You might spend some time at SurLaLune Fairy Tales, it's a wonderful website! Here are two suggestions: The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, 3rd Ed. [/url]The Complete Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales If you read the book descriptions on Amazon carefully - you'll be able to discern which versions are truest to the original form.

Absolutely I would (and have) taken my kids if they were interested in going. My twins are very interested in learning about the issues and supporting political causes that we believe in, they've endured long drives and hours in line to attend events/rallies - even during a blizzard once! The other 2 children usually opt for Grandma's house instead.

How exciting for you both, congratulations! You must be so proud!

Thanks Sherry! A Netflix list is one of the first things I put together because we use it quite often as well!

I'm willing to share what I've got once it gets closer to completion, I'm just struggling with the best format to do this. While I've got everything going into a master spreadsheet, some things don't translate to a spreadsheet well and would require supplementing. For the science portion, I've been working on a website - organizing information both chronologically and by category (i.e. communication, light, color, & sound, etc.), so it can be used either way, but it's A LOT of work & thus rather slow-going. However, I tend to put everything online anyway (if only for myself) in order to organize it & help me think through it. I have half a dozen private Google sites for this purpose, LOL. I'm hoping once I get further along it will come together more readily...My thought was to create a website for the entire thing once the schedule is done. That way people can use portions of it or the entire program and I can add relevant files for download (schedules, activity instructions, worksheets, notebooking pages, etc.). I'm still thinking through this though...but I'm glad you posted about this because now I'm inspired to get back to work on it! Lapsetmom, are you doing Ancients this year too? Or are you trying to put something together for next year? PM me if you're interested and we can talk through some of this...

I'd searched high and low for something like this also and ended up essentially doing it myself. I'm still writing out the formal plan (others have expressed an interest in it, but it's only about halfway done so far), but have been winging it in the meantime - using all of the resources SherryTX mentioned above & others. We're not going chronologically this year, as we're studying ancient civilizations, so I take one civilization at a time, however next year for the Middle Ages we'll go in chronological order. Science, Art, Math, Architecture, Music - everything is being aligned to fit our history studies - I love being able to immerse ourselves in each culture/historical period that we study.

An alcoholic beverage?

I live in my Birkenstocks pretty much year-round, but Borns are my second choice - they are wonderfully comfortable!

Oh heavens, you have my prayers - your year sounds very similar to mine, so I totally understand how rough it can be! In particular, I can sympathize with the neck issues. I had surgery in December to remove two bulging discs from mine & I'm still in a lot of pain which is *no* fun. :( Have you tried any epidural steroid injections yet? Many people do find some relief from those, at least on a short-term basis. :grouphug:

We just ordered one of these as well -- I missed this message when first posted, so thought I'd add to it in case anyone else missed it too. It really seems like a great deal! I found this on the Galileoscope Specifications page, which I thought was interesting: "As a first step in the Galileoscope project, we canvassed the marketplace for existing low-cost telescope kits and preassembled telescopes, many of which are marketed as toys. We found dozens of different models from various suppliers and obtained samples of each for evaluation. Most of them had problems like these: Insufficient magnification for astronomical use (for example, 3x) False color and other optical aberrations Small or stopped-down aperture produces dim images Very narrow fields of view (<1°) Unstable mount, no mount, or no way to attach it to a mount Poor, missing, or ambiguous assembly instructions Accordingly, we set about to design a new telescope kit from scratch, one that would redefine the small educational telescope and include features usually seen only on commercial instruments costing 10 times more, such as achromatic lenses, aggressive stray-light control, and a 1¼-inch focuser. We believe we've succeeded! The Galileoscope enables kids of all ages to build and observe with a telescope similar to (but much better than) Galileo's."

This site has a helpful chart comparing Latin programs, and here's a review of it that's pretty positive. However, we bought the program and did not find it very easy to use at all, so have given it up.

There's no intruding at all - you can simply post a weekly report on your blog and then provide the link here. :)

We're in KS too & I know of at least five people, DH included, that have lost their jobs. All but one were in senior-level professional positions, so maybe that makes a difference but certainly it seems that no one around here is hiring, which is bad. I work in health care, which I always thought was semi-safe, but recently found out that my company is planning on cut-backs as well. Frankly it's pretty depressing.

Our crazy, awful week (with a couple of fun things) is up.

This is me too! Sadly the one time I actually needed to use self-defense skills, I pretty much blanked out on all of it.

I second secular_mom's suggestions...Here are some other movies we enjoyed, for Bollywood: Just Married, Umrao Jaan, Mujhse Dosti Karoge, The Namesake, Bunty Aur Babli, Parineeta, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Devdas & Raincoat...Indie/Foreign: August Rush, Once, La Vie en Rose, The Darjeeling Limited, Outsourced, Gormenghast (LOVED the book!) and Pan's Labyrinth.

I have not seen them anywhere offline, but I would think you're still okay to order them before Easter. We got ours from Stubby Pencil Studio & the shipping was quick!

That was great! I'm a day behind too, but I showed it to my kids, trying to convince them how much fun it would be & they looked at me like I was crazy, LOL (when I told them it was a joke they were quite relieved).

I would appreciate some prayer because I just found out yesterday that some of the problems I've been experiencing lately (headaches, vision/balance changes) are due to papilledema and increased intracranial pressure. I have to go in for a brain scan this morning and am trying not to freak out about the whole thing! (Added to this, we're about to lose our health insurance and DH's job.)

I got mine right on my 9th birthday, ugh. I sincerely hope dd (who will be 9 next week) has a bit longer!

Ours is up too! :)

Perusing BGG again, I came across a link to this article (recently published in Wired magazine) about Settlers of Catan - Monopoly Killer: Perfect German Board Game Redefines Genre (and board games in general) - it's pretty interesting!

There's also a Jamestown Society for those who have qualifying ancestors...we've got two, but since we don't live near VA I've not figured out what the benefit would be (though I guess it is kind of cool).

Very interesting article, thanks for sharing! I had to laugh at the part about her father in college - my DH (who went to school in India) is so like that. He remembers all kinds of poetry, obscure quotes, Shakespeare and who knows what else & can recite it verbatim. It seriously blows my mind, because while I did some memorization in school, I remember none of it!

I can't speak for Core 4, but really the books are such a vital part of the Sonlight program (they're our favorite part)! And yes, I do believe that kids learn quite a bit from reading them. My kids are doing Core 6 & the books have really helped them understand the cultures we're studying - they bring the history to life!