thanks calbear, I watched the video. the strips we had were already flexible but you're right, they were somewhat dry. I may have to plant my own next time :) I'm going try pounding them and re soaking, we have nothing to lose

aw, I'm so sorry about your dog. its a rough place to be in. we lost our first dog back in october, he was only 2.5 years old but was very ill, long story but I was spending about 2-3 hours daily on his care. we knew the time had come when he was no longer able to eat or drink, he couldnt even manage his saliva, it was just drooling out and he could barely lift his head, he was panting non stop. he wasnt able to really walk at that point either, just do this weird scoot thing, I had to carry him out and hold him up to pee/poo it was just so so sad. I had a hard time letting him go, surprisingly it was my ds15 who had most strongly bonded with him who told me it was time. hard as it was, he was right. Its hard to know. so so hard. I'd probably do what others here have said, see if you can rule out pain/anxiety. big hugs

I hope by now its all resolved. but if not, I sorry to say I'm with the 'go to the ER now' camp. DVT's, as you know, are serious business. this from a very 'wait it out' kind of mama. my dh had a similar story a few years back, went to the GP who met him immediately in the ER. in his case it turned out to be a cellulitis, which is also something you'd want to treat rather quickly. because they caught it early, he did not need to be admitted for IV antibiotics and thankfully all was well.

I'm a huge konmari fan. I'm by nature a minimalist, I declutter my space for fun, my family knows that when they see me on the prowl with 'that look' they had better put their stuff away or I will get rid of it :) that said, I keep all of my math stuff. we've tried so many different curriculum over the years (not even homeschooling that long!) and I've accumulated a ridiculous amount of stuff (manipulatives, books, etc). and it happens at least once or twice a year that one child is struggling with a concept and I'm able to pull out something to help them. for example, at some point I purchase saxon 3. I dont even remember why, but I did. It was NIB and sitting around for years. I saw someone here iso of it last summer and was >this< close to selling but I hung onto it. and now, my third grader who is hs'ing for the first time was hating right start and generally just giving me a hard time with my other go-to math programs. my 6 yo found the saxon box and suggested that her older brother try it...we did and he's doing rather well with it. so I'm happy we had it. I have a hard time calling my homeschool stuff "clutter", I keep it organized and honestly, it does spark joy! I love my hs stuff, especially my math manipulatives. def. keep the base ten blocks. I relate to what pumpkinbear said.... keep them until you retire and then set them on display :) love that! the mat books though, well, my kids were thoroughly traumatized by those when they were in school, so I wouldnt be inclined to keep those. (probably more of a reflection on how they were used rather than on the books themselves, but thats our story :))

ah. that would be it. the instructions we had did not say to pound the strips. maybe we will pound the now dried strips and try soaking again. cant hurt. thanks for the tip

we did weave it that way, it just fell apart. I'm sure my kids will find another use for all of our papyrus strips, and the packaging alone was worth the money. we were surprised that it actually came from egypt, postmark and stamps were very cool. and it was delayed due to some embargo at one of the ports which sparked plenty of interesting conversations. amazon sells the papyrus paper pretty inexpensively, I might just order some. oh well, we tried :)

we are wrapping up a unit on ancient egypt and I thought it would be fun to make papyrus paper. I ordered papyrus and hieroglyphics stencils. googled. soaked the papyrus strips, we wove them, placed them on towels and under heavy weights for three days. and... fail. the strips did not stick together, they just dried out :( so I'm wondering where I went wrong. has anyone done this successfully?

I have an old electric one that my father in law purchased in the '70's. if and when it dies, I will either stalk ebay for another old one, or move to hand crank. the newer electric ones we've tried have all been poorly made and didnt sharpen nicely.

thanks for all the ideas! I've forgotten about so many of those books and there's a number I've not read yet. now I just dont know which to choose first ...so many books, so little time!

in addition to the games mentioned, we liked zingo and hedbanz

I get auras before my migraines. the weird lights, loss of vision, sometimes l cant speak clearly, I go numb in one arm. thankfully mine were hormonally triggered so mostly just during pregnancy and occasionally with PMS. when I changed my diet to balance my hormones, I stopped getting the PMS migraines. but I also have fibromyalgia and I must nap more often than I would like to. I cant take my kids on too many outings if there will be lots of walking or we will be out in the heat for too long. there are many things I cant do and I've had my kids on one occasion or another tell me they wished they had a mom who didnt have to be lazy. It is hard for me because like you say, I know there are so many things I am not doing with them and it seems unfair to them. but it is what it is, I didnt choose this. its a disability like any other, and I do my best. they can take it up with G-d some day. I hope you find a way to treat your migraines and auras. hugs to you.

my 12 yo made some yesterday. filled half of them with strawberry preserves and the rest with chocolate chips

I've been reading the Ramona books by Beverly Cleary to my 6 yo dd, she's not reading on her own yet but is loving these books. what would you recommend next? I love Beverly Cleary but after reading hundreds of pages of her writing aloud in the last 2 months, I'm ready for a new voice, so I'm not running to read her other books right now. also, dd is not interested in princesses or fairies after three boys, I kinda forgot what little girls like to read

personally, I cant stand adapted/abridged books. My older son was completely turned off to Ray Bradbury after reading the Great Illustrated Classics version of the Invisible Man when he was 9 or 10. But, my mil saved my dh's copy of Call of the Wild adapted by Olive Price and my younger kids love love love that book. I must've read it to them a million times, the language is beautiful, lots of the original language is preserved, the story line is true to the original as is the general vibe and flow of the book. I just read the original to my 8 yo and he was able to stay with it because he already knew the story and was familiar with the language, descriptions, etc. so if its well done, adapted/abridged versions of classics have their place.

the Unwind series?

we celebrate every time one of the kids finishes a level too. the child who finished gets to choose from ice cream, donuts or slurpees. we do a first day and last day outing, usually to the beach. I like the idea of questionnaires and evaluations. I might incorporate that too.

I find RS level A to be open and go. sometimes I do read ahead to get a sense of why on earth are we doing this now, but mostly its ok for me. I much prefer it to some of the other curricula we've attempted with my older children. my perspective is a bit reversed, I began hs'ing older children and then gradually kept pulling my younger kids (in reverse order, lol) out of school. so this is my fourth hs'ed kid but my first gr.1 student. my older kids came out of school with tremendous math anxiety and gaps like swiss cheese. so we've had to do alot of healing, confidence building and remedial work. this is our first year with RS and I try to encourage my older kids (grades 3 and 7) to watch my first graders lessons so that they can get the solid foundation without making them feel that they are going back and doing first grade work. The other day, my 7th grader said to me that he wishes he had been taught math this way (RS A) from the beginning. the 3rd grader agreed wholeheartedly. so that's enough for me to stick with it. good to hear B is better (we're doing C and D with the older ones right now, those are ok but the kids didnt have the benefit of A so they are still learning to internalize the abacus way of doing things).

we just move on to the next level. very often we even skip a few of the first lessons in the next level, since they are (at least in the later saxon levels) review. which makes sense if a child is taking the summer off, but if you go straight there should be no reason to spend weeks reviewing what you just covered. child will be reviewing it as they progress to the next lessons anyway.

I think I spoke to the same guy,and after the same conversation, he agreed to sell me the same (he did not remember me from when he was a principal of my dd's school and its better that way, if you get my drift). anyway, I was very impressed with that curriculum (lhavin ulehaskil if we're talking about the same one) at first, but it was not so fun to use. my kids find it very tedious and the teachers manual doesnt exactly feel like its helping me much. It states the obvious and then still leaves me feeling like I'm flying by the seat of my pants sometimes. I'm not sure I will continue with it. If you'd like to have a look at mine before you order lmk and I will try to send you some pics. alternatively, with some (lots!) of patience you can find good chumash workbooks on chinuch.org for free. My dd's school used tal am for one year, she learned so much it was incredible! but then they stopped and moved to something else, alot less incredible. I'm looking for a good hebrew curric too, so am paying attention here!

for a 7th grader who is way behind in math and having difficulty learning mult. facts, would you give him a calculator and move on or stay with multiplication until he has some level of mastery? he understands the concept of multiplication but cannot for the life of him memorize from flash cards. we're currently using Right Start Math and he is starting to become more familiar with some of the facts but its oh.so.so.slow. part of me thinks we should not let this lack of mastery hold him back, and part of me thinks its important before moving on to fractions/division. any comments, advice, words of wisdom greatly appreciated

skipping the bible readings and uber-christian resources, is the rest of it relatively secular or is it all religion-heavy throughout? I really would like to use SCM but prefer a secular curriculum.

this is my gut feeling, I'm just so unsure of myself! she loves to write, mostly she asks me to spell for her, occasionally she will use inventive spelling or whatever they call it. maybe I will just keep doing what we are doing for a bit (reading loads to her and this sort of writing) and revisit in a few months.

I think this is what I'll do. I already ordered HWT for my 1st and 3rd graders, but now I'm rethinking that, the getty dubay looks nice too. for myself, my handwriting isnt abysmal, just...ugly. I think I'll get the spencerian books. I was planning to do my copywork while the kids do theirs. I'm surprised by how excited I am about this, maybe my enthusiasm will wear off on the kids, or is that hoping for too much? In any case, thanks for all of the suggestions :)

I will be homeschooling my first grader next year, she was in K (private school) this year and what with poor execution of common core or just plain old rotten teaching, she is totally convinced that she will never learn to read. she's still only 5 and shows no signs of any sort of learning issues, she's bright and gets stuff but just more slowly than the teacher would have liked. so...I'm looking for something lightweight and easy, nothing that will scare her off. I'm in no rush, I just want her to feel competent. She already knows all the letters and their sounds, she has a bunch of sight words (although she has vehemently declared that she 'will never ever do any more sight word flashcards in her whole entire life') and can put together some simple cvc words. what curriculum would you recommend?

did you use the theory book? or just the copybooks?