Thanks for the info :thumbup:

I'm wondering, are there colour pics included in the Burgess Bird and Burgess Animal books? I'm wondering, are there pictures in the Burgess Bird and Burgess Animal books?Wendy

As a help for others who may want the program I thought I'd share some info. I placed an order through their website and didn't hear anything back for a couple weeks, so I emailed, then called the company with no response. I ended up disputing the charge through paypal and got my money back and ordered through a different website. I ended up ordering from homeschoolandmore.ca and they were excellent to deal with. I'd email them first to make sure they have what you need in stock, but if they do then it should get to you without problems. I think it was around 1-2 weeks between my order date and when the pkg. showed up on my doorstep, so it was really fast shipping from them.

Well, I used HOE with dd (12) last school year and am VERY happy with the program. This year I have her working a problem or two from the Verbal Problems Book every day and I am really impressed with the way the program introduced algebra concepts in such a concrete way. She has now progressed from using the pieces to writing out equations on paper using variables and I feel it gave her an excellent head-start on working algebraic equations. This year she is working in MUS Pre-Algebra and because she has gone through HOE, she's not having any difficulty at all understanding how both sides of an equation have to stay balanced which is critical to solving algebraic equations. She's quite good at solving for the unknown and even at Level 1, *I* find some of the VP Book problems a bit difficult so it's stretching her mind to think of ways to turn word problems into equations on paper.

Oh man, I think everybody who buys the WWE books should get a link telling them to watch that video! I did WWE 1-4 with dd when she was in 5th grade. I just used the hardbound teacher book and only did things at an accelerated pace. Anyway, even I was having trouble remember a lot of the dictation passages. The way the book makes it sound, you should be able to repeat it twice to your child and then have them repeat it back to you and that's it. Luckily, I didn't stick to that and read it more times for dd when necessary (which was almost always for Level 2-4). What I hit on that worked really well is dd would read the passage to me and have *me* learn it first. Then by the time I turned it around for her to do, she had it pretty much down pat. This really helped alleviate her stress about remembering a very long passage and it also showed me how difficult they were when I tried to do them, so I could remain more patient with her.

Nevermind, when I tried typing "WWTB" into the search engine, a bunch of threads came up. Previously I had been searching for "Write with the Best" and was getting nowhere, but I should have thought to use the acronymn!

Has anyone tried it? I don't see much about it anywhere, but I came across it and it looks like it might be a gentle way to get dd writing more. When she does write, she comes often comes up with some great stuff, but I'm wondering if WWTB might help her polish up her work more.

Dd (11) just started book 1 today. I think it's somewhat too easy for her, however I thought it would give her a solid foundation to start with book 1 which does quite a bit of work with syllables. She's done work with them with All About Spelling, but I figured it wouldn't hurt. So, because it's so easy right now I had her do 4 pages today and will likely do the same for the first half of the book and then slow down to 2 pages a day. I'll likely have her do two pages/day so that she can easily finish book 1-3 this year, do book 4-6 next year, and then 1 page a day to do books 7 & 8 for her grade 8 year. If I was starting with a younger child I'd likely only do one page/day.

The only set chores my kids have are dishes (dd) and feeding pets (ds), making sure their rooms are tidy before bedtime, and folding their laundry when it is clean. They are expected however, to help keep the house tidy of their toys and help out with things as asked. I know they could do more, but usually it's quicker and less messy and done more properly if I do it. I know I should give them more responsibilities though. Dd loves to cook/bake and I have been letting her do more in the kitchen. She'll now make soup, scrambled eggs, or grilled cheese. She also baked a yummy chocolate cake completely from scratch a couple days ago. I haven't even ever done that (pathetic, I know, but I always get the boxed mixes). She was so proud of herself and I was very proud of her too and it was a nice bonus that the cake tasted so good! I just need to learn to let go more of my perfectionistic ways.

If you would have asked me a few weeks ago before the Kindle 3 was announced, I would have said to get the Nook, but now that the K3 is out I've ordered one. Kindles seem to have a very good track record for reliability and Amazon CS is usually excellent if any issues come up with something you ordered through them. The new Kindle looks VERY nice with the Pearl e-ink screen and page turns are supposed to be much faster than they are on the Nook. If you think you will use an ereader a lot for library books I'd say go with the Nook, but otherwise the K3 may be the best one to go with. I want an ereader mainly for free classics which I can get on either the kindle or the nook, though some people have said the b&n classics are formatted very well compared to the typical pdf. However, the kindle supports bookmarks and annotations in pdf files now whereas I'm not sure if the Nook does. The pricepoint on the wifi Kindle is excellent as well - $139 for such a high-quality ereader is impressive. From what I understand, the dictionary on the kindle is better, and the kindle also lets you create folder systems whereas I don't believe the Nook does. I'm really liking the idea of being able to create folders for classics, new releases, books I'm currently reading, books I've read, etc. so I don't have just one huge list of books but I can organize them how I want to. I can even create folders for different Ambleside years which has me quite excited!

My children are dawdlers too and I've resisted timers because I don't want them to rush their work, however if something should take roughly 30 mins. and I give them an hour then it should give them ample time to get it done properly. With dd I noticed a marked improvement in the amount of time it took her to complete work when I let her work on the workbook pages. I was having her use the workbook and do her work on a seperate lined paper so that I could use the workbook down the road with ds. Math sometimes took hours. Since I've started letting her do the work on the worksheet she has gotten much better, sometimes finishing her math work in 20 mins!

Did you use it as your sole spelling program? I've been using AAS with dd (11). We did Level 1-3 last school year and I was thinking of continuing with it, but ds is going to need more 1 on 1 spelling instruction this year so I'm thinking of switching dd to Megawords and using AAS with ds.

Dd got a rock tumbler from Michael's last year and after she did the one batch of rocks we both agreed to get rid of it. She liked the way the rocks turned out, but having it running almost non-stop for weeks was crazy. It was x amount of days for the first step, rinse, several days for the next step, etc. There were four or so steps and I did not want to go through that again, plus I think there was only enough grit for one more go-around and then we'd have to buy more. Maybe if we had a garage I wouldn't have minded it, but we don't have one and so we had the rock tumbler in a closed box in the basement to try to muffle the sound, but you could still faintly hear it upstairs and it drove us bonkers. Plus I was wondering how much electricity it was using running for weeks almost non-stop. So yeah, I'm being a party pooper right now I know, but just wanted to give a review for those who are considering buying one. Dd and I thought the rocks turned out beautifully, but it was a pain for those two weeks it took to get them. Plus, after they were done dd made some jewelry items out of some of the rocks, but now the rest of them just sit in her room in a container.

You said in your original post that one of the families has an income of 90K a year. Coming from someone who usually has a combined family income of roughly 50K/yr., that would make a big difference in how much you could pay on your mortgage each month! Hubby lost his job of 14 yrs. in January. He is now employed again, however we've really learned to tighten our belts since January. Actually, hubby had been laid off last summer for two weeks and that was a real wake-up call for us. We had no debt except for our mortgage and car lease, but nonetheless we were really worried how we were going to pay all the bills because at the time we didn't know it would only be a two-week layoff. We had no idea if it would be weeks or months dh would be laid off. When dh went back to work I started putting away money by cutting spending in many areas, including on clothes and books which are my major spending weaknesses and I also: -cut back my cell plan to $15 month (now it's been cancelled and I just use a pay as you go plan since we only use about $5 of talktime per month anyway) -cancelled satellite -stopped eating out as much (used to be once a week and it went down to once every month or two and it was roughly a $20 meal at McDs) -made more frugal meals (soup night once a week, pancakes or bacon and eggs once a week for supper, more careful about timing meals so we could eat leftovers at least once or twice a week) When dh lost his job in Jan. we had some savings so we weren't freaking out as much about how we would pay the mortgage for the next couple months. In April our car lease was up so we used our savings to buy a good used car and that freed up $350/mth. and that has made a huge difference in our financial situation I'm sure. Dh was on employment insurance (55% of previous income) until the end of July and we've been able to stay debt free. This month we will barely scrape by, but now that dh is working again I hope to build up at least a small emergency fund again since we used ours to buy our car in April. That would be a HUGE tip I would give to anyone to save money - buy a reliable used car! Also, go down to one vehicle if you can, unless both your vehicles are paid for and your insurance is really cheap, but even then you'll find you make less silly trips when you only have one vehicle because you maximize your time and travel and as a result you save $$ on gas. We only have one vehicle but we make it work and I still hope to be mortgage-free in ten years. Dh's new job will involve relocating in a year, so I'm hoping wherever we move I'll be able to find a nice house in the same price range as our current house ($150-160K) and still pay off a mortgage in 10 years. That's still quite a ways away, but I'm only 33 so being mortgage-free at 43 yrs. old still sounds good to me :)

I really loved DP when I read it, but now I wish I had a bookclub closeby that we could have those kinds of discussions in. It succeeded in making me want to look at underlying themes and ideas in books, but I still feel inept in leading discusssions like those given in the book. I feel like *I* wouldn't be able to get to the root of it all myself, let alone help my kids or others do so. I guess if you look at it though as there being no "right" answer then it's okay, but there are some books that I wouldn't be able to figure out the protagonist/antagonist like they did in DP.