I use MyDays on my Android device--I don't know if it's available for Apple devices. It was free. It has a small ad across the bottom of the screen, but it isn't at all obtrusive. You can track when your period starts and stops, when you have TeA, that you took your pill if you're on BC, and you also can track your BMT and add a note to each day. It predicts when your period will start again and also when you'll ovulate. I like it.

From the description, I thought no way. Then I looked at the picture. It looks nice. I'd do it.

I took the quiz twice--once answering according to my honest opinions, and once trying to answer based as much as possible on what I believe SWB seems to indicate in TWTM. Of course, I had to infer and guess on some of them, but I tried to put on my "hardline classical" hat when taking the quiz the second time. :) The first time, my scores were as follows: Score for Charlotte Mason Education: 20 Score for Waldorf Education: 0 Score for Traditional Education: 3 Score for Unit Studies Education: 9 Score for Montessori Education: 11 Score for Thomas Jefferson Education: -2 Score for Unschooling: 4 Score for Classical Education: 19 I think this is fairly accurate for me. I do consider myself more of a WTM classical than CM, but I also recognize that there don't seem to be a whole lot of important differences between the two. They seem to agree on the things I find most important. When I took the quiz the second time, trying to channel my inner Classical Educator (yes, those capital letters are deliberate ;) ), these were my scores: Score for Charlotte Mason Education: 20 Score for Waldorf Education: 2 Score for Traditional Education: 0 Score for Unit Studies Education: 12 Score for Montessori Education: 7 Score for Thomas Jefferson Education: 5 Score for Unschooling: 2 Score for Classical Education: 25 Again, I think fairly accurate for what I was aiming for.

What is your favorite resource or tool for teaching calendar skills? Once we start K in the fall, I intend to have a "morning time" that includes calendar work. I plan to incorporate learning days of the week, months of the year, and seasons. We'll talk about today's day and date, what yesterday was, and what tomorrow will be. I'd also like to include a discussion of what season it is, what the weather was like the day before and how closely it matched the prediction, and what the predicted weather for today is. (I wouldn't be surprised if we drop the weather stuff--we'll be living in a location where the weather isn't all that variable.) I've looked at the teaching calendars available on Amazon, and there are SO many options! I'm not quite sure where to start. Can you help me narrow it down?

:grouphug: I'm so sorry it's a difficult and lonely time. Thank you for the sacrifices that you and your family are making.

True. I was responding based on the assumption that the OP wouldn't be asking this question if she didn't believe that she should tithe and if she isn't in the habit of tithing. I doubt this question would even occur to someone who didn't currently support the church financially, unless she was in an early phase of attending the church and was withholding tithes pending a judgment of whether or not she would continue attending.

I agree with Starr. I've always understood that the tithe is meant to go to the local church that the believer attends, and gifts to other ministries are optional offerings separate from the tithe--or at the very least, if you give part of your tithe to other entities, you give the majority of it to the church you attend in order to help with the expenses of the services and ministries the church provides. The worker deserves his wages, and in this case, the church is the worker. If you don't want to support the church financially, you really should find a different church.

My daughter will turn 5 in July. We'll probably start K in September or so, once we're semi-settled into our new home (arriving mid-August). Phonics/Handwriting/Language Arts: LOE Foundations, possibly omitting that handwriting and adding HWOT K since she loved the preK so much; also continuing to let her do Reading Eggs and read with me from Progressive Phonics readers as desired Math: Singapore Essentials, or possibly Earlybird; also continuing to let her do Math Seeds (from Reading Eggs) as desired *Science: gently beginning BFSU, with a few demonstrations, discussions, and lots of living books *History and Literature: mostly read alouds, with hands-on projects as desired, pulled from SOTW1+activity guide, TOG Y1, and selections from Sonlight's Cores P3/4 and P4/5 (will be repeats) and from Cores A and B (just a couple from these, as most are a little advanced for her) Art: ARTistic Pursuits preK Music: Calvert's Discoveries in Music (not attempting to do it all, as some of it will be a little advanced for her, so we'll either drag it out over 2 years or repeat it next year) Health: debating here ... I had decided on Horizons Health K, but lately I'm wondering if it would be more useful to go through a few workbooks in this series: http://smile.amazon.com/dp/1572246103/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=17HLNUMN105X&coliid=I1N8IQ3GUZL42N . The problem is that most of them are designed for kids a few years older than her, so while I think the topics of the workbooks would be more relevant than a general health course, I'm not sure I could modify them to be on the level she would need. Physical Education: lots of walks, some children's yoga games, weekly playgroups at the park, and possibly have the Horizons Physical Education curriculum available for backup ideas. I'm also hoping to get her involved in a dance class or swim lessons, but I doubt that will happen until next spring--my shy and anxious girl will need some time to feel comfortable in our new environment before she's ready to be in a class setting. "Morning Time": memorize basic information like Mama and Daddy's new mobile phone numbers (she already knows our address--no matter where we live, it's "The American Embassy" when strangers ask her), days of the week, months of the year, number of seconds in a minute, etc; also do some calendar familiarization that will incorporate days/months, seasons, and weather. * Most of the science, literature, and history readings will go into a book basket, and I'll let her choose a book from the book basket for me to read to her at various times throughout each day. My loose plan is to do one project a week, alternating history and science, in addition to the art project. My daughter loves projects and I ... don't ... so those may drop in frequency.

Bookshark is basically a secularized version of Sonlight, from what I understand.

My hands-down favorite was the transatlantic Disney Cruise. We did the westbound, offered in or around September of every year. The ship wasn't as full as it usually is, because it's a longer cruise that happens just after school starts back, so usually all the cabins are booked, but they're not filled to capacity like they're likely to be during the high season. It was expensive, but nowhere near as expensive as you would expect for a 14-night cruise. I think the 14-night off season cruise cost about 10% more than a 5- or 7-night, peak season cruise, though we did have to add in about $1000/person for one-way airfare. For us, it was the perfect blend of traveling and seeing new places (ports of call) and just relaxing. My favorite part was the 5 straight days at sea as we crossed the Atlantic. Service was excellent, the ship was beautiful, the food was delicious. The cast and crew were excellent with the kids, and there was plenty for them to do, but also plenty for adults to do with or without kids. The ports in Europe were interesting. The ports once we hit the Caribbean were not as interesting, but if you enjoy beach activities, they'd be great. (We prefer sightseeing over hanging out at the beach.) Many people combine the transatlantic with a week or so vacation in Europe, making it a 3+ week dream vacation. My next dream cruise is the eastbound transatlantic. Next year, the ports of call are Boston, one in Nova Scotia, Dublin, Liverpool, and ending in Dover--all much more interesting to me than the Caribbean ports. There also are Northern European and Norwegian fjords ones that would be utterly amazing. Those are all more expensive because of the port fees, though, and due to the timing of them, I'd expect the ship to be more full. Disney also does a long Panama Canal cruise, which I'd love to do when my daughter is older, timing it so that we study the construction of the Panama Canal just before we do it. And of course, Disney also does the shorter cruises--Alaska, Hawaii, Caribbean, and Mediterranean ones. My second favorite vacation was the Nile cruise we went on with Abercrombie & Kent when we lived in Egypt. It wasn't too expensive for us, but it would have been if we'd had to pay the non-resident prices. I think it was a 5-night cruise, maybe a 4-night, and we visited lots of amazing sites in Upper Egypt. I enjoy cruises because the planning is very simple, and once you're there, everything is taken care of for you. Because of that, a cruise is a true vacation for every member of the family. When I was a kid, I loved going to the rented house on the beach with my friend's family, but as an adult, I see now how much work that was for the women of the family, who still had to cook and clean. That's not a vacation I would enjoy as much as the responsible adult, kwim? I also do enjoy vacations that are more active, but in our family, we call those expeditions. A vacation involves time for relaxing; an expedition is a trip to see the sites and/or do other active things most of the time. Vacations may involve some periods of activity, and expeditions may involve some periods of relaxation, but the overall tone of the trip tends to be one or the other. My husband and I had to come up with the distinction after we got married, once we realized that we had fundamentally different ideas of what a vacation was. Once we defined our terms so we both were expecting the same things from our trips, we both enjoyed them more. So we had a great expedition to Siem Reap, in Cambodia, to see several of the ancient temples of Angkor Wat--we loved it, but it wasn't very relaxing.

We have a dedicated GPS with European maps, because our mobile phones lose reception at the border of the non-EU country in which we live. However, we've also experimented with a few free GPS apps while in the United States. Overall we prefer the GPS unit because the interface is easier and it has the screen that is easily visible to the driver--we can't guarantee that the rental car will have a screen the phone can send to, and it's easier for him to glance over and see what's coming than for me to describe what I'm seeing on the phone screen for tricky upcoming turns. For short trips to the US in areas that we're generally familiar with but where we may need directions to just a few locations, we're ok with using the apps. For a longer trip to the US which will involve a road trip to a destination with which we're totally unfamiliar, we're seriously considering buying the US maps to load onto our Garmin and take it with us. What's the return window for your new GPS, and how often do you use a GPS? If possible, I'd leave it in the box and try out an app or two in whatever context you usually would use the GPS. Then decide if the app does well enough to make you comfortable returning the GPS.

following ... planning to start my K'er in Singapore in the fall and wondering if I should reevaluate ...

I don't know the word for it, but I'd love to know it if you figure it out. I remember, after being evacuated from Egypt during the first of their recent revolutions, yelling at the TV because the talking heads were talking about what some celebrity wore or something. Didn't they know that my husband was still in Egypt, that many of my friends were still in Egypt, that my daughter and I were stuck in my mom's house in a small town where no one understood anything about what was happening, and what I really wanted was just to go home but since I couldn't do that, the very least the news could do was talk about it? Didn't they understand that nothing else mattered, that this was big enough and would affect the world enough that they should be obsessing over it just like I was? I forgave them a little when the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear-reactor-meltdown issue happened in Japan and then at least even if they weren't talking about Egypt, they were talking about something that mattered ... but I still couldn't shake the feeling that they should be talking about Egypt, too. Egypt and Japan--nothing else mattered. And I could barely tolerate the well-meaning folks in my hometown who said how glad I must be to be home and then believed my "must be strong and brave" persona when I told them that I wasn't worried about my husband, because he was in the embassy with a bunch of Marines. Yeah, I'd say alienation is a large part of it.

It wouldn't bother me at all, but then, when I correspond with people in regard to activities with which I'd like to get involved, we almost always end up with a group copied on the email--it's almost certain that one will be going out of town, but will copy someone else on the email so that the process of getting involved can continue, or one won't have an answer so it'll be copied to someone who does, etc. Anything that I'm not ok with sharing with the world (or at least with everyone involved in that activity) doesn't get mentioned in those emails. If they then happen to get forwarded to the one person in all of creation that I'd rather not have that information (and there usually is someone, no matter how innocuous the information may be), because I didn't think about the possibility of that one person being involved in the activity, I groan and move on. If I shared something and later realized I didn't want it forwarded, I would start a new conversation rather than replying, or reply without quoting the conversation, in order to get it off the email chain going forward. OP, I LOVE your username, btw :D

I often rely on physical cues to tell me that I need to take a look at my life, see what's stressing me out, and deal with it. My most common, most easily noticed, and usually most severe symptom is fatigue--often, but not always, wanting to do nothing all day but sleep (but staying awake anyway, not actually napping), but then insomnia at night. Or, even if I sleep well at night, when I'm stressed, I still feel exhausted all day. Mindless eating--I find myself standing in the kitchen looking for something to eat without being hungry and without even consciously realizing I was headed there. Tension in my shoulders and back, often leading to pain. I think my daughter feels stress physically as well. We've been separated from my husband quite a bit lately (she and I went to my mom's for almost 3 weeks to help after a medical emergency, whereas my husband had to stay at home to work; two weeks after we returned, he had to leave for a conference). My daughter says she's fine, but within a week of being separated from her daddy the first time, and the first day she was separated from him the second time, she started talking about feeling "knots" in various places on her body. She would say she was ready to get out of bed, or go into a different room, or eat lunch, but the knot in her stomach or throat or bottom hurt so badly she couldn't move. My husband told me that it sounds similar to stress-related problems he experienced as a child. She also seems more tired than usual, so I'm thinking she got the worst from both of us.

Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood and Curious George are both big hits around here. Some seasons of CG are on Amazon Prime. I don't recall if Daniel Tiger is or not. Blue's Clues, Dora the Explorer, and Go Diego Go at least used to be on Prime. (We mostly use Netflix, so I'm not sure what's still on Prime.) If any of the Leapfrog videos are on Prime, those also would be great choices.

The trick I've learned to wear ponytails with my very fine hair is to make it a loose ponytail. I usually put my hair up, then pull the band away from my head just a little. And I use ponytail holders made for preschoolers--otherwise I have to wrap the darn thing around 10 times and make it so tight I get a headache, or it slips out. For other hair accessories, the key to avoiding a headache is to avoid the ones with teeth that are meant to dig into the hair. Those teeth dig into my scalp because I don't have enough hair. Occasionally I can find small ones, meant for kids, where the teeth connect sideways, so it lays flat on my head instead of having the teeth dig in. For very fine hair that's too short for a ponytail ... well, what I do with my daughter's hair is let it go. We brush it morning, evening, and before we leave the house. Otherwise, we just let it stay tangled. My hair pick does better at getting tangles out without hurting too badly than either a brush or (heaven forbid!) a regular comb. I often use the hair pick first to work out the big ones, then a detangling brush for the smaller ones that the pick misses ... if I don't just let those go.

I do it too :)

I heard from the non-accredited school again, and they do not intend to pursue accreditation. Their rep said that they'd talked to several international schools and that they were told that most would admit and place students on the basis of test scores alone. However, I'm not sure to what degree that would hold true in a culture that is anti-homeschooling. There is no doubt that we will homeschool for K next year. My daughter is socially anxious (anxious in general, actually, and particularly upset if she has to be separated from both me and my husband), and even b&m school in an English-speaking country would be very stressful for her right now. A situation where she was away from us and couldn't understand those around her absolutely would not work out well. We don't see that changing before fall. We'd like to homeschool long term, but we just don't want to put ourselves in the position where we feel like we have no choice if it doesn't work out. We've been exploring social opportunities already, and I think we'll be ok there. I'm hopeful that after we've settled in a bit, we'll be able to enroll her in a group class--she's indicated interest in ballet, and I would like for her to take swim lessons. We also will seek out a church where she may have some exposure to Greek children, but I'm not sure since we'll need to have English translation at a minimum, and I'm not sure how many Greeks we can expect in a non-Orthodox church anyway. I need to discuss this decision with my husband, but I think he'll prefer the accredited school. Because there isn't too much difference between the two schools other than that, it kind of makes sense to get that extra detail, kwim? That's what we'll probably do--thank you all for helping me hash it out so I can have it straight in my mind when we discuss it!

We'll be in Greece. Our legal status there--again, because of my husband's job--is that we're among the few who are legally allowed to homeschool. So I'm not concerned about the local law other than how it reflects and affects the local population's attitudes toward homeschooling. If we try homeschooling for K or for K and 1st, and then decide that it really isn't working for us, our options will be (1) continue homeschooling anyway; (2) put our daughter in the local public schools, which by most accounts are not good and in which instruction will be in Greek, which we do not currently speak and in which we are unlikely to become fluent--so not really an option--or (3) put her in a private international school there. My concern with option #3 is that because homeschooling is so uncommon and presumably frowned-upon there, the admissions officials at the international schools will not look favorably upon a homeschool transcript. Unlike public schools, they would not be required to admit her, and if they did admit her but chose not to accept the work she'd already done, they could place her in a lower grade than we believe appropriate. I'm thinking that a transcript from an accredited school, even if the actual instruction was done at home, would help in that situation. (And it really isn't a stretch to think that private international schools wouldn't accept her--I know of at least one family, in a different country, that ended up involuntarily homeschooling because the international school wouldn't accept their student, and local schools were very bad.) I think the answer for us is becoming apparent as I type. Apparently I'm leaning toward the accredited school as an insurance policy in case we discover that homeschooling is not for us after all. I know it wouldn't be a problem once we come back to the States, but we know we'll be in Greece for 3 years, and we don't know if we'll be back in the States or somewhere else after that. I worry that we'll begin homeschooling, discover that it's not for us, and then be stuck with the choice of continue homeschooling overseas even though it isn't working or come back to the US to find a school that will accept our daughter at the appropriate level. (I'm a worrier by nature ...) I like the non-accredited school better in some ways, but that's mostly a gut-level thing. On paper, the two are very similar other than accreditation. Sigh. It looks like I'll be ignoring my gut on this one, unless the non-accredited school replies to my inquiry and tells me that they're in process of becoming accredited.

The cover school will be doing most of the interaction with my husband's employer, who has a financial role in our home school. In order to benefit from their financial role, we have to interact with them to some degree, but the regulations are capricious enough that we'd rather go through a cover school. The only concern with accreditation that I can think of for these younger grades will occur if we decide that homeschooling isn't a good fit for us. I'm not sure if using an accredited cover school would help us in enrolling her in a private school, especially if we're still in an area where homeschooling isn't common or well-regarded or even legal for most people (as we will be for grades K-2, without a public school option there). I doubt it would be a problem if we were back in the US, but we know we won't be for grades K-2, and we aren't sure where we'll be after that. I'm wondering if others have experience with this or similar situations, or if there are other concerns that we should consider.

Our goal in purchasing insurance on my husband was to replace his income--have enough life insurance money that it could be invested, and the interest would replace his income indefinitely. We didn't quite make it because the prices are so high, but we came close, and we know that if anything happens to my husband, I'll move to be nearer our extended family, and the cost of living is lower there. Our goal in purchasing insurance on me in the past was to enable my husband to hire a housekeeper and keep working--any kind of emotional upset sends him right to work, so we expected that he would work long hours in the aftermath of losing me. We haven't adjust that amount since our daughter's birth because, where we live, a full-time nanny/housekeeper costs the same as just a housekeeper. However, we may need to look at increasing it so he could take some time off work to help our daughter through losing me and to provide for a private school if he decided to move back to the United States.

My husband and I have decided to enroll our daughter in a cover/umbrella school. The school we choose will allow us to choose all of our own curriculum. We are considering 2 different schools. I'm still waiting on answers to my questions from one of them, and those answers will play a role in our decision. However, the main difference that I see at this point is that one is accredited through AdvancED/Northwest Accreditation Commission and the other is not accredited. I'm not certain how important it is--or even if it is important--at this stage for any cover school we use to be accredited, or if AdvancED/Northwest is recognized and/or respected enough for any accreditation it to matter one way or the other. What do you think--would you consider accreditation when making this decision, why or why not, and if you would consider it, how important would it be to you? For background: my daughter will be in K in the fall. We intend to homeschool her for at least the next 3 years, though we are open to re-evaluating that decision if necessary. We will be outside of the US from grades K-2, so if we put her in school during those years, it will be a private international school that may or may not have strict admissions criteria. After grade 2, we may still be overseas, so that we'd prefer to homeschool, with a private international school as the only other option. If we go back to the US after grade 2, we would prefer homeschool or private school, but if homeschooling doesn't work for us, then financial considerations may push us toward public school anyway. We're nowhere near being concerned about high school or college yet, and we can switch cover schools if we need to when we do get to that point, if we're still homeschooling.

No way is it common sense! I will be forever grateful to my 10th grade English teacher, known throughout the school as the Comma Queen. I thought I understood commas before that year, but I was wrong. I had as much understanding of commas as common sense and extensive reading can get you, keeping in mind that not all authors use commas correctly, so you can't always intuit correct rules just from reading. After that year, however, I knew my comma rules backward and forward. (I can't still tell you all the rules and the correct names for different kinds of clauses and such, but I still use commas correctly, and I'm almost always right when I look one up.) When I was in college, my English Composition professor put two sentences on the board the first day of class. He asked us to tell him what the two sentences told us about Mary's family and how the sentences conveyed that information: Mary and her brother John went to the store.* Mary and her brother, John, went to the store.* Most people said something along the lines of "Mary has a brother named John." ... "No, we don't know if she has any other brothers; the sentences don't say one way or the other." Many tried to say that one sentence or the other was incorrect. I was the only one in a composition class at a small, private, selective, liberal arts college who could tell the professor that Mary in the first sentence has more than one brother, and Mary in the second sentence has only one.** My classmates were flabbergasted by how I knew that. It takes instruction to learn comma rules, especially the ones that seem arbitrary unless you know either the rule or the context. *I don't recall the exact sentences, but they were illustrations of this comma rule. **For those who've said they aren't great with comma rules: The commas around the name "John" in the second sentence indicate that you can understand the sentence just fine without the name--if you're talking about Mary's brother, you're talking about John; she only has one, so there's no need to indicate which one. The name "John" is extra, unnecessary information and should be set off by commas. The absence of commas in the first sentence means that the word "John" is crucial to understanding the sentence--Mary has more than one brother, and you don't know to whom the sentence is referring if you leave out his name.

:iagree: Absolutely!