I also really want Mysterium from this list. Reminds me a bit of Dixit mixed with Clue, and we enjoy both.

We're giving Bears Vs. Babies to DS. He has Exploding Kittens and loves it. He's also getting Harry Potter Clue since the kids have gotten into Clue lately and brought the Clue game we have at the lake home this fall - this way we can take one back to the lake. We got Oh Snap for my BFF's 9 year old daughter (both BFF and I have tiny practically non-existent families so we exchange gifts with BFF and her family). I got KingDomino for someone - not sure if it will be DD or DS. I'm hoping to get Santorini or Patchwork for myself. Our favourite game of the year is the game that I created a month ago when DD insisted we all sit down one Sunday and make our own board games. It's relatively quick (10-20 minutes), funny and requires zero strategy. All the kids that have played it (we brought it to games day for our HS group at the park) thinks it's hilarious and all the moms think it's hilarious and could completely relate to it and were happy to help make suggestions for more cards for the squares that you land on (the squares being Breakfast, Lunch, Snack, Dinner and Thanksgiving - need I say more). I always like to check out the board game recommendations at Ben and Birdy - both their current holiday gift guide and their master list of favourite board games.

We implemented the program in a similar fashion to you all the way through AAS 5 and although I had the student packets, we didn't make much use of them. The word banks were nice to use on occasion but not necessary. Some of the other things I see listed as part of the student packet I don't even recognize so I'm guessing we didn't use them! So I would say that if you are happy with how things have been going so far, you probably can use only the teacher's manual without a problem.

I disliked the Lemony Snicket books, haven't seen the movie but quite enjoyed the Netflix series. So I would choose watch for that. Would much rather read HP but am OK with the movies, although I think I feel asleep during some of them. So far this week I've managed to read three books and drain my adrenal glands. Books read: It's All Relative by A. J. Jacobs - light hearted romp through the current state of genealogy as viewed through Jacobs typical lens of experimenting with everything out there on the subject on himself whilst also having a huge project (in this case, a giant global family reunion) to tie it all together. Light and easy and made me want to get back to my genealogy work but time is not my friend right now. Finding Gobi by Dion Leonard - this was one my former book club read last month and it had sounded interesting so I decided to read it even though I'm not part of the book club any more. It's the story of an ultramarathoner who is joined by a little dog while competing in the Gobi Desert in China and then decided to bring him home to Scotland and all the difficulties that ensue after that point. As a (mostly former) runner and a rather new dog-owner, I found both the racing and the dog aspects of the story interesting and it was a super quick read that I am passing on the DH and DD. On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz - this was my Prime Number book for the bingo. It was rather disappointing because it was so uneven. I wanted her to walk around the same block with the 11 experts and see the same block through their eyes but she kept going to different places so it didn't feel as neatly tied together as I'd hoped for. Some experts (the insect guy, the urban animal guy) were more interesting than others, which led to some chapters being more interesting and cohesive than others. As far as the adrenals, so far this week: 1. I dropped my phone into a toilet (I always wondered about those people, now I know). 2. My credit card number was stolen and $2500 worth of airline tickets in South America were fraudulently charged to it. 3. The electric door locks on the car have been malfunctioning and they all locked while I was outside the car putting in gas - and the children were not, for once in their lives, in the car. Everything else was in the car - the keys, my cell phone, my wallet. 4. I spent an hour searching for the little boy across the street who had gone missing - he was supposed to be at a friend's house but had not gone there. 5. My mother had a stroke and ended up in an ambulance headed to hospital. The good news is that pretty much everything has turned out for the best it can be (phone seems to work, credit card company caught the fraud and will reverse the charges - eventually, got CAA - like AAA - to open the car but of course it could happen again, little boy was found, my mother seems to have suffered no lasting effects that they can determine right now. But my whole body is sore because it keeps on being so clenched and stressed for hours each day that my muscles literally hurt. I certainly haven't done any exercise to cause this level of soreness. I think I'm going to have a long relaxing bath and read something now.

During the two years that I wasn't working at all outside the home, I tried to maintain a schedule of 6 weeks on, 1 week off , much like 8FilltheHeart. I really liked that schedule. We also took off time to go on holidays (one month in the winter) and I tried to have the one week off coincide with things like the winter public school break and the spring public school break so that they had time to spend with their public school friends (if it didn't coincide we usually just ended up taking a day off here and there). Now that I am have been working for the last couple of years, albeit part time, we tend to take a break whenever it feels like we need one. We took a lot of time off this summer, and we usually don't. I just didn't have the energy to do much this summer. Right now we've been going pretty much daily since the start of September but it seems like one day per week is usually lost (in an academic sense) to something (park day, appointments, errands that just can't get done during the evening etc) so we are going to continue until close to Christmas and take a week off then and probably just plod on through until near the end of March when we'll probably take another week off. So, much like the public school year around here this year.

DS just turned 10 and in public school would technically be in grade 5 but would be one of the youngest grade 5s. Last year in grade 4 and this year, he probably spends about 30-45 minutes/day on math, 5 days a week. A bit extra on Fridays when we do fun math (20-30 min extra). We are doing Math Mammoth and sometimes BA. For fun, we did Life of Fred last year, The Number Devil and Penrose the Mathematical Cat this year. He has historically been very writing phobic so our goal there is slow and steady. He has progressed from a goal of just writing a few words per day (grades 1-2) to a sentence per day (grades 3-4) to this year being able to tolerate writing enough to write a paragraph. They tend to be pretty coherent paragraphs in terms of the sentence structure, organization of ideas, and spelling but need some work with regards to punctuation, capitalization and use of apostrophes in contractions. I try to have him write something every day - alternating between a Bravewriter project, Treasured Conversations (we are just finishing the this so we are in the phase of him learning to take notes, create a summary for a paragraph and then turn it into a paragraph), writing letters and freewrites. Science is dependent on me and I have to say that I am sucking at Science right now. I was trying to get to it a couple of times a week for 30-45 minutes each day and we did pretty good for a couple of months but the last month we've just been doing the basics and that has not, sadly, included Science. Hoping to get back into the swing of things in January. I work part time every morning, so it can be tough trying to fit in things in the afternoon particularly with outside afternoon activities that seem to keep cropping up (coupled with the fact that realistically by the time I get home, eat lunch and recover from my morning, it is often 2 pm and then by 4 pm I need to start worrying about dinner so that people can get going to evening activities by 5:30 pm). So that impacts our schedule as well. We'd likely be doing better at Science if I wasn't working.

Nim's Island was one that my 9 year old son read willingly. I think because it's nice and short.

Since I've noticed that I've enjoyed a lot of books you've read this year, I am going to take you on your word for this!! Bonus: the public library has both of these available. I've put them on hold so I should get them soon.

I've actually been busy at work this week (!) so I haven't had time to catch up on this thread as usual. Also less time for reading. Last week I finished three books: Hummingbirds by Joshua Gaylord - although I could appreciate the writing style at certain times, and even enjoyed a couple of pages here and there, I found the book mostly unpleasant to read given the focus on the older male teachers at a private girls prep school in NYC and their views of the teenage girls they taught/the other female teachers/other women in the book. This was one of my Shelf books and it will not be going back on the shelf. The New Morningside Papers by Peter Gzowski - Gzowski was a morning radio show host on CBC, the public radio station in Canada and he was the soundtrack of my youth as my family only listened to CBC. This is a collection of letters, poems, stories, essays etc that he read, received or wrote during the mid 1980s. It is the perfect bathroom reading material and is about as Canadian as all get out. I had the whole series of books based on his radio show that he published I've decided to read through them and then divest myself of them as I'm trying hard not to hoard too many books. At Home in the World by Tsh Oxenreider - I took this out of the library, having heard of it somewhere (here?). Did not particularly enjoy it. Found it a bit on the shallow side. Or maybe I'm just jealous - she took her family on a trip around the world for a year, which I would love to do! Anyway, not something I found particularly engaging or enlightening. I'm currently reading my Prime Number book and an A.J. Jacobs book I picked because I knew it would be mildly amusing and easy to read. If anyone has any recommendations for Steampunk books or Ancients, I'd happily hear them. Still really hoping to pull a Bingo miracle in December!

I agree with the King of Tokyo recommendation. We played it with DS starting when he was 7 or 8 and he picked up on it right away (and proceeded to win every single time I played with him).

I second the Hanna Andersson undies recommendation. We found that they lasted forever and were quite versatile in terms of sizing (I actually sold DD's HA underwear when she outgrew the first set we bought for her; we bought her a second set when she was 4 or 5 and she was still wearing them at 10). I didn't have many (maybe 6) so we also had some other brands but these were by far her favourites.

If she like Anne of GG, she should definitely try The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery. A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness (not much in the way of sex and if you stop reading after the first book of the trilogy, you'll be quite happy). Rainbow Rowell's YA books are enjoyable. Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan is pretty frothy and funny (and about to be a movie). I don't remember much in the way of sex scenes. Sci-fi but fun sci-fi: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline And I'm going to throw in Lab Girl by Hope Jahren. A memoir. She's a scientist who studies plants and who has had some wild adventures along the way.

I second Happy Salmon. We've also enjoyed Bendominoes, Spot It ( I don't think you need the Jr variety at your ages), Wildcraft, Uno, Twister, Exploding Kittens, Oh Snap, Dixit and Clue. And we have a version of Guess Who where you create a face out of a human, animal and monster and you can play with up to 4 people. They think that is hilarious.

I've just bought from Rainbow Resource because even after exchange rate and shipping it has still generally been cheaper than any Canadian supplier I've found. I usually order a bunch of stuff from RR at once but try not to get so much that I get dinged with duty (a delicate balance it seems - if it's over $200 I usually get hit but not always).

A friend's parents are downsizing and she asked me if I wanted their stand mixer. I don't think it's a super fancy/good one - it's a Sunbeam. I'm trying to decide if I want it or not. I've lived over 4 decades without one so what I need to know is the following - how will this magically change my life?

We had a real tree once - probably the first year we owned the house. I was still vacuuming up pine needles half a year later and swore never again. Also the cats really loved attacking that tree (and since we have always had between 2 and 4 cats I knew this would be a continual problem). So now - sad fake Charlie Brown tree that we got second hand from someone 19 years ago and had seen better days even then. Decorated however the kids choose so there is never any theme. Two years ago they opted to forego the lights and it was like Christmas had come early!! These days (for the last two years) I set up the tree, go for my annual haircut at the hairdresser at the end of the block and the kids decorate the tree. It's delightful. I have no idea what's on top. We don't have a star or angel. I think the kids sometimes tie a small stuffed animal to the top? Sort of like a hostage?

We got DD, who is always drawing, these Frixion Erasable Markers when she was 8 and they blew our minds. They both colour and erase so nicely and we loved the variety of colours. Her latest obsession is the Faber Castell Pitt Artist Marker sets. She has the Basic set, the Landscape set, the Terra set and several others. She loves the detail they provide. She's 11 now and got them when she was 9. Those might be good for in a couple of years for your son or if he is careful, he might enjoy them now.

We are using Quark Anatomy as part of our anatomy studies for the first half of this year, but I am supplementing A LOT. We are also using various Ellen McHenry programs, lots of books on anatomy that I already owned and from which I am creating my own assignments, Human Body Detectives for fun, and another program that I picked up at a used book sale that is geared towards classroom teaching but that I'm able to adapt for just the two of them. We are not using the notebooks for Quark - we did for Botany but I decided to skip them for Zoology and again, supplemented with a lot of other resources. My kids are 5th/6th grade this year and we are using Quark mostly because the kids are curious about what's going to happen. I could easily drop it from Anatomy and still have a solid program with the rest of the things we are using.

What a lovely story. Thanks for sharing. I got to be part of that in a small way as well when DH's grandmother was still alive. She lived to be 98, and was on her own in an apartment til the end, not even in a senior's complex. Her older sister lived to be 96 and her brother is still alive at 98+. On DH's grandmother's last trip to visit her daughter in the city where we live, her older sister (and her sister's boyfriend!) were driving across Western Canada at the same time and they all ended up here together - they were all in the late 80s/early 90s at that time. It was a lovely reunion and I got to here all sorts of terrific stories about their days growing up all the way into their 40s and 50s - stories I never would have heard otherwise if they weren't both in the same room.

Congrats to Lady Florida and Matryoshka on the Bingo Blackouts! And Happy Belated Birthday to Robin. I did enjoy seeing which of the books on the above bingo cards I had also read (one overlap with Lady Florida - The Cellist of Sarajevo - but it was a book I read about 5 years ago) and 6 overlaps with Matryoshka (3 read this year - All Our Wrong Todays, Radiance, Evicted - , although I think I'm only using two of those on my Bingo and 3 read in previous years - Homegoing, Miss Garnet's Angel and Station Eleven). I am slogging through the current books I'm reading. Two of them are shelf project books and not enjoyable as one is horrifying due to the attitudes in the Canadian publishing world in the 1950s (can you say casual sexism and racism?) and one is equally horrifying because it just seems skeevy and wrong although I do occasionally find a bit of the writing to be well done and there's enjoy of that to keep me going. The third book I'm reading is one I read about here perhaps - At Home in the World by Tsh Oxenreider - and I have to say that although it's going faster than the other two, I do feel like it's pretty light and skims the surface of a lot of things (and maybe I'm jealous that she got to travel around the world with her family for a year and my pettiness is colouring my reading of the book). I really want to get started on my Prime Number book so I need to finish one of the above as I can't handle having more than 3 books on the go at any one time.

My kids enjoyed The Little Travelers series of 5 DVDs featuring a couple of kids who traveled to Japan, Germany, The British Isles, Bali and Iran. We borrowed them from our library.

Ditto what ErinE said - I've read lots of romance and lots of sci=fi but none of these (maybe the McCafferty one way way back in the 80s, if it was even published then). Going to be checking the library to see if they have any - but they will have to wait until 2018. Need to finish the Bingo first!

The house we own had a layout remarkably like this. Stove layout exactly as you described. Fridge did not fit in kitchen and was in a different room. We lived with it for 18 years before deciding that if we were going to live in the house for another 20 years, we should probably make the kitchen experience a bit more enjoyable. We have since moved the kitchen to a completely different room thereby solving both of these problems. It was a bit annoying, but we lived with it for a long time without going crazy (I think :laugh: ). The other positives to the house sound great. I would be more concerned with the yard/neighbourhood than the kitchen layout.

For my DD who is the crafty one, something she needs (and for her, this is a real need) is always glue sticks for the glue gun and acrylic paint. She is always, always running out of those items. Aside from that, due to their ability to always lose one mitten, my kids always need an extra set of good mitts by the time Christmas rolls around (although that duplicates the something to wear I realize). They also need new skates for this year, but that might be a bit on the large side (And perhaps you don't live somewhere where skating is a thing).

My DD is similar. Honestly, for the early grades we did nothing formal for writing. She just wrote. She wrote short stories, she wrote news articles, she wrote advertisements, she wrote poems in different formats as a result of our poetry tea times and finding out about different formats. I couldn't stop her from writing. By third grade we started with formal programs but we used several - we used CAP's Writing & Rhetoric (we are still using it), we used MCT - did the whole program, the grammar, writing, poetry etc (still using that, have moved on to level 3) and starting in fourth grade we also used Bravewriter's Partnership Writing (now doing Faltering Ownership projects). Just to mix things up and because I felt it covered how to create a well-ordered paragraph and turn your point form notes into a paragraph, we also spent 6 months somewhere in grade 4 doing Treasured Conversations. I felt that the writing programs in BW and MCT allowed for her to have fun and experiment within a certain structure whereas CAP and TC offered more explicit direction in some areas that I wanted to cover. This might seem like a lot, but for her it wasn't; she has enjoyed all the different aspects we cover and still writes a lot on her own (she did NaNoWriMo last year and competed a 5000 word story and this year is aiming for a 10000 word story).