Ask on inter-library loan for "Homeschooling on a Shoestring" by Melissa Morgan. http://www.amazon.com/Homeschooling-Shoestring-Jam-packed-Melissa-Morgan/dp/087788546X/ Does she have internet access? Project Gutenberg is publishing a lot of classic books online, free access. They would be great for read-alouds or self-study for older students. http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page Also the Internet Classics Archive http://classics.mit.edu/index.html Books can be picked up for next to nothing and then swapped for ones you want on book swap sites like PaperBackSwap. http://www.paperbackswap.com/index.php?n=7&r_by=mypcmichelle%40yahoo.com There are tons of online games that reinforce concepts and give practice, or teach stories. Here are just a few: Winged Sandals http://www.abc.net.au/arts/wingedsandals/storytime/ World geography http://www.tripadvisor.com/TIQGame Math games http://www.iknowthat.com/com/L3?Area=L2_Math (Leon's Math Dojo is a hoot!) Swapping teaching subjects or just trading your time works too. A mom with littles might love to trade babysitting for phonics, or chemistry for time her kids spent learning to bake a cake or sew a straight seam with your friend. Barter is the lifeblood of homeschooling communities! You're a good friend to want to help. I applaud you!

A lot. :001_rolleyes: I don't keep track, but if I did, it would probably be alarming. Include the sports, sporting equipment, piano lessons, and what-not, and . . . hoo, boy. Expensive private school might be a bargain.

When they first came out they were so laughably bad I wondered how anyone could stand them. But even then people were getting hooked. It's addictive, especially for boys. I made a stand on the issue. No video games, no video game systems. You can play at someone else's house because that's at least somewhat social, but none at home. I allow the boys a few computer games with strict limits, so I'm obviously not as strict as I'd like. DH got DS a computer when he was 2, with Freddie the Fish. And so it goes. We don't have any special control add-ons, so I think it's likely not as exciting as the guys would wish.

I don't think loading help is part of the bargain. It's just not in their program, not on their radar, whatever you call it, it's going to be very rare, because little to no customer service is how a warehouse store is run. I think simple human kindness would have prompted someone to offer assistance, whether employee or another shopper. I'm sorry things were so rough.

Let's try this again. DS accidentally logged me off and I lost my post. Rebecca Randall of "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" - she of the intense eyes and brilliant mind. Sara Crewe of "A Little Princess" - an intense mind and florid imagination Mary Lennox of "The Secret Garden" - capable of deep concentration and friendship Kate Wetherall of "The Mysterious Benedict Society" - brave, quick, and acrobatic OK, that's all I can glean from my bookshelf at the moment. Good idea to find the heroines of our kids' literature!

I learned a lot from Andrew Pudewa's lecture "Teaching Boys and Other Children Who'd Rather Build Forts All Day" I sit with each boy and give lots of help with a lesson until he gives me the signal that he no longer needs my help. Here is the clue they give: "Mo-ooom! I can *do* this." I let them chew sugarless gum while doing math. If we could do it all over again, I'd buy a big exercise ball for my boys to sit on while doing their seatwork. Lots of work done orally rather than written. First Language Lessons, narrations, Prima Latina, all were done orally. We used a math curriculum with lots of movement, manipulatives, and games: RightStart. Plenty of what we call 'strong food' for breakfast and lunch. Short lessons. Outdoor breaks if needed, and the reward of lots of free time once lessons were done. We kept extra-curricular things to a minimum. Sports for my high-energy, social kid. Every season he's in whatever sport is available. It keeps us all sane. ;)

Adding more prayers to those already offered.

Good news, indeed. Thanks for sharing.

Around here, this is standard operating procedure. I'm always working on learning about some big concept, or preparing a lecture for a group I'm in that requires learning and researching. Several years ago, pre-kids, I did a big study of Dante's Inferno, and read three different translations, all kinds of study guides, and listened to a Teaching Company audio series on it. What fun! Then I jumped into Aquinas, but that wasn't nearly as exciting. Still, interesting. Now I'm finishing up a Teaching Company series on Aristotle's Nichomacean Ethics. Wonderful! It's never too late to learn -- that's why we live this long, eh?

Just noticed the poll, sorry I'm chiming in late. We had a huge, and I mean *huge* world map wallpapered on the long wall of our basement playroom. Ordered it from a catalog for business travelers that DH picked up from the airplane seat pocket, and had pro wallpaper-ers put it up. Looks great, and I can quickly point out locations when we're doing read-alouds in the basement, while the boys play with the Lego World we seem to be accumulating downstairs.

Amen, sister. If your voice is *that* quavery, I'm sorry, but it's time to hang up your microphone. And her show on homeschooling was beyond lame. So superficial, and dumb questions were her only contribution. She didn't give the guests enough time to really say anything substantive. Whew. I didn't realize I was holding all that in. :chillpill: OK, I'm better now. :D

Good grief. I'd be curled up under a heavy piece of furniture, too. You have sure taken on a big chunk of responsibility, and along with that comes more than a few weeks like this one. Volunteer organizations like churches should give out medals to people like you, Michelle. Call a few friends over for some tea or Mike's Hard Lemonade or head out to a watering hole. You deserve a break, honey. Edited to add: Am I the only one who thinks a message on stb-xdh's phone isn't necessarily a bad thing? The fallout from a marriage collapse hits a lot more people than just the two main parties. It might be God's way of communicating something to him.

Hooray for Schmooey! The crawling stage is supposed to be very good for all motor and brain left-right connections, so enjoy! Don't allow enthusiastic older siblings or cousins to walk Schmooey around by holding his hands. I had a girlfriend whose younger brother came to visit and taught her 9mo to walk before he learned to crawl by doing this. She could have throttled her brother! :lol:

Interesting issue. Difficult to discuss in writing rather than in person -- there are so many variables that I might not be offering ideas that are actually helpful. Let's see. Yes, I would want as much as humanly possible to tie in to the history cycle. There are so many wonderful books available for any era that you won't be forced to dumb-down your reading to match the era. I suppose the only concern is that you might miss reading special books at the age-appropriate time if you waited for the right history cycle. But hey, I read to my kids a lot of stuff that isn't part of 'schoolwork.' Nobody says a parent is to confine their read-alouds to reading lists, eh? This was the concern expressed in an article in the latest issue of "The Classical Educator" from Memoria Press, and I just don't buy it. I suppose as a school, Highlands Classical has to take responsibility for ALL age-appropriate reading, and so their students really might miss a lot of important stories. But I don't worry about that nearly as much. Tell your parents to read to their kids good books from every era as a bedtime story. :D We even tie our science in with history. We studied astronomy when we did the ancients, because the ancient civilizations all emphasized it. Then we studied anatomy, because the late medieval/renaissance world was beginning to investigate it. Then I thought we'd do chemistry, till DH put the kibosh on that by saying [quite logically, doggone it] that the children would get more out of it a bit later, and a good introduction to chemistry is a study of materials/elements. So we're reading about the beginning of chemistry and the alchemists, the early experiments that revealed the nature of elements rather than just the five Aristotelian ones. Some fun experiments, looking at rocks, that sort of thing. Not very intense, really. Lots of biographies, though. Music lends itself to an historical approach, and I bought an iPod specifically so we could listen to composers from the era we're studying without buying tons of CDs. You could begin with a bit of theory and rhythm instruments (think of Hungarian music educator Zoltan Kodaly's plans), then medieval vocal music and folk tunes, then begin a study of specific composers in the Western tradition and traditional music of other societies. If your customers have MP3 players, the whole thing would be a lot easier. I guess I don't have an opinion on whether your curriculum should include music or not, but those are my thoughts if you decide to include it. Good luck. I so enjoy putting things together for my own kids, the intellectual challenge is great fun. I hope you enjoy your much bigger project just as much.

[waving hand wildly in the air] I know! I know! Pick me! http://store.doverpublications.com/ Their history coloring books are *outstanding.*

I should be getting a referral fee from Ms. Cotter for all the RL friends I've convinced [bullied?] into using RightStart. ;) A friend said her 1st grade daughter asked to do math, said it was based on a lot of Montessori concepts & manipulatives, and incorporated insights from E. Asian math teaching. And it used games to solidify concepts rather than worksheets. I was practically sold then and there. But she suggested we caravan up to Chicago where the author (Joan Cotter) was teaching a one-day seminar on how to teach it. WOW! It was so much fun, I couldn't wait to use it. And we've been happy math learners ever since.

If you can, get a copy of Book 11 of the My Book House series, called In Shining Armor. Series editor is Olive Beaupre Miller back in 1920, reprinted many times. It has an extremely well-written short version of the Comedy. It might be a good overview before reading the real thing. And I concur with Beth in TX, the Pinsky translation is the best. And if you have time, the Teaching Company's lectures are great. I especially loved the lecturer's explanation of the punishment of the lovers in the first circle: they weren't comforted by each other's presence, that was an additional torment. And Dante's reaction of horror and pity demonstrate his disordered spiritual state. Instead of recoiling from evil, he sees it as just a minor thing, and he mistakenly sees the sinners as victims. Whereas the woman (forgot her name) still hasn't taken responsibility for her sin, claiming "Love made me do it!" And her disordered soul shows in her giving over her highest allegience (to "Love!") to a evil simulacrum of the Love that is Real. The names change, but the issues of the human heart remain the same, eh?

I'll be the lone person saying I don't think ours was worth it. But if our children were different personalities, that opinion would likely change, it just so happens my older son only likes competitive play, and imaginative games and exercise don't appeal to him. Different strokes. We bought a Rainbow floor model. I chose Rainbow because the preschool DS attended had one, engraved with the date it was donated, some 20 years previously. Well. Considering how many 4yo kids who played on it every day for 20 years, I was impressed with how solidly it was built. Fast forward a couple of years after ours was installed. A tornado ripped through our back yard and took out several mature trees (before wreaking more damage on the rest of the neighborhood) but not a bit of damage was done to our playset. Nada. I didn't get a canopy because I thought they were too gaudy for our little backyard, and we let ours weather to a lovely gray that blends in better than stained cedar would. Our younger DS still plays on the playset when his friends come over, so we're still getting some use out of it, but it is a pain to mow around, let me tell ya. But I anticipate getting at least $500 out of it when it comes time to sell.

How could I have not noticed that Memoria Press has online Henle Latin courses? Woohoo!!!:thumbup: I was so afraid we were going to be done with Latin before DS1 even became minimally functional. He is a tough cookie to teach, but an online class will be right up his alley, because it will be taking the Magistra role off of me and turning it over to someone else. He tends to balk at mom as Magistra. Now I can focus on teaching DS2 Latina Christiana I; much easier when you've done it once before. Yippee!

An album: "Songs From the Big Chair" by Tears for Fears.

Just finished "The Lightning Thief" by Rick Riordan, recommended by the good folk of this board as a good read for my 11yo DS. I had to check it out first, ya know. ;) Listening to "Crocodile on the Sandbank" by Elizabeth Peters, same source, thank you very much. Slowly working my way through a lot of other non-fiction. I keep 11 or 12 going at once, so I can have just the thing to fit my mood. For example: 1) "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" by Max Weber -- surprisingly readable, and similar in tone to a lot of recent books like "Culture Matters" by Lawrence Harrison and "Human Accomplishment" by Charles Murray. 2) "The Story of the Bahamas" by Paul Albury. We visited the Bahamas a few years ago where I started this book, and recently decided to finish it. Did you know the first settlers to have a government were Puritans who formed the first republic in the New World, and forbad religious persecution? What kind of puritans were these??? 3) "Stiff" by Mary Roach 4) "Letters to a Young Conservative" by Dinesh D'Souza

I'm jealous of such tiny aspects of people's lives that they sound silly when I put them into actual coherent thoughts, much less type them out. I'm jealous of people who have engaged, loving parents. Well, I had an engaged, loving mom for an entire lucky childhood and part of my adulthood; I can truly say I appreciated her while I had her. My dad loves me, but he's a perfect example of an absent-minded professor, and forgets about anyone's existence unless they're standing in front of him. See? This gets me impatient with myself when I have twinges of jealousy reading about involved and loving grandparents for their children. I'm jealous of fit, trim women who aren't in pain from short runs, and who don't get heatstroke if they try to exercise outdoors when the temps are over 68 degrees. But my physical condition is my own choice, eh? Lifting too many cookies, and not enough weights! I'm jealous of women with husbands who treat them as if they *like* them. I know mine loves me, but he frequently acts as if he doesn't actually like me. I spent years walking on eggshells around him not to make things worse. He's getting better, really better. But golly, those 20 years aren't going to come back. But when I compare notes with other women about husbands, I don't think I could stand to deal with theirs, yk? :lol: The list of things I'm thankful for is so much more substantive and real. I'm happy to be a SAHM with money worries that I can leave to DH to handle. And he does. Not in the way I would, but I gave up trying to ride every horse in the corral. His way works, so that's good enough. I'm grateful for children I like to be around. The hard work of early childhood is beginning to bear fruit. It's great fun, and you get to enjoy life twice by seeing everything through their eyes as well. I'm grateful for the mind and leisure to dip into the writings of the world's great minds. SWB, for example. ;)

I rush to see if they have any Teaching Company materials. I nabbed some economic tapes and history ones at the last museum booksale. (That's our local big booksale.) These are for me, and as far as I'm concerned they are gold, so everything else is an extra. :) I would go to children's next, but if I were done with that, I'd zoom to history. I'd scan for classic titles, then eras we're going to study soon, and finally go general, looking for things we might be re-studying later. Everything else I'd take at a leisurely pace.