Biscuits with jam or syrup - way easier than pancakes and basically the same thing Popcorn (sometimes with some apples or carrots on the side) Muffin cake - We do this one often. I'm too lazy to wash muffin tins and papers seems so wasteful. I just pour the batter in a pan and bake like cake. Oatmeal

I learned 2,5,9 and 10 in school in the early 90's in Canada. I learned the rule for 11 a few weeks ago on these boards. :) I just taught my children 3 and 4 in the MEP curriculum. The MEP curriculum has the children work out a proof for the 4 rule. It's really simple. It's just that all whole 100 is divisible by 4 therefore you can just look at the last two digits in order to deduce whether it is divisible by 4. Example: 348 is divisible by 4 because 348=300+48 and 300 and 48 are both divisible by 4. MEP generally teaches children to find divisibility by this type of method. For example, if you want to check 7 for the number 117 you could think, 49+49=98, 98+19=117, 19 is not a multiple of 7 therefore 117 is not divisible by 7. I <3 MEP.

I totally feel your pain! I've got two babies a toddler and preschooler at the moment. It's a wonder that my big kids get any work done. I've appreciated a number of the suggestions upthread and just want to say thanks for starting it. :)

Have you seen this: http://www.click2learn.co.za/shop/curious-natural-sciences-grade-8-etextbook/ ? I believe that it's available in Afrikaans as well. It's free to download if you're in Africa. You'll notice that there is a grade 7 and grade 9 book available on that site as well. I can't comment on it's quality but it's free to look at. :)

We were reading The Wonder Book of Chemistry by Fabre yesterday and came across Uncle Paul talking about "asses gold." It made me think of this thread too and while I pondered what a modern understanding of that phrase might mean. :D

This one isn't as dangerous as some of the ones mentioned but I always find it funny when people claim that beans/cabbage/broccoli/etc. cause their babies gas. It just doesn't make scientific sense.

Sometimes I'm glad that I live in Canada. We have our own issues (like the BC teachers being on strike for the first 3 weeks of September) but that sounds like a nightmare. It seems to me from this side of the border that given just how messy US politics are that if the various political camps represented in the US were more geographically separated that civil war would have erupted years ago.

I keep seeing this pop up on the boards and was hoping someone could enlighten me about what the fuss is all about. All I know is that it's some gov't policy to standardise education. Care to enlighten me?

I just wanted to share an idea that I had that my children are really enjoying. I've been wanting for awhile to teach them computer skills. At the same time I've got a preschooler in the house that loves learning the letters. So, what I thought of was to have them make an alphabet book for the preschooler, an "A is for apple" sort of book. They are pulling images from the images folders of gutenberg books that I have downloaded and from their digital camera (family members will be included). The sillier the better :). I'm going to make sure there is no "S is for shoe" non-sense (this drive me nuts!). We're going to separate the long vowel pictures from the short vowels pictures. We'll probably even do a Th, Sh and Ch page. I'm really excited because they're having fun, learning how to use the computer and the preschooler will get a fun book that he'll love and learn from. Homeschooling can sure be fun some days!

How about Spell to Write and Read? It's inexpensive, rule based, easy to implement and maybe takes only ten minutes per day. I really like. The children basically memorise all the phonograms and their phonemes and about 30 spelling rules. The children create a spelling notebook with an appendix. Each spelling word in the notebook gets marked up with a special markup code designed to remind the children what rules are used for each word. The appendix that the children create has a page per spelling rule so that the children can review them as needed. There are flash cards that you drill and little exercises that the parents picks from each week. The best thing is that it's about $100 for a non-consumable K-12 curriculum. You can't beat that. :)

This looks great! Here's another thank you for your effort. By the way, I really like the choice to leave the curriculum unnamed. It really does make it feel more open and alterable, maybe also a little less pretentious.

My dear children are always making up songs. When they were around 7yo they made up the following rhyme and were singing it regularly: Over the hills and far away We shall be merry and we shall be gay. Isn't childhood innocence beautiful? :)

I'm really excited to see what you come up with. Thanks for putting so much work into this project. I think that while spelling out a curriculum with prescribed books for each year I think that it would also be great to have some alternatives provided with a summary of their strengths and weaknesses. Really, I'm longing to see a site put together where people can review and catalog public domain works, especially ones for children, so that I can know what the book is about rather than having to read it myself.

I see what you're saying. It's my understanding that such books would still be copyrighted in the US. You can confirm this by asking on the Project Gutenberg distributed proofreaders forum here: http://www.pgdp.net/c/ . You'll need a login but these people are the copyright experts. They also have a thread in their forum where you can request that they produce good PG quality versions of any book that you wish. It will take awhile but they'll probably do it. :) I totally agree. I didn't realize the curriculum issue. That is completely ridiculous. I like what St. Paul had to say: "For we are not as so many, peddling the word of God." (World English Bible - a completely copyright free version)

I can completely relate to your dilemma. One thing that I've done is to stay strict with older children that tend to be influences and loosen up with their interaction with younger children or children their age that they don't look up to at all, even really troubled kids. This allows them to see what the world is made of without it unduly influencing them. It also allows them opportunities to be unsupervised in what I consider a safe situation. IMHO it's well worth the conflict that results from following your gut and forbidding certain interactions. 8yo is still really young and influencable. Shepherding your child's character is probably one of the most important jobs that you have. While the time will come to completely back off I don't think that it's yet.

One misconception is that I'm noticing on this thread is the idea that the author in question needs to have published the book within the country in question. Above I mentioned that I uploaded Little House in the Big Woods to PG-Canada. The books were published within the US and are still under copyright there but because Laura Ingalls Wilder died more than 50 years ago the books are in the public domain in Canada. At least in Canada and US the country of publication is irrelevant. Here's a little public domain trivia for you: Did you know that the KJV bible is still under copyright in the UK. There's a special rule for it under UK law and it will never enter the public domain there until the law changes. Weird, isn't it?

I'm a big public domain fan boy. I've added a few books to Project Gutenberg US and couple to Project Gutenberg Canada. My understanding has been that what is public domain in Canada and hosted in Canada is still copyrighted in the US. For example, a few years ago I put Little House in the Big Woods onto PG-Can. If you download it to a US computer you will now have a copy of the book that you did not pay for. This is exactly what the laws are trying to prohibit. They need to do this because there are some clever hosting companies that run outside of any national law (google Principality of Sealand, if you're curious) that are willing to host any copyrighted material you wish. Imagine if downloading from these companies was legal. The laws would be completely useless because there would be no way to prove where an item was downloaded from. Was it from a US host, Canadian host or the Principality of Sealand? The authorities make it easy for you. If you have copy that wasn't paid for and it's under copyright then it's contraband.

How does a mathematician deal with constipation? He works it out with a pencil.

Did you know that you can make scrambled hard-boiled eggs? You cut a sleeve off of an old shirt. Put an egg in the middle and then holding both ends, spin it around and snap it several times. This breaks the yolk without breaking the shell. Then you can cook it. I've been itching to make them for a potluck.

Mismatched socks or shoes set off all sorts of ASD bells in my head. I just can't handle it. All things must be symmetrical or I can't think. We tend to stifle quirkiness here.There's nothing sacred about the social norms of our society but we just want our children to not look like attention seekers and to make others around them comfortable. I've wondered if "homeschool syndrome" is really just that some parents don't realize that because their children are not in PS the responsibility of teaching social norms and manners then falls on them. I've met some homeschool children that just don't seem to ever have learned how to be polite. Children need to learn how to blend in so that they can if they want to or need to (job interview skills). I remember several incidences from my PS years when my peers taught me some painful lessons about what is socially unacceptable. For example, one must close the stall door in public washrooms and farting loudly in public is considered rude. Believe it or not, I didn't realize this. I was so socially oblivious and my parents lacked intentionality and so my peers stepped in and filled the gap. Had I been homeschooled I would have way more issues now then I already have.

One thing that I appreciate about the download wiki is that you can ask students to try to find information on their own rather than just handing them an article that contains the answer. This is a big deal to me because I really want my children to be able to teach themselves as adults rather than just needing to be spoon fed knowledge. While some of your target audience may not be able to take advantage of this many people do have friends with wifi access that they can mooch off of from time to time. When we're without access we either use the library which does come with the limitations that Pen mentioned or we go to a friends house, set up the downloads we need and then visit.

I'm probably what you would call ultra-conservative (people mistake us for Amish or R&S style Mennonites). I don't particularly care for the name but it wouldn't stop me from using the curriculum. I have some friends that this would probably be a barrier for. Maybe you could use some play on the name Sophia since wisdom in Proverbs is referred to by this name in the Greek scriptures.

We downloaded it quite awhile ago because our internet access is transient. Are you having issues? My dh might be able to help when he gets home in a few days. There might be a way to use it. One thing that I really like about having a downloaded version is that I can alter it to my heart's content. :) I don't have the same guilt that I would if I were to alter a PD book.

I hope that this isn't too much of a thread hijack... I just had a thought. My boy has a terrible time remembering to capitalize words. I was just wondering if the lack of capitalization through out the beginning of the book was responsible for this. Have any of you had the same experience with children that learned to read with 100 EZ lessons?

I'm sure that you've already thought of this but you can draw reading material from old public domain books to challenge his reading level. They were once intended for children but are often difficult for children because now because of old fashioned language.