:hurray: This is fantastic!!! I love hearing stories like this.

I went to one of those HUGE state schools (IU Bloomington) and loved it. I was a music major (2500 students) so I found my small-ness there. I also took many, many seminar-style classes where there were from 3-10 students in each class. This was the MAJORITY of my classes, except for the general requirements for my music major (theory, history, etc.) where it was 3x/week of lecture with 100-200 students + 2x/week with graduate student-led smaller sections. I definitely did not enjoy those classes. There are many alternatives for getting a college education, and one definitely does not have to go to an expensive private school to get a high-quality education. And as a music major, it would have been very difficult to start off with many thousands of dollars in debt (unimaginable, actually). If one was going into a more lucrative career it would be slightly more imaginable, but not much. It especially makes less sense to me for an undergraduate degree. Oh, well. That's 12 years away for us... ask us about it again then!

I would go to Spain in a heartbeat. It's even my code word for when I need a break. :) I also had a GREAT time wandering around Amsterdam for a week by myself many (many!) years ago. It's a great walking city. But Spain, ah.........

We play variants of Go Fish. Instead of pairs, you need to find 2 cards that equal 5 (if you're playing 5s) or 6 (if you're playing 6s). For 5s, we take ace through 5 from at least 3 decks. 5s can be discarded by themselves, and the others go in sets of two cards. We've played up through 10s and she learns her math facts without even realizing it.

Some people call it K4 and K5. I never know what to say... usually I just take their age and say that's what grade they're in when people ask. :)

Before I got to the end of your post, my first thought was "Lyme disease." Years ago, a co-worker's son went through exactly the symptoms you describe.

DD#1 started learning Hebrew when she was 4-1/2 (alef bet and oral Hebrew). Now (at 5-1/2) we're doing Hebrew phonics. DS#1 started doing alef bet and oral Hebrew at 3, and hasn't yet started English alphabet. DD#2 (2-1/2) has tagged along with DS#1 doing alef bet. DS#2 just giggles. I would like to start Spanish around 3rd or 4th grade. Then add a second modern language (her choice) around 7th or 8th grade. Why Hebrew? We're Jewish. :) Why Spanish? I'm fluent, so I can be a good teacher for that. :)

YAY!!!! We're still pre-explosion here, but I think we'll switch over to OPG next week. DD has started reading easy books to DD#2 (2-1/2 years). LOVE that! :) Gives me some 1-on-1 with DS (3-1/2).

Yes, you'll put a lot less into social security if your deductions are that many. The self-employment tax is a killer if you don't have those deductions.

OY! I don't get migraines, but my husband sure does. Since early childhood. And no one believed him!!! A couple of years ago, we finally figured out that his worst trigger was low blood sugar. He rarely gets hunger signals, and if he actually starts to FEEL hungry it's already too late. Crazy. But if we feed him well enough he stays on an even keel and can avoid headaches. If he's not into full-on migraine, 40 minutes of hard exercise (exercise bike) usually will make it go away. Brain fog? Definitely. And absolute exhaustion. We tuck him in early on those days. I'm just glad he has a wife who doesn't think he's pretending to be sick to get out of going to school or something. Good grief.

I like to use Saxon K for our 3/4-year-olds. Then in K I switch to Singapore.

Huh???

Another R.E.A.L. fan here. We're doing biology and my 5, 3, and 2 year old all join in. The activities are really perfect. Science time is a huge hit around here.

I don't think taking breaks that frequently would work for us. Our kids are 5, 3, 2, and 1. Once we're in a learning groove I hate to leave it. :) We pretty much school year-round, but if we (or some of us) get sick we cut down to 0-50%. If papa is at work, we're doing learning time. Between Jewish holidays, vacations, sick time, I'm sure we've taken 8 weeks off in the last year. I like pretty much having the same schedule most of the time, and our kids (as little as they are) do best with that too. We just had 2 weeks of coughing/poor sleeping/minimal learning and it felt SO GREAT to get back to regular learning time this week. Everyone is happy about it.

Are these liquid medications? Pharmacies can combine different flavors to mask the bad flavors in a particular medicine (I think the addition was called FlavorX?). We do this for my #2 child who vomits if he eats bad-tasting medicine. Adding different flavors has really worked.

$54 for a night at the movies when we can watch one at home (sometimes on a borrowed projector) for FREE from the library??? Sometimes it takes 4 months to get one of the latest releases, but who cares? :)

My DD will be 6 in June. She is required to do one page of math (Singapore 1A) each day, or more if she chooses (she usually does). She is required to read to me for 15 minutes per day, more if she chooses (she usually doesn't). Altogether, we spend about 60 minutes/day on secular studies and 90 minutes/day on Jewish studies.

Thanks, Ali. I just read carefully through every page and realized exactly that - it IS deceptively simple at first glance. Now I see how it's at a subtly deeper level. I love this program, and see more why with each passing day.

We have decided it's no longer worth it for us. I use paper diapers at night only and can get those just as cheaply at our discount grocery store. Many of the Costco deals are on snacks/pre-made foods and we just about don't eat anything like that except maybe crackers. Bulk grains we get at a local mill for a great price. We used to keep the membership for the really cheap kosher cheese we could buy there, but since the cheese became unavailable we dropped our membership. :)

My oldest daughter (5-1/2) is doing the sample of Biology right now, and we'll be buying the whole course soon. It's GREAT. My daughter loves biology more than anything and this is right up her alley. Lots of discussion and experiments. I'm very pleased with this program (and so is my PhD microbiologist husband!). :)

We're just finishing Kindergarten in Singapore (and before that did Saxon K), and will be starting 1A this week. We LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Singapore Math. I also got the i-Excel book, Level 1, and that has some great mathematical logic problems in it. I feel like DD (5-1/2) has really gotten a deeper understanding of numbers and how they work then we ever got with Saxon. The math is challenging, but the progression of skills is done quite brilliantly. We're very happy (in case that wasn't clear!).:001_smile:

Just one thing to consider... sometimes people have to wear shoes for health reasons. If my husband goes for one hour without wearing his really good shoes, he can suffer severe foot pain. You'd never guess it from looking at him that he has this difficult problem with his feet! Maybe there could be a note by the door, with an additional phrase welcoming people to wear their shoes if they need to do so for health reasons. :)

We use ours all the time!!! (Kids are 5, 3, 2, and 1.) My husband is an epidemiologist, so we didn't have to buy one. It's much better than what we need, but he already had it. :) We *love* using it all the time. We're studying cells in R.E.A.L. science/biology right now, and it's great to actually look at the difference between plant and animal cells, and compare many with each other. Bugs or bug pieces are another big hit. Water. Spit. Blood. Dirt. Salt. We look at lots of things. I think my daughter inherited her papa's love of biology. I'm pretty sure she could look through a microscope all day long and not get bored... :)

Just do lots of meat, veggies, eggs, cheeses, and salads. Just avoid things like flour, rice, potatoes, and sugar. It's basically just like keeping a low-carb diet. Many diabetics are told to avoid fruit, especially first thing in the morning. Juice is definitely out. Berries are a low-carb fruit. Whole grains are usually better, but often there's not much difference between the effect of white and brown flour on blood sugar - they're both not great. Same with rice. Brown is somewhat better but not a LOT better. One piece of whole wheat toast is likely just fine, or 1/3 cup of brown rice, etc., just not a whole bunch. Been through several diabetic pregnancies. I remember it being a little overwhelming at first, but then it got easy and now we don't eat any other way! :)

Thanks, everyone! We'll just start at the beginning and zoom through. :) I sure do love Singapore Math and how it teaches concepts. We also bought the Level 1 i-Excel workbook from them. It looks like a terrific book for teaching mathematical logic! We'll add in a problem per day or so. Fun!!!!!