I am headed out to the first real used curriculum sale of the season here, and I am way more excited than I should be. There are two more in the next month! Seriously, I am trying to wean myself off of this. I am really hoping to stick to my list and treat this as a thrifty shopping opportunity and not a look-at-all-the-books free-for-all. Wish me luck!

When I am doing well with this, here is how it works. I have a six week menu all written out, with only our favorites repeated and a basic outline of chicken on Sunday, beef on Monday, soup or beans on Tuesday, ethnic on Wedneday, pork on Thursday, meatless on Friday, etc. At the top of the page is the menu, and at the bottom is the grocery list required for it, plus a list of items that we frequently buy. I print this out, take it to the kitchen and cross off anything we don't need. I don't have to think about it again, and I just print and go. Right now, it isn't working because swim practice is killing my time to cook, and I need to have more crockpot meals or already-prepared-and-frozen options going, so I am trying out recipes and making my list as I go. But the six week rotation works great for me when I account for my schedule!

We filled in the blanks in the test booklet with the CAT through Seton last year, and everything came back fine.

Like many of the other people, I require physical activity over a sport. I have because given their natural inclinations, I think two of my DDs would glue themselves to the couch instead. I do require a certain level of proficiency in swimming, for safety reasons, and I do require them to sign up for either a sport or a class at the YMCA to stay active. Unless there is a schedule conflict, I let them choose the activity. Until this Spring, this mostly ended up being a once a week homeschool PE class and their choice of a once a week physical activity. I do like my kids to all have the experience playing on a real team for a season, and my oldest two have both done this. I may suggest things, or they may do things their friends are doing, but I don't require they stick with anything long-term, other than to finish the season or class session once we sign up for it. We have tried softball, soccer, dance, gymnastics, swimming, cheerleading, volleyball, and rock climbing over the years, with varying degrees of performance and success. Right now, my oldest is doing the swim team, and my youngest is in ballet. My middle DD is the child who most needs and thrives on activity, but she can't find anything she likes well enough to settle on, so we are still going on a session-by-session, season-by-season basis, letting her try out different things. Next up is martial arts!

I can't seem to figure out or manage to pull together the WTM method of history at this level without HO. I love it for that reason. It is exactly what I was looking for at this level for this child. Your child needs to be ready to do this kind of writing, and it helps if your child is detail-oriented or you are using this to teach your child to be. To be fair, some people find this approach to be dry, which we remedy by adding in more fun readings. Good luck choosing!

Welcome to the club! We are not doing the summer team this year, but we are finishing spring training with the team and starting up in August for the competetive stuff. It has been a wonderful experience for us so far.

:grouphug::grouphug::grouphug: Praying for a miracle for all of you!

My kids are still fairly young, so I don't think I would be much help with questions 1-3. :lurk5: But for #4: Do you have any local community colleges or community centers? Mine and the ones around here offer what they call Saturday Experience classes. Basically these are non-credit classes offered in all sorts of arts and life skills from gardening to painting to photography to cake decorating to changing the oil in your car. They sponsor them at the college and sometimes even at local high schools or junior highs. The classes are fairly cheap and taught by people who really like what they are teaching. And they are usually only for a Saturday or two at a time, so they are easy to fit into your schedule. Mine will take 13 yos and up, as long as they are mature, and younger if a parent signs up with them. Hope you find what you are looking for!

:iagree: Joann said if for me! My oldest wanted a DS for her birthday, and it is more than we usually spend on a birthday present (and we were already having a party for her at the YMCA). So she took her birthday money and we paid the rest of it to buy the DS, but she has to earn the difference, and until she does, I have the right to take back the DS if she isn't living up to her part of the bargain. She is 10 and fairly mature for her age, so I felt like she understood the deal upfront, and so far, after two months, she is still incrementally earning the money and I haven't had to take the DS. I feel like having one is a privilege and not a right, so if the child isn't earning that privilege, I wouldn't hesitate in taking the DS and using it sort of like a library book, to be checked out from me when I decide it is appropriate and returned in the meantime until I feel like the privilege has been earned and the child can be responsible for it. Good luck!

I am a little torn on this one. I understand all the reasons not to teach this, and for the record, I do find these things offensive (I am an English major and still hated Hemingway). But if we stop teaching all the books that people are offended by, there won't be many books left to teach. My other issue is that my family lives in a pretty insular place, and if I don't use some of these books to teach and make these points, they may not come up in our daily lives or may not really get talked about and worked through. We live in a fairly integrated neighborhood, but I wouldn't say this area is socially integrated. We have friends who have adopted interracially and internationally, and my kids have friends of other races and nationalities (which I did not growing up here). If we weren't homeschooling, we would have to work a lot harder to seek this out. Anyhow, I do want my kids to be aware of racism, sexism, eurocentrism, etc., and I think that books can be an excellent way to bring these issues up and discuss them.

OK, some of you are going to have some pretty messed up genealogy going on in the future! ;) I know to take the census with a grain of salt. Some of mine look like they were given by the neighbor or the five year old of the house, with names spelled wrong, ages all over the place, etc. But if you look at them over time, you can still get the big picture and use them to flesh out what you are looking for. And of course, like anything else, you have to corraborate! Can I just put in a plug for interested descendents here and ask those of you not participating to put in writing somewhere for the family your dates of birth, places of birth and residences, and marriage dates at least?:tongue_smilie:

I love their penmanship books. They are the only ones that don't make my 7 yo DD cry! She loves the animals in them. And you can't beat the price either.

Mine came in the mail today, and I am SO happy!

I don't know why they ask what they ask, or what the government does with the info, but I am VERY grateful for the results in my genealogical research (1900 is the best!). I know things about my family that I had no way of figuring out otherwise. And the questions about how many children vs. how many living really are helpful in that arena.

DH and I have never worked a salaried job that didn't have at least 50 hours per week expected. That was why I quit my full-time job when my oldest was a baby. DH currently works almost 60, counting working from home and all the on-call cr*p he has to put up with. If we didn't homeschool, the girls would hardly get to see him except for weekends, and he works most Saturdays from home. I would call 40 hours a week a vacation at this point.

David Hazell came to speak at my local homeschool group this year, and even though I am not using MFW, I did enjoy hearing him. I didn't agree with everything he said, but I found him to be thoughtful and engaging. Maybe my experience was different because it wasn't a vendor seminar, it wasn't at a curriculum fair, and many of the other people in my group are already using the curriculum. Just wanted to present another view.

I am jealous, ladies! I am reliant on recipes. After trying one, I can sometimes customize it to suit my tastes, but I can't start out winging it and end up with anything edible. Right now, I am hooked on the Saving Dinner crockpot recipes. I am trying to make another 6 week menu rotation and am trying out various crockpot things to add to it. And I taught myself to cook using the Taste of Home magazines, so I am definitely in the recipe camp.

:grouphug: Prayers for your family.

I would just like to point out that just because someone says he is Catholic does not make him an official apologist for the faith and does not make what he says the official position of the Catholic Church. I am pretty well-versed in apologetics, and I don't recognize this site or any of the names on it as being mainstream -- meaning that these people are likely Traditionalists and not in agreement with the Pope and the Magesterium anyhow. Most of the quotes I have seen on the anathema bit are from those people also. If you really want to know what the Catholic Church teaches, check the Catechism, EWTN, the actual Vatican web site, etc. Please don't use extremist positions that don't really represent the teachings of the Catholic Church as ammunition here. I do understand that this might be confusing to someone who isn't Catholic, but suffice it to say that Protestants are not the only ones who don't agree with the official teaching of the Catholic Church.

We have done the CAT tests from Seton also. They only charge $25 for the test, and the scoring comes back pretty fast. And they were wonderful over the phone answering questions too.

I know this won't completely answer you, but I just found these on the WTM site the other day, and they really helped me. If I had read the last one two years ago, I would never have left WTM and bounced around! http://www.welltrainedmind.com/O98pattern.html http://www.welltrainedmind.com/schedules.php http://www.welltrainedmind.com/multiples.php Best wishes!

Just adding in a few more: Mater Amabilis (free Charlotte Mason online curriculum; basically like Ambleside but Catholic) http://www.materamabilis.org/ History Links (Catholic unit studies approach) http://www.historylinks.info/ Hillside Education (sells CM books, language arts, literature guides) http://www.hillsideeducation.com/ Emmanuel Books (sells Mother of Divine Grace books and syllabi and has booklists for MODG) http://www.emmanuelbooks.com/

Have to agree with everyone else on here -- buy used! We have two local places that buy and sell used curriculum on consignment. The selling there isn't that great of a deal, but you can buy at a nice discount. We also have several used curriculum sales sponsored by local homeschool groups, and those are the real bargain if you can find what you are looking for. The sales are open to non-members, so contact any groups around you that are close enough to drive to and ask if they have one of these. If not, it would even be worth setting one up yourself at a park or church basement. This is where I get at least half of my stuff. I have a budget in mind and a list for each child. I buy new at the conference once a year for the things (like workbooks) that I am pretty sure I won't find used. I try to buy the absolute essentials out of our tax refund to make sure we are able to start the year. Over the summer, I check the consignment stores and used sales. There I buy ahead on things, buy things I really want to see at home, buy things that are more expensive than I want to pay new, whatever. I try to only buy things new that are workbooks or a sure bet for us and buy used for everything else. Having said all that, I am REALLY trying to reform on this. More is not better; it is just more. And you have to store it, which takes room. You can buy ahead, but there is no guarantee you will actually use any of it because kids are different, new things come out every year, and sometimes you just get bored with something and want a change. You also have to mentally deal with the stuff -- remember what you have, what you were planning to use it for, etc. It can also be a block if having it means you can't be satisfied with what you are using or if you are keeping things in your head to constantly tweak what you are doing. Good luck!

:grouphug:

Poor Latina Christiana -- popular as an unused elective here! And I am really using mine next year, but after trying for two years, who would believe me! Then there are the Artpacs, which sound like a great idea, but we open the pack, we make it to week two and we quit. And Child-Sized Masterpieces, which is now sitting on the shelf for the third time, bought for DD1 and still never used. I also have Masterpac Calculadder and Math Facts Now, still in their cases. Two speech therapy CDs, used twice and discarded. A pack of classical music CDs and a workbook, bought at conference LAST year and still not touched. I am sure there is more, but this is plenty of humiliation for now. Not enough to keep me from doing it again for this year, but plenty still.