Water kefir? I've played with kefir grains in milk but I've never heard of water kefir. How is it different?

High gloss paint works great too. Use a magnetic primer before you paint and you can make a magnet dry erase wall!

We loved AAS so much I bit the bullet and started my struggling readers all over in AAR1, we finished in ~3 months BUT my kids weren't starting from scratch, AAR was our 4th attempt to find a good fit. At the end of AAR1 my guys were able to decode a lot but not really reading books per se. We are 15 lessons into AAR2 and NOW my boys can pick up leveled readers and get through it by decoding without much trouble, this is not to be confused with fluently reading, we are definitely NOT fluent on the first read. We love AAR, it's the perfect fit for our family.

My boys will be starting level 2 when their sister is starting level 1. My grand plan is to have the boys teach their sister for review.

When my kids do something similar I play stupid and have them teach me, works every time.

MUS manipulatives are base ten blocks.

Manners/etiquette were not being caught in our house. I've scaled back school and started The Etiquette Factory, we are going through the parenting cards for We Choose Virtures, and our read alouds all come from Beatiful Feet's Teaching Character Through Literature guide. The Etiquette Factory is super cheesy. I would not force an older child to watch the DVD or sing the songs, and the quality is poor for the price, BUT my kids are really into it! We Choose Virtures, I'm only using the parenting cards, is hands down the best thing we are doing, it's good for them and me. BF's book selections are great too but less direct than EF and WCV. Good luck, I'm feeling your pain. My ID twins are the type of kids that must touch a hot burner several hundred times, complete with burns, before they figure out it's hot!

I bought it when I was at my whits end with struggling readers. We are 9 lessons in to AAR 2 now and I can honestly say I love it more with every lesson. I'm a college graduate and my decoding skills have improved.... I think it's wonderful especially for brains more geared toward math and science not language. I could see how a natural reader would find it boring and slow but for average or struggling readers it's great! FYI we tried Bob Books, 100 EZ Lessons and Funnix before AAR.

As long as science is taught in the context of science and not politics I think the standards are encouraging. Any intellectually honest person, be it a diehard creationist or browbeating evolutionist, is doing their child a huge disservice if they fail to introduce current popular theories.

My OCD perfectionist did better when we gave up HWT and switched to cursive. I'm now on the cursive first bandwagon.

My thoughts exactly!

If you'll sell to us "recreational user" types I'll buy and I'm happy to pay a small handling fee in addition to shipping to make it worth your time.

I used base 10 blocks. First I taught my kiddos to count to 9 then taught them to change kind. Example: count 9 unit blocks, if we add one more then we change kind and have one 10 block and Zero units. If we have 325 then we count 3 hundred blocks, 2 ten blocks and 5 unit blocks. We never have more than 9 of one kind. If we don't have anyone "home" the house is still there and we use a zero to show it's empty. Zero is simply a place holder. After they have a firm grasp of place value and the concept of zero as a place holder we move onto proper number names like "eleven" instead of "one ten and one unit." Numbers are not like learning ABCs, numbers have a predictable and repetitive pattern. IMHO counting can be a memorization activity or it can be introduced as a pattern that follows a logical sequence. Kids that understand the logical sequence are going to be light years ahead of kids that have simply memorized a long list of numbers. Obviously they will need to memorize 1-9 and understand zero is a place holder, from there the pattern and knowledge of place value or (kind) should kick in.

Too funny, we are working on character traits, today I introduces "attentive." I had lots of opportunities to point a lack of attentiveness!

You'll want the activity book for the fluency pages, just skip the activities if your DS doesn't enjoy them. Whether it seems babyish or not will depend on the 12 yr old, I think he may enjoy some of them. I personally am done with the word flappers, but everything else I enjoy doing with my kids. I have a friend remediating a 9 yr old with AAR1 and she praises the program! (FYI the 9 yr old is her son and she has a BA in Elementary Education.)

I'm interested in quantities of 10, especially the larger sizes and I'd love a variety of colors! I don't see me ever using 100s of spirals, I like the group buy idea but I'm a small time "user." :-)

My 6 years olds are expected to help/do most of the things you mentioned. They have even taken the initiative to help their toddler sister in the bathroom. Tell your neighbors they should thank you for raising the next generation of productive citizens!

I started my DD when she was 2, begging to do school, I promise I'm not one of those crazy overachiever parents! We did/are doing what Stef03 suggested skipping the meaty parts and revisiting. It's a lot of bun! I say mo for it. :-)

My older kids are only 6, they don't do school at the same time. The kid not doing school is assigned to keep the 3 yr old entertained. It works well most days.

Are you getting the posters too? The graphics are just a full page B & W version of the letters on the poster. I laminated mine instead of using them as craft pages. You could easily just had draw those letters.

I have Building Thinking Skills Primary and Mathematical Reasoning Level A. I bought it for my K'ers. My kids are not gifted or even "bright" and the books were beneath them. My, just turned, 3 yr old enjoys them so it wasn't a total waste... I won't buy anymore CTC books without touching them first.

This is how the IRS works just sub credit card for paycheck! It all makes since now, they model their company after the IRS!

We are starting over again for 1st grade, I suspect we'll blaze through what we already covered. We put it on the back burner to focus on the 3Rs and so I can make it easier to implement. I'm going through the book now, using AAR as my model, making BFSU open and go. I'm lightly scripting the lessons and adding in a review card component.

SWB isn't a fan of doing Lit Analysis with young children. At least not in the audio lectures I've listened to. I have TtC and it's helped me introduce my K'ers to literary devices. I'm a math/science gal who needs the hand holding TtC offers. FYI Exodus Books has the best prices on the TtC book/DVD combo.

eBay, where used is thrice the price! I don't get it either but I do know when I start selling, this is our first year homeschooling, my reasonably priced stuff is gonna go quick!