If I had to pick just one, I'd go with Little House on the Prairie, or one in that series ... or the whole series :) If I couldn't pick those ... maybe The Witch of Blackbird Pond. Island of the Blue Dolphins. Bridge to Terabithia. A Wrinkle in Time. Sarah, Plain and Tall. Hatchet (actually set in the Canadian wilderness, but it's an American author, Gary Paulsen). Julie of the Wolves.

For protein in pancakes, add whey protein powder. My husband occasionally gets a hankering for pancakes, and we've discovered that adding some vanilla protein powder adds a really nice flavor. The recipe we use is here: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Good-Old-Fashioned-Pancakes/Detail.aspx . We just add a scoop or so of protein powder ... I think my husband has developed some kind of formula (add this much protein, decrease flour to this, etc), but I don't know his formula, and I do know that the first couple of times we did it, we just added protein and it turned out well. Protein powder may even be a good temporary solution to get the protein intake up while you work on the other things--add to milk for chocolate or vanilla milk, for example. Half a scoop is enough to meet my daughter's protein needs for a full day. We try not to give it to her too often, since she does eat meats and such, but she sees her daddy drinking it and wants some too.

Check out this webpage: http://www.hsperson.com/ . You sound exactly like how she classifies a "highly sensitive person," and she has written a book about it, as well as another book about parenting a highly sensitive child. You also can sign up for a free newsletter with interesting articles about highly sensitive people.

I'm concerned about a lack of books as well. We speak English and smatterings of other languages, but really, only English. When we start this curriculum, we will have just arrived in Athens, Greece, after spending the summer in the US, after having spent two years in Prishtina, Kosovo (where we are now). I'm in the very early phases of trying to learn Greek, but there's no way we'll be able to use Greek resources in school, and I don't know yet if there is an English-language library with educational kids books to which I'll have access. Our current plan is to do as much planning as possible for kindergarten before the end of this year--early next year will be consumed with getting ready to leave here. Then, next summer in the States, I'll have all my records from this year's planning, and I'll (hopefully) be able to go to a homeschool convention and lay hands on the curricula I'm leaning toward, visit libraries to preview books in various subjects, and make final decisions about what to buy and bring with us to Greece. I will have access to US mail once we're there, so I'll be able to order more later if needed, but ... it's going to get awfully expensive, buying everything if there's no library we can use. <sigh> Off to finish reading responses ...

And if you do it for more than a single session, how do you extend it? BFSU is the only science curriculum that my husband and I agree on--we both think its organization provides the best conceptual understanding of science (even though we'd be willing to go with a boxed curriculum instead, we can't agree on which one, so BFSU it is ... we think it's better anyway, just not as easy), and we want to use it with our daughter, beginning in fall 2015 when she's ready for kindergarten. I haven't ordered the book yet, but I have looked at the intro materials that are available for free with Amazon Kindle's preview program, and I've looked over the sample lesson available on Dr. Nebel's website. I'm running into two problems, the second related to the first. The first problem is that I have to prep the lessons, materials, schedule, etc. all on my own--I see that the book has a good lesson outline, but this is no boxed science curriculum. I'm pretty sure I can handle it except for one aspect of it: the first book is supposed to be a curriculum for grades K-2, but in order for it to last that long, I'd need to do something like one lesson every three to four weeks--and the book's lesson plan wouldn't take anywhere near that long! So I assume that most of you who start at K and don't need to "catch up" supplement rather heavily. What do you supplement with? How do you pick resources? How do you NOT finish the K-2 book in 1 or 1.5 years? Thanks for any advice and encouragement you can provide! (I am already a part of the yahoo group, but it seems like most of the people there are concerned with "how quickly can I go through this to catch up," not "how do you make it last 3 years?")

Assuming your husband is an introvert, I can sympathize with him. My husband likes to have people over (friends; we don't live near family), and even when it's people I enjoy, I find myself thinking, "What? You want them to come over again?! We just had people over!" ... and then I realize that we "just" had people over a month ago ... Try to find out what the problem is--does he want the time with just you and the kids, in which case you should try to interact with your parents when he can't be there anyway? Does he just feel drained by having people over, in which case you can see them whenever but if he's home, plan to meet them elsewhere? For example, one of my main reasons for not wanting people to come over is that if people are coming over, I feel like the house has to be extra clean, so I wear myself out getting the house ready and the meal/snacks ready, and then as an introvert, even if I enjoy their company, it's exhausting to interact with them anyway, so one visit may exhaust me so much that I take 2 weeks to recover; if I had people coming over every 2 weeks, I'd be constantly stressed and exhausted and miserable. It's just not worth it unless it's a special occasion or people I really and truly enjoy. What works for us is to get together outside of our house more frequently--it only takes me a day to recover from that :) --and only have people over every month or two. In any case, I think you need to talk with you husband to figure out exactly what the problem is and work to find a solution that will work for the whole family.

Are you a member of HSLDA? If so, I'd ask for advice from them. My inclination would be to tell them that I will follow the laws and that's it--just be certain of what the law says first. If they require more than the law allows them to require, they'd have to put that in writing so I could get legal advice before I acquiesced.

Congratulations! That will be a fascinating place to live.

Charlie's Soap. Despite the name, it is detergent, not soap, and it's available in powder. Only one tablespoon per load, too, but works well. (I used cold water on clothes before moving here, now use warm because there's often too much chlorine in the water and warm prevents the fading for some reason. It always worked fine in cold water, though sometimes if the towels get an odor, I'll run them through on hot.)

I also prefer to give explanations to my little one, about to turn 4. I've found, though, that explanations given beforehand may or may not help her understand what behavior is appropriate. I still tell her beforehand what to do and why, when I know an unfamiliar situation is coming up. During the actual situation when she behaves inappropriately, I correct it like the poster above suggested--a sharp "no," and removal from the situation if necessary. Then, once we're out of the situation, I get on her level, look her in the eye, and go over what just happened. "Do you know why we had to leave the show? It's because you were moving around and distracting people, and that's not ok. I'm not mad at you, but I can't let you do things that are rude, so we had to leave." Then before we go into another similar situation, I first ask her if she wants to do it (not always because she has a choice, but so I know how to approach it), then remind her of appropriate behaviors and what happened last time when she didn't behave appropriately (if she wants to be there--if she doesn't, I try not to remind her how to get out of it; I switch to a more bribery-oriented tactic of "if you behave appropriately here, then we can stop at the park on the way home/read an extra book/spend extra time doing something you like/in an extreme case get ice cream after").

I'd get her to the vet ASAP.

He's a mathematician. He always notices numbers! :001_rolleyes:

I'm not sure if they receive a message or not, but I do recall one of my acquaintances posted something on his timeline once along the lines of "Noticed I'm down one friend. Didn't they know they could just unfollow me?" So, I don't know if this person would notice you unfriending her or not. If you're annoyed by the things she posts and don't really care if she sees your information, I'd just unfollow her, so nothing from her will show up in your page. If you don't want her seeing what you post, the easiest thing would be to unfriend her, though I guess you could go through the effort of creating customized "who can see this" lists that exclude her, then remembering to apply that setting to everything you post. I usually just unfollow people I find annoying, though if it's really bad, I'll unfriend.

BookShark is the new, secular version of Sonlight. I know from the SL forums that at least a few SL users are switching to it (while making fun of its unfortunate acronym, BS) so that they can get SL without the Bible and LA components. It is something I would consider using for book suggestions, though the reasons I'm switching away from using primarily SL also apply to BS. Apparently when they removed some of the missionary stories to make it secular, they replaced them with some good secular literature, so there are a few good BS books that SL doesn't have.

I've looked at MFW's website several times. Each and every time, I think it looks absolutely wonderful, a great program ... and somehow not right for us. I cannot for the life of me put my finger on why, but every time I think about ordering a package from them, I feel a check in my spirit that it just isn't right for us. I am beginning to find some individual subject curricula that I think will work well for us, though. For at least the elementary years, I expect I'll be buying not one big, multisubject box curriculum, but a bunch of smaller, specific-subject boxed curriculums--SOTW + activity book for history (though I'm looking hard at a K-level American history for a foundation since my daughter isn't exposed to all the American traditions in daily life), a science boxed set, math, etc. It'll take some work to decide on the literature/extra reading I want to buy, but if I get my main stuff early enough, I should have time to look through it and order appropriate supplementals ... I hope ...

I would make him say it correctly. It is said incorrectly by most people, but that doesn't make it correct. It's easier to learn it correctly than to change it later.

I would not go against my conscience as a gift. I would do one of two things: (1) If I knew of another charitable organization that they support and that I could support in good faith, I would give a donation to that organization in the couple's name. No explanation is necessary unless the couple requests it. (2) If I did not know of such an organization, or if I did not want to give, or if for some reason it was difficult to do so, I would take them at their word that it's perfectly acceptable not to.

Score! Thanks for sharing.

If you like coffee with cream/milk and sugar/sweetener, use it a tablespoon or so at at time in your coffee. SOOO good!

We haven't started formal science yet (we're doing SL P4/5 for preK right now), so there's nothing I can recommend based on having used it. But a couple of days ago, I saw on someone's blog--linked to here on the WTM forums--that she uses Elemental Science as part of her fairly strict classical-WTM homeschool. I started looking at it and it looks really great! They have a couple of different programs to choose from, one of which is the classical series. It follows the WTM progression, but the packages are labeled as "grammar," "logic," and "rhetoric" levels, rather than grade levels, so I would think they'd be good for students in any grade of those levels. I'm looking hard at using one of their 2 preschool science programs for K next year, then starting their classical series. I have to discuss it with my husband (far and away the most sciency person in our family), but that's what I'm leaning toward at this point.

I'm currently using P4/5 with LA K, after having just finished P3/4. The Developing the Early Learner workbooks are consumable and are worth the price, in my opinion. Also worth it to me is the optional, consumable Get Ready/Get Set/Go for the Code workbooks--and you do need the teacher's manual for some of the pages in those. And I like HWOT, though we're using the PreK set right now instead of the K set that a lot of people use with P4/5 and LA K. Other than the workbooks, it's mostly a book list with scheduled readings, and a few optional activities with some readings. We're following the schedule on a weekly basis (I bookmark all the readings for the week, then choose 1-3 to do each day so that by the end of the week, we've done all the assigned readings except for the ones I decided were still too advanced for my daughter--like Ungle Wiggily and Milly Molly Mandy, which I think she'll love several months from now), but I know lots of people just pick one book, read through it, then move on to the next book. The books are not correlated to each other, the seat work, or the time of year, so you can use them however you like. You could save a lot of money by buying the IG from SL and the consumable workbooks and associated teacher's manuals from wherever you can get the best price. Then, for the read alouds, you could check them out from your library and read a whole book rather than spread over several weeks, or buy them used, or however you would like to do it to save money. If I had easy access to a library, I'd probably check them out, and the order in which we read them would be determined partly by when I could get them at the library! I'd only buy our favorites--at this point, only to week 5 so we haven't even read anything from most of the books, I'd say that The Lion Storyteller Bedtime Book is a definite favorite that we'd probably buy.

Yeah, I think if I had a resume, I'd probably go back 10-15 years on employment history if I'd been at each place for a long time (so not too many employers to list). Since your current goes back that far, I'd list just that and be done with it. I wouldn't list the work study on the resume, just on the application where they ask. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you'd get the job _just_ because of a friendship. What I meant was that if you don't promote yourself enough to be sure to be the best qualified, the HR director may not have a choice but to hire whoever is best qualified, and you want to go to whatever lengths are required to make certain you don't give the impression that you expect to be hired no matter who else applies. It certainly does help that you know him in a professional capacity and that he's familiar with your work. Good luck with the application! :)

I wouldn't go back farther than your current employment, since you've been there so long. However, if the application asks if you've "ever" worked for an institution of higher learning,I would list the work study. It's probably overkill and not something they really care about, but I used to be a background investigator for security clearances, so my default is "ever" means "ever," and if something else was meant, they'd have said so our they should have said so. (The forms we used asked about some things for the last 3 years, some for the last 7, some for 10, and others for ever.) If a time isn't specified, then 7 or 10 years, or going back to college graduation if it wasn't that long ago, is sufficient, but if they put a time frame on it,I go with what they say. It shows attention to detail if nothing else. I'd put estimated dates, though, and indicate they were estimated, rather than trying to get exact dates for that long ago. And I would act like the HR director never said that. You need to be the most qualified applicant, or close enough, because otherwise they could be forced to hire someone else, especially if they take federal funding or if it looks like you're not taking it seriously and assuming you have the job because you're friends.

Have you looked at Elemental Science? I haven't used it--I just saw it on a blog yesterday, linked to from a thread here at WTM, but it looks really good, and they sell supply kits, at least in the classical series. The more I'm looking at it, the more excited I'm getting. https://www.elementalscience.com/

I just checked out your blog and oh my word, I am so excited about the Elemental Science and History suggestions you have for kindergarten! I haven't seen those options before, and the sample pages look so GOOD and the curriculum is so INEXPENSIVE! I am in awe and definitely will be checking out your other curriculum suggestions. Quick question, if you have time and feel that it wouldn't be too derailing to the thread--if my daughter's PreK (ages about-to-turn-4 to just-a-few-months-shy-of-5; already started in an attempt to finish up before a big move next May) science consists of simply reading books (Berenstain Bears Big Book of Science & Nature, plus some other smaller, more topical books), would you recommend doing K with Elemental's Exploring Science or Intro to Science? Or does it just depend on the child's maturity level? If I go with Elemental, I'll want to start biology in 1st, so I'm wondering if it would be problematic to skip from Exploring straight to Bio, or if Intro would work well for a child who hasn't done Exploring. Thanks! Now I'm off to look at your blog some more ...