I will be there Thursday & Friday!

We have a Goldendoodle, who is the best dog I have ever had. Her father was a white standard poodle, and her mother was a Golden Retriever. She looks very much like the picture of Laura's labradoodle. Addie is so eager to please and looks at you to ask permission before getting up on the furniture (which we allow); she even goes to the bathroom on command! I haven't had the time to train her much, but she would be so eager to learn tricks. My dd 6 taught her to sit. She is very good-natured and wonderful with our kids and their friends. Her bark is loud and has scared quite a few repairmen, but if she sees that we greet them at the door and that they are supposed to be there, she is friendly. She is large (about 70 pounds) but is a gentle giant. We do have to get her trimmed three or four times a year. When we let her fur get too long, it does get matted.

My daughter has just finished reading Who in the World Was the Acrobatic Empress?, the biography of the Empress Theodora. She loved reading this book. It was the perfect reading level and so engaging. I ask with faint hope: Does anyone know of other books like this, or know if other books in this series are forthcoming? I can find plenty of biographies written for children on American figures, but it's so much harder to find biographies for World History.

Hmmm. I'm not so sure about the "I feel badly" part. To be correct, that sentence would have to mean that the nerves in my fingers don't work very well, wouldn't it? Isn't it correct to say, "I feel bad"?

We are going to be doing 2nd Grade Science a la TWM next year (Earth Science & Astronomy). The only problem is that Amazon does not have the Usborne First Encyclopedia of Space. Does anyone know of a comparable encyclopedia, or should I try to find it on ebay?

We've just finished FLL 1 & WWE 1 this year. I really liked how they worked together. Many of the grammatical concepts that are being covered in FLL are reinforced in the copywork of WWE. For example, FLL starts off with learning about nouns. In week 2 of WWE, the focus is capitalizing proper nouns. We would usually skip the copywork and narration portions of FLL since we were already doing that in WWE. I also skipped a good bit of the poetry memorization since we are using IEW's poetry memorization course. Most of the work in FLL is oral work and is a gentle, but thorough, introduction to grammar.

We have really enjoyed it. The charts at first helped me to make sure to get around to practicing it each day, but we don't use them now. I have a print version of each poem in our Language Arts notebook. I have varied some of the poems, too, with ones we've found online or ones from FLL. I think you could do it on your own if you had your list of poems printed out and ready to go at the beginning of the school year. I know that if I didn't have them all available, I would have probably let them slide.

Thanks, Carla. I had not thought of them having to work on the formatting for the Kindle. I'll wait and see if they put it out on Kindle. If not, I guess I'll go with the print version again.

I recently got a Kindle and was wondering about the feasibility of putting some curricula on it. I was specifically thinking of the SOTW 2 stories (not the AG). I saw that Amazon offers SOTW 1 on Kindle, but not SOTW 2. Has anyone put the PDF file that Peace Hill Press offers on your Kindle? If so, does it work well?

I would want to do a British trip: England, Scotland, and Ireland. I am a bit of an Anglophile, so keep that in mind. I have been to England twice, and there is so much history there that I would want to share with dc. Our honeymoon was spent in Ireland, and it was absolutely beautiful; I want to go back so badly! I've never been to Scotland and want to go! Dh and I have been to Italy, and it would be my second choice. We just finished SOTW 1, and I would love to expose them to all the history in Rome. We also spent a day in Pompeii, which was fascinating. Florence and the Tuscan countryside is beautiful and would have a lot of medieval-history connections. We went to Venice, and my first impression was horrible; it was overrun by tourists, and the water buses were so crowded and hot. After the first day, though, we learned to find our way walking using back streets that mostly locals used. Truthfully, I believe that any of the places you've mentioned would add another dimension to your children's studies, but these would be my top two picks.

I'm not sure about a general etiquette guide, but I have Children's Tea and Etiquette: Brewing Good Manners in Young Minds, and it would be great leading up to a culminating tea party. It is co-written by John Harney of Harney & Sons teas, and it has beautiful watercolor illustrations. http://www.amazon.com/Childrens-Tea-Etiquette-Brewing-Manners/dp/0966347897/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275143688&sr=8-1

We have been reading through The Child's Story Bible by Catherine Vos, and we love it! It was recommended to me by a couple of families in our local homeschooling group. It does not have comprehension questions, but I usually ask my own at the end of a selection, and usually have Emily Anne choose one selection each week to narrate. There is little prep time, but we have gotten so much from our read-alouds!

Oh, my, I was afraid of this. I sat around and thought deep thoughts when I was a child, but I was always verbal and would never have taught myself multiplication! I will look at the Singapore website. What about Singapore makes it a better program for mathematically oriented children than Saxon? What is MEP, and where can I find out more about it? I looked on the abbreviation list, and I didn't see it. Thanks!

Thanks so much for your advice! We have been skipping the manipulatives, and I have approached the lessons by just testing out her understanding of the concept before jumping into the lesson. I think I will continue on with Saxon and this method, as well as try giving the weekly tests before the lessons.

My daughter is six and in first grade, and we have been doing Saxon 2 this year after having completed Saxon 1 last year in 5K. We've been doing fine with Saxon, except for the fact that we skip much of the manipulatives. She gains concepts very quickly and doesn't have much patience for the manipulative work. For example, today on Lesson 100, she was to use one-inch colored tiles to find the areas of several squares and rectangles. After the first rectangle, she was multiplying one column by one row to find out the answer without putting in all the squares and counting them. She thinks about math a lot, and has taught herself some multiplication just by thinking about it as she lies in bed when she wakes up in the morning. My background is English, and I am much more humanities-oriented. Saxon has worked fine for us, but I don't want to hold her back just for the sake of the status quo. At the same time, I don't want to curriculum hop and have gaps in her math instruction. Is there another program that I should think of for her for next year? Is there supplemental work I should be exposing her to build on her ability to conceptualize?

You can see the book list for WWE 2 Workbook at the sample pages at Peace Hill Press. http://www.welltrainedmind.com/store/media/downloads/pdfsamples/wwe2sample.pdf However, some of the books that were in WWE 1 we had already read, and it was no problem for us. I'm not sure that reading comprehension is one of the main skills being taught in WWE. It focuses more on writing skills (summarizing, dictation, reinforcing grammar/mechanics). We've had a wonderful experience with WWE this year!

I just finished reading aloud D'Aulaire's Greek Myths last week. DD (6) loved it!

Thanks for your responses. Do you know if the Parent book includes suggestions for other exercises? I know that the Practice book includes exercises, but since I'll just be teaching the grammar book, I didn't know if the Practice book would confuse the students. It includes vocabulary and writing, too, right?

Oh, Aubrey, I completely understand what you're going through! I also have a degree in English and a degree in Education, and I have been having a terrible time finding a grammar text for a high-school co-op class! I think the problem is that I would rather write my own and be able to introduce the topics in the order that I want. I actually started doing that, but after pulling my head from the clouds, I realized that the endeavor was completely unrealistic for the next year (I can dream, though, can't I?). I have since decided to go with The Magic Lens by MCT for the high-school class, despite my reservations on some points. I completely get what you're saying about some of his points, like "object pronoun." I think he uses that phrase to emphasize the objective case for objects of prepositional phrases so that students will avoid the mistake of "for Sally and I." Some of his summarizing statements don't do a whole lot for me ("A subject is a subject, and an object is an object!"). Also, I really love what he has to say about how important it is to read the classics and how the classics help to improve vocabulary, but he has a huge quotation (probably 72 point) from Stephen King smack dab in the middle of one of his pages! The quotation is from King's book On Writing, and it makes the point that you should avoid using adverbs with a weak verb when a strong verb would be a better choice. I just can't get my head around such emphasis given to King in a program that emphasizes the classics. I really love his four-part analysis, though. I have to confess that I am not a visual person and I have never been a huge fan of diagramming. I think for some visual people (and I realize that a lot of students now are) diagramming is a great way for them to see how the individual parts of speech work together in a sentence. I get frustrated, though, with how diagramming chops the sentence apart. I much prefer leaving the sentence intact and labeling each part of speech. I also really like how they are able to see four levels of sentence analysis with MCT, parts of speech along with phrases and clauses. For this high-school class, I have decided that The Magic Lens is the text that I can use with the least amount of tweaking for me (and I know that I will tweak it; I just can't help myself!). For my own child for next year (2nd), I am going to stick with FLL & WWE. It has worked beautifully with us for this year, and since the first FLL book is Vol 1 & 2 together, I already have the text. For 3rd grade I'm going to investigate a little more fully into MCT and decide between it and FLL & WWE. I doubt that I've helped you with your decision, but I did want you to know that you're not alone with your conundrum of finding "the perfect" LA curriculum. Does anyone know what SWB thinks about MCT? I looked for references to it in the latest edition of TWTM, but I didn't see anything.

I forgot to mention that neither FLL or WWE covers spelling. We use Spelling Workout.

I think LA curricula seem so complex because the strands of reading, writing, and grammar/mechanics are intertwined. I can't speak to the the other curricula you mentioned as I have no experience with them, but I can tell you about our experience with FLL & WWE this year (1st). They are both written by SWB and work really well together. WWE is a writing program that focuses primarily on copywork of sentences from good works of children's literature and narration of passages from those same works. While doing copywork, students are taught to focus on the conventions of grammar/mechanics (capitalization and punctuation). Each week the copywork has a grammar/mechanics focus, which corresponds to the same focus you're doing in FLL if you started it at the same time. There are two days of copywork each week and two days of narration. With the narration, students are learning the skills of summarizing (and improving reading comprehension at the same time). FLL is focused on introducing grammar/mechanics. The lessons are short and painless, and there is continual review. She includes some narration exercises that we usually skip since we are doing narration in WWE (and also in history and science). I really like how my dd finds that the lessons from FLL are reinforced in WWE.

Knowledge of literary terms is important because literary analysis helps a student to go beyond the "what" of literature to "how" the author constructs a short story, novel, play, or poem. This knowledge helps a student appreciate the various methods an author uses to achieve a certain effect on the reader. I would emphasize literary analysis more at the high-school (rhetoric) level. Although literary analysis is important, there is a danger in applying it to every single work read. Dissecting all the literature you read sometimes kills the joy of simply reading and enjoying a book that appeals to you. You may find SWB's lecture on literary analysis helpful. Socratic discussion is taken from Socrates' dialogue with his students. It emphasizes questioning of the student to lead them to a conclusion instead of lecturing them.

I am just about to finish up OPGTR with my daughter and plan on beginning it with my younger son next year. She went through a period of disliking phonics last year (K), but the lessons are so short, we just kept plugging along. This year (1st) phonics has been her favorite subject, and she is able to read chapter books independently now. I had also bought ETC for reinforcement, but I haven't found workbook-type phonics to be necessary or effective for us. For my son, I plan on using the white board for some of our lessons, as I predict that he will be a little more resistant than my daughter was.

I am planning on using MCT's The Magic Lens (Vol. I) in a co-op class. I ordered the student edition to preview and was wondering if the Teacher's Edition offers more in the way of extra exercises or information to communicate to the students. I am a former English teacher and feel comfortable with my answers as I worked through the student edition, so I don't want to buy the TE simply for an answer key. Is there enough other material to justify my buying the TE?

If the speech is geared toward students and encouraging them to do well in school, or even to serve, why the last two questions (taken from the suggestions for PK-6 teachers)? If the aim of these questions is to promote critical thinking, then wouldn't better questions than these last two for grades 7-12 students be relating to any president's speech to the nation? I think that these questions seem "creepy" because they refer specifically to President Obama rather than to our nation and because the word choice seems to be leading. Asking children prior to the speech about how he will "inspire" and "challenge" us seems to set children up to have a positive opinion of the speech. A more balanced question to me would be "What might he say?" After the speech, I think a balanced question would be, "Do you agree or disagree? Why?" I also wonder about the word choice of some of the questions asking what children can do to help President Obama rather than to help the United States.