Sorry about the floor. :grouphug: I do think the greeting should be rewritten to say, "We would love to give you a prayer card of our patron saint, if you would please stand so the ushers know who you are." As it is there is that split second there when you are not sure why you are standing, and I think it adds to the apprehension. Hope you enjoy our sad little mall. I never go. We are at my mom's in Geneva today, so won't be about.

We sat about two-three rows behind you. I was the harried looking, plump semi-blond with two small blond children. I know exactly who you are since they started that mildly scary practice of asking visitors to stand. And as you likely figured out, St. Columba is the only Catholic church in town. We all go. :) We normally sit on the other side, but my daughter decided she wanted to sit on the side where Fr. gives communion yesterday. I didn't realize how much it would freak them out. She received the blessing then forgot what to do next, turned around and fought upstream to go back to our seat. Meanwhile my son decided he didn't want a blessing from Fr. and clung to my legs from the back while I was trying to get the host into my mouth without dropping it. That was us. Jeff was our Deacon, and he can be quite folksy. You can thank your lucky stars he didn't bring his guitar and sing. (I should note he can sing well.) I thought yesterday was one of his better ones, but I admit that with the kids I miss a lot. I am also used to his jokes, but I much prefer Fr. in the homily department. You can also be thankful that our absent minded, mid-80s priest in residence wasn't delivering the homily yesterday. He forgets what he was saying -- like every few minutes -- and you never leave one of his homilies without knowing that God is madly in love with you. In fact you usually know it about six times a homily. But he is a dear. And yep, like the others we really just stay inside from the end of May until the end of September -- just like you guys do in the winter. If we go out we swim -- either really early or really late, and we have been known to go to the park at 7:30AM. Today we will be in the pool all afternoon. Would love to meet up and swap conversion stories if you have time this week. We are happy to meet anywhere with a play place during school hours. That way I can talk. :D

OMGoodness Chucki! Were you in MY town today? Were you at Mass at my parish? ACK! I feel like I have been blessed by celebrity. How long will you be here? But really woman, it wasn't THAT hot. It only reached 92 and there is AC everywhere. It's not like you had to shovel snow or something.

Kristen - That is not a bad idea. Let me rework the post and just put up the go alongs. Might be tomorrow morning since we have school and gymnastics today. If there were some way to know who had purchased the cards I would be happy to email them the song lyrics as well. I have about four of the songs "written" and to me they are the best part of the program. :)

Sorry, I deleted these due to copyright concerns. I sent you a PM.

Lexi - We would love to have a look at these too please. pkbarnhill@gmail.com Thanks!

I wrote the review at Everyday Snapshots. :001_smile: Just wanted to pipe in with a few things. The last time I checked shipping on a DVD was $8. Not sure what it would be if you ordered more than one DVD. If you are planning to buy some of the art supplies from Jerry's then doing it all together might help with shipping. I will say that I did have all of the supplies we have needed so far on hand except for large watercolor paper. We are just back to school this week and my daughter has already asked to do art with Ms. Volin. As for grade placement, some of the DVDs have themes to them. I was going to get the second grade DVD since my daughter is much more interested in art than my son, but when Ms. Volin heard we were studying world cultures this year, she recommended the first grade one instead. Almost all of the projects on that DVD are cultural in nature. The second grade one focuses on fairy tales. Not sure about the others. It might be worth it to research or ask to see if that would help your decision. HTH, Pam

When we sold last year we went the first week with no showings at all and then the first people wanted to see it on Good Friday. Of course I said yes, but hated having to take the kids and find somewhere else to go that day. (I guess I should have gone to the church, but there was the 6, 4, and 1 yo to contend with.) They bought the house and then we had to rush to find our new home in the next town. We tried to get into one place a couple of different times and kept getting excuses that renovation work was being done. Finally the realtor told them we were making a decision that day. They still wouldn't let us in. I guess they really didn't want to sell. The market is tough here. I have friends who have had houses on for well over a year.

:iagree:This. But you know how I am feeling about it. :D I say if the book looks easy enough to implement, then go for it and add some picture books to read where you can. I do like the Science Works books, though.

We're learning to ride bikes this week. This session was unplanned so the attire is a little strange.

Kristen from Teaching Stars!! I "met" her here on the curriculum board and then started reading her blog. This weekend we got to meet up for the first time. I blogged about it here on my blog (lots of photos)! Oh, and if you have a chance, head over to the Circle of Moms Top 25 homeschooling moms blogs and give her a vote. She is number 29. Would love to get a Hive member pushed into the top 25 this year. And now I'm out of here, because my 2yo wants me to "do racin'" :auto:

Second grader: math grammar handwriting writing reading spelling Kindergartener: math reading handwriting Together: Spanish faith memorization science geography and cultures (includes art, music, literature, writing projects, cooking, maps, physical geography, etc. It's a monster! :D) tons of reading aloud

My library does have it!! I am going today before anyone else figures it out. We can keep books out for one month, so we may do our unit the week before. I love your idea of doing a tally too, so that would bleed over to the next week. Thanks for the link to the Pinterest board!

You are fabulous and this is just perfect. Thank you. Now off to find the books. :D

Another OLLY fan here. I am finishing up my trial and am going to purchase. I use the Simply Charlotte Mason forms for outlining our week and subjects because I need the visual chart, but for entering lesson plans OLLY is working great.

I am not sure if this is the one you are looking for or not, but this is a lovely option. http://www.amongstlovelythings.com/2012/06/end-of-year-folders.html

This category is by special request of a WTM member who is in a planning funk. Please help me help her out! I am collecting homeschool planning posts at Real Mom Resources. I would love if you would head over to the planning page and link up your post(s). Also, the homeschool methods page is lacking in posts from classical and CM homeschoolers. I would love to get more variety on that page as well, so if you have written a post about your methods, why you chose them, and how they work in your home I would love to see it. Thanks for linking up! I can't wait to read your posts. :001_smile:

We have a 12yo Maltese. He came at the age of two before we had kids. He was already housebroken when we got him. He has no other training. He does not shed. We keep him in a puppy cut and he gets professionally groomed about every two months. The biggest work is keeping his eyes clean. They do run a lot and stain his hair near the eye. The last time the vet had him under to clean his teeth (tarter is a problem in this breed they told us) they did some kind of hair removal around his eyes. It has made a world of difference and I hate it took 10 years to figure this out. He had been fine with the kids. He can be snippy if they mess too much, but he is old and grouchy and he was here first. He was an older dog before they arrived, so has never been terribly affectionate -- more like indifferent. I am sure a puppy would be different. All of that to say I think he has a pretty decent tolerance level with them. He barks A LOT. Not as much now that he is aging, but it can be quite annoying sometimes. I know other Maltese owners who said it wasn't a problem for them, but you might want to consider it. Our little guy has a tumor and is acting his age. I am not looking forward to what the next year will bring. I am not sure if I would have another Maltese due to the grooming issues. Right now we do the bare minimum. That is the only reason, though. Other than that I would have another in a heartbeat. I would just pray hard to get a non-barker next time. And Maltese puppies are SOOOO cute.

We've had this one for a few years. It works great for us. They all love it.

Thanks! I picked up a number of these!!

Not sure how old your child is, but I used to love Write Source 2000 for grammar and writing reference for middle schoolers. It was well-laid out and readable for the student. There is a version for high school as well. Not a reference, but a fun read would be Eats, Shoots, and Leaves for Kids series. There is an adult version as well -- loved it. Something else you might do is to take sentences she has written out of context and then tell her how many errors are in the sentence. Then let her see if she can find the errors.

I can't speak to music as we don't make it here other than singing loudly along with our CDs. :001_smile: For art, though, I have found that with the ages of your kids focusing on process more than product has been really helpful to us. We started out art education with Preschool Art by Mary Ann Kohl. The focus there is definitely process. The projects are open-ended, allowing the kids to experiment with the materials and make their own thing. We have recently started Home Art Studio DVDs. I wrote some reviews about our projects on my blog. The projects are a little more structured, but my kids have still managed to put their own twist on some of the artwork. A good mix of both kinds of projects -- open ended and creative AND more technique driven serve us well right now. Most importantly, art can't be wrong, just fun!

:iagree: These are fabulous ideas. Also, if you need him to work on something while you work with others, we have had great success with the Kumon books -- like My First Book of Tracing, which has them practicing the same strokes needed for writing and Let's Cut Paper, which is great fine motor practice. I find that waiting until my DC are older than the minimum age for these books helps greatly with their frustration level. Your DS is a good age to start these.

It is not a lapbook, but a book I have heard wonderful things about recently is The Creed in Slow Motion. Maybe you could read this and then discuss or have her narrate. If she really likes lapbooks, she could make his own about the Apostles' Creed as each chapter in the book covers a small part of it. Do one lapbook component per chapter? Or maybe venturing into a more apologetics tract might be the answer? There is Did Adam and Eve Have Belly Buttons? It is geared towards teens so you would not want to hand it over for her to read, but could read the age-appropriate questions aloud and discuss the answers. The Q&A format and the fact that the questions come from real kids might liven things up a bit.

We love, love, love The Random House Book of Poetry for Children. There are seasonal selections, funny selections, traditional selections and multiple indexes so I can always find what I need to fit with the topics we want.