ooh - I like Jennuine. :)

This is really cool! I love that it isn't tech heavy. Not everyone has devices (me!) or is willing to give their children a lot of screen time in the name of education (also me!). I don't mind purchasing curriculum, but there are quite a few folks out there that can't afford to do so.

I didn't read all of the comments, but I wanted to come in and say that I just pulled my oldest out of montessori for both financial and academic reasons. I agree with a PP that montessori has diminishing returns, especially for a child that doesn't have a very strong sense of self motivation. At some point, academics is WORK and things need to be a bit more formal. K and first are wonderful and second is probably great for most kids too. But after that, bad habits that went unnoticed by the teacher get cemented in, and in the case of my DS, I think he had pretty much "hacked" his teacher by the end of his second year with her (lower elementary). I always loved the idea of having the same teacher year after year, understanding that the teacher would be able to know the child more deeply - but I was surprised to realize that goes both ways! LOL! Pros and cons I saw at my montessori: Pros - math (oh my - I am amazed at the solid grasp DS has on place value, and how addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and fractions are interrelated), interesting and engaging science, geography, respect for a work plan (this is BIG for me - it's made the idea of homeschooling DS seem attainable), and of course the ability to work at one's own pace. Cons - no attentive teaching of handwriting (we are currently remediating his pencil grip and working on proper formation of letters), too much emphasis on writing stories, etc. before any concrete instruction of proper sentence and paragraph structure. Too little correction of said writing. Too much opportunity to hoodwink the teacher into thinking he did/read more than he actually did. EXPENSIVE. I'm glad I had DS at this school overall. There is some catching up to do, but they got me through the hardest years of dealing with a temperament I don't handle well, and the learning environment was right for him. I would have never been able to teach math like they did (which I regret for my HS kindergartner!). I honestly think that because DS is familiar with a work plan, we have been able to make a fairly painless transition to HS. If it was free, I'd be tempted. But I don't think that they'd do a better job than you. A different one, with different strengths and weakness, but likely not better. :)

Another late talker here that we can't get to shut up now. My first child was only saying a few words at three (with a decent amount of signing), and almost all of his "words" had multiple uses (ie shoes and train were the same word as were water and music). Only DH and I could figure out what he was saying. However, he knew and could say all of the letter sounds before two, so we tried not to worry. I finally got him evaluated at four by the school, who told me that since his social skills, motor skills and letter sounds seemed fine, he should be okay and didn't need therapy, just time. Apparently it's not that uncommon in boys! I suspect the baby signing helped to delay him, so I was afraid to do that with my other two. Do have him evaluated. It will set your mind at ease, and if they do find something, you'll be glad you did it.

To use up your stash of sour cream, you could make a swedish/russian creme for dessert. Look for one with whole milk and not heavy cream. You'll need plain gelatin. Delicious! PS - I'm sure this is more fun for us than you. :/

Also, I think I'd be spending all of my cash on cheese, onions, a ham hock for bean soup and frozen veggies.

One dozen eggs is going to disappear pretty quickly with your family size. I wouldn't use them to make your bread into bread pudding or french toast or the like. They use quite a few eggs and you wont have enough left over to make your mixes. I'd definitely use a few to make GF rice pudding for breakfast (we eat it cold). I think that will get all or most of your kids to consume some of the whole milk. Try making a dressing out of the bread and use some of your seasonings for that with some crumbled corn muffins for dressing for the GF child. Cook your chicken in the crockpot to go with your dressing, but only put out as much of it as you want to be consumed for that meal. Then throw the bones and skin back in with more water for broth. You can do this!

The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum

I believe I'm seeing this in my DS too. I too find it shocking since I'm a morning person. But then we are polar opposites in just about every way, so why not this? LOL I do wonder if it has something to do with going out. We are out at the Y around lunch time 3 days out of 5, and he seems more in the frame of mind to do schoolwork after this. Not sure. I'm watching for a continuing trend...<shrug>

Thanks for these suggestions! I'm looking at Real Science Odyssey right now and I can get a pdf of the first unit to try out.

So we've been using Elemental Science chemistry for over 2 weeks now and I'm pretty much hating it. It's terribly disjointed and set up in a very boring, tedious way. It's a little too much writing and hunting for pages for my third grader. He asked specifically to do chemistry this year, and I loved the idea of Elemental Science, but now that we are working with it, I feel it's just not well executed. I don't like having to find the answers for him because they aren't obvious in the reading, which I'm having to do. I feel he's learning nothing but to lose interest in science!! Can you suggest something for an 8 year old very interested in chemistry, but not with the writing and study skills needed for Elemental? More open and go? I don't mind experiments, especially if I can buy a supply kit to go with the curriculum. Newby here! Please be kind and don't abbreviate.

My thoughts exactly. If the car was off and window was down, why not just strike up a conversation with her? Most elderly love to chat. Then If it was taking a little longer for the person in the store to come back than you were comfortable with, you'd have built enough rapport to be able to ask the lady if you could go in and find her caretaker. Explaining to her that you are worried she's getting too hot.

This is my first year and I am feeling the same way about the SOTW2 activity guide. We are doing the map work and I'm having him write out one of the "narration exercises" for writing practice. I've noticed that there are plenty of blogs out there with corresponding literature lists, so I think I won't buy an activity book again. You all have made me feel better about not doing silly activities. I'm thinking about dropping asking the review questions in favor of just an oral narration.

Thank you to both. I think we are okay after all. I told him to think of this method as cracking a code before I left him with the babysitter this morning. He did all of the work himself without her help. It was all in the marketing. ;) It's odd, I'd never laid eyes on this until MiF. I just thought that's how one did sums/differences in their head. You add(subtract) the tens to(from) the original and then the ones. Never in my life had I seen a visual of it - but kind of cool that it can be diagrammed.

I don't know how good my 10-12 year old filter is, but I think Merlin would be enjoyable for them. It's clean, it doesn't really follow the King Arthur legends. Instead, it takes the characters and goes from there.

Hi all. I just have a quick question about my third grader's math. We are using Math in Focus 3A (and I had him go through 2B this summer just to review and see if he had any holes where MiF covered something in 2 that his school hadn't covered). Today we came across the number bonds again. I just sort of breezed past them in the 2B workbook, because ds is very good at doing addition and subtraction in his head and the number bond thing seemed a little insulting. But now we have it again. I've gone through and explained how it works, albeit clumsily because I never had this in math. It seems to really confuse him on something that he already knows how to do. To be honest, I think it might actually be how he's figuring out the answers in his head though he can't articulate it. Pretty sure he's not carrying. My question: is it essential that I have him master this? If I don't will it bite him later? Thanks!

Hi! I'm Rachel, and I've been homeschooling my kindergartener and third grader for a whopping four days now. :) I've been lurking here for quite a while trying to glean some good, useful information - which I've found! I decided to finally come out of the shadows because I have questions....