I have read some of the common core standards, and I have yet to find anything really wrong with them. so far my kids are meeting them without a problem. They are written in some fuzzy language at times, which I think makes it difficult to accurately demonstrate them on standardized tests. So the a lot of the implementation in schools is seriously messed up. Some classrooms are taking the problems like 70 divided by 10, and focus on drawing the x's in the circles, at the expense of the student understanding that 70 is 10 groups of 7. And, solving large number problems with elaborate pictorial representations can lead to confusion from minor counting errors. But this really isn't CC, it is a curriculum or state/school/teachers way of interpreting the implementation of CC, and trying to demonstrate it. For example, I know my daughter knows several strategies for solving multi digit addition problems. But if she had to demonstrate that she knows multiple strategies on a standardized test with no guidance that would be a different story. She would solve problems the easiest way for her, and look like she only knows 1 or 2 strategies. I think this is why so many teachers I know hate it. (Many of them are in NY state and I understand the implementation there has been a huge mess). The common core seems to have some emphasis on critical and conceptual thinking, but those things are almost impossible to assess in mass standardized testing. so for implementation and assessment teachers are having to turn conceptual thinking into memorization/regurgitation, which just doesn't work.

I keep track of several people I grew up with on Facebook. But other than that I really don't have contact with anyone (other than family) that I knew before college. Dh on the other hand has had the same best friend since 2nd grade, we see him all the time. We are friendly with several of his other friends from as well childhood since we still live where he grew up and people often stay in the area.

Demonstrating the dichotomy of knowing technical language better than ordinary English: Dd: when we leave (the baseball stadium) will we use the escalator? Me: well we might go down the ramp. Dd: What's a ramp? Me: An incline plane. Dd: Oh, yeah I saw that. :) I wonder what the other people in the bathroom hearing us thought? :)

I have a Ker who is reading fluently. I have really enjoyed using LOE foundations with her. I am able to speed it up a bit, since she can read, but the phonics training has been so great, and LOE is fun. It also includes handwriting, so that may be helpful for you as well.

I would never give up LOE for math. :D I used Singapore math with my oldest. It went ok, but I struggled a bit with really knowing wether she got it. When started using LOE I discovered my teaching style and kids learning style. So I decided to get right start B, mostly because it seemed so similar to LOE in teaching/ learning style and I love LOE. So far I am liking Right Start better than Singapore. If you can swing it, go for it.

I receive support from 3 main places: friends who homeschool, my friends local used homeschool materials store, and this board. None would I consider more primary as they all serve different functions. I don't belong to a group, but we do have 2 families who we spread a lot of time with who also homeschool. They are emotional/social support. My friends store, and this board provide most of my information about curriculum etc...

Another "other" in all 3 categories. 1. We homeschool primarily for scheduling reasons. My husband's schedule is very difficult to work around. I also value free time and think the school day is too long. The academic experience/lifestyle is a great perk, and why I love homeschooling. But my husbands schedule is what tipped us into homeschooling. 2. I am influenced by several styles: unschooling/relaxed, a little bit classical, and traditional. 3. I use an eclectic variety of curriculum. All of which I modify. I like the guidance of teacher's guides, but don't actually follow them closely. I also use workbooks, living books, and activities. I "unschool" all subjects except English and math at this point,

I have always thought option c a strong possibility. Which is why I considered myself young earth. It wasn't until I began homeschooling that I discovered young earth could mean something different. So now I hesitate to call myself YE, because I don't agree with a lot of "YE" scientific interpretations. The idea that it is trickery does not make sense. Certainly there are people who reject God and misinterpret many things in his creation, that doesn't mean he is tricking them. If I plant a mature tree in my yard because I want shade, or already growing tomato plant because I want tomatoes before frost, it doesn't mean I am involved in trickery. It is plausible if you believe in an all powerful God, to believe he created the earth already in process, not because he wanted to trick us, but because his processes have purpose at all their stages. In actuality I am not firmly wed to option C. I believe it is possible to "literally" interpret scripture in the Hebrew and allow for an old earth. (I do not personally believe Human evolution is plausible according to scripture, nor do I even find it all that plausible from what I studied in biology, but I am very interested in hearing why others believe it is plausible) I also find the idea that if you believe the supernatural intervenes in the natural world you are somehow expelled from science to be an overreach. Many historic scientific discoveries were made by individuals who were looking for the wonder and order in God's creation, and refused to "leave God at the door". I do find it quite sad that in some circles there is such a hostility from different groups (both the anti-god and anti-science types). The definition of science simply is not as narrow as some of the "anti-god" types make it out to be, and yes it also isn't as broad as some of the "anti-science" types would declare it to be either. But if one truly believes in God they can not somehow divorce God's existence from science, and that does not disqualify from science either.

I have gotten them that fast a few times, but I only live about 90 miles away from their warehouse. I have noticed my orders are faster in the summer. maybe they have extra staff since they probably have a lot of summer orders.

In Illinois, the law is that you can't leave them unsupervised for an "unreasonable" amount of time. So a movie at 10 could be defined as "reasonable". But unfortunately, since it is so murky, you could also get in trouble for it, depending on where you are. I remember hearing this law discussed, the spirit of it was situations where people were leaving their kids home with the oldest in charge for 10 to 12 hours all week, not leaving a 10 y/o at a movie Crime is actually down since the 70's. The 24 hour news cycle alters our perceptions. Driving your child to school is probably more dangerous than walking, since most child deaths/serious injuries occur in cars. The world is more scary, but it isn't more dangerous. It is hard to deal with scary. :hug: But our children suffer because of our fears. Children can't learn street smarts if they are never on the street. They need freedom to develop confidence and responsibility. I think they are actually safer if they have self-confidence, creative thinking, and street smarts they can only develop by being put in situations where it is a bit scary for me.

I did not get Doodling Dragons, the game book, or any of the cards. I just make make my own cards with index cards. I only purchase the teaches manual and workbook. (I have both foundations and essentials). We like games too. But there are many games in the teachers manuals, i also have become pretty creative and come up with my own games. I like the feel of the teachers manual. It is nice and sturdy and will likely be highly resell-able.

You might want to consider LoE foundations. You could go through A double time, and then do B at one lesson a day. I use it with my almost 2nd grader and soon to be Ker together. It is a lot of fun. I also have essentials which I had started using with my 1st grader. It was so good I decided to switch to foundations and do that with both my girls. My 1st grader is a bit of a struggling reader. But my younger daughter is a natural reader. Foundations has been great for her be use even though she can read she is still learning a lot! Essentials would also work, but it isn't as much fun, though it still is fun. There would have to be quite a bit of modification for your Ker, and that might make it too slow for your older. I really didn't need the essentials workbook for my 1st grader. You can definitely get by without it. But I do think it would be nice for an older child. The Foundations workbooks are quite helpful. You would really only need 1 though. The games can be shared, and the other activities can be done together, or you older might skip them. Foundations would be hard to go through more than once. But there is a lot of meat in the Essentials lessons. So especially with the advanced spelling lists I could see using it for 2 years. I have yet to use them over obviously but with my 1st grader I was doing only about 1/2 of one lesson a week. (She was not a reader though). I was skipping most of the grammar and composition part of the lessons. I plan to go back to essentials for my will be 2nd grader once we finish Foundations at the end of the calendar year. Then go back through it again for third grade with the advanced spelling lists. Hopefully this makes sense. To sum up. If you want to do them both together I would suggest foundations (it would be perfect for your Ker and fine for your 2nd grader) For just your 2nd grader you could easily use essentials, probably don't need the workbook. Of course you could include you Ker with your 2nd grader on the phonograms and rules in essentials, but it might not work very well for her. Hope this helps :) I love LoE BTW. It is really worth it. :)

A cupcake. :D (Really truly, but that isn't my norm)

It sounds like she is making progress :) and I certainly don't think you need to worry a lot. I have a daughter the same age, who has also "struggled" a bit. I try not to worry about her reading. But she really wants to be able to read, so we started LOE. She has really enjoyed using LOE Foundations, we started it in the end of March. It is not fussy or crafty, I don't do crafty ;). I started with A because I really felt she needed the phonemic awareness activities, we moved through A quickly and now are doing B. (I am hoping to finish it in time for her to start C at the beginning of next school year, and hope to finish through D by the end of this calendar year.) She is now reading short early easy readers, with just a little bit of help. They enjoy Logic of English because of the games and activities (they are simple non-crafty things). My daughter is also very logical/literal so the way Logic of English sets it up really works for her. Oh and LOE has also been a hit with my younger daughter who is a natural reader. It has been a great way to do phonics with a young kid who can already read a lot intuitively.

Ours was about 200. My dh had 70+ relatives on the list to invite (most of them came). I only had 16 relatives to invite, and 8 of them came. we were married here (where dh grew up and I went to college) so we had lots of friends as well. Our church also had the policy that weddings are a religious service, so weddings are announced in the bulletin, and technically anyone can attend the ceremony. Though most don't if they don't receive a personal invitation

I think this is pretty normal developmentally, and I don't know if I totally want to completely "break" that habit. When we read to ourselves silently do we really sound our every phonogram in our head? Or do we read a mix of contextually, by sight, and by sounding out? I have a heavy emphasis on pure phonics. And I don't believe in learning "sight words" until you understand them phonetically. But I also don't want my kids to lumber through books sounding out every word. Run/ran and plurals are things you self-correct when reading silently. My youngest already can read a bit faster than she can pronounce, so she appears to miss those type of things, but really her comprehension is just fine. I also try to be very careful with over correcting on/no and letter reversals. I correct them when reading and move on. My older daughter struggles with these, but she can also read upside down for many words. She is able to see things in a way that makes standard right to left progression difficult. But these skills will be useful in other areas, so I would rather she naturally develop the understanding just for reading, and am trying to be patient. I want my kids to be able to sound everything out phonetically, but I don't want them to need to sound everything out. Eventually one does have to transition to whole word reading for most of the words they read, especially the words you mentioned. But it is very important that they know how to decode phonetically because you can't whole read everything.

I have never heard it before either.

Thanks :). Typing it out and your responses made it all seem very reasonable. In general our library is so above and beyond what one would expect in such a small town (population 500) I don't want to add a burden to the very small staff, so I have been a little squirrelly about suggestions. I think I will just go in there and say something like. "have you ever tried shelving...like the big library. It was so helpful to have it that way when we went last week. If you think that might work I would be happy to help, I know it could be a big project."

Can you box up some stuff for a trial period: Say, " I think it would be so much easier to play if you had room to move and could find your toys. let's put a bunch of them in this box and put them away for a while. If you think you really need something we can always go get it. And while we're doing that if you want to give some toys away, or we find anything broken we'll pull out those too." Take in a big storage box, and 2 trash bags, (one for donating, one for trash) Be sure it is an opaque box and bags, out of sight, out of mind.

First, we have a wonderful small town library. I have great rapport with the staff. I have one issue with the library, all the children's books below chapter books are shelved together. Every picture book, board book, and easy reader (fiction & non-fiction) is shelved together by author. My daughters are just moving into easy readers and it is often hard to find them, especially since a lot of the ones they are interested in aren't by consistent authors (ie. my youngest loves "step into reading" Cars books). Several other moms have had similar difficulties. We would love it if the easy readers were in one shelving section. It is like this at the larger library in town, and it is wonderful. I so want to suggest this. I would even be willing to do much of the work to accomplish it. but obviously there would be some logistical things I couldn't do since it would affect their shelving and cataloging long term. But I also don't want them to feel like I am being critical. It really is a wonderful library. And I certainly don't expect them to change just because I want it. But I know it would be helpful to many of us, not just me. So do I even bring it up, and if I do how?

Wasn't quite sure what to pick. I have read the book through the grammar stage a couple times. I have only skimmed Logic and rhetoric stages, so I haven't read the book I it's entirety. But I did read what was pertinent prior to homeschooling.

Is it grade going into? If I have a 5 y/o who reads at a 1st grade level do you think I could call her a first grader? It doesn't seem to have a k level.

The jury is still out on my kids, but my dh does not read fiction. I have never seen him read fiction in the 20 years I have known him. He is well educated and very intelligent. I can't say he doesn't "read for pleasure" because he reads the paper, finance magazines, tractor manuals (cover to cover), ag papers and magazines. But it always has to be something he sees as useful. I have a feeling my oldest might be this way. She is so practical and has not started reading fluently, she could be considered slightly behind. (She had vision issues, that resolved a few months ago) But as she is only 6, I don't consider her behind (she is reading at a mid first grade level). Her personality is a lot like her dad. She doesn't care a lot about TV and movies either, though she will watch. I have resigned myself to the strong possibility she won't be a reader, and it is really ok. She actually appears to have excellent reading comprehension, for the limited amount she can read, and based on her understanding when read to. Fortunately my younger one is already starting to read fluently, and already reads for pleasure :) so I do have a bookworm I can relate to ;)

I work in hospice and homecare as a physical therapist. Nurses are usually allowed to accept small inexpensive gifts. Gift cards might not work, as they could be considered to have "cash value" (unless it was a very small amount) A note of appreciation sent to their supervisor is an excellent choice, and should not be overlooked even if you also give them a gift. One patient I was especially close to gave me a small inexpensive pin that had some significance from our conversations. I was able to put it on my lab coat. Another option is to send a treat for the office. If the nurse/aids names are mentioned usually some of it will be set aside for them. This also recognizes all those in the background who support the nurse and help her/him to give good care. Also many hospice organizations will accept monetary donations. We use those to support hospice pt's who are having financial issues and support our volunteer program. So nice of you to be considerate at this difficult time. I hope you and your mom have some special days together. :hug:

I have noticed that some of the schools are listing "Sumna cum laude", instead of valedictorian. Which seems to make sense if you are going to have 10 or more. Actually it seems to make sense period. Our class rank system with 1 valedictorian was rather messed up as well. I really don't think it is possible to do it right. It is interesting to read how music didn't count. Music counted too much. You really couldn't be valedictorian or salutatorian at my high school if you didn't take music. Every single class was weighted. But the only classes with the highest level weighting that you could take before senior year were, A level English & Social Studies, and select choir, advanced band, and advanced orchestra- which you could take every year and still receive the highest level weight each year as you repeated the class. So if you chose to take select choir rather than physics (lower weighted class) you would have a higher class rank. Happily in our class our valedictorian hands down deserved it. He is a genius literally, and was an all-around nice guy. But Our salutatorian was clearly not the 2nd best academically.