:iagree: Congratulations!

Soon after we got married, my folks gave us a car when we were moving cross-country. We picked it up in Kansas & my husband had 2 days to learn how to drive stick shift (small sporty car). The day after that he drove it into St. Louis and then the following day into Chicago. He also drove it into Atlanta during a torrential downpour. After that trip, he had no problems in normal traffic with the stick :)

Ceiling fans make you feel cooler. They don't keep the house cooler. So you should only have ceiling fans on when you're in the room. Right now we've got our AC at 83 (and it's running!) but I feel relatively comfortable being under a ceiling fan (I've got a breeze!).

I'll be approaching 50. I may go back to work full-time (teaching at a community college) or may continue to stay home. It'll depend on finances and how much aid ds gets for college :)

I don't think that there's enough practice even with the textbook and workbook. For some topics, it's fine, but for others (basic arithmetic) you'll likely want to do a lot of supplementation (drill).

For feeling cool, put a cold wet washcloth on the back of your neck. Keep your hair wet and use a regular fan to blow on you - make your own ac that way :)

You can find some starting ideas at Carolina Homeschooler. Boards aren't used much. I find it pretty easy to homeschool here. You'd want to use Option 2 (through SCAIHS - more expensive) or Option 3 (independent groups with different requirements) to homeschool. There are more support groups/coops if you're conservative/religious than if you're secular. Around Columbia, there are monthly classes at the Columbia Museum of Art for homeschoolers. Riverbanks zoo has a monthly class and has started behind the scenes tours for homeschoolers (we'll be seeing the penguins & get to pet one this Friday!) The State Museum has monthly classes. Through ETV, you get a free subscription to Discovery Streaming Plus, so that's nice. (That's true anywhere in the state.) In the Columbia area, if you live in Richland county, you have access to an amazing library: Richland County Public Library. If you're in Lexington County, you can pay an annual fee to have access to RCPL :)

I just took a look on my account and I have access to the Liberty's Kids videos on my Discovery Streaming account. Maybe there was a glitch yesterday?

:iagree: We had a problem with it as well. We worked with base 10 blocks when visualizing (and discussed money). When ds would get a problem wrong, I'd have him show me with the base 10 blocks. He hated it :confused:, but it helped him see what was going on. I think the inclusion of mental math techniques caused us some problems as well. Ds made some big mistakes with subtraction for a while, but I think we've got it straightened out now. For the "skills" in Singapore, I have the IP, EP, and CWP books, but I still don't think that's enough practice on the "basics" (like addition/subtraction). We've got the Spectrum books and I use pages as needed (and from other workbooks) to keep practicing those topics (carrying/borrowing/multi-digit addition, multiplication facts). When you hit that wall, just keep practicing. We also continued to review the addition/subtraction even when we moved on to the next topics in the text. We just also did a page of addition or subtraction problems as well. Hang in there!

Nifty. Passed it along to dh. It'll be up to him if he wants to tell ds about it :)

I've been using Advil Allergy (since Drixoral isn't sold in the states anymore... grrr). Think I may be hitting the hot toddy later this evening. It's miserable, isn't it? I ended our school day by watching On the Town and argued it as "cultural history" :D

Some other boards have banner ads at the top of the forums. It gives money to pay for server space but isn't too annoying (and really annoying ads - animated - are generally reported and removed). That's one possibility. Another board has an annual pledge drive where members pay through paypal and donate for the upkeep. It's kept anonymous. Only happens once a year and is only open for 1-2 weeks. That also seems to work. I've made changes to the curriculum I use and have been more effective at teaching my son thanks to these boards. I'd hate to see them closed, but I'd also hate to see them unavailable or with less posters.

Friday!! :party: Assuming we manage to get our work done each day this week. Fingers crossed! We'll take May off and start back up in June (year-round). But boy are we both looking forward to May!

We are using the Weekly Reader Map Skills for Today books. They're easy to use.

I doubt it would work, but it may be worth checking and seeing if there's any sort of warranty on the tv or if it was bought with a credit card if there's any extra insurance through it. I'm glad we have an older tv that's got a pretty solid glass screen, but we're still really careful with those straps! I imagine your daughter feels pretty sad. I know I felt horrible when I broke our vacuum when I was about 12. I never once heard, "I told you so" from my folks and that helped me a lot. :grouphug:

I hear it as two syllables but my pronunciation is the same as on dictionary.com. I see that you can't split the word between the o and i, so I see why it has to be listed as one syllable, but I do "hear" the two... Although AAS mentions one approach for determining syllables as how many times your jaw drops when saying a word, and if I put my hand under my chin, I can say "boil" with only hitting my hand once (down for the "oi", up for the "l").

Writing with Ease

I have heard of students at my community college who can't read a standard (analog) clock. It made me realize how many digital clocks are around us and how few standard clocks. So I got a standard clock for the living room and unplugged a couple of digital clocks. By looking at a real clock and reading it regularly, my son was able to tell time (although we did have a few problems where he'd run to the kitchen to read the digital time off the stove). So that may be worth doing more "real world" time reading. I've also started with Writing with Ease and I think it'll help my son with being able to retell information. If you aren't using it, you may want to take a look at it too.

Thanks. I enjoyed the article. Where to go from there is really the question. I'm sure working at that with my son - trying to figure out when to push, how to encourage, and what to provide. Where's my user's manual for him? ;)

Thanks. Our son is so excited at the idea of being able to eat dairy. If it works, it'll open up a lot to us. His dairy allergy was pretty severe as an infant (enough to get prescribed the Epis). When we were able to add in soy it helped a lot. He loves the soy ice cream bars. Cherrybrook Kitchen mixes were the first taste he had of chocolate. We did their brownie and chocolate chip cookie mixes. Then I started seeing the Enjoy Life products. Their chocolate bars taste pretty good. We did a taste test last year for homeschool with senses and I got one of their chocolate bars. It was wonderful to watch him really enjoy it (first ever chocolate bar). The Enjoy Life website talks about their products and history too. We haven't had any problems with their foods & I've never seen recalls through the FAAN email list on their products. I've actually got about a dozen bags of the chocolate chips in my kitchen now... did the amazon order. I really should bake cookies soon :D

My son has a dairy allergy, but he hasn't had anaphylaxis to dairy. He has to cashews though (and I was so thankful for the dairy allergy and the epi-pen or the cashew reaction probably would have been fatal). I have trusted the Enjoy Life brand. We have used their chocolate chips and chocolate bars :) The chips are more like mini chips instead of large chips. Still really good though! (We should be doing a dairy challenge to see if he's outgrown that allergy this summer. Fingers crossed! But I imagine with the nut allergy we'll stay with the Enjoy Life chips regardless.)

G is for Googol is good. It may give some ideas for projects as well.

I used the 2nd grade text this year - some. The instructor's guide did have a LOT more information. It has answers to all the text questions. It's a wrap-around format, so it has the student text in the center, then notes to instructors around the edges. The thing I liked most was that the instructor edition has additional writing prompts and suggestions for program implementation. It had rubrics at the back for grading with samples of good and poor essays. It was definitely too much for ds's age and it was also clearly designed for classroom use. I felt that the instructor's edition did add to the program though and if I were using it again, I probably would get it. But money isn't terribly tight right now. If it were, I'd have to really think before buying the instructor manual. (Moving to MCT next year and really excited about it!)

I generally do the text and workbook. We'll do drill from other books (Spectrum) as needed and some drill/review on arithmetic facts as needed. We'll finish a topic in the text/WB, then do problems from Intensive Practice, while doing the Extra Practice as a review (far far easier) at the same time. So generally when we're doing the IP, we've finished that topic in the text/WB and are just working it in IP; although sometimes we'll do the IP work at the same time as workbook work. We do move quickly through the text/WB to have time just working on the IP though.

I imagine you'll get some replies from people who are nurses in a bit. My experience is with teaching math at a cc with many hopeful nursing students trying to get into the programs. Nursing programs are packed with students who want to become nurses. When looking at a program, ask specifically about the pass rate of students on the nursing exams. If you go through a program but can't pass the nursing exam, you're still not a nurse. The two schools I've taught at have wait lists for the nursing programs. I see a lot of students who want to be nurses but who won't even make it into the programs. Check out the prerequisite courses that are needed before the nursing degree. At my school, that's math (now through statistics), English, science (anatomy/physiology - another major weed-out course) and one or two other classes. Taking the prereq courses while homeschooling should be doable. But you may want to go slowly. I'm teaching 2 courses two nights a week, and I'm really really really looking forward to taking the summer off and having some free time. I have needed those other 2 nights of not teaching to get my work done. Once you're in the nursing program, you probably would need to be only taking those courses - or if you're still homeschooling, be aware that you would have no free time during that time. But for many students, given the waitlist, once they decide they want to get into a nursing program, they still have 2-3 years (!) before they start taking their nursing classes. Hope this gives some ideas... and if not, at least it'll give you a bump :) Good luck!