but it will take tweaking a bit of code. This tutorial link will show you how. It is not that hard if you follow the directions step-by-step. http://www.bloggerbuster.com/2007/07/how-to-hide-blogger-nav-bar.html HTH, Pam

and what I can think of off the top of my head. Some may be too easy, you will have to wade through: http://www.buildingblox.net/taskideasandfreebies.html http://www.donnayoung.org/penmanship/redines.htm http://www.prekinders.com/teachers.htm http://lapbooksbycarisa.homestead.com/LapbookontheWeb.html http://www.shirleys-preschool-activities.com/index.html http://members.tripod.com/~Patricia_F/mathscience.html http://www.education.com/activity/preschool/math/ http://www.besthomeschooling.org/gateway/inted16.html http://www.homeschoolshare.com/Level2.php We also love activities from the following books which may be found cheaply on Amazon: Family Math for Young Children Wow! I'm Reading (a Williamson Little Hands book) Would complement OPG nicely Science Play (a Williamson Little Hands book) Add to this tons and tons of books to read aloud and you have some fun preschool time. Cheers! Pam

I live in Alabama so it doesn't surprise me at all that they stopped by. What is shocking is that it was not on a Tuesday night! If you visit a church around here, expect a Tuesday night visitation that week or the next.

My oldest just turned four, so we are still in the research stage. I have hesitated on buying this one -- sure that if I did a revision would soon follow before I actually "need" it. Of course our library doesn't have a copy. Does anyone know if she plans to revise? Thanks, Pam

:grouphug: Ours is coming too. DH will leave June 7 for six months military training. He will be stateside, so not deployed. But he will be GONE. And I will be HERE with a just turned 4-year-old, 2-year-old, and 13 weeks pregnant with number 3. The good news is I won't have much time to miss him emotionally, but the bad news is I don't know if I will be able to keep my sanity. Hang in there. :grouphug:

I delete all forwarded emails usually without reading them. Big waste of time.

Here is my method: Put five regular sized (or two family sized) tea bags into a small saucepan about 3/4 filled with water. Bring to a gentle boil -- turn it off when it just starts to bubble. Let the tea sit for a while on the stove. Usually about 15 minutes. You need it to steep for strength, but you don't want it to cool too much -- this is VERY important. Put sugar into the bottom of a gallon pitcher. I use 1 and 1/4 cups for a gallon of tea. We like ours pretty sweet. This is really personal taste, though. Want it sweeter then by all means use more. Pour the still hot tea onto the pitcher retaining the bags in the saucepan (restrain the bags with the back of a spoon, pressing them lightly to squeeze out more flavor). Don't add anything else to the pitcher at this point. Simply stir well until all of the sugar is dissolved. Refill your saucepan with water and repeat the restrain and press step once more adding the water to the pitcher. Then fill the remainder of the pitcher with cool water and enjoy. The tea will still be pretty warm so it is better to chill it first, but if you don't have time simply fill your glass with lots of ice. Hope it works for you! Pam

Sweet tea is an art form not to be taken lightly. It must be created under carefully controlled circumstances to taste as it should. Kind of like a fine wine. So just adding a couple of cups of sugar ain't gonna do it. :001_smile: I think others are on to something about separating politeness from true friendship. I grew up in the deep South, moved to Tampa for ten years (which is NOT the South at all), and then returned three years ago. I am amazed at the hoops my SIL will jump through just to keep up with the Jones in her small town. We choose not to participate and could care less what people think. That said, I love the lifestyle here. I love the politeness and the slower pace.

Someone asked about the planning grid. We have only used the system one week and I have preschoolers (am using it to keep ME accountable) so we only do read-alouds, crafts, and fun activities, but to me the planning grid was one of the best parts. I sat down this past weekend with a copy of the grid (actually didn't like the version from the web so I redid mine in Excel so I could type it up and copy and paste repeat activities) and planned out what to put in each box each day. I have one large basket where I put all my resources for the week. Each night it takes me about 15 minutes to look at the grid and fill the boxes. I think my fill time would be less, but there are two days my sitter does a few of the boxes with the kids, so I write more detailed instructions on post-its for her. I LOVE the idea someone mentioned about using an art bag, a clay bag, etc. I could see that cutting my fill time down too. Right now I am only filling one set. And after seeing how things went this week, I will probably cut our boxes down to 9. We haven't been getting through 12 with all the outside play and other play we do as well. They have been awesome for us. My three-year-old was asking to "do school" at seven this morning as I was making breakfast. Pam

Library Thing it is. I think it will do most of what I want. Thanks so much for the responses. Now the idea of an iPhone and accessing LT from there is VERY intriguing. I have never coveted an iPhone before, but being able to access book lists while on-the-go might just do it. :001_smile:

I really need to organize my books -- not only the ones I own, but the ones I want to own (or borrow). And I want to do it all in one place. So I am looking for a program or website that will allow me to enter an ISBN and catalog my books -- grouping them by tag (category) and also noting their physical location (i.e. bookshelf). In addition I would like to be able to keep lists of books I want to buy (while tagging them by subject as well) and be able to keep a list of books that I want that are at one of our local libraries (also tagged by subject). For example, I see a cool book listed here on the board and think I want to use it one day. I would like to be able to go to a site and see if it is in a nearby library. If it is, I want to save it to a list and be able to tag it by topic. If it is not, I want to be able to save it to a "to buy" list and tag it by topic. Once I own it I want to move it to my "own" list so that when I am looking for books on that topic I can find it. It would also be nice to be able to export my "to buy" list to my Paperback Swap and Amazon wish lists as well, but now I know I am asking too much. ;) So one day when we are ready to study ancient Egypt I click on that tag and can see the books I want to use that I own (and where they are), the ones I need to get from the library (and which library) and the ones I need to buy. Is this making sense? Is there anything out there like this? Thanks!

Heidi, You can use the Hot Coupon world forums to match up the weekly sales with coupons -- some of which can be printed online. There is a coupon database on their website too where you can search for coupons for things that are not on sale and see if there are any internet printable ones available. I use coupons on milk, flour, yeast, etc all the time. You might call your store and see if there is a day they double coupons to get more bang for your buck. Also ask when they mark down their meat -- usually in the morning. If you go right after you can find meat that needs to sell at a big discount. Good luck.

There are samples of the K program here. You can see the book list and then click on the sample link for a sample of a number of weeks. I have the Foundation Year IG so you can PM me if there is something else you would like to know about. My DD is 3.5 right now so we are just starting BFIAR. I haven't decided if we will start this next year at 4.5 or wait until 5. You can easily add your own phonics and math while doing the other things as listed.

I have never had to do a full recovery *knock wood* but have recovered individual files. It works great. We also have an EHD, but wanted something off site in case of a home fire.

I recently had my IUD with hormones removed, and we are now using NFP. It has made a HUGE difference in my "want to". DH has commented on it a number of times. Of course there is irony there. We are limited to only a couple of weeks a month, but boy are they good ones.

Thanks so much for the info!!

If I want to make these ahead of time for tomorrow can I put them in the fridge after the second rise (when they are cut and filled) and put them in the oven tomorrow? I didn't want to try to bake in the morning. Thanks!!

The biggest question is about printing. Do you just print the pages on cardstock or some type of specialty paper? I print on EPSON Scrapbooking Paper either 12x12 or 8.5 x 11 depending on the size of my project. As previously mentioned with the EPSON inks paired with this paper there is a 200 year life expectancy. If the whole point of scrapbooking is to organize photos, what do you do with your film photos after you scrapbook them digitally? I scrapped all my printed photos the traditional way. I have only started digital scrapbooking with photos since I started using a digital camera. DH has some old printed photos, but I will not scrapbook all of those. We will store them in a photo-safe place and I might scan a few for some pages later. At any rate, the whole point of scrapbooking for me is to tell stories. It has little to do with organizing photos. That is a separate thing entirely. Back to printing, Do you have to have a specialized printer? Ink? I have the EPSON 1400. I only use EPSON inks. This ESPON is a large format printer I treated myself to earlier this year. I like to do hybrid pages (start digital and add traditional elements after printing) so I love this printer. Before I was almost completely digital and had my pages printed at www.scrapbookpictures.com. I printed 12x12 and saved my pages until they had their big sales. They make wonderful photo prints. These pages were on photo paper and simply slide into the page protector on their own. Putting two back to back makes them very sturdy -- no other pages are needed. What kind of albums do you print the printed pages in? I use American Crafts cloth albums. I've come across some tutorials on the links given in the other thread but they all cost money to look at. Does anyone have a link to a tutorial that is free? I second JessicaSprague.com. Also BigPictureScrapbooking.com has a couple of free digital tutorials. Any other info you can give that I haven't thought of would be helpful. This looks like something I want to do. If you go to the Adobe website you can download a free 30 day trial of Photoshop Elements. Here are a couple of links to blog posts I wrote with lists of digi scrapping resources: http://everydaysnapshots.blogspot.com/2007/12/digital-scrapbooking-resources.html http://everydaysnapshots.blogspot.com/2007/12/couple-more.html Have fun, but watch out. It's addictive!

I buy. I do get freebies but many do not appeal to me as much as the purchased stuff. Check http://ikeagoddess.blogspot.com/ for a good list of freebies each day. I tweak my items too -- changing the color etc. But I like to shop and get some quick, easy to use, designer items as well. I shop at www.designerdigitals.com, http://www.jenwilsondesigns.com/, www.pepermintcreative.com, www.scrapartist.com. I agree that you have to find your style and shop at places that fit with it. You can see my style on my blog http://everydaysnapshots.blogspot.com and click on the scrapbooking category. It has been a while since I made some pages.

I wrote to ABC saying that she really needed to do a little research. While her opinion matters to me not at all, I hate to think that she is perpetuating misconceptions about homeschooling to the general public. Some people have no better sense than to view this show as "news". The applause she got from the audience -- that annoyed me.

Ours is not as big of a hit as I thought it would be. My kids are pretty young, though (3 and 1). I think the appeal might grow as they grow developmentally into more imaginative play. I will say that it has been out for about six months now. We left it out of the toy rotation because it was new. Now it has been put away and will come out again in a month or so. I bet it will get lots more action then.

Thanks for the responses! I especially like your last idea kidlovingmama!

Thanks for Thanksgiving is a favorite at our house.

Our Leap Frog fridge phonic letters are a little grimy from hanging out on the fridge. Has anyone ever submersed these and they came out OK? I hate to have to take the time to clean each one individually (lazy or efficient -- you decide :tongue_smilie:) and would rather toss the bunch in some soapy water and give a quick swipe. Thanks, Pam

Another vote in support of John Adams (the mini-series). We loved it here and couldn't wait for the next disc to arrive in the mail.