Thanks for the compliment! I didn't realize it was the incorrect Caterpillar poem. I'm glad you pointed that out. Do you have the correct version for me please?

Science: Free songs from Singing Science Records - the Experiment Songs and Space Songs are our favourites. Lyrical Life Science CD's from Lyrical Learning. They come with workbooks, but we don't use those yet. Geography: Geography Songs by Kathy Troxel Lyrical Earth Science Volume 1 from Lyrical Learning Composers: We enjoy the Themes to Remember materials from Classical Magic although I know that not everyone cares for them. Math: The Schoolhouse Rock DVD's are fun for Multiplication and they also do Science and Grammar. Poetry: Try Poetry Speaks to Children and A Child's Instroduction to Poetry Latin: The pronounciation CD from Prima Latina, although this is not a favourite. History: Story of the World CD's. Have a look at the selections from singnlearn.com/ for more ideas.

:blush: You're welcome Michelle.

Yes, you need to join. The documents are in the files section.

Your choices are great Michele! You may want to add some music appreciation and artist study. There are many ways to do this. Ours is to have an artist and composer of the month. I download paintings from Artchive and put them up on the wall. We then get books from the library about the artist. There's a free intro to picture study available from http://www.currclick.com at the moment. For composer study we also get books and listen to that particular composer's music while doing crafts. We've really enjoyed SOTW. The activity guide is fantastic. See the link to the Yahoo group in my signature for timeline and memory cards for SOTW1&2 and worksheets for SOTW2. I hope your daughter is able to use her hand soon.

It is a British program, but if you don't mind that, you can try Letterland products (linked to Amazon). You can view samples at the Letterland site. The program includes CD's to go with the books. You'd ned to get the ABC book and Alphabet songs CD.

I don't want to make promises about when it will be completed - it always takes longer than planned - but I hope to be done by the end of September. I've uploaded preview pages to Lulu.com Thanks Jan! And for describing the program. :001_smile:

Thanks for sharing Angela!

I'd be really interested to see everyone else's master lists too. We don't have one yet (I've been using mostly Sonlight), but creating one is on the to do list.

If the pastor and his wife trust your son to babysit their children (and obviously they do), and he is happy to do it, I don't see why "what people may think" should factor in at all.

There's a good British article in this past weekend's Financial Times magazine about homeschooling.

This describes my grandmother. She is in - I typed lives, but really, she's just there in a nursing home about 1000 miles away from where I live. We visited my parents a while ago and I drove to the home, but I just could not bring myself to go in. She does not recognize anyone any more, and would not remember that I had been there. It's totally distressing and I do not want to see or remember her that way. I want to remember her laughing and enjoying seeing us. I feel guilty for skipping the visit, but I just could not go through with it. My other gran is 92. After leading an active life, she has become more and more frail over the years and has been in a home for the last 10. She has always been a very engaging conversationalist, well-read and on top of events. Her memory is now starting to fail her and she loses what she was talking about, or changes topics mid sentence. She's aware of this and says that it makes her embarrassed and she is starting to feel worthless now that both her body and now her mind are forsaking her. Every night she prays that she will not wake up and recently she has gone through a very bad spell, not wanting to take medication any longer. If she did not believe that it was a sin, she’d choose to end her life. The family was up in arms at this, but honestly, I don't blame her. She looks around her and sees the type of people you describe and does not want to go there. Neither of them is being "kept alive" per se, but if they were to stop taking medication for various ailments, their lives would probably end sooner. And maybe that would be a relief.

Yup, that's us and why I love these boards!!

We have friends who have just come back from a year in St Andrews and they loved it. They were on a year's rotation with our company. They are looking hard at other jobs to be able to go back. It's a beautiful area. All the best and good luck for the planning and packing phase ahead!

My dd is very similar to your son. She's not "sporty" at all, and in any situation where she has to compete, it just shows up her lack of skill and aptitude. She has never enjoyed ball-sports - even just playing in the yard. I do agree with you that one should be physically fit, and that regular exercise is a very good habit to acquire at a young age, but it does not have to be in a team-sport. Dd has found a passion in horse-riding and rides twice a week. She also takes swimming lessons twice a week. She is learning correct strokes and a love of swimming as a form of exercise from a very gentle teacher. The aim is not for her to ever swim competitively. So, no, I don't believe team sports are necessary, but the habit of regular exercise is. The ideal is to find something that you really enjoy. For dd it is horse-riding (which is very affordable in the rural area we live in). For others it may be a martial art, dancing, going for long hikes in the mountains, running. Provide him with other options if they are available to you.

I'm not sure that I may mention this, so if it is regarded as advertising, I request that the moderators remove the message please. Because I couldn't find the no-frills, rules based spelling program I was looking for, I wrote one myself. Level 1 of Word Attack Spelling which covers one syllable words is at Lulu.com. I am busy writing level 2. Each section has copywork of the spelling rule, a word list and dictation sentences that use previously learned rules and sight words.

We have the same Southern Hemisphere schedule here. As most of dd's activities follow it, our schedule roughly coincides with the school holidays. We end our school year at the end of November and the new school years starts during the second week of Jan. The winter break is about 3 weeks in June/July. We take other times off to take advantage of "off-season" rates (during school terms) for discount flights to visit my parents and our annual week in July (usually just after the school holidays) in the Kruger Park.

I memorized a few poems for annual eisteddfods as a child and teenager and I remember those. Dd is doing memorisation from selections in this file I created a while back. She's also chosen some things on her own that she wanted to memorise.

Thanks for sharing your awesome work!! Here's a link to a sticky on the How To board about Reputation points.

We follow British spelling - so they look completely fine to me too!

And of course I had to make a spelling error in the title of the post!! :glare: It's so frustrating that I can't edit it.

Someone on an eloop I'm on made the comment that "a voracious reader seldom has to spend lots of time on learning spelling rules as they can 'see' a word is incorrectly spelt". Have you found this to be true? It's not the case for my dd (an auditory learner). She devours books, but struggles with spelling. I'm wondering if she is the exception to a general "rule".

My dds just for fun top picks are: Dogger by Shirley Hughes Fritz and the Beautiful Horses by Jan Brett The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina Mog Stories by Judith Kerr Katy No Pocket by Emmy Payne For learning about art we've really enjoyed: Katie meets the Impressionists and other Katie books by James Mayhew For slightly older children the Getting to Know the World's Greatest Composers by Mike Venezia. I know that some people don't like the cartoons, but my 8yo dd thinks they are fun.

Just after we were married, dh was hanging a mirror for me. After he had drilled the hole, I decided that it needed to be just 5 cm (2 inches) lower. He convinced me that drilling that lower hole would damage the brick and thereby the structural integrity of the wall!! He had such a long explanation about tensile strengths and and and....that although I was skeptical, I believed him!! Must have been young love...

That's just brilliant!! :lol: