It might take a few years. In the meantime, don't let them flower. Mow frequently, get out there with scissors if you have to. Where we live there are only a lot of dandelions for a few weeks in the spring, so I work on them really hard during that time. I often spend Mother's Day digging dandelions. After the spring, I guess the grass gets mowed often enough that I only have a few at a time to deal with. I spend several hours each spring doing dandelions, and it's slowly getting better. I actually sort of enjoy it. :D

Do you mean squares or square roots? I see others posting about memorizing squares up to 12 or up to 20, and I agree those are useful. I don't think there's much call for memorizing square roots, except that root 2 comes up fairly often. It's handy to know that it's approximately 1.414, just as it's handy to know that pi is approximately 3.14. Of course, one should be able to see very quickly that the square root of 27, say, is a little more than 5. But memorizing them? Waste of time IMO.

We combined Day 2 and Day 3 this week, and it worked well. I may make that a regular habit, now that the outlining exercises are not taking ds as long. He usually needs two days on the Day 4 assignments, and we spend an extra day every week or two doing revisions. Sounds similar to what you're doing!

Get yourself right over to Harmony Art Mom's blog -- Handbook of Nature Study. Free and absolutely PACKED with helpful tips about using this book.

My ds has corrected most of his verb forms, but "tooken" seems hard to shake. And that's not even getting into the words he just flat out mispronounces: devastated = de-VAST-ed education = e-DUCK-tion variety = VAIR-ity acid = AY-sid

Ruth, do you plan to take longer than a year to do each WWS level? The extra discussion and work sessions appear to add several days to the schedule. I alternate between wanting to take the time to do the assignments well and really dig into them, as you describe, and wanting to just get through the program for the exposure. We're only up to Week 11, and I'm starting to worry about running out of time. (I know we won't finish Level 1 this year, but I'd like to get through a fair amount of WWS before high school.) In the OP, you said you plan to use LTOW in 9th. Do you expect to have finished WWS at that point?

I thought of one tiny, tiny complaint. The driver's seat is motorized, meaning that you push a lever to adjust the seat and the motor pulls it forward or pushes it back for you. We only have one car, so dh and I are constantly switching back and forth. Dh is a full foot taller than me, and sometimes I get impatient waiting for that motor to pull the seat all the way forward. It takes like five seconds or something. :lol: I LOVE that there's a height adjustment on the seatbelt. I've never had a car with that feature before. Also LOVE the heated seats.

We bought a used 2005 Outback in 2008 and love it! The only thing I don't like about it is that it's an extremely popular car in my area and it's sometimes tough to find ours in the parking lot. Perfect for winter driving, hauling stuff, and road trips.

Aww. It's hard when they're little and so uncomfortable. :( Hope they feel better soon!

Good to know. We've occasionally used Tylenol to reduce fever, but mostly it hasn't been high enough to warrant treatment.

What do you give a child Motrin for? The only thing I use ibuprofen for is menstrual cramps (mine) or an occasional headache (again, mine), and that doesn't sound like what you're dealing with. Not criticizing, just curious.

We do a Teaching Time each day, but it doesn't sound quite like what you're talking about. I like the suggestion of "morning meeting".

I hope you don't mind that I fixed the spacing. Personally, I find it very difficult to ignore erratic spacing. I can't concentrate on the content! So this version may be helpful for others like me. (I would suggest breaking up the paragraphs even further. They are quite long and include quotations from multiple speakers.)

This is very similar to what I'm tentatively planning right now for my ds, though based on much less research. (I'm hoping to undertake a similar project this summer. LTOW is taunting me from my desk.) I feel so validated in my choices! We're using Image Grammar, not Killgallon, but I understand they have a lot of overlap.

I'm curious about this. Can you explain what makes a task an "in-breath" vs. an "out-breath"?

A lot of good ideas here! One I didn't see mentioned was a "reference" section. We like to have frequently referenced books in one easy-to-access spot. The books you want at arms reach for dinnertime discussions. Ours has the dictionary, encyclopedia, atlas, Visual Dictionary, World History Timelines, almanac, field guides, etc. The contents vary a bit over time. Right now we have a book of quotations and a book of Bible charts there as well.

It doesn't look like anybody has mentioned Student News Daily yet. They offer a number of different features. The one we've used the most is the Daily News Article. It's published M-F during the school year. I like that they pull articles from a variety of sources (in the February archive, I see articles from the Washington Post, Yahoo News, Fox News, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, , and the Chicago Tribune). Each article is accompanied by discussion questions. They often include background information to give a context to the article and sometimes extra resources such as links or videos. In addition to the Daily News Article, they have weekly features on bias in the news, commentary, cartoons, and a few other things.

Perhaps! But I can accept that you do not agree. There may be history among posters here that I am not familiar with. By the way, it was certainly not my intent to "slam dunk" you in any way. I was merely trying to show where the misunderstanding originated. It also seemed to me an excellent illustration of how grammar truly can affect the meaning in communication.

I truly can't believe I'm wading into this discussion. But as you have mentioned grammar . . . Traditional usage rules dictate that we use "that" for restrictive clauses and "which" for non-restrictive ones. For example, if I say: Smoothies that contain bananas are vile. I am making a statement about some smoothies, namely those that contain bananas. I am not making any statement about blueberry or raspberry or kale smoothies. On the other hand, if I say: Smoothies, which contain bananas, are vile. Then I am actually making two statements. First, I am asserting that smoothies (all of them) are vile. I am further asserting that smoothies (all of them) contain bananas. Now one could argue with either of my statements, but it would be best to know what I intended. When you wrote, The modern secular system which brought music about mutilating prostitutes to our children (along with many other mysogynistic, child-hating, sloth-encouraging and mind-numbing forms of entertainment) has pretty well proven to be a failure for our society. your use of "which" appears to me to make two statements: 1. The modern secular system as a whole brought depraved entertainment to our children. 2. The modern secular system has been a failure for society. Perhaps that is not what you intended! Perhaps you meant instead: 1. A part of modern secular society brought depraved entertainment to our children. 2. This part of modern secular society is a failure. In that case, a restrictive "that" would have clarified your position.

The first three are excellent summaries. Why do you want to improve them? Check them against the rubric and call it done. You work on style later in the program. Depending on what she's learned in grammar so far, I would either have her find the grammar/mechanics mistakes or act as editor and show her how to fix them. I notice she uses a lot of compound sentences, which is great. Make sure she knows how to punctuate those. Personally, I ban the use of exclamation points in school writing. We'd have mayhem, otherwise. :lol: The last summary is more problematic. Unfortunately, this leaves out a large portion of the story. The hard part about this assignment is condensing the whole story down to the required number of sentences. It is tough, no doubt! I had to ask my ds to do this assignment over again, and I know I'm not the only one. I made him go back and read the directions carefully and follow them to a T. His second attempt was a huge improvement, though it still needed some revision.

:iagree: If it's measurement issues, let it go. Fine motor skills will improve. I find my 11 yo ds, doing some geometry this year, is *much* better able to measure angles and lengths and draw them accurately than the last time we covered these topics. If it's concepts, then it's worth spending some time getting it down. But it can wait until spring or summer. Just make a mental note to come back and do some review later on.

We love it on popcorn. It has to be in powder form (sometimes it comes in flakes). Careful with the powder, though. It's very tiny particles and easy to inhale.

Oh, sure. It is a big range, and certainly different kids are ready for different books at different times. I'm not looking for suggestions for my child, by the way. I'm more interested in this idea in general of the transition into a more sophisticated genre. (Not to belittle children's literature -- I still enjoy it a lot myself!) What I find interesting is to see, across lots and lots of different lists, these same books appear over and over again as sort of the first introduction to adult literature. I'm curious what links them -- why are these books in particular more accessible to a younger reader? Some have a young protagonist but not all. They're mostly plot driven, I guess.

What are your recommendations for a child branching out of the children's section? I've looked through a number of lists and found the following commonly listed for middle-schoolers. That is to say, when I look through grade-oriented reading lists I see that the children's lit is gradually replaced by adult works over roughly 6th - 8th grade until adult fiction dominates the high school lists. And it appears to me that the first adult fiction works suggested are quite often from this list --- Tom Sawyer The Prince and the Pauper Around the World in 80 Days Journey to the Center of the Earth To Kill a Mockingbird Treasure Island Kim Fahrenheit 451 Lord of the Rings Call of the Wild Sherlock Holmes I think it's accurate to say that these were written with an adult audience in mind but are easily enjoyable by a younger reader. Any thoughts on adding/subtracting from this list?

How does one go about getting an evaluation like this? Do you just call up a neuro-psychologist and say, "I think my child needs an evaluation"?