My olders would like to plan some activities they can do with the toddler. I thought getting them an idea book or two would be a great idea. Or maybe pointing them in the direction of some good blogs with simple ideas. I plucked most of my ideas for them from my preschool teacher brain so I don't really have any idea books. Since they want to do the planning & implementing I don't think they want my ideas ;) So I thought I'd ask and see if anybody had any good books/blogs I can point them too. TIA :D

All I keep thinking about is 'ugly naked guy' from Friends.

It seems I have lost my book list on my old computer (argh!) so I am trying to compile a new one. I am looking through the Sonlight catalog and am quite certain there were a few books I had marked from them, but that are now not part of their lists. Since I am drawing a blank, I am wondering if there were any gems from past Sonlight catalogs that you think I should remember? I am looking at both read alouds & readers for k-5. TIA :)

Thanks.

My son is working his way through Teaching Textbooks. I'd like him to complete Life of Fred Fractions followed by Decimals & Percents (he is almost finished working his way through the Elementary series and loving it). Would you do this as a supplement like he is doing now? Or would it be okay to pause and let him work through this as his math for a bit? I am also trying to figure out which level of TT these two books would work best with (or between/middle of which levels) since I don't have a copy handy to look through. TIA :)

Has anyone used K-3 books 2 & 3 of Artistic Pursuits? We have already worked our way through book 1 a couple years ago. I am trying to decide if we should invest time in books 2 &/or 3 over the next 5 months before moving on up to the next set of books for grades 4-5. Artistically my son is more than capable of moving up to the 4-5 book (I have the first book it in my hands and it looks great and I know he'd be successful!). But there is a part of me that is wondering if we should spend some time with the other books first??? I've looked for reviews on these two books but am coming up blank. So I thought I'd see if anyone here has used these particular ones. TIA :)

My 4th grader and I are just wrapping up TOPS Radishes. It was a huge success and lots of fun. I plan to come back to corn & beans next year for sure. So now I am trying to figure out where to go from here. With this short & sweet unit I have realized what really works for science around here, and that is that we weren't locked into something for more than 4-weeks. When I've tried science curriculum in the past I found us both bored after about 4-5 weeks. I also really liked having a calendar that told us what to do when. I am totally okay making our own calendar up so we have the plan that works for us. Oh, and I also like that we pulled all our supplies together in one place so we could just glance at the calendar, pull out our supplies, and get to work. So now my question...I would love to get my hands on some good science kits or activity books. Something that I can pull together a short & sweet 4-week plan with. He is really interested in something with electricity. I am considering the TOPS for this as well, but I'm not sure. Any ideas???

Awesome! Thank everyone :)

I am looking to make a list of picture books about artists / composers to work through as we head to the library. Or even books on music/art in genera. I've no idea where to start since this is a relatively new topic for us to explore. A variety of elementary ages is what I am looking for. Any ideas are greatly appreciated :)

Anyone have any good links to SOTW 2 booklists? In chronologically order would be a huge plus :)

Yeah, I'm thinking that I totally didn't ask that question correctly ;) I love to read aloud, and we read aloud often. I am not looking for specific recommendations on what to read aloud to my child, but rather how to choose which to read aloud and which to let him read silently when *I* want to read them all too. I was really hoping to get an idea on what books serve as good read alouds because they read aloud well, and which serve as good read silently because they are difficult to read aloud. What I am hoping to do is suggest some books for him to read that I'd enjoy myself and we'd enjoy discussing. This isn't really at all related to books for school. Sorry I was unclear in my original post. Hopefully that better explains what I was after :D

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone. It has given us lots of things to think about and possible paths to take! We are feeling very fortunate right now income wise and want to make sure we are wise with the money instead of 'throwing it away' and getting stuck.

As for the monthly surplus until now, this is mostly new money. What wasn't new was already going towards our emergency savings.

Thanks for replying. Not sure if I was clear or not in my question...I'll try again a different day ;)

Thanks - lots of food for thought! I am not sure we could crank the equity line out in a year, but maybe 18-months or so. I'll have to crunch some numbers. My husband was hoping for 3-years, but maybe we can pinch a bit more and cut it in half. Like you said, if we can cancel that equity line out of the equation it will be very freeing!

We are behind, yes. But we do have money in a 401k from a previous job, and a hefty mutual fund that my husband has been saving monthly in since he was 13 (we do still add to this now, just not like he used to). Since his new job (a couple years old) we haven't figured things out since they don't offer a 401k plan here, so here I am trying to finally get things back on track! Thanks for the input. No matter what we do I know there is no way we could have 3x our annual income in 10-years, but we make significantly more than we need to live now so maybe we need to figure out where we should be to live how we'd like?

Thanks for the input. Here is a bit more information... The extra amount is pretty significant, not just $100. I used $100 because it is more like thinking in percents and I thought that would be easier. We are very fortunate right now with income, my husband's job is very stable and he is well taken care of. I want to make sure we put the extra in the right place. Getting to 3-months emergency fund won't take long - we are very close and I am thinking I'll at least get us that far. I am just trying to decide if we need to go further than this right now. My husband's job is very stable, the company is doing very well, and we aren't worried about him losing it. But, since you never know, we want to be prepared for it. And this is 3-months looking our budget right now. Obviously in that situation we'd cut way back in several areas to stretch the money as far as possible. I do also have funds set aside for car/appliance repair/replacement needs so I am not worried there. We are 35 with two kids. Not sure how much we will help with college education at this point. We both paid our way so we just aren't sure how we will handle that yet. But I know we need to start thinking about retirement. We've been advised by others to put 15% of our income towards retirement. With that amount towards retirement we'd still have about 40% extra leftover to decide where to put. I guess we could go crazy skimping and saving every last dime towards paying down equity (just the home equity line - we don't mind having a mortgage, but would like to start chipping away at the equity line), saving for retirement & college - but what about now? If we did that we'd never have fun with our kids now and be able to enjoy traveling with them. So we'd like to put aside some money for travel now, not just when we finally retire.

We've got savings for those things that we'd need to replace immediately. I actually just built our one up again after replacing a water heater in December. I don't like to really think of this as our emergency savings though, since these things can happen when out of work too.

I am working on setting up a new budget and I am trying to figure out what to do with the extra. Here is my situation in a nutshell: *Our only debt is our house and equity line. Don't mind the mortgage, but would like to chip away at the equity line a bit. *We have roughly two months savings, could squeeze to three with a lot of sacrifice (which, of course, we would try and do). We'll hit 3-months by the end of April if all goes well. I've also got funds set aside for car/appliance repair/replacement. *We are only saving $50 to retirement at the moment and that is so not enough obviously ;) We are both 35 right now. *My husband is in a very stable job and well taken care of. *We have two kids at the moment. Not sure what will offer as far as education goes. *We love to travel and that needs to come out of these leftover funds. After paying for all our needs & giving ourselves some 'fun' money (not much) each month we have a nice chunk leftover. So really I need to figure out how I should split the extra up. Should we keep saving in our emergency fund? Or put a large chunk to the equity line (which is not frozen and will be readily available if needed) (my husband's choice)? Or would you do a little to both? If you go for emergency savings how much would you save before you switched it over to equity? How much should I earmark for retirement? Should we start now? Get the savings first? Pay off some equity first? Then there is travel that I just need to figure out. I'd like to save for some larger trips now that we are more financially able to do so. Pretend it is just $100 left at the end of the month. How would you split it up between the categories. If I take $60 and put towards retirement that would be 15% of our gross income, which is what our goal is to arrive at. That will leave me with $40 to spread between extra savings, equity line, and travel. There is more info in post #9 too :)

I am putting together a suggested reading list for my 4th grader. I'd like to include a variety of books. My biggest issue is decided what to read aloud vs. what to suggest he read silently (that we can later discuss). I tend to want to read everything aloud, but realistically I know I can't. What books would you definitely save for reading aloud? Say you were making a list of 3 books from each of these genres that he could read silently...what would you choose? Humorous Historical Fiction Mystery and/or Adventure Realistic Fiction Classics Bio/Autobiography Award Winners Tall Tales / Folk Tales / Fairy Tales Edited to Add: Yeah, I'm thinking that I totally didn't ask that question correctly ;) I love to read aloud, and we read aloud often. I am not looking for specific recommendations on what to read aloud to my child, but rather how to choose which to read aloud and which to let him read silently when *I* want to read them all too. I was really hoping to get an idea on what books serve as good read alouds because they read aloud well, and which serve as good read silently books because they are difficult to read aloud. What I am hoping to do is suggest some books for him to read that I'd enjoy myself and we'd enjoy discussing. This isn't really at all related to books for school, mature themes, etc. Sorry I was unclear in my original post. Hopefully that better explains what I was after :D

Yes, I completely agree - mid year is horrible timing. This will hurt many homeschool families, mine included. I know many will remain silent so the true impact won't even be noticed. Sure, files are being reworked and posted, but I don't have time to wait, sift through, and figure it all out. On to plan B...

Love that book! I am actually revisiting it now so I can get a handle on the out-of-control clutter that has taken over. Aackk!!! We already have a very minimal screen policy here - best thing ever. I went cold turkey with my older many, many years ago. Now we do family movie night and it is special and enjoyed. He also is watching something with Dad once a week, which again is special time since it isn't always something he does. Now that he is older (9) he will from time-to-time watch a documentary or something during the day, but it is rare - like ever few weeks rare. Toys aren't too much of an issue, but they are at the same time. We aren't overloaded that is for sure. We went to a neighbor's to play with my toddler and I know he was very overwhelmed by the amount of toys available to him. Also, we don't do noise making toys here so those were so overwhelming to him! But even though we aren't overloaded much, we need to go back through and clear out. For my older it was hard. When he was maybe 5/6 I had him go through his room and get rid of a bunch of stuff. He is attached to everything, even scraps of paper. To help him I let him choose five categories of things to keep. If it didn't fit in one of these categories he needed to donate or toss. He thought really hard about categories and what was truly important. He came up with - building, Harry Potter, collections (we had issues with this one because it could become overwhelming for sure - but we figured out a creative way to display them so it was good), dress up, and stuffed animals. After he came up with that list it was a piece of cake to clean his room. And he felt so much more relaxed in his room after that. For the main toy storage I keep them all stored in baskets in the hall closet. They are often forgotten about, but nice to remember on a rainy day! Now I have youngers again and it seems I need to figure out how to control the chaos once again. I pretty much am thinking I will keep to the same rules - 5 categories - just make them up myself since they are too young to do so.

Thanks! So many great titles here that we have never heard of. We loaded up the holds on our library card and can't wait to pick them up later this week :)

Thank you! Lots to explore :)

My 4th grader is looking for some new reading material. What have your 4th graders read and enjoyed recently? I am hoping to help him stretch a bit beyond fantasy if possibly since I don't assign reading, but really anything goes. I just like to keep him reading :)