My kids are loving using Timez Attack, the addition game, to get their addition facts memorized. I used xtramath.com for a whole year, and while they made progress, it wasnt nearly as good as timez attack. I bought a three month subscription and it took a week for my second grader to memorize all the addition facts. It adjusts to how fast your kid types, and works on little groups of facts at a time. It's the only video game my kids have ever played, and they love it.

Yes, food trucks (they're referred to as "Lunch Wagons" or "Roach Coaches") are very common here (California) and have been for a looooong time. My parents met getting lunch at one. They typically were used to serve lunch to blue collar workers but it seems they've become popular with foodies. I can tell there is construction going on nearby if I hear the musical horn of a lunch wagon, announcing its arrival for lunch.

My 9 year old also loves language and is studying Spanish, latin, and koine greek. She does about 15 minutes of each, four times a week and has only mixed them up once on accident. She was so proud of herself because she wrote a whole story in Spanish in her free time. The only problem was that we hadn't studied verb conjugations in Spanish, and she used Latin present tense verb endings on all the Spanish verbs. She didn't even realize she mixed the languages until I mentioned it. Haha we study spanish as a family, including th tots. We watch Salsa, go through GSWS, I can read and Speak Spanish, Duo Lingo, etc. I will start them in a Spanish textbook in 5th grade. I start them in Latin using GSWL at age 8 (with no writing as Ruth said above) and then Lively Latin at age 9. We start Elementary Greek when they're at least half way through GSWL. But they work on the Greek alphabet for a couple of years before that (hey andrew).

The survey is very poorly designed. You can tell most of the questions were chosen to get specific results in the end. A lot of it didn't apply to those homeschooled prior to the 90s. (I didn't have unlimited access to the internet as a kid BECAUSE NOBODY DID, not because my parents were afraid of it!) Also, it only asked about my CURRENT employment. I'm a homeschool mom right now, but in the past I had quite a nice career. But that isn't reflected on the survey. I can just see the results now..... "We proved it! The results show many homeschool graduates can't get a lucrative career...."

For us, our morning meeting includes everything I want to do on a daily basis that can be done as a group for all the kids at once. History, science, art, logic, etc. can be done as a group, but I only teach that once a week, so we don't include it in our morning time. So what's left after morning time: language arts, math, greek and latin, and an hour of something else, like history, science, crafts, grocery shopping. Morning meeting doesn't add to my day. For me it's just the time when all the kids are together for stuff that I want to get covered every day. (Bible reading, hymn singing/memorization, group prayer, poetry memorization, scripture memorization, skip counting, GSWS spanish lesson, catechism, pledge or national anthem, creed recitation, etc.)

Which text exactly? Signs and Seasons, or the MP Book of Astronomy? I'm currently using Signs and Seasons with all my kids as a read-aloud. We covered BFSU 1 previously so they already had some idea of the concepts. There's a lot in Signs and Seasons that is way over their heads, but the illustrations are good and they do pick up quite a bit. I have to learn it myself so that I can talk about the concepts when we go out into the "real world" and look at the sky together. I have found it very valuable and fun. I plan on repeating it in a few years (I have some younger kids coming up the pipeline). The MP Book of Astronomy is a great overview of the constellations and stars, and the workbook activities are great -- they get to draw the constellations and copy the lists of stars. So all that to say, that yes, Signs and Seasons is challenging for second and third grade (more like jr. high level), but we still get a lot out of it to make it worth it for us. Since I know we'll do it again, I don't mind if they miss stuff. But your situation may be different.

I like the Kumon workbooks. I help them with the first couple of pages, and then they do the rest mostly independently.

My fourth grader: 1 hour, circle time with siblings -- poetry, Bible, hymns, catechism, Getting Started with Spanish, etc. 1 hour, Language Arts -- Climbing to Good English, Sentence Composing for Elementary School, Building Spelling Skills, 5 minutes cursive (Spencerian workbook) 1 hour, Math -- Timez Attack, Primary Mathematics (Singapore) 1 hour once a week: Story of the World history lesson 1 hour once a week: R.E.A.L. Science Od. or BFSU 2 30 minutes - Duo Lingo Spanish or watching Spanish TV 30 minutes - Elementary Greek 30 minutes - Livey Latin 30 minutes - exercising 15 minutes - piano practice 2 hours once a week -- arts and crafts 1 hour once a week -- health, nutrition, cooking 1 hour once a week -- astronomy It comes out to about 6 hours a day. We do most of the daily subjects four days a week and then the content stuff on Fridays (generally)

Yes.... "Unless" I've been in the homeschool community in California for 30 years and never met anyone who had to answer to anyone -- school district, truancy officer, or otherwise. Not that you don't want to have your bases covered, but you don't have to live in fear, either.

Filing a PSA is simply telling the state that you are a private school, not that your kids are enrolled in the school. The form asks how many people are in each grade, but it actually doesn't mean that it is proof that the kids are enrolled there. All private schools send in PSAs in October, but they enroll or un-enroll kids at any time. We don't have to prove that our kids are enrolled anywhere until we are being investigated for educational neglect or truancy.

1, no 2, N/A (I marked "other")

#6 - WTM forum

I chose "other" because I use multiple educational philosophies -- and different kinds of materials for each subject, too. So we take a C.M. approach to language arts and use workbooks for geography, and more of a classical approach for history. Textbooks for math, but not for reading, for example.

from what I understand, adults are usually the ones who develop oral allergies like that, and avocado is a common oral allergy. I have a kid that has an oral allergy to raw figs, but not cooked ones. It can be linked to latex allergies, so you may want to watch for that, too.

My kids definitely don't sit still the whole hour we do our Morning Time. I break every 5 to 10 minutes with something physical. Sometimes they run laps around the front yard, or do jumping jacks, or sing a motion song, etc. That's in addition to their other periods of exercise during the day. I chose what to cover during our Morning Time based on what was important to our family that we can do together and wasn't going to get done otherwise. I'd like to cover other stuff like Shakespeare or composers or art, but I can't do everything, and we always have next year to do something different!

We've been doing our version of Morning Time for quite a while, although I recently became discouraged because it was frequently falling by the wayside. A couple of weeks ago I happened on Cindy Rollin's posts and boy, were they a breath of fresh air. The best tip I got from her blog was that Morning Time can start at ANY time. I had it scheduled for the first thing we do in the morning, and because of our family dynamics (mostly because of two toddlers) it wouldn't happen and then I would skip it. Now, I get the older kids started on their math drills or independent work while I take care of the crazy home stuff, and when I am able to, I say, "Time for Morning Time!" and we do it, then get back to our other school work afterward. We are all HORRIBLE singers, too. But we still work on memorizing a hymn each month, one new verse a week. I use YouTube videos projected on the TV for us to sing along with. Nearly all the good old hymns have a version on YouTube that includes lyrics and is easy to sing along with. I intersperse each thing with a physical exercise like jumping jacks or a kid's song like Father Abraham for the little ones to benefit from. 1. Prayer, where we take turns going through the A.C.T.S. prayer model. (Confession to God and each other really helps their attitude throughout the day). 2. Pledge of Allegiance (sometimes the national anthem, too) 3. Apostle's Creed 4. Catechism memorization 5. Hymn of the month (we sing it three times with YouTube) 6. Poem (I read it three times for them to memorize) 7. Bible memory verses for Sunday School program 8. Bible reading 9. Spanish lesson from GSWS 10. Skip counting (for memorizing multiplication facts later) 11. Benediction 12. Closing song on YouTube. (My kids like "You Shall Go Out with Joy")

After mulling it over half the night, I think I'm going to use color-coding stickers to label according the category, and THEN move the books around. I think it will be doable.

My husband and I are both long-time bibliophiles. We must have at least a thousand books in our tiny house. Many are antiques or out of print and we're not interested in significantly downsizing our collection. They are all over our house. We have shelves EVERYWHERE except the bathroom and kitchen. I really want to sort them into categories so we can find what we want. When we moved into our current house, my husband put them onto shelves by SIZE! (Makes no sense to me!) Anyway, I don't have a lot of big time chunks to do book sorting as one big project. Has anyone ever sorted out a home library system or know a way I could do such a thing 15 minutes at a time? I don't even know what categories to use. I'd really like to have a lot of hese books available to my kids, too. But that won't work right now because I can't even remember what all I have!

Wow, I live in one of one of the most ethnically diverse areas in the US, and it is very common to hear AAs call each other the N-word, women call each other the B-word, and Mexicans call each other cholos. (which used to be very derogatory) And whites will sometimes call themselves crackers. But someone who is not AA can't say the N-word, a man can't say the B-word, etc. The racist jokes I have heard have always been by people making fun of their OWN culture or race. It's really not that big of a deal unless you start getting up into the college-educated white-collar crowd, who are more politically correct and don't use a lot of slang in general.

I have 2 yr old twins and one only naps 2 or 3 times a week, but the other naps every day. I put the napper down in their room and then I take the other one into my room. I lie with her and if she fals asleep, great, if not, I pull out something "special" for her to do so I can get some stuff done and she won't wake her brother up. (Coloring, playdough, puzzles, etc.)

You can still read the 1984 NIV here. Otherwise, I like the ESV and a lot of people seem to be slowly moving to that version since the revision of the NIV.

I got a paper copy, just because I like to be able to highlight main points in the lesson plan so i can glance at it while I'm teaching from it. But other than that, I can't think of a reason it wouldn't work just as well as an e-book.

I got a paper copy, just because I like to be able to highlight main points in the lesson plan so i can glance at it while I'm teaching from it. But other than that, I can't think of a reason it wouldn't work just as well as an e-book.

Maybe these previous threads will be helpful to you: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/508265-has-anyone-finished-hey-andrew/?hl=%2Bhey+%2Bandrew+%2Bgreek#entry5539790 http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/486368-hey-andrewgreek-for-childrenelementary-greek-which-one-and-why/?hl=+&do=findComment&comment=5165729 http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/322822-greek-for-children-vs-elementary-greek/?hl=+&do=findComment&comment=3367785

I used this: Right Start Abacus I love it! I let them use it for most of the math in 1A-1B until they had their facts memorized. And we use it in 2A for learning place value and borrowing/carrying. One side of it has columns for 100s, 10s, and 1s, when you hold it sideways. I also used it to teach long division. I like how the kids can visualize the number without having to count because of the groups of 5s and 10s. Also, I like that it is self-contained and doesn't have a lot of little pieces that can get lost. It comes with instructions on how to use it properly. I think it's a great supplement to Singapore math.