Costco super premium vanilla ice cream is the best--and no HFCS. It is the best, so very creamy!

I use 1/4 cup maple syrup, 1/2 cup honey, and melted butter. Sometimes I add a little water to thin it out. My kids don't like real maple syrup but they eat this. :)

We lived out there for the military and the one thing I can recommend is getting aquainted with the metro and it's stops. Try to avoid changing lines (blue line, yellow line, etc) It makes things a little less chaotic. Be aware potty stops are hard to find sometimes and we had a couple of accidents with little ones. Recon, recon for potties! Bring extra clothes--wish we had a couple of times. We lived three miles from Mt. Vernon in Lorton, VA. Hotels are a bit cheaper in that neck of the woods, so are restaurants. Mt. Vernon is really nice. I second bringing lots of snacks--food out and about is a killer. If you can get in touch with your Congressman that is the way to go. We lived there for 8 months and NEVER could get any freebies out of ours. :confused: Monticello is a great stop if you are driving that way. I recommend reading The Hatmaker's Sign prior to that stop for little kids.

I really like http://www.hebrewresources.com/viewpage.php?page_id=57 We used "At Home with Hebrew" for a year and a half. It is perfect for painlessly learning the Hebrew alphabet, the marks, pronounciations, and reading printing and cursive. It doesn't teach much in the way of vocabulary, but if your goal is to read Hebrew this is definitely a great place to start. My youngest was 6 when he started it.

:iagree: Love it!

Yes, I have read much about sterility due to GMO corn and high fructose corn syrup. Floride makes people dumb. Eugenics rears it's ugly head again. If it hadn't been documented in the past I might not worry....but history always repeats itself.

We LOVE Costco! We are a military family living on an Army post and even with the commisary we still go to Costco. The quality is always so much better, and cheaper for a lot of things. It is the impluse buying that will get you. I use a Once a Month Cooking plan and then make trips to Costco and Sam's club sometimes.

I have to say that I learned more about the parts of speech and functions through Shurley Grammar than anything else. We have dropped the program, but we continue to chant the jingles and parse sentences using the jingles as a guide. Also, I want to second (or third) the comments about LC1. We are half way through it and grammar concepts are coming together quite nicely now.

:iagree::iagree::iagree::iagree: I totally forgot we dumped the TV. It has been WONDERFUL!! :) Oh, BUT I love netflix. It is wonderful to have complete control over the idot box. We are watching Johnny Tremain tonight as a treat for finishing the book.

We love Sonlight here and if you would choose a lower core, everyone could participate. It has really brought my family together. I bought "thinking putty" for all the kids to play with while I read and it has produced remarkable results in their ability to focus and retain. My 11 year old has really been enjoying Core K. Now he does reading and math at his level, but the stories are great and really help the kids all get in on the same page. I do core 3+4 for the older kids and the youngers just tag along according to their interest. If you son likes computer learning, I can recommend www.time4learning.com . My kids really liked this and we did it for two years as a way to cover reading and science. The math was not quite enough for my kids, but depending on the child, it may work very well. If time and one on one attention is lacking, this may be a great way to free up your time.

After six years of CMing with books I picked out, I am ELATED that I finally went with Sonlight. I don't have the burden of planning anymore. Latina Christiana has been wonderful. My kids are constantly noticing derivatives which my husband finds terribly amusing. Also, doing real dictation with the kids has made a lot of difference both with their confidence and ability. I had been in a copywork rut and now am so happy to see progress.

:iagree: We have used Phonetic Zoo, great program, but it just wasn't a great fit for my kids. I used real dictation for the first time this year. Previously, my kids did copious amounts of copywork and still it wasn't traslating into their other written work. Dictation seems to be the glue that pulls it all together. Since dictation is so similar to real writing in that they have to pull things from their brain and get it on paper in a meaningful way, it seems to bridge that cavern between short-term memory and long. Also, dictation exercises that are pulled from their reading generally contain lots of those high-frequency words that often defy spelling rules. After they do dictation we then discuss any strange phonetic rules that are contained within the passage. Also www.thephonicspage.org has wonderful, free, phonics lessons that I use with my kids yearly to brush up on phonics.

We like MUS and LOF, but I have been using Professor B because I got it very inexpensively used and it does a really good job of breaking things down the long way--the why behind the method, and then showing the shorter method. Since working through Prof B my children now understand why and how long division works. We did not do Gamma and Delta and Prof B has filled in our gaps really nicely.

I have used both and I can say a few things. AO has many more challenging and well, heavier books. We did AO 1 and 2 and I got very tired of printing off books. It may have been easier with paperbacks, but surely more expensive. I have loved Sonlight's content so much better. In AO we struggled through Trial and Triumph and Shakespeare Tales. Now Sonlight uses CHOW and some AO books, so they are not all horrible, but my kids have enjoyed the Sonlight flow much better. I use CM methods to check on comprehension and avoid the questions that Sonlight provides. Sonlight does cover heavier readings, but in much later cores. I prefer this as AO just about killed my children's interest in reading. Some of the books were wonderful, but we had trouble with some of the spine texts. Sonlight does not have picture study and composer study. We add these things into our Sonlight schedule. Sonlight's language arts seems to be easily adapted to CM too. AO is very easy to try out, and that is a great thing. If you do a few weeks and LOVE it then I would certainly stay there. I used all the books I could print off to try it out. We loved it, for a season.

I used www.educationalfontware.com . The teacher pack gives you many fonts, but HWT is included. I use it all the time.

Oh, I'm so sorry----I used ElizabethB's site and LOVED it too. :001_smile::001_smile::001_smile::001_smile:

I have used MECS software (Montessori based) for three children. They all learned a great deal from the moveable alphabet and phonogram lessons. With my four and a half year old daughter I am using a little MECS, but lately we have been using the 70 SWR phonogram cards and a salt box. She enjoys practicing the letters in salt and it certainly saves paper. Once she has it down in salt I move to a gel board or marker board. I am very much enjoying the hands-on aspect of the salt box, which in our case is simply a 13 x 9 inch pan with some salt scattered in the bottom. I am also doing cursive first with her.

Does the workbook have the stories included that the copywork and dictation are taken from? Are the stories in the text? Just curious. Thanks,

We really, really like Carry On, Mr. Bowditch. My hubby just purchased his book tonight on ebay, The New American Practical Navigator. This is the second time we have read it and the kids really like it.

Grammar Songs by Audio Memory has a song that is exactly that. My kids think it is a little corny, but it really got them stuck in their heads--and mine.:001_smile: It is fairly inexpensive too and good for review.

We are doing 3+4 this year. I switched to it a while ago and we LOVE it. I have a fourth and fifth grader doing it mostly, but my seven and four year olds tag along. Currently, we are on week 12. My kids have liked all the readers so far and they really seem to like the read alouds. My husband joins us as we read each night. I read the history bits earlier in the day and save the read alouds and bible things for evening. I personally like the spine they chose--The Landmark Book of American People--I think that's the title anyway. I have enjoyed reading ahead and then if it is a bit on the boring side I narrate what I read to the kids. I find it helps tremendously to have something for the kids to handle while listening to me read. Thinking putty, legos, ZOOB pieces, etc seem to help them focus and retain more. We have a map on our dining room wall tracked all over with people's journeys and labeled countries and states. The kids seem to enjoy all of this too. After getting a few weeks into it, I know wish that I had done this years ago. I just bought Core 5 for next year. HTH

I make viili--it is from Finland. You can buy the culture at various stores online. What is really great about it is the fact it is counter cultured. You don't need a machine and you do not need to prep the milk in any way. It also self perpetuating, so providing you don't kill it you will have yogurt forever. I do use half and half sometimes because it is just sooo good. The method is simple: Retain 2 TBSP of your last batch and put it in a quart mason jar. Pour your whole milk or half and half over and to within an inch or so of the top. Stir with a plastic spoon. Cover with a coffee filter and rubber band. Let sit at room temp until it sets--usually about 18 hours at first, much faster with consecutive batches or more starter. Refrigerate for a few hours or overnight as it will continue to thicken. If you cannot re-culture soon make a batch out of pure cream. It will last 4 or more weeks in the fridge. We serve it with organic preserves on top or honey. :001_smile:

A problem could be lack of time for read alouds. We finally cut off the "idiot box" and started reading at night, long before I got Sonlight. By the time I stared this year we had a good chunk of time each night already dedicated to reading. Sonlight slipped in perfectly, but I can see how it could be positively overwhelming if you were not used to it. My boys would have not liked Sonlight at a younger age. We did three years of Five in a Row before attempting long read alouds. My daughter (4) will sit through anything, so it could be just an individuality thing. I appreciate the lack of hands on. I have craft supplies and let them go at it when they wish. I use the older Language arts and really like it. I do not do their writing assignments, but we work through IEW SWI whenever I feel like taking a few weeks off the activity sheets from SL. Dictation has worked wonders on my kids. Cost is a huge factor too. I can't/won't buy a new Core simply because I can find things used. I would like to get in on their forums, but I just can't bring myself to pay for it.

I so agree with this also. My kids LOVED Bride and Prejudice! It was so colorful and happy! We also just watched the Weeping Camel. Movies are a great idea. :001_smile:

Maybe it was the volume you were using? My kids LOVED the biology one. They especially liked the pirate song about bones. My kids now know what metatarsals and phalanges are because of the songs---even my five year memorized many things. The songs also really grew on us. Some of the melodies are a little complex, taken from old classic, even some medievel tunes. If you only listened once I can imagine you may not have liked it. We focused on one song until memorized and then moved on. Then we sang the whole way through for review. The songs have a kind of blue grass feel. Bobby Horton is the singer and he does a really good job of it. The songs are the heart of it and the books are for reinforcement. The workbooks only cost $5 new, so to expect a lot of color would be a stretch.... , but they definitely worked to reinforce the lessons. We used colored pencils to color the workbook. I think the songs are great for the car and during free time.