could need me for something, I leave the ringer on vibrate but hold the phone in my hand.

It is time to put up sweet potatoes. I don't have a root cellar or any other good way of storing them so I'll be cooking them to put up. I plan to can some just b/c I never have but not very many b/c I do n.o.t care for the added sugar. Otherwise, I don't have any really good ideas. So, here is my challenge for you: Pretty please post/link your favorite Sweet Potato recipes that are: Vegetarian or easily convertible w/o any added sweetener Freezes well or Can be canned (again, with no added sweetner) is delicious and family approved!

Thanks, guys, this is helpful. Well, Candid, my daughter has pretty strong feelings about it and I think she wants to use the negative lables in her list of cons. She wants to use more charitable/sympathetic language herself.

We have a dog (gorgeous Airedale!) and cat (oh-so-precious!) and 4 chickens (:glare:). I did not list chickens as birds b/c I thought you might mean regular ol' indoor birds like parrots, lovies, et c.

Like lion, it isn't the dark that I'm afraid of . . . it's what my imagination informs me may be lurking there!

My daughter is writing her essay on whether circus/fair/et c "freak shows" honor God's creation. She needs a word/term/phrase that means what we think of but uses more neutral language. Can you think of something?

I have the go ahead to order a microscope and want the digital with camera. If you don't mind, could you share the name/brand/whatever that you're happy with? Knowing nothing, I'd like to have a solid recommendation to go with. (fingers crossed!) :bigear::bigear::bigear::bigear:

Sorry, no experience with this. I do have a kiddo who strongly prefers to write with a pen, though. We got the Frixion Pen for her to try out. It is a pretty good pen for her and erasable (the most important part). However, what we did not know is that heat makes the ink disappear. When her writing was exposed to heat, she lost most of her science notebook. a devastating loss, I assure you. Just letting you know b/c I wish we had known.

oops, sorry! meant to post on the general board.

Nope, not your children. You, responsible, adult, maternal unit: are you afraid of the dark?

My 13 year old has NO fear of growing up and moving out. She can't wait; in fact, she often asks the legal age for marrying and having her own family. Of course, we told her the truth . . . it isn't by age but by number of PhDs. Having said that, she IS still afraid of The UnderTheBeds. Oh, a couple of years ago, I asked her how she can move out and be the Mom if she's still afraid of The UnderTheBeds and she said, "You don't think I'm taking them with me, do you???"

Thanks, I'll have a look. We're both happy with the Lukion bk for Gk and all the books we've had for Latin. I do understand wanting to appeal to the kids but . . . blech. and we may end up staying with OSU, too. We'll stay with OSU before we drop it altogether.

Last year we finished year 1. We started off loving it and we contacted the local German society and, since they don't have a language class for her age, they let her be the teacher's assistant for the little kids' language class. She positively adores doing that! This year we both want to continue with German but by the end of the yr, didn't really care for OSU. After our first few tutoring sessions we got Sabina once and she was a super tutor: speaking in German, challenging my daughter with questions in German and expecting German responses . . . just really good. We requested that my daughter have her all the time and we actually got that for a while. That was great. We weren't crazy about the increasingly mature themes with the silly romance and the music vids but really enjoyed having Sabina. After a while, though, we stopped getting Sabina and went back to having one of the students. I absolutely understand this. Still, they are nothing like having Sabina and what was a full 30 minute session with lots of German conversation became 5 to 10 minutes of where are you in your homework? Read the story to me. How would you answer this? et c. So, we'd like to consider something else. My daughter gets to be the asst tchr again this year and she is very excited but she hasn't been taking German. I thought I'd like to find another class and continue but nothing has walked into our lives as yet. I have absolutely no background in German. We selected this language for academic reasons but fortunately, my daughter loves it and wants to continue. I'd love any ideas you have for a class especially if you tried OSU and liked something better.

Well, about making up opinions . . . they don't really need to be made up. Anyone can have an opinion on anything. Even if the opinion is that it's ridiculous to care about such a thing, it is still an opinion. An opinion is more fun to write about and defend if it is an opinion about something she really cares about but that isn't always an option. When the SATs roll around, she's probably going to have to write about stuff she doesn't care about. A couple of years ago, my daughter and I would edit her papers together and we would mark E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G that needed to be corrected. Coincidentally, my daughter hated writing. She felt that she wasn't a good writer (though I would strenuously disagree), her learning not adequate, her opinions not worthy, et c. In one particularly illustrative blow up, she wrote a paper and then got a pen and scribbled all over it and said, "There. I edited it." I cried. She cried. We quit writing for a while. My point is that no matter what I said about how wonderful the content was, how creative the story was, how ingenious the style or how positively clever some turn of phrase was, every positive word was ****ed into oblivion by all the corrections. After a while we just wrote, no pressure. Then we got back at it and now I focus on one thing per paper/essay to correct AND I don't mark up her paper. I look it over for the most obvious or most often repeated problem and ask her to look it up and find it in her paper. After than I expect her to get it right and she usually does. Between IEW and pretty insensitive editing, we have a somewhat tortured past with writing. After we did probably an entire year of no-pressure writing we went back into serious school writing with the editing changes and my daughter fell in serious like with writing again. We spent more time working on techniques to conquer writer's block type problems (a la brave writer) and she felt this might be love. Now we are into LAoW and she L.O.V.E.S writing now! She loves being able to express her opinions so much more than the regurgitation of report writing. She still has to write reports some but not too much: one/semester seems good for now. My point for your daughter is that maybe the editing process is killing the creative/inventive/my opinion is valuable sense that she could be getting otherwise. Maybe not. Check with her, though. You could just chose the one thing that bother you or her and just correct that. So you have to over look a dangling modifier for two weeks, you can get that next time. No big deal. Maybe you'll find that she'll feel that her opinions are easier to come by and more important if you give that a whirl.

LVP says this in the What is an Essay chapter (1)": "'What shall I write about?' It is the universal question, a kind of midnight howl of anguish, loudest and most hopeless the night before an essay assignment is due." I think that's funny. This is what we do. I originally read it in Brave Writer when we were trying to "heal" from IEW. Ugh . . . what tortured memories! LVP encourages students to write about what they know. I agree with this. However, sometimes students have to write about an assigned topic, say, the Civil War or Louis Pasteur. If it is a topic my girl knows a lot about out (Religion, Fiddling, how to fix dolls' hair, mythology, et c) I usually don't need her to do any reading on the topic but I might encourage her to read something to see if she learns something new (which she often does). If it is a topic that I have assigned for school I have her read, and read, and read about her subject. To take the Civil War example, I had her read our History material, material from several reference books, a couple of things from the geography reference, and a few books from the library. The writer must have a deep well of knowledge to draw from! Only after my daughter has read a good deal of information is in her mind, I have her sit down and have her do a Topic Funnel for 5 minutes. 5 miinutes is probably longer than you think! The process is something like this: Write everything you know about this topic. uh, civil war, men, men soldiers, women soldiers, women spies, disease, on and on for 5 minutes. My daughter thinks 5 minutes is too long but I tell you truly, excellent ideas have come AFTER she coulnd't think of anything else to write. After the first go, select a topic from above to send through the funnel again. women in the civil war women's official roles, women's unofficial roles, women's downright sneaky roles, women spies, sneaky girl spies during the war, nurses, famous nurses, what's her name, again I"m a stickler for the 5 minutes. Here you could select a topic for the funnel or for the paper. When you do get to the topic you like, then subject it to the chapter one stuff in LAoW. You said your kiddo has plenty of opinions so then you just go for it! By the way, when my daughter can't decide on a topic when she's writing about what she does know, she still does the topic funnel sometimes. I find that she uses it more when it is an assigned topic. Oh, the topic funnel also works for research papers and debate topics. hth

WishboneDawn, I agree with you 100%. This book teaches the essay exactly in a way that agrees with everything I feel is true about this topic. One thing I could never stand is rigidity in writing. Once you've handed in the outline no changing; once you've writting the into, you're locked in. I love her writing style, her respect for change and fluidity, and her devotion to truth.

Oh my goodness! We just love Lively Art of Writing! We never, ever, do the assignments as listed in the book, though. In fact, I don't even know why she put them because in chapter one (?) she writes at length about knowing about your subject, having an opinion or forming one, and having knowledge about it and being able to defend it. My daughter doesn't care about any of her topics and we didn't even know what drag racing was until we looked it up. We are on ch 4 (? -- structure beginning with the introductory paragraph) and my daughter's most recent essay was about whether her recent theatre experience would be considered suitable for a Christian. My daughter never, ever, ever, writes about silverware, drag racing, or home ec b/c she just couldn't care less about those things and in some cases knows absolutely nothing about them. Much less has she formed a controversial opinion about them. Nor does she care to. I teach writing to my daughter and her friend using this book. The friend's recent essay was over whether cats make good pets in homes with small children. She cares. For their last essay before that I asked them to choose a topic about which they disagree and then write opposing viewpts. The chose camping b/c we L.O.V.E camping and go as often as we can. They took a trip last summer and the poor girl felt every moment was torture. As far as I know, the friend has no interest in silverware and I know that neither she nor her mother know what drag racing is b/c we've discussed that. The friend does some of the vocab work. We use the classical roots vocab program and b/t that and my daughter already knowing most of the wds in the LAoW, we don't bother. My advice: forget about drag racing, et c. and let your students choose their own topics based on what they care about. I haven't yet assigned topics, myself, but have asked them to come up with them. This week, however, I will assign my daughter's topic. We also plan to use some of the SAT essay prompts but later after we have gotten a bit further in. Anyway, I love LAoW and hope these ideas help!

I was thinking of getting the Yudu set for my daughter but the negative reviews at amazon scared me off. For that amount of money, I would want something with a better reputation. I still like the idea of getting her a screen printing kit for Christmas, though. Any ideas?

Once again I'll disagree with most: I think the internet and most other tech is way overrated in education. I do use it and (see below) my daughter has several online classes that we LOVE! Still . . . Anyway, as someone above said, subject specific reference books are a must around here. We have had to collect them slowly and I didn't have them all when I needed them but now i"m set to homeschool my grand children! I think these are indispensable: -- Bible and good commentary -- Catechism of the Catholic Church and at least the 2nd St. Joseph's B'more Catechism -- Good resource for Saints/martyrs (if I could only have one: The Golden Legend) -- Gk/Roman mythology resources -- encyclopedias -- science encyclopedias -- geography encyclopedias -- LOT of poetry (by author and anthologies) -- excellent adult/college level grammar resource (even if your kids are littles) -- excellent literature: start now collecting wonderful books. An excellent resource list is at Angelicum.net. Start at pk and work through. -- I also love my printer/copier. -- Good set of colored pencils, permanent/dry-erase/wet-erase markers in a variety of colors, -- I love my great big white board but we hardly ever use it now. In elem and much of middle we did but now hardly ever. oh, a good globe. and you might as well make it a pretty one b/c it'll be around a while. oh, oh, legos . . . from math concepts to catapult testing, from art to architecture. Must Have! oh, oh, oh, seriously, a stocked pantry/freezer. yep, in all earnestness, it saves the day . . . of course, you probably can't get that from RR. too bad!

I read that book and a lot of things made sense. I really kind of bought into it. However, eating breakfast within an hour of getting up is not physically possible for me. I did honestly try it for a while but stop reading here if you're sensitive I would gag and sputter just trying to get a mouthful down. I tried several different things from eggs (boiled, scrambled, fried, poached) to cereal, to granola, to yogurt, to smoothies, to dry toast, to Forget It! It just seemed after a while that there had to be another way. I have even thought of doing it in reverse order. Maybe there is something about the whole addiction thing that makes me so breakfast intolerant. Now, I do eat breakfast sometimes . . . but it is several hours after waking. I get up at 6.15 and on some days I'm ready to eat around 10 and on some days, noon is a better time for me.

yes, addiction in my family. Yes, if there is a sugar addiction, I think I've probalby got it. I have had some success with l-glutamine and i'm working my way off but honestly, I'm at a point where I've cut down but otherwise I've only substituted one kind for another. I haven't had white sugar for several weeks but i've had honey and dried dates (as in ground with almonds and coconut to make a little treat). It's hard enough to quit white sugar but honestly, it seems as if you ought to be able to have a little mayo on your sandwich or a but of catsup on a potato w/o having a sugar fix. I made my own mayo but it isn't nearly as satisfying . . . probably b/c it didn't have any sugar. sigh

I hope this isn't a hijack! If so lmk and I'll repost. On the 4-day, 2-wk schedule thing . . . it seems that a lot of ppl plan to read text and do the OYO and Vocab for week one and Experiments/lab notes, study guide, and test week two. I note, though, that the text completing the experiments when the student comes up to them in the reading and not to read further until the experiment is complete. Well, we try to do that. I also note, however, that sometimes that isn't possible b/c it is an experiment that takes several days or weeks to see through to the end (growing a plant, the pond thing, et c). I would like to know how you address these things. As far as our 4-day schedule goes . . . well, Last year we just divided the work into 8 days. I'm not at all sure that we'll be able to do that this year, though, b/c we plan to complement with nature study and book studies so we may even need all 7 days! http://www.hslaunch.com/mypage/profile/8288 (scroll down to movies + living books) http://www.squidoo.com/apologiabiology (scroll down to the nature study part).

My daughter had problems similar to that in 6th grade Singapore (IPs) but they tended not to take up two pages. Though we tend to have my daughter use grid paper for math so maybe that makes a difference. She had a private tutor at that time who liked to give partial credit but we discussed her out of that.

I agree . . . in part. On homework, if my daughter makes a misstep but the problem is otherwise correctly worked (say, she added wrongly in a step but otherwise worked the steps themselves correctly) she has to find her own mistake, correct it, rewrite it. If she messed up the problem somehow, she has to correct the problem and gets a few more like it to solve until she gets them consistently right. In the begining I didn't understand why there were so many problems offered and why we did so few. Now I appreciate the well of problems when we need them. Having said that, the homework isn't graded per se. It is checked for mistakes and treated as above but no grade is recorded. On the other hand, tests are different. If, on a test question, she works the problem correctly but misses something like above, she misses the question altogether; no partial credit. I feel that on tests, partial credit is a little too much mercy where not needed. She should scour her papers for mistakes and try hard not to make them. This works for us. Now, I do not live in the world of high-stakes, real-life math but it doesn't seem like a place for partial credit. A digit off 5 steps back could mean the difference b/t lift off and not, between a sound structure and can't pass inspection, between the coolest roller coaster ever and . . . something else. As I said, I don't live in that high stakes math world but my daughter is a pretty mathy kid and she might. For that reason (not to mention no partial credit on SATs, et c) I think the better approach for us is to teach her that she will make a few mistakes so she has to really scour her problems searching for her own mistakes and then correcting them before handing in. When she misses them in hmwk, she should be held accountable by redos and extras and when she misses them on tests she should miss them altoghther.

I've only tried Cafix. I like it with a square of Green and Blacks 70% chocolate. Otherwise, not so much. It doesn't taste like coffee or satisfy in any way like coffee. It's not coffee. It isn't good in coffee drinks, either, imho.