My maiden name was Hill, and I still had to spell it ridiculously often. I actually really like many traditionally boy names as girl names. But like the Evelyn Waugh discussion earlier, it gets tricky when people with the same name fall in love. I know two Michaels who are married to each other. I also have a BIL who shares the same name as me. DH and I refer to him as Little Sammish, because he was a young kid when I first met him. But now that he's older, taller, and could easily bench press me, it's just funny. Also, family Christmas is so tricky! I can't tell you how many of his presents I've accidentally opened, because gift tags are confusing! I'm starting to believe there's no such thing as an "easy" name. Our last name is Polish and ridiculous, so we deliberately went with an easy to spell and pronounce name for DS: Asher. How hard could that be? At our very first pediatrician appointment, the nurse came out to the waiting room, looked at her chart, and called out "Ash-eer?" I also have a relative who reliably spells his name Ascher. :confused1: Sigh...

DH is getting is getting a pair of handknit socks and the Deadpool DVD for Christmas, so not much help there. But it is traditional in our family to get a chocolate orange in the toe of our Christmas stockings. What about nerdy socks? If he's overflowing on tshirts, I be there's lots of fun socks out there. One year for Christmas I bought DH a Senseo coffee maker, and the promise to make him coffee every morning for a year. (Not much help since you husband doesn't drink tea or coffee, but thought I'd mention it in case it sparks anything.) As someone who's had anxiety (and depression) for many years, I must say that one of the best things I did for it was to start meditating, using the Headspace app. Maybe a few months trial of something like that? It's quick (starts at 10 minutes), easy, and no "woo" involved. For his bad back - maybe one of those lumbar support pillows for his chair at work? Or a fancy heating pad? Or a gift certificate for a massage?

DS9 loves the Lego Creator 3-in-1 sets, because he can keep taking them apart and rebuilding them into something else. Other Lego sets get built once, played with for a bit, and then taken apart and added to the communal Lego bucket. These have more rebuild value for him.

11 on my desktop, 5 on my phone (and it's about to be many more, as I just opened up the forum, and haven't opened all of the threads I'm interested in reading in new tabs yet !). It drives my husband crazy, but it's my to-do list! Things I want to remember and refer back to, things I'm thinking about doing, things I want to show DH or DS, etc. I wonder how this correlates to email inboxes? I'm feeling pretty good about only have 37 messages in my inbox right now. DH, on the other hand, has about 6 emails in his inbox, and frequently just closes his browser, because he's closed all of the tabs. I really don't understand how someone can live like that. :lol:

:iagree: This can't be overstated! I got super lucky in that the first medication I tried worked great for me. But when (many years later) I needed to change medication, I feel like I tried every drug under the sun, trying to find one that worked for me. Some worked, but not well enough. Some didn't work at all. And some worked, but had such awful side effects. I'm lucky in that I'm pretty sensitive to medication, so the low, introductory dose, is usually enough for me. But on the other hand, I also seem to be the queen of rare side effects. :/ I picked up a copy of The Pill Book at the pharmacy, and that's been very useful for having a reliable source of possible side effects to reference. It's been a rough road at times, but when you get the right combination of meds, and you feel normal and like yourself for days and weeks and even months at a time... it's so worth it.

My son is about to turn 10, and we've been homeschooling since the beginning. I was diagnosed with depression/anxiety in college, and have been on medication since then. My meds suddenly stopped working this past year, so my doctor and I have been working to find a new regimen that works for me (with varying levels of success). So I have good days and not so good days. So, with all that being said, what works for me: 1) Making sure I'm being treated! Meds are not a cure all, but they sure make a heck of a difference! I also have a Happy Light, which I use in the winter and have it turned on while we do school. 2) Meditation (I used the Headspace app to get the hang of it, and now do it on my own) and mindfulness (I'm working my way through The Mindful Way Through Depression book and workbook). Becoming more aware of how I felt, and not getting immediately dragged down the rabbit hold of depression just because I momentarily felt sad have been great for me. It's just given me a little breathing space between me and my emotions. When I feel myself getting really worked up or anxious or frustrated, stopping and focusing on my breathing for a few moments can be a great way of snapping me out of the cycle, and calming me down a bit. 3) Not trying to push too hard when I'm having a bad day (this has taken the longest to learn :)). It used to be that when I felt bad, I'd feel like I HAD to push through and do everything anyway, and would be short tempered and get mad at myself for not being able to do it all. You can guess how productive that was. Now I give myself permission to take it easier on bad days. We'll do a lighter day of school, maybe include some documentaries, and choose not to do something that requires lots of patience or is likely to lead to conflict (introduce a new math concept, do a difficult spelling list, etc.). If I had a sprained ankle, I wouldn't still expect myself to run all of my errands, or take my kid for a walk. Same theory- my brain isn't working, so I'm going to take it easy on it. The relationship with my kid, and his attitude toward learning/school, are more important than any individual facts he might learn that day. 4) Realizing that it's okay to not be perfect, and that it's actually good for my son to know that. I read a great blog post (which I of course cannot find now) which talked about this. The basic idea was that giving your kid this unrealistic idea of you being this perfect Pinterest mom who never has a bad day sets them up for unrealistic expectations of other people in their lives (particularly future partners) in the future. My son is older, so I've talked to him about the fact that sometimes my brain doesn't play nicely with me. He knows that when that happens he needs to be a little gentler with me, and that I could use some quiet time. He'll often make sure that I have a blanket tucked around me on the couch, or suggest we play a game I like, or watch something together on TV. And then when I feel like myself again, life goes back to normal. It's just something that happens to Mom sometimes, and it will pass, and it's okay. I feel like this is a pretty important life lesson, particularly as depression may have a genetic link. I'll be keeping an eye on him as he gets older, teaching him coping mechanisms if he needs them. And if he does end up having depression when he's older, or he is close to someone who does, it won't be some big unknown, scary beast. It's something he's seen before, and knows it can be survived, and that it passes.

This was the first author that jumped to my mind, too. I loved the early Sookie books, but later books just went downhill. I never read the last two in the series. I disliked the last one I read, and then read reviews for the next one, and people were complaining about exactly the things I hated in the previous one, so... When I mentioned this thread to DH, the first author he thought of was Laurel K Hamilton (as a pp said). I stopped reading after the Edward book (where she goes to visit him), and I am forever grateful that I did. (I feel it's kind of like how we stopped watching Heroes after season 1. :)) I think some genre authors do get better. I think each new Kate Daniels book (by Ilona Andrews) gets better, and I just finished book 9). (Although I don't love anything else Andrews has written, even in the same world. There's a book written in the world from the POV of another character, and I HATED it. Their other series are okay, but not wonderful.) Patricia Bridges is writing two series in the same world, and both continue to be excellent.

This is a good idea, and one I keep meaning to do. According to this LifeHacker article, Sharky Shopper is a good app. Although it looks to me like Price Cruncher is better rated. I'm going to take a look at them, and maybe finally get around to putting one on my phone (no promises about actually using it though :))

I just want to mention that I have Dear Kates, and I had issues with attaching disposable pads to them. Well, not with attaching, but rather with peeling them back off - they'd stick too much to the underwear, and I'd be left with sticky/paper on them. :glare: I'm not sure if it was the fabric of them or what. I switched to reusable pads (Party in My Pants), and that solved that issue. (Plus I like the cloth pads much better - no clumping at the end of the day, less waste, and I just throw them in the wash with my regular cloths.) I use all the things - a diva cup, cloth pads for backup, and Dear Kates for backup backup on my heaviest days (particularly overnight when my cup can overflow and my pads can shift). I'm so high maintenance :)

I did levels 1 & 2, and my experience was that it wasn't that much work. What do you mean when you say your workbook doesn't match up? I believe the way it should go is: Read the literature chapter that is noted at the beginning of the lesson. -Do the grammar lesson (usually pretty short). -Read the poem (which is also printed in the workbook) -Read the fable -Do the copywork (also written in the workbook, with lines below it so your student can write it) -Do the written work (I think? Like diagramming or finding nouns and verbs in your copywork or narrating) The workbook isn't required, but it does have a place for the student to do the exercises in it. We didn't use the workbook for level 1, and I just had my son do his copywork in a separate notebook. The author recommends doing one lesson a day, but only doing lessons three days a week. We followed it mostly as written, except we didn't read the literature, because we were using a different program for that. We also used Quark Chronicles, but I'll admit we didn't use the workbook. We just read the chapters (usually spread out over 3 days, because they're long!). I coordinated another related book to read along with Quark, and we read that the other two days. The workbook tells which additional books to read (pick one from the appropriate age range), and then tells you how many chapters to read to go along with the Quark chapters. There's vocab words from the chapter, and space for the student to write definitions, as well as copywork from the chapter. It also has you doing an experiment from another book, and then there's some scientific method pages to fill out as you do the experiment. So the way it would work is you read Quark over a couple of days, doing the vocab and copywork along with it. Then read your supplemental book one day, and then do the experiment another day, along with the scientific method pages (if desired) in the notebook. The experiments and supplemental reading are just done in order (do experiment 1, then 2, then 3, etc.), so they don't actually line up with what you're reading in Quark. That's the big reason we didn't do them (or use her supplemental books). I like things to be related! So I picked other books that I liked better to read along with them. Does all of that make sense, or have I just further muddied the waters? :) It looks like a lot, but it's really not- it does go pretty fast. Since we didn't do the literature reading, it took us 10-15 minutes, tops, to do ELTL.

"PBS to Present “Spotlight Education,†A Special Week of Programming Featuring Reports About America's Students and New Models of Learning, September 12-17" Is anyone else planning on watching this? I set up my DVR yesterday to tape them all, and should have the first one (POV “All The Differenceâ€) waiting for me already. I'm particularly looking forward to the Nova episode about "School of the Future."

The part of the first section that I thought was most useful was not learning the grammar, but the discussions about word choice. We learned about nouns and verbs, yes, but also about how different nouns and verbs make more interesting sentences. "The boy ran" versus "The teenager sprinted" versus "the child scampered." So I wouldn't skip the beginning section (although you can probably go through it more quickly, focusing less on learning the grammar, and more on word choice).

This thread is dangerous to my credit card. Who knew Mental Floss had tshirts? I'm seriously tempted by the "Dodgeball: America's Twist on Stoning" shirt. (I'm 37, and I ordered a "Suck It, Trebek" shirt from SnorgTees just a couple of days ago :))

My 9 year old is also obsessed with this show. I'm pretty sure he's made Lego recreations of every bot in the competition. :) This year I'm doing a computer science and electronics course for him. We're going to start off with a Kano Kit (which is supposedly good for ages 5+), so he can build a computer and learn to program it, and then we're going to do EEME kits so he can learn electronics and building circuits. If all goes well, I can totally see us having Raspberry Pi powered robots running around the house in a year or two. :laugh: This recent thread about robotics at home suggests Lego Mindstorms, which I imagine we'll be getting in the not too distant future, too.

There's also Scholaric. We used it for a year and liked it well enough, before I realized I'm just a paper and pencil kind of girl, and switched to a paper planner.

I can't remember which science curriculum it was, but under their list of "common household objects" was an ice pick. Really?? Do people even still have those? (And I would like to hop on the "anti comic sans" bandwagon. :iagree: )

Common Sense Media has a review up here. It looks like it's fairly violent, and they recommend ages 14+.

We're a little into the second book, and it's working very well for my DS9. You can tell they're learning and remembering because every so often (30 days? I don't have the book in front of me) there's a spelling "test," which is just 20 or so words that they've done over the course of the program. They're words that I'm sure my kid couldn't have spelled before, but he's now able to (without review) so I know it's sticking for him. My son is a natural speller, fwiw, and does really well with patterns. I like SS because it's a very easy, low-key way to do spelling. (We actually do it almost entirely orally, and I only make him slow down and write out the really long words.) If you want to try it out, the free sample on the AVKO website is just the beginning 16 pages of the first book, which includes the methodology, and first 8 days of lists. When I was looking at it I just printed that out and started doing it, and by the end I knew it would work for us.

For the past two years I've used a planner from A Plan in Place customized homeschool planners (and I'm getting read to order a new one for next year). You get to pick out how many boxes you want, what you want them to say, areas for daily checklists, etc. Plus, you can get two pockets in the back, which are super useful. I use the first pocket to hold my plans for individual subjects, and the second folder is where I keep completed schoolwork that I want to keep. Instant portfolio! I can't recommend these planners enough - I love them!

Yes, friend sent it to me a couple of days ago. It's so cool! DS has requested to watch it several times, because he likes watching the explosion of cities at the end. :)

Perhaps the one posted in this thread would be useful to you? It looks pretty awesome.

We actually don't even have a kit yet - I'm still looking into it for next year. I was hoping to get a feel for how long/how many projects there are in the kit. But the link you provided looks great - I'm going to have to dig around it more. Thank you! Now that school is winding down and I'm ready to devote more time to this, I'll try asking on their FB page and see if I get an answer. Thanks for the tip :)

I LOVED She-Ra, but never had any of the toys. My dad used to call her "She-Ra, Princess of Powder," which infuriated me to no end. But on the other hand, I did have a huge herd of My Little Ponies, and a half dozen Jem dolls, so I wasn't totally deprived. :lol:

Has anyone managed to get the lesson plans that go with the Kano Kit for Raspberry Pi? I'm planning a CS course for DS9 next year, and I'm planning on using a Kano Kit. The website says "Lesson plans: We provide material you can use to integrate Kano into your curriculum and can help with custom content designed to meet your needs." But this only seems to apply when you're buying a bunch of kits, which I don't need. I emailed them a week or two ago, explaining that I was a homeschooler interested in the lesson plans, but I never heard back from them. :closedeyes: Has anyone else used them? Or even seen them? (I'm not sure if they'd be useful, or necessary, but I'd sure like to at least take a look!)

I have one of those bells for parrot cages hung on our door for our dogs. The older one (who is very pretty, but not the brightest bulb in the pack) understands and rings the bell when he wants to go out. Sometimes repeatedly, if we don't get up quickly enough. The younger one, who is ridiculously smart, refuses to use it. We've taught her and taught her, and she just won't. She'll stand at the door and look at it, and look at us, but not ring the bell. (Except if it's a potty emergency- she has rung it a handful of times over the past five years, but not many.) BUT, if the older one rings the bell, the younger one will immediately go into whichever room we're in, and STARE at us until we take them out. Like, "Did you not hear the bell? Get up and let him out, people!" She clearly knows what it means, but just refuses to use it herself. Dogs are weird.