Our district starts Aug. 19. I think they start back on Thursday and Fridays to give the kids a day or two to get back in the routine before a full week. We're schooling year-round, so we've already got 1/5 of third grade done :D The downside is that I've run out of pre-prepped material, so I've got some work to be doing!

After quite a few rough days, ds and I had a really really good homeschool day today. It ended with "art" and he asked if I would teach him to crochet, so we ran out, bought some yarn, and he managed a chain stitch long enough to make a jump-rope. It's too light to spin effectively, but he's still thrilled. And we met with his allergist yesterday and HE DOESN'T NEED SHOTS yet. We're going to continue to watch for a couple of months. The @#$&% nurse who did the second skin test said, "You'll have to keep him in a bubble. He's allergic to everything and will probably be started on 3 shots." I've been gearing up for waiting in an office 2x a week for 30 min after getting shots - and now I've got a ton of free time since we don't need to. :D

:iagree:

We just got an iPad and it's pretty cool, but I'm still coveting the Kindle. We had a reason to get the iPad quickly (okay, it was a rationalization) and we'll get a lot of use out of it. Go to a Barnes & Noble and check out the Nook. I had been pretty anti-Kindle until I saw a friend's. The e-ink does make a significant difference. If you don't like reading on the computer, WAIT on the iPad. When it goes to 2nd or 3rd generation, prices will likely be lower, bugs will be worked out, and there likely will be more features as well. The Kindle is getting cheaper now, so I'd go with one of them and then see how much you use it, then consider the iPad sometime next year.

On Writing is excellent. It's been a while since I read it, but the first half gives some of his history with writing. The second half gives more of a tool-kit for what makes writing good and mentions things a writer should do. It does not contain any writing exercises and isn't a curriculum or really a "how to" book. It is one of my favorite books though on how a writer actually writes. You may want to check it out from the library. Another good one is Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott.

Unfortunately the original CWPs are out of print now :( This is what is replacing them. I haven't seen them (and haven't seen a thread where anyone has used them and made a comparison to the older series). There is a series of books available that is called Singapore Challenging Word Problems and is by Frank Shaeffer publishing. From what I've read, you would not want them. Hope this helps - and maybe someone who's used the newer books will reply as well! The link is to the Singapore site. I've had good experiences ordering there (some books have been cheaper than at Rainbow) and you can also read their forums and get advice there too.

AAS helped us with this. I also told my son that if he was struggling with a word, I'd help him with it, but if he just made wild guesses, I'd get angry. It took us about a year but the wild guesses have stopped. Although yesterday I had him reading a postcard written in my mother's cursive and I was encouraging him to make educated guesses. I do see his point when an "n" does look like an "x" :)

We had someone down the block HOWLING last night from 11 - 11:30. Sigh. I think it was our former next door neighbors visiting siblings. At least they did leave, so it's better than when the dog cried outside all night. Hope things settle down with your nitwit neighbors as well.

Yeah, that'd be strange generally. Here, many classes are already filled for fall, so if she hasn't registered already, she'll probably be wanting to follow up (couple of phone calls). It can be tricky getting in touch with the correct person on occasion as well. Hope it goes well. I think our testing center gives the placement test as just a walk-in; that generally gets students placed correctly for math and English courses. If a student feels misplaced in class the first couple of days we give exemption tests so a student can move up if they were incorrectly placed.

When ds had his anaphylactic reaction to cashews, he had hives that were incredibly itchy at first (although IV Benadryl makes that stop), but it then took 3 days for the discoloration to go away. So it may be possible that they were hives that now just are taking time to heal. I'd be sure you carry an Epi-pen though. Latex allergies can be really bad.

Most community colleges don't look at transcripts unless a student is trying to transfer credits to them. I know at ours, you don't even need a high school diploma or GED to take classes - just register, take the placement test and get advised.

Completely uneducational, but Plants vs Zombies is a fun game. When playing Angry Birds on my father's iPad, ds talked about where the bird should land on the structure to collapse it. "It's like the keystone of the arch." :lol: Ah the places you see that he's learning from homeschool!

I'd LOVE to have someone clean the house. I generally wait long enough and dh gets annoyed and takes care of it. :001_smile: The dust bothers him more than it bothers me! He hired someone to do the lawn the past two summers. It bothers his allergies and after wincing at the cost, I agreed. On the plus side, we don't have the dandelion lawn anymore!

The Planet Earth videos on Discovery have a different narrator than the DVDs. Some states can get Discovery Streaming for free. We are one of them (yea) through our PBS stations, so you may want to check if it's free in your state before purchasing. We use Netflix so much more than Discovery - although I do get some good video clips through them.

Someone's giving out gold stars?? I want one!!! In some ways I think ds and I might have a better relationship if we weren't homeschooling, but I'm pretty certain dh and I would have a tougher time if I weren't. We did have a good day today though, so that was nice.

Calvin was what got my son to read as well. :D If you haven't already used it, Foxtrot is a big hit here too! I think he was 6. I claim no credit for his learning - he basically is self-taught. Complete (and I mean fits & all) refusal for anything resembling his reading or attempting to read, and then when he wanted to read Calvin & Hobbes, he picked it up. All About Spelling has really helped us get the phonics in that he refused to get initially!

Barnes & Noble is doing a few of their "classic" series for free each Friday through their ap. Yes, they're available through Gutenberg as well, but it's neat getting these editions for free.

Generally the day goes poorly for me after that :( However, deep breathing or meditation for about 5 minutes can help. Or do a bit of quick exercise (Wii Fit here!). Hope your day improves!

The discussions on the yahoo group have been really great too. It's neat hearing people discuss their viewpoints on specific grammar issues :) You may want to read over the past couple days of posts as well. Enjoy the curriculum! Glad you had a good experience at the conference (and sounds like MCT will be speaking at Greenville in March!).

Present.

It depends on the person, but for some of us, yes :) However, since homeschooling, I'm spending a lot less on the new gizmos and a lot more on new programs. Now if it's a new poster or someone whose only posts are "Yes" and "I agree" to ancient threads, you've got a spammer. I am grateful for the posts and experience people provide here. We switched to AAS and MCT due to posts here and they're much better fits for us than what we'd been using. I don't worry whether people are paid for recommendations or not; I go based on what I hear about a curriculum, specifics about what worked & what didn't, and I also do look at whether a poster's prior recommendations work well with what works for us. So I really do appreciate the signatures where people say what they're using, and that's why I added mine.

I like the TM. It gives websites for extra investigation. Some of the sites don't work, but some have been useful. The TM has "notes to the teacher" that gives a bit more depth of an overview of the topic. It has teaching directions for each topic with material to use to introduce the topic and teaching suggestions. It has the text with wrap-around, including answers to the questions posted in the text, common misconceptions (really basic so far and that's not been of use), and additional information for advanced students (we've been reading these - some interesting stuff). They also have the activity book and answers. It was frustrating with the material they suggest and say, "You can get this from the supply closet." No I can't! :001_smile: Using the TM has not been open & go for me, unfortunately, but I am glad I got it. If I hadn't, I probably would have been really disappointed with the curriculum because the books are just so tiny.

The TM order is: Diversity, Cycles, Systems, Interactions, Energy. Diversity & Cycles is Gr 3. Systems, Interactions, Energy is Gr 4. We're about 1/4 through Diversity & I can see how Cycles will use what is learned in Diversity, so I'll follow their schedule.

I might give one final warning, then box/bag up everything that's out. If they start looking for their things, you might let them go through the bag at that point. If it continues (you picking up their stuff), then you stop letting them go through the bag until some pre-arranged point (like on the weekend or on a certain day of the month).

It was funny that I was looking in the guide as ds was commenting that asking whether the number ended in 5 was a dumb question :D Thanks for the viewpoints. Sue just guessing and getting the answer makes sense, but then I'd think they shouldn't have left the blank for the student to fill in since both answers would be correct. Glad we're not the only ones to have trouble with this sheet. Ds wanted to play the game on our own, so we did that some during lunch.