Well, things stayed status quo with me over the weekend. I spent some time feeling sorry for myself and I spent some time trying to distract myself and just focus on the kids I DO have and staying positive that I will be able to conceive again and that I just have to get through this and so on. Today I would be 5 weeks pregnant. I went for the ultrasound but because it is still so early and my HCG levels so low it was still hard for them to rule anything in or out definitively with regard to an ectopic pregnancy (even though they didn't see anything that might indicate it IS ectopic). They drew blood one more time (one of my arms is so bruised from all the recent bloodwork so I made them use the other) so that they can check the HCG levels one last time. They should call me sometime this afternoon with those results. At this point, we already know it's not a viable pregnancy, they just want to try to determine whether it's ectopic. If the levels are hovering around where they were last week, that could be an indication that it is ectopic. I would go to the hospital (probably this evening) and they would give me a shot of some sort of medication... I forget the name of it now. But it would basically end the pregnancy, stop anything from growing, my body would absorb the pregnancy for the most part, there may be some period-like bleeding, and then that would be that. I would wait til I got my next normal period after that, and then could start trying again. If the levels are dropping, then that could be an indication that the pregnancy was forming in the uterus and that my body was beginning the process of miscarrying naturally. They said I could either wait it out and in the meanwhile they'd keep drawing blood every 2-3 days to monitor my HCG levels and make sure they keep dropping and just wait til I miscarry naturally. Or they could give me the shot anyway if I wanted them to. I am inclined to get the shot either way. I don't want to drag this out anymore...emotionally it is hard, I don't want to go through more repeated blood tests and phone calls and waiting periods to see what's going on with my body. I also want it over with as soon as possible so things can get back to normal and I can try again. Being 38 I'm in a bit more of a rush to conceive quickly than I might have been if I were 10 years younger. So. That is where things stand now. I'll get the blood test results later today, probably end up at the hospital to get that shot of medication sometime this evening, and wait for everything to just... end. I go back for a follow up appointment with the doctor in two weeks.

We recently finished TT5. 1. My daughter watched the lecture 2. She then read the lesson in her book (a summary of the lecture) 3. She did the 5 practice problems on the disc using scrap paper to work out the problems. 4. She did the actual lesson problems (there are usually around 22 of them and each lesson usually takes her about a half hour to do) which consisted of listening to the problem on the cd while also looking at it on paper/in the book. She would work the problem out on paper first, then immediately enter her answer on the computer to see if she was right. If she was right, she moved on to the next problem. If she was wrong, it always gives a chance to try again, so she would try again to make sure it wasn't a silly error. If she got it wrong again, she would "view solution" and would be told and shown step by step how to get the right answer.

Why WOULDN'T it be ok to graduate almost a year after the "norm?" And with all the various cut off dates in all the various districts, what makes you think that someone graduating closer to turning 19 than 18 isn't "normal" in some schools anyway, depending on a child's birthday? If my daughter had been born just one day later she'd have had to wait an extra year to enter school, and wouldn't have graduated until 4 months before her 19th birthday anyway. And yes, I WOULD like my child to be a bit more mature before she goes off to a college setting or to travel the world without an adult etc, and I WOULD like her to be 4 months from her 19th birthday rather than 4 months from her 18th...what's wrong with that? I'm glad it worked for you to make sure your kids graduated by the time they were 18 no matter what, but you still haven't said anything that makes me understand why you would tell someone else "it is not ok" for their kids to graduate closer to 19 than 18. It IS okay, it just wasn't your preference for your kids.

If my daughter graduates in May or June at 18, she won't turn 19 until that October... ...but regardless, why is not "not ok" to graduate at almost 19? What's the big deal? :confused: ETA: To the OP I didn't mention this in my original post, but we have pretty much reached a definite decision to stretch 6th grade out over a two year period beginning this fall as my daughter was THE youngest in her class when I first sent her to Kindergarten, and I think that she will do better with and get more out of various independent reading, writing and research assignments by having that extra year to age/mature- and I also prefer that she end up being 18 when she graduates rather than 17. I think as long as you do it prior to high school, it'll work out fine!

Hi, I've only used Oak Meadow for 4th grade and 5th grade so far with my daughter. I will be using it again this fall for 6th grade with her, and will simultaneously be starting my son with Oak Meadow Kindergarten. I have been blogging regularly about Oak Meadow but like I said, that wouldn't start til 4th grade so may not be what you are looking for. If you're interested though you can take a peek (link in sig- although currently it seems there's a problem with LiveJournal and no pictures are showing up anywhere in my blog at the moment, I have a message in to tech support to find out why and hopefully that will be resolved soon!) I don't know much yet about what 1st grade includes (as to form drawing etc) and I'm not even sure what "scheduled in blocks" means lol- I wanted to offer some suggestions about the main lesson books though- for OM4 we did use spiral books- I just bought artist sketch pads at Walmart and used those. At that level, I used a different main lesson book for each subject. But in Kindergarten, we will just be using one book per quarter and using that one book for all subjects. If you don't want to use a spiral bound book, you could always just use a 3 hole punch and a binder for your pages, and use those plastic sheet protectors for projects where, say, you're gluing leaves onto a page or something and want to keep it covered/protected. This past year for 5th grade we switched to using a binder and lined paper for writing, but I could still three hole punch blank paper that I wanted to insert for those activities that required blank paper/more of a "main lesson book" feel, so it made a nice transition year and a nice combination. Like someone else said, the health curriculum (Growing, Growing Strong) is not put out by Oak Meadow and has a different feel than the rest of OM stuff does. When I first saw it, I didn't like it or "get" it- it seemed to be geared toward a teacher in a classroom, not a homeschooling parent. But after looking through it again, I decided there really are a lot of good ideas in it that I can definitely utilize in our homeschool, so I decided to pick and choose which projects, activities, etc would work for us and use those, and ignore the rest, and I'll be using those activities this coming fall starting with my son for Kindergarten.

Don't you only have to keep "transcripts" for high school? High school is considered 9th to 12th grades. So 8th grade doesn't even have to go on a transcript as far as I know. If a year of review and solidifying skills etc. would be beneficial to them, I say go for it.

A lot of people will say that TT is not good enough, too easy, etc, yet my daughter used it for 5th grade this past year as a stand alone program with no supplementing whatsoever and did very well (especially for a non-mathy kid) on the math portion of the standardized test she had to take this year. I have a detailed review of it on my blog if you're interested in checking it out: http://nancextoo.livejournal.com/124221.html With that said, I thought LOF sounded really interesting/fun and in the fall when we start 6th grade, we're going to continue using Teaching Textbooks 4 X a week, and on the 5th day, we're going to check out LOF- just one lesson a week- and see how we like it. If my daughter likes it and it goes smoothly, she can continue doing it that way. If she doesn't like it or doesn't want to do two math programs, I'd drop LOF and stick with TT because we like TT and it works well for us.

:iagree:

Yeah, my son was a HORRIBLE sleeper for a VERY long time. I invited some friends and relatives over and literally threw an impromptu party the first time he ever slept through the night. Check out the cake I got for the party. LOL.

Updates in this thread.... http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=286415

I would have switched places with the dad no problem (wouldn't even think of refusing), and the situation you described doesn't sound all that horrid to me; it sounds like they did the best they could with a child of that age, the amount of space they had, etc. And yep- a kid that young, even if he had his own seat, would have still wanted to be climbing into the parents' laps, having a hard time staying still etc. It's to be expected.

My son's only 5 and not very into read alouds but my daughter and I read all sorts of books together. Some of them might be considered more boyish (Sign of the Beaver, Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Island... she's 10 and I usually don't "assign" her any reading that I don't intend for us to read together. She reads plenty of books on her own, of her own choosing, too, just for fun.

Despite where he placed his line breaks, that doesn't come across as poetry at all. More like an essay type piece.

Here's a fun one...we were in Florida on vacation in March and were sitting in a restaurant and my daughter (age 10) was MISERABLE because of some red ant bites she'd gotten and she had her best, most miserable pout face ever going on.... ...and my husband took a picture of her with his iphone then used this app he had to put that picture of her face into this app and make it look like she was wearing a costume and I thought it came out so cool and artistic looking lol- so I'm posting both pictures.

Update: The doctor called me this morning. He said that since my numbers are rising but only slowly, the concern is that I might have a tubal pregnancy. The first step is to go and get an ultrasound so they can try to determine if there is any sign of a pregnancy in the uterus, even if just a sac etc (it would be too early obviously to see any sort of fetus or anything). If they CAN tell that the pregnancy is in the uterus, we can discuss options, those being: Waiting to miscarry on my own, which he said can take a few days but up to two or three weeks; Taking a medication that will stop any pregnancy from continuing to grow at all and my body would just basically "absorb" the pregnancy; Getting a D&C. We will discuss those options in person after I have the ultrasound (which will probably be on Tuesday). If they do NOT see anything in the uterus, they would have to go with the assumption that it is a tubal pregnancy and they would give me that medication that would stop anything from growing, end the pregnancy, and cause my body to absorb it. They want to be careful with that because if the pregnancy continues to grow eventually it could rupture the tube, but he said I'm still very early so that shouldn't be a concern just now. So anyway I have to call the office Monday morning and ask them to schedule the ultrasound for Tuesday. That's assuming things stay status quo. He said if I start getting any bad pains I should call immediately and would have to end up going to the hospital. But for now, things are staying the same...only the same light spotting, no pains etc. I was supposed to make a round trip to NJ tomorrow to take my oldest daughter to my aunt's house where her father was going to pick her up and take her back to NY for the rest of the summer, but I've asked my husband to take her for me instead. 1) I'm not feeling emotionally up to much just now and not up to socializing much, even with my aunt and 2) I don't want to be far from home in case I DO start having any pains etc that require a trip to the hospital! Other than that- next week will be fun. I have to get the kids back and forth to their summer camp program from 9-12 each day of the week (a Montessori camp that they're only going to three weeks spread out throughout the summer). I have my end of the year homeschool evaluation on Monday later in the afternoon. I have to do the ultrasound on Tuesday and then see what comes next after that. And between Wednesday and Thursday, I have to go to the social security office to take care of paperwork for my oldest daughter's SSI disability payments which are up for review, and I have to get my portfolio over to the school district. Thank goodness I decided to put most of the portfolio together a couple of weeks ago to get it out of the way and only have a couple of things to print (like my book log) to be done with it. I'd be SO overwhelmed if I'd put all that off until this week (having to select and photocopy samples and so on)! Anyway, it will be kind of a stressful week and I'll be glad when it's over with- I'll be glad when all of this is behind me and things get back to normal. Just wanted to update you guys. Thanks for the support etc, it has meant a lot. Nance

Thank you all so much for the supportive responses. I REALLY appreciate them. I'm sad and have been crying on and off today but I'm glad if it had to happen that it happened so early on. I, too, have heard that after a m/c it is sometimes easier to conceive again more quickly as I guess your body is already primed for pregnancy. I hope that we are that lucky and have a happier outcome next time. Meanwhile, the doctor never did call me back and they are closed all weekend. Things are status quo with me right now- I guess I just wait it out? I don't even know if I'm supposed to be waiting to miscarry naturally or scheduling a D&C or what. I wish they would have called and talked to me. I'm not sure what to expect or when or how bad it will feel or anything.

That is hysterical. I read it, cracked up, re-read it aloud to my husband and we were both cracking up laughing. I SO needed something to laugh about today because I was tired of crying! :)

I would show my daughter the sentence in the book. Some of the activities we would do orally (matching activities and such) and she would just write out her imitation sentences on a sheet of notebook paper. Sometimes if I wanted the original sentence on the notebook paper to show comparison, I would handwrite the original myself and then let her handwrite the imitation. You could try something like that. Or you could let them type it if they find that quicker/easier. Or you could shorten it a bit by having them only write out say two imitations and do the other two orally (I know a lot of times they have to do like 4 at once and some are pretty long)!

UPDATE IN POST NO. 77 UPDATE NO. 2 IN POST 102 (Page 11) --- Hcg levels were 410 Monday and 587 Wednesday. Today they were only 589. So there's no way this can be a viable pregnancy. It was a receptionist or somebody like that who gave me the results at my request as the dr wasn't in the office. She's going to try to reach him and have him call me to tell me what the next step is, she thinks he's in surgery right now though. I'm pretty sad. I'm 38 and it took me 5 months to conceive, who knows what will happen now. :(

My daughter thought so when she was like 3 and had eaten this cotton candy that had made hers a funky blue green color. It was such an unusual color that dh and I both exclaimed over it and dd was quite proud of it. In fact, the next time she had to go, she asked us what color we wanted lol Glad your son is feeling better!

Can you skip copywork and/or dictation?

Congrats on your accomplishment!!! :)

Not only is it disgusting, it's also stupid. I don't even see how it gets their main point across. You know what car ad I DID like years back (and can't even remember what kind of car it was)? One where a family is traveling in the car and a kid in the backseat asks why she was named whatever it was she was named. It was after a location and the mom said something like "you were named after the place where you were conceived." Then the girl asked, "so how did _____ get her name?" And you see the mom look at some emblem on the car that had the same name as the child in question... ...Something along those lines, anyway. I thought that was humorous! But this? Yuck.

So, got up at 2:30 AM having to pee and when I wiped there was like some dark pink spotting. Started thinking too much and could not fall back asleep. So by 3 AM I was making coffee, and I've been messing around at the computer drinking my one-cup-a-day. It's now 5:30 AM. Went to the bathroom again an hour ago and spotting was sort of brownish again. Having some mild crampiness on and off, but I've had some mild crampiness on and off every day and that's pretty normal in early pregnancy anyway. Going at 7 AM when the lab opens to repeat the HCG test for the third time. Only had like a 46 percent increase last time, which wasn't great. Hoping for better results today, but not feeling overly optimistic. I should find out the results this afternoon, last time he called between 3 and 3:30 PM. I guess I will go take a shower now to kill some time. I am definitely going to need a nap today! Maybe when I get back from the lab.

I know every kid is different, but just wanted to throw out there that I did SCFES this past year with my daughter...she was 10 and in 5th grade and it required a decent amount of handholding and prompting throughout nearly the entire year (she could do the matching and stuff like that independently but often had a hard time with composing her own sentences). She didn't love doing it. I think if I'd have tried it when she was only 8 it would have been a horrible flop, we'd both have been miserable.