Thanks!

I found this at the library. It looks quite good. http://www.amazon.com/SCIENCE-WORKBOOK-Instructions-Winning-Science/dp/0615136613/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1290905180&sr=8-4 http://books.google.com/books?id=5w3FBx3taMUC&dq=a+science+fair+workbook&printsec=frontcover&source=in&hl=en&ei=CKjxTM3xD4iq8Abl34H9Cw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=11&ved=0CD4Q6AEwCg#v=onepage&q&f=false

$2.50 for a single month, and not be forced into a year, is just what I need :-)

I'm up for dealing with yucky this winter, as I know my options are smaller, than they will be in Spring.

Any tips on the best bug kits to use in winter? I'm in the Northeast.

The schedule that worked for us was half days in December, July and August and matched PS school holidays. And this gave us about 2 weeks off to use for family emergencies or burn out. 1/2 days were just Bible, math and Latin/Greek. We were always starting quite a bit of fresh curriculum in January especially since we had been doing 1/2 days all of December. I'm making some big changes in my self-studies right now. More focusing on the journey and not the destination, and not being such a curriculum snob. Discarding stuff that sounds good, for things that are more fun. And the change in weather...makes a difference....somehow.

Hmmm...I'm still not quite understanding something :-0 I knew I was supposed to make it, but am not sure what the final poster is supposed to look like. I've seen regular square charts, where there are obviously a lot of pairs. I can picture the lines of the squared products, but am I supposed to not fill out all of the chart?

Is there a commuter rail train into Boston? And once you get to Boston, you can get buses from China town to China town, for really cheap and get to New York and other cities. And there is a new bus to Canada and DC, I've heard for $1.00 :-0 Cars are no good for the cities. Virtual catalog is bigger than interlibrary loan. And your librarians can order from out of state if you ask. Start collecting library cards from around the state, at least for the downloadable resources. Right now I'm trying to get ahold of some out of state cards, for the major cities that have really good downloads. I was looking at French stuff today, and quickly looked at the Italian. There wasn't as much as for French, but there was more Italian, than Latin and German. What about a course in Italian history and geography? Since you have taken both Italian and Latin.

I looked at so many French resources today, but didn't buy anything. I paid just $5.00 for Hooked on French awhile back and I have The Berlitz Self-teacher French I haven't seen anything else I'm sure is better, so I will save my money. My girlfriend wants to watch James Bond in French. I told her we should start with something easier. I want to try the Madeline or Barbar books I think. Are those originally French? Looking for English books translated into French is a good idea. I know some people have had really good luck with bilingual bibles. Thanks for the tip about Swiss French.

The anime hamster is Hamtaro. I just bought this Christmas DVD for kicks :-) The holidays are difficult for me. I've been collecting holiday resources that are as different from past holidays as possible. This one is DIFFERENT :-) I've seen crafts and drawing worksheets for the series. I think the series is a good introduction to Japanese anime for little ones.

Soon after homeschooling starts, children have a new peer base, of a multiage group with all different rules. What makes someone a "laughingstock" completely changes. When my oldest at 14, started working all day with seasonal workers from Nepal and Thailand, what was "cool" changed drastically. He now worried about things like...what to get for the person who he picked in the Christmas lottery...that was light enough for the man to carry on the back of an elephant, if it was something he would be bringing home with him :-)

Part 2: You are in MA. Can you get into Boston. Have you been to the North End, to see if you can find any little shops to practice speaking Italian in? Have you gotten a Boston Library card? I have 3 cards from around my state, allowing me to tap into 3 systems of resources, and one of the systems allows me to tap into an online state wide borrowing system that allows me to search it and place holds. Can you get into "virtual catalog"? Do you have access to a library that will bend over backwards to order you resources from around the entire country? Sometimes just traveling one town over will give you access to such a group of librarians who will take you under their wing. It might be nice if you could travel to Boston twice a month to visit the Copley library and do an enrichment activity.

Part 1: Yes, college, and preparing for college, should not define all of our learning decisions. I'm caught in a bad place where college has been put on hold....maybe permanently. And it has freed up my education in some...surprising ways :-0 The rehabilitation agency that will supplement my Pell grants, has dropped me until I get treatment for BOTH my Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome and my Anorexia. The problem is though, that the Anorexia clinics won't accept me until, my PTSD symptoms are more under control, and the PTSD Programs won't accept me until my weight gets up, so right now I'm not getting treatment for anything and I'm continuing to deteriorate, while my doctor just makes me come see her every other day and pleads with me to have fun and just study what I want to study because....well...it feels good...in the moment. So I put away reviewing the high school maths...and started Rapid Math Tricks and...then backed up even farther and have all the time in the world to review basic math speed drills. Last night I downloaded Timex Attack and had a blast playing it till 2:00 in the morning. If I never get better, I'm still going to learn...because...for some of us, to stop learning...is to stop living. We breathe, we eat, we sleep, we learn. And if I do get back on track to start preparing for college, I think this time of studying for the sheer pleasure of it....will define where I eventually end out. I think if you continue studying Italian, without trying to fit it into the box of Italian 3, and just start looking at what is most fun about Italian, that is available to you, that you will end out crossing a hump. Start by backing up and seeing what the library has available for small children.

My girlfriend is going to LOVE Timez Attack :-) She is such a kid still :-) And our professor friend just loves to see educational resources that efficiently do what she spent decades trying to figure out how to with her students. She didn't give me an exact number of how high to go to for pi. She just told me to start memorizing the numbers x 3.14. Just perfect squares, for the square roots. She says that every time I compute instead of using memorization, I risk making a mistake. That the more commonly used things I can memorize, the less careless errors I will make when rushing. She likes the idea of Saxon spiral review, but I was rushing through the lessons because they take so long, and making a ton of careless errors. Especially with the long geometry problems.

You could continue the Italian as a hobby, and not put it on your transcript. Your library should be able to get you this book. http://www.amazon.com/Berlitz-Self-Teacher-Italian-Self-Teachers/dp/0399513256 And maybe Muzzy in Italian http://www.early-advantage.com/howitworks_et.aspx

Saxon Math has a lot of problems that include multiplying by 3.14. My professor friend didn't usually teach gifted students, but mostly taught remedial college maths and for credit (but carefully taught) sciences to medical tech students. She had a great deal of success with Saxon type methods even though she never knew about Saxon math. I've done well with Saxon in the past, and it is what I want to review and continue with, after I become faster and more accurate, so it doesn't take me so long to complete the lessons. Can I see an example of the charts you are describing online? I like the idea of hanging a poster above the bed :-) I am VERY visual. My girlfriend is dyslexic, very gifted, and very auditory. She would like silly auditory methods. She has gone as far as Calculus 2 in math, but her basic math skills are worse than mine.

I have a retired professor friend who is mentoring some of my (and my girlfriend's) studies, and is just THRILLED with the used books I learn about here and then purchase for her online. We have formed a nice little learning team :-) She says my girlfriend and I need to memorize ALL basic math facts up to 12, square roots even farther up, and as many numbers x pi as possible. She says anything memorized is more accurate than something figured out, never mind being faster. What is the best way to accomplish this? I don't mind using babyish resources if they WORK and are the most efficient resource available. And my girlfriend prefers them :-0 she had a blast working through a 3rd grade grammar workbook with a retired English teacher friend (sadly now passed). Her favorite part was pulling out her crayons when instructed :-0

I just put Bug Zoo on my wish list. Creepy Crawlies is in the mail and i'm looking forward to it's arrival. I purchased it hoping for ideas for applying the scientific method to nature study. I adore the idea of hatching eggs and then being able to give the birds away, soon after hatching. I'm thinking of getting a pet...but...there is a lot entailed in that, because of the rules of my building, and I'm scared to death of large unexpected vet bills. I need more life in my apartment this winter. I'm looking for cheap, creative ideas. What have you all done with plants? What about long term studies with repeat visits to an aquarium, museum, zoo, that are worth the year long pass? Other than hatching eggs are there other opportunities for a short term small animal visit? What about river activities? Hmm...I remember sea monkeys. Years ago I remember there was a free curriculum download, for a similar creature, that my younger son used.

What is available for edutainment? What is available for kiddie workbooks? When I have done language learning in the past, I found that the more resources the better. Reinforcement using as many different senses and styles as possible. I decided this morning that I want to tackle French too. I was looking at getting back into Greek and/or Latin....but I think I want to combine French language learning and some French cooking. Has anyone used Memoria Press French? I put Pimsleur French on hold at the library. I know I want to have some strong iPod resources in place, to make use of those wasted minutes. I think Berlitz has some super easy first readers. So far any children's song resources I've found have been very inefficient. I like to use children's resources when they work better than adult ones, but have no time for silliness for the sake of silliness. Have I missed out on any good musical resources?

This is one of the best parts of homeschooling. You get to shed the labels if you want to. And it's so nice to use ungraded resources, that just focus on efficiently getting a certain thing learned, and being able to take as long or short a time as necessary to complete them. Mommybostic, one of the things you will need to do, is compare YOUR homeschooling experience with what would have happened to YOUR son if he had stayed in PS, and not get distracted by what other homeschoolers are doing or what other PS students are doing. There are going to be times when you will get, oh so busy and distracted, by concerns with your daughter and sister, and guilt and second thoughts will overwhelm you, if you are comparing your HS experience with homeschoolers with less overwhelming circumstances, or PS students with access to resources your son doesn't have. My younger child's educational experience was so much less than he deserved/needed, but what I gave him was so much more than PS was willing to give him.

I had a doctor's appointment tonight. My MD said she doesn't believe in free will. She says we just pick the least hurtful choices available to us based on our genetics and circumstances. Trust yourself to make the best choices available to you. It doesn't mean they are perfect choices, just the best available.

I started homeschooling by pulling my gifted, science loving, non writing 5th grader out of school in December. I'm just laughing here :-) Almost 2 years later I pulled out my older child (end of 7th grade) for what I intended to be one year, but i skipped him a year and he started American School correspondence school and started working almost full time (yes we were breaking the law) and two years later started putting himself through college. Then moved Across the country to Las Vegas two years later, with a degree, no debt and financially independent. He manages a video game store and is getting married this winter. Younger son, never did learn to write all that well. But he learned Latin and Ancient Greek, and learned to love Shakespeare and the aeneid in some old poetic version from the 1600s. He lost his love of science and never even completed a typical high school level text. He read science Matters and watched the Joy of science videos about scientific literacy and studied about how real scientists do science, and read real books and watched a lot of documentaries...but didn't really care by the end of it all. I got really sick and we were living in extreme poverty during his high school years. We both got burnt out. He "dropped out" so he could qualify to take the GED, got a job and started putting himself through the same junior college his brother had attended. I got even sicker and a messy, messy, messy divorce became inevitable...and I no longer have contact with this son. My ex is Italian and...my son chose to side with "the family". So I don't really know what is up with him now. He is an incredibly bright young man, but got kinda lost during his late teens and slowed down when others his age were picking up steam. And the divorce and the horrible mess that went down, didn't help any. I know I made the only choice possible. Keeping him in school wasn't an option. I did the best I could. As for the older son, all his professors were so impressed with him, they used to often take him out to eat to grill him about his education, and childhood. Then they got shocked though...cause...well it was illegal and negligent...but...he was one of their best students and the complete OPPOSITE of what people assume homeschooling does to a child. It was working along side men all day, sweating and hurting, and paying for his own schooling that shaped him into who he is, I think. I won't win any mom awards...but I did the best I could with the very meager resources I had available to me. I was a teen mom married to an abusive man and my kids grew up in extreme poverty. Considering that...well...it could have been much worse. I did my best. Now I'm self educating myself, and my older son, I know is doing the same. And writing a graphic novel...and dreams some day of being able to go to art school...but well...he's about to have a family to support :-0 Homeschoolers are real people with real problems and real life happens.

Learn to count to 10, the colors, and a few simple phrases. Watch a manga cartoon. Maybe in Japanese instead of English. There is a hamster series that is just adorable that I cannot remember the name of. Research common pets for children there. Watch YouTube videos of them crowding onto subways. I think there is a somewhat active volcano there?

I just adore this out of print workbook of experiments. They can be used as is for younger children, or made a bit more complicated for older children by having them design the method to include the use of variables. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0471466476/ref=oss_product

I generally go outside every day...but I tend to rush from one cement jungle to another, without stopping to spend time in the parks, then arrive home exhausted and then stay inside. My doctor says I need to SIT outside and absorb some vitamin D, but I forget :-0 Wind comparisons would be very interesting. We get wind tunnels and wind shelters as I call them, that vary considerably. Also, I think it would be interesting to log the wind from my balcony, just to, I don't know :-) know the wind speed in MY place :-) I should challenge myself to do some wind projects. Sun is the main problem for my balcony. It gets about 1 hour of sun in the early morning, in early summer, and none by late summer. I am allowed plants though, and really need to get some. I was feeding the birds, but a large flock of pigeons found me, and we are forbidden to feed the birds, so I had to stop. And the bird poop mess was...wow! I'll have to maybe try a bird bath and see what happens. Or a small feeder that is pigeon proof. I have free electricity. I'm thinking of indoor growth lights and some herbs, but the initial set up is quite expensive and involved. I get no sun in my apartment, at all, and it is very warm and dry, with the free heat that everyone cranks up. I know I'm too old...but...I'm thinking of keeping some type of insect this winter :-0 And weather monitoring, as the places to start. I want plants...but...it's just not falling easily into place. And my building does have a nice garden out back if I get off my butt and go downstairs. And in the high-rise building my post office box is in has LOTS of amazing exotic indoor gardens, if I just STOP to enjoy them, instead of rushing home. I should get just ONE shade loving plant though, to start. There is something nice about indoor and balcony nature. Traveling to nature just is not the same.