We actually rent my dd's violin from an online company. We went to a shop locally to have her measured (although the online company was really great about help). They have several models to choose from, from the very basic student model to much better quality. Some of the reasons we went this route- they are a larger company so have a lot more leeway. It is cheaper than locally, ALL of the monthly rental cost would be applied toward the purchase of the rental violin OR any violin we opt to purchase. You can't beat that. We pay about $7 per month for additional insurance and a maintenance plan. This is protection. She WILL grow and need a bigger violin, and will most likely need a better quality violin later. She is very young now (4), so by the time she is older and ready for a full size, her new, nicer violin will already be paid for:) Also...it comes to your door. Any problems, bigger size? It gets picked up from your door and a new one arrives at your door. Obviously, this might not be the best option for older, much more serious students. But it is perfect for us.

That is basically what is in the student package, sold without the book, for $14.99 I think? There will be a couple of extra things like a certificate of completion and such, but basically the cards. They come in perforated sheets you fold and tear. If that is all you want, and are willing to make your own phonogram cards (for level 1 it is pretty much letter sounds and a couple of blends) I am happy to send you all the word cards for free. I gave away my level 1 book, but have the cards in a bag:)

I don't know about Clip Art, but Montessori for Everyone has some great printable 3-part cards for leaf types and types of trees. http://www.montessoriforeveryone.com/Types-of-Trees-Nomenclature-Cards_p_306.html

Ha! I think I might win most-name-procrastinating mommy award. Hubby and I went back and forth for ages! He hated everything I liked, I hated everything he liked. Part of it was cultural I think. So my dd4 was BORN and we still had no name decided! Her hospital bracelet says 'Baby Girl X' on it. However, on the day it was unanimous:) For the record, I had a name I called her throughout the pregnancy...although she may or may not of originally been called Cleo the Embryo, followed by Cletus the Fetus before I settled:) Does that make me a horrible person?!

If you are wanting a fun, gentle program that introduces ideas and piques her interest, AND she already likes Magic School Bus? I would get her the MSB videos and make it a study. You can order the MSB kits for some hands-on experiments as well, and the library will have their books... But the real fun comes from this website. The Scholastic link to MSB has teacher's guides with ideas and info to go with each, as well as the ability to search for a selection of children's living science books to align. I did this with my dd when she was younger, and it was a lot of fun. One of the great things is that you can choose your pace...and if something catches her fancy you can go more in depth:) http://www.scholastic.com/magicschoolbus/parentteacher/faq.htm I would also add in a discussion of the Scientific Method, and HOW we approach science.

We are vegetarian and are very picky with soups, but this sounds fantastic. I am going to try it this week on one of dd''s swimming nights!

Uh, no... Attached to the side of a cliff, above a very rough part of the sea, with iron rods. Hhhm, let me think. And what part of the rock cycle did the designers not understand? Not a question of if, but when it would destabilize or fall! Maybe they are betting on a timescale. And the view SOUNDS great, but reality much? You wouldn't see a thing. Water, salt, spray...sea birds😠Of course, our family rock climbs, so dh thought living on a crag sounded great:)

Definitely wait until everyone is served. The only exceptions I can think of would be if there were issues with say one person's food, or even a couple of them in a restaurant. Even then, it would be exceptionally rude to just pick up utensils and eat! Of course, it would also be rude if those waiting didn't say, "oh, please, go ahead" if it was going to be more than a minute or so:) It is still a courtesy thing...

Ooh! Just remembered a huge one from year ago. I still cringe to think about it:( We were at a restaurant for a family bday dinner. For some reason I was paying cash. The bill came to about $180 with gratuity, so when it was time to pay I handed the waitress 3 $100 bills, and asked that $100 be changed. The waitress returned and handed me he bills, and I added a bit more to the table because she was excellent and had talked about her young dd and finishing college. The next day I was out running errands and could not figure out WHY I had all these loose bills! The waitress had brought me all $300 in change:(. I essentially left her a bit of a tip and we skipped out on the bill. Or rather I did because very one else assumed we had paid! I FREAKED! I kept expecting a police car to swoop in and arrest me. I phoned the restaurant and jumped in the car to drive the 50 miles back. When I got there the woman ran out and hugged me, weeping. She had had to pay out of her tips and pocket for my mistake. She couldnt believe I had come back. I felt dreadful.

Hate it when that happens! Last month I woke up early to cook homemade, all-vegan Indian food for a vegetarian potluck we were planning on attending for the first time. It is held once per month. I realized halfway through that I was missing an ingredient and had to send dh off to the grocery store. I spent hours cooking 2 kinds of curry, tomato chutney, and daal. That isn't counting the prep time from the night before as I even made homemade dosa! We were in a horrible rush to get there, but packed it all up piping hot and rushed over. We knew we would be just a few minutes late. When we got there the place was deserted except for the cleaning lady who kindly informed us we were 1 DAY and a few minutes late😡 We ate Indian food every night for a week. And saved the cleaning lady from cooking dinner that night:)

We use the Living Memory book, the collections included in the What Your X-grader Needs to Know books, and random things that strike her fancy. Poems, speeches, science facts, etc. CC has apps you can download with all of their materials (all 3 cycles) and you can pick and choose if you like. If you are not in the US, this may be a much more cost-effective way to go:)

Just this morning I turned on the washing machine and added the soap to dissolve...when I went to transfer the clothes to the dryer I realized I had neglected to add the clothes😩

We have adapted a couple of more advanced programs for Alex. I tried FLL with her...it is really gentle and sweet. Whilst she was fine with doing it, it just doesn't fit her needs. She needed to be handed all the parts of speech and then allowed to practice and absorb them, not have 25 lessons on nouns before moving on. We have MCT, and I pull from that. It isn't quite what we need either, but much much closer. I can give you some more details if you like... Funnily enough, she saw Easy Grammar one day when we were browsing. It is workbook style, and she can pretty much do it independently...so I bought it for her to play with. Very little writing. We do MCT together when she wants it, but she really likes the layout of Easy Grammar for just 'getting it done.' I also have Jot it Down. I actually would wait on any of these until she is writing. She will get so much more out of it, and it makes great handwriting practice as well:) Are you set on a more scripted program? Until Alex was writing well, we did a homemade program. We did things like Brian P. Cleary books. I printed out the FLL definitions for her to use, and bought wooden Montessori parts of speech symbols. When she wrote her sentences from WWE or AAS (you could easily print out her typed sentences) she just put the symbols above the words to identify the parts of speech. We did literary and poetry concepts whilst reading children's books. There are actually books you can get to teach these more advanced concepts through picture books, but it is pretty straight-forward:) For vocabulary, when we read I allow her to gently underline any words she doesn't know in pencil (in our books) and we write them in a little book for her. Sometimes she likes to draw a picture to go with it. We also have Marie's words, and she chooses 10-20 of those she 'likes' every week or so. Since they are picture based, these are fun for kids. I actually have a fishing line with clothespins in our school room and she clips the cards up. We make a game of narrating a story using as many of them as possible, which usually dissolves into fits and giggles. Daddy does this wih us, so it is a family thing. One of the very best purchases I have made is a card game...Rummy Roots and More Rummy Roots. It has over 100 Greek and Latin roots. You play it kind of like Go Fish at first. There is a master list to check if you can't remember, but you have a root and must ask your opponent for the meaning to make pairs. Really, if she likes vocabulary and etymology, make this your very first purchase:) After only a couple of times playing, Alex would take words (I think her first were photosynthesis and autobiography) and break them into their roots spontaneously. These weren't words she didn't already know, but the ability to apply the roots is really neat. Not to mention she uses them to try to figure out unfamiliar words. Really, a fun game and very useful:)

Sounds like my dd4! Where do they come up with some of these things?! Mine knows from all her animal studies that a woman's egg is fertilized by a man's sperm, and I remember a memorable round of questions at about age 3 after watching the Magic School Bus episode about chicken fertilization:) When she asked not too long ago HOW the sperm got in there, I simply said the male uses his penis to mate with a female. She accepted this and went on playing...but she was very quiet, and finally asked if the 'hook and barb' hurt me...huh? Turns out she had read part of a national geographic article on dragonfly mating😳 So we went a little more in depth that I had planned for!

Sounds fantastic! At some point I will probably end up starting too many groups for my dd, as there does not seem to exist anything at all here! In the meantime, can I just drive Alex to your house?! A few hundred miles to play (I mean learn about!) mythology AND see snakes? She would die of happiness:) I recently ended up completely cutting up a beautiful copy of a Child's Introduction to Mythology so that we could make Popsicle-stick finger puppets. Daddy painted her a backdrop with Mount Olympus, and she has been busy recreating puppetshow performances:)

I don't have experience with the multiple specimen per slide version. I am not sure how that would work for organization. Are the specimens on the same slide related? We have several sets from AmScope, such as this one. They do go on sale periodically, and they are organized numerically with a reference chart, which is very handy when you are looking for something specific. http://www.amscope.com/100-pc-prepared-microscope-glass-slides-set-b.html

Definitely glass. Part of the learning is learning to be careful. Dd once accidentally dropped one on the floor and it broke...no biggie and now she is more careful:)

I bought a Magiscope for my dd last Christmas through HSB coop. We love it. We have the 5x and 10x eyepieces and the 4x, 10x, and 40x objectives. I haven't had much call to use the 40x yet, although the few times we did I did find it a bit finicky. Later we will invest in a more powerful microscope for home, and this is perfect for carting around. If you are wanting it primarily as a simple field microscope for kids, I would say the 40x is not strictly necessary. Fun to have, but not nearly as useable. If you are going to need the higher power regularly, a different style of microscope may be a better choice. The surface adapter? Meh. We have it, I have never used it nor discovered any added benefit for it. I haven't had any trouble needing additional light, but we tend to use it in a room with lots of windows, or outside. If you are having it shipped, order slides! My dd loves the prepared slides, as well as a slide-making kit for her 'specimens.' The Magiscope is really a lot of fun, and gives her a lot more independence/variability of use.

I hope it passes soon! Kidney stones are the worst. I once had a hip surgery, in which they discovered my allergies to morphine and Demerol, as well as the others I was already known to be allergic to. They did not carry others I could have:) It was at an army hospital long ago, and they decided that I should try to get by on Toradol. So far beyond not fun. There was no relief. Finally they knocked me out, and later they had me alternate doses of Tylenol with 800 mg Ibuprofen. It killed my stomach, but it did manage the pain a bit. They also ended up giving me a muscle relaxant because after you are so tense from the pain EVERYTHING begins to hurt. Feel better soon...

Yes, this. With my hip problems and being in the wheelchair, the chiro I saw briefly for back pain knew to be extremely cautious....and I ended up in absolute agony with relentless spasms after the decompression table. Really, when chronic pain and spasms are involved I just don't think it is worth it. I occasionally still have deep massage on my back, and TENS...but that is it.

Thank you for sharing! I have looked for samples, and I think the Padraic Colum version is what I am aiming for. I think we will do the Sutcliff Black Ships Before Troy, and then move to this as a read-aloud if she is so inclined. I think she will love the language. She is very good about asking the meaning of a word if she doesn't know, and I allow her to faintly underline any words in pencil so she can look back. This looks wonderful:)

Thanks...I had ordered the paperback copy, but just went ahead and ordered the hardback illustrated copy. I think it will really be something she will enjoy:)

These look really good. Funnily enough, she asked for more on Achilles after Odysseus meets him in the land of the dead, so I just ordered that one to see if she likes the style:)

Whilst supremely grossed-out, I guess maybe we should be grateful that they have limited themselves to pads...or is there an in-app purchase for further tools?ðŸ˜

😄No, she is 4, turning 5 in December. She LOVES to read:)