Well, the one time that I suggested a purchase, they were very receptive and did order the book, but they told me upfront that the process takes several months, so I had already purchased the book for my own use by the time it was available at the library. It was The Latin-Centered Curriculum, the second edition. I sure hope someone has checked it out.

assessment that we are required to submit with our yearly notification form? Ds was assessed by the gifted resources coordinator for our local public school district. We decided not to enroll him, but instead to keep homeschooling. So, I'm just wondering if these scores would be admissable? They are only for Reading and Math, not any other subjects. I'm wondering if that's enough? There was no overall composite score, since all he was tested in was reading and math. So, I would be submitting his Broad Math percentile and his Broad Reading percentile, not any of the other breakdown scores in specific math or reading skills. What do you think?

Bump :001_smile:

There is no composite score on the score report the examiner sent me. There is a Broad Reading score and a Broad Math score. And then there are breakdowns for reading and math, with several different scores for different skills. I was not going to include any of the additional information, just the Broad Reading and Broad Math scores. I just wasn't sure if that would be enough, since the test didn't evaluate for any other subject areas for which we are required to provide instruction (e.g. social studies, science, spelling). Do you think it would be wiser to just have a portfolio evaluated? Or would you submit the scores and see if it is enough? Or would you call the school and ask? Dd will be attending a gifted magnet class in this public school system this year, and we have a good working relationship with the gifted coordinator who tested both of my children this spring. But I hate to mix homeschooling in with all that, too.

Do you know if you must report scores for each subject? I had ds evaluated by the gifted resources coordinator for our public school district, not for the purpose of end-of-the-year evaluations to include in our yearly notification form, but for another purpose. She used the Woodcock-Johnson II Normative Tests of Achievement. She only evaluated him for reading and math. Do you think I would be able to just submit these scores, or do you think science, social studies, spelling, etc. scores are mandatory as well? If I can't use these scores I need to put a portfolio together to be evaluated soon, as we must send in notification before school starts in mid-August. Thanks for any input.

If I had more energy I might make chicken picatta with herbed angel hair pasta and salad. But I'm feeling like something quick and not as involved, so it might either be hamburgers on the grill or chicken fettucine alfredo with a purchased jar of alfredo sauce.

That sounds delicious. I wish I had bought salmon at the grocery store!

I agree that the way I phrased my original post was a very shallow, simplistic, and westernized view of karma. I actually have a deeper and more complex view of it myself, but I was trying to be succint (something that doesn't come naturally to me, as I tend to write in a wordy, convoluted, and involved style). The reason I was contemplating it this morning was that I was trying to make a decision about whether to seriously inconvenience myself by making a five-week commitment to babysit my neighbor's 23-month-old son 35 hours a week, something that would benefit my neighbor but would be quite cumbersome for me and my children. It wasn't something that I wanted to do at all, and it was filling me with a sense of dread. We did help out and watch him for a couple afternoons this week, but it was clear that making the longer commitment would make it very difficult for us to do some of the things we needed/wanted to do for the rest of our summer break. And for some reason, watching other people's children is very draining for me. Declining her request wasn't something that would leave my neighbor helpless. She definitely has several other feasible options and the means to pay for them. And the situation she is in is partly due to her own choices as to how to organize her life. But I was still feeling rather guilty and wondering if I should just rearrange my life to help her. I really believe that we need to help each other in life because we're all people trying to make our way in a life that can often be difficult and filled with hardships. I want to be the kind of person who does help others, just because they are other people, not expecting anything in return or looking for rewards, instant or delayed. I was trying to figure out this morning if I was in the kind of situation in which I should sacrifice to help someone else and it would be selfish of me not to, or if my considerations for myself and my children were worthy reasons not to make the commitment. Ultimately I decided that the concerns I had for my children and myself were important and communicated to my neighbor that I wouldn't be commit to 35 hours a week, but that I would be happy to assist her again for a day or two at a time if the need ever arose again. She was very understanding.

Do you believe that if you help others selflessly that help will come to you when you need it? Do you believe that if you choose not to inconvenience yourself to help others that no help will come to you when you need it?

The Odyssey translated by Robert Fitzgerald is my current read. I'm about halfway through it. It's my first time ever to read it. Dh is picking up from the library for me tonight: Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman The Shallows: What The Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr

Can you still glaze it? Do you have to add liquid? Thanks.

I think my dd would love this dessert. Cheesecake and peppermint patties are two of her favorites. Ds probably wouldn't like it. He loves peppermint, but doesn't care for cheesecake. I love cheesecake and chocolate, and peppermint patties are okay, but something about the combination of it all just isn't appealing to me. I enjoy junior mints and candy canes, but that's about all the mint I can handle outside of toothpaste. Although, mint chocolate chip ice cream is good. So, I don't know maybe it could work? It definitely wouldn't be my first choice for dessert, but if I had to try it I might end up enjoying it. I much prefer cheesecake with chocolate and caramel, like turtle cheesecake, or chocolate cheesecake, or even plain cheesecake with berries.

I understand your predicament very well. I was so hesitant to allow our kids to have any video games. I just didn't see any positive aspects to having them at all, and worried that our dc would choose to play them to the exclusion of other more worthwhile activities. I worried that monitoring their usage and limiting it to acceptable amounts would be a difficult task for me. And before we moved a few years ago, we had lived in a community of very natural, Waldorf-style homeschoolers. I think if we had continued living there buying video game systems might never have entered the kids' minds, because they just weren't something we really encountered often. Sure we knew of a few kids who had and played the little handheld games, but there were none in our circle of regular friends and acquaintances. But dh lobbied for them. He didn't see the harm in allowing them to have and play them. He didn't see the big deal and felt that it would be fine, that our dc would easily learn balance and self-regulation. And he was right. We started with Leapsters. There was actually a Star Wars game that I think ds got for free at a thrift shop that helped him master reading two and three-digit numbers. When they started outgrowing the Leapster games, dd asked for a Nintendo DS for her 7th birthday. I was again quite hesitant, but we got it for her. It has been the easiest thing in the world to make sure she doesn't overuse it because she naturally gravitates toward physical activities, doing art projects, drawing and painting, and playing with friends. She really only plays her DS once in a while. On car rides sometimes she'll play it. And sometimes she'll go through phases where she plays it for a few minutes in the morning or at night time. But she's definitely not skipping out on other activities to play video games. It's such a non-issue. She does enjoy it, though, especially games like Cooking Mama and Gardening Mama. But she also helps cook and garden in real life, so it's not as if she's missing out on real life activities. I was the same way about the Wii. Dh was offered an amazing deal on one that was used, from a friend who no longer wanted it. So, he bought it thinking that if I didn't want him to keep it for the kids he could resell it. I was so reluctant to let them keep it. I actually took a few days to decide. But again, it hasn't been a big deal. It's great for the kids (ds mainly, dd plays it only occasionally) to have something to do on very cold winter days when getting outside for long periods is impractical, but on nice spring and summer days when he can be out exploring, playing with friends, fishing, swimming, playing in the sand, etc., he completely ignores it. In fact, there's one neighborhood boy who comes over in the spring/summer and wants to go inside and play the Wii. Ds tells him that he doesn't want to; he wants to play outside. If there's a summer day that's unbearably hot and we aren't going to the pool that day, he might play it for awhile, but eventually he'll find his way outside anyway. Once in a while in the fall/winter I might have to tell him that we're turning it off for the rest of the day because he's played it enough, but most of the time we don't even have to have rules about how long or when they are allowed to play it because it just isn't an issue. When ds was turning six, he asked for a DS for his birthday. We got him one and he has loved it. He plays it much more than dd does, but still not excessively. It has been great for him to have at her interminably long gymnastics meets and at gymnastics practices. Sometimes he'll go through phases where he plays it at home, especially if he has just gotten a new game, but mostly he plays it on car rides and at gymnastics. He still much prefers playing outside. He would never choose playing video games instead of playing with a friend, or going fishing, or swimming at the pool, or exploring a creek, or catching lightning bugs. He does take it into a restaurant once in a while, but most of the time he doesn't and we just talk while we wait for our food, or if the restaurant has paper placemats and crayons we play tic-tac-toe and draw. I personally agree with the other poster who said that she'd rather see a child quietly playing a DS than running loudly around the restaurant. Our children have often been complimented on their good manners and polite behavior at restaurants, without any video games to distract them, but I also don't see anything wrong with allowing ds to play his DS while we wait, as long as the volume is low enough not to disturb other patrons.

Dd taught herself to print when she was 3, so she asked me to teach her cursive in first grade. We chose Abeka, although we've never used any of their other curr. or products. We were pleased with it and continued with the next two books, until she no longer needed a handwriting book.

Every time I've tried to cook fresh green beans they turn out bland. I need a method that will make them tasty. Thanks for any ideas?

Would your mil be offended if you or your husband asked her to smoke outside for the time that you are there? When our first child was born, dh's mother and her husband both smoked. Dh is the kind of very protective papa who wasn't about to let his baby girl be exposed to something harmful. He is also pretty assertive. So, he just let his mom know (in a loving way) that no one was to smoke around dd. Mil and her dh were very thoughtful and would try to air out their house and run fans to try to get rid of the smokiness as much as possible if they knew we were coming for a visit. And during the visit, anyone who wanted to smoke did so outside. This worked well for us. We didn't ever have to stay overnight at their house, though. We lived just a few miles away. But we did stay for several hours at a time on holidays, and we visited on a fairly regular basis when dc were small.

Here is the recipe we love for Creamy Chicken Potpie With Rosemary Crust. It is one of my daughter's favorite meals in the fall and winter. I substitute chicken stock for the chicken buillon and water specified in the recipe. I usually double it and make it in a 9x13 casserole dish.

Have you found it reasonably easy to choose your own selections and come up with your own questions and copywork? I bought the WWE2 and 3, and used them with dd. In a way I'm really glad that I did because I'm not a naturally organized person and having the selections already made, the questions written out for me, and the copywork already chosen and ready to go was quite helpful. We also discovered some new books that we might otherwise have missed (e.g. Mrs. Frisby and The Rats of NIMH), and we were exposed to some neat selections whose vocabulary have entered our shared family language (for some odd reason Moomintroll is now one of my nicknames, coming from the story Momminland in Midwinter). At any rate, I have considered of late the benefits of streamlining our studies and making them more authentic. I think that simply discussing a selection we were already going to read together, and choosing a sentence from the passage to have him copy might somehow be more genuine and less contrived, and it would allow more time for other studies. He would be learning the same skills (answering questions, learning to do narrations and summarize, making a fair copy of well-constructed sentences, etc.) In evaluating what I have done with dd, somehow I think that using workbooks has sometimes removed the studies of grammar and writing from their greater context of great literature/meaningful communication of important ideas, and placed them squarely in the arena of "schoolwork to be dreaded and endured". I'm not sure if any of this is really making sense. I'm very grateful for the assistance the workbooks have given me in getting a vision, understanding a process, and starting me on my way. But I think I'm ready to move beyond them a bit. I actually think that what I have in mind is probably very much what many already do in their studies, but for me it is something of an epiphany, so thanks for enduring my thinking out loud.

I have AAS because I used it with dd, but I'm seeking alternatives for ds. Thanks!

As another gymnastics mom, I think you made an excellent decision, although I can thoroughly sympathize with your daughter's disappointment and with your own feelings about having to make the decision. With so much close contact and sharing of equipment, it's easy to spread germs at gymnastics. I always appreciate it when other parents keep their sick children away until they're certain they are no longer contagious. Also, even though your dd may have felt that she could go, would she have had the stamina for a several-hours-long gymnastics practice after being sick all week? I know it's tough, though. I have a dd who loves to go, go, go. Anything that keeps her from doing an activity she loves or going somewhere is major to her.

I used AAS with dd, but I'd like something different for ds. Thinking about getting out all of the tiles and review cards everyday fills me with a certain dread. Any suggestions for another program whose approach is systematic but doesn't come in so many different pieces?

Play-doh or homemade playdough. (I don't know if that would work with food allergies?) Do you have any dominoes? My kids think it is fun to build long lines and patterns with dominoes on a table and then knock one over and watch the chain reaction. My dd loved jigsaw puzzles at that age. Do you have moon sand?

Oh, my. That sounds horrible. Do they make chewy toys for hamsters to gnaw on that help keep the teeth filed to a normal size? When we had rabbits we were advised to give them those sorts of things to avoid that kind of situation.

I'm not sure why this thread popped up today. I posted it almost a year ago. And I had completely forgotton that I ever posted it! Weird.:confused::confused::confused:

Is it semisweet, bittersweet, unsweetened? You could make chocolate molten/lava cake. Chocolate cake with ganache icing. Chocolate pudding. Brownies. Chocolate mousse.