Is it becoming common in the public schools for children in the Honors/AP track to take Biology in the 8th grade these days? When I was in school it was 9th grade, but I know these things change. (Oh, and I am not looking for debate over right/wrong, good/bad...just "is it done?") TIA

:iagree: I love love love StartWrite!

Our menu from last week: Buffalo Chicken Sandwiches with Twice Baked Potatoes Mexican Chicken Chili with cornbread Apricot Glazed Chicken with steamed rice Crockpot Chicken Parmesan with whole wheat pasta Takeout Pizza - I usually make our own pizzas as well, but ds threw up in his Lego bucket and I had to wash and dry 1200 Legos...

We like anything Muppet related here. (I know my avatar sort of gives that away...) Other movies the kids have liked: Ella Enchanted, Babe, and George of the Jungle. My eldest dd really liked Because of Winn Dixie. The kids also like to watch things on Netflix online. They are especially fond of Kim Possible (DH and I like it, too). We also like Johnny English....there is a bit of potty humor in it, but it's really very funny and still PG.

I purposely avoided giving my kids names beginning with the same letter. I wanted them all to have unique initials in case I ever wanted to monogram anything. I also wanted to keep their first initials different from hubby and I. We're sort of the anti-Duggars.

I don't really have any website recommendations since back when I decided to homeschool I mostly trolled message boards. I would recommend you (with her permission of course) get her on the mailing lists of every homeschooling catalog you can think of. Once I decided to look into homeschooling I found the catalogs helpful for being able to piece together in my head what homeschooling would "look like". Catalogs like Rainbow Resource, Rod and Staff, Christian Book Distributors, Sonlight, Timberdoodle, Veritas Press etc. would give her a feel for what is out there. She could see there are textbooks, but homeschooling isn't all textbooks....different philosophies come across in many of these catalogs.

I haven't found one I like yet. I've had a Eureka, a Dirt Devil and I now have a Bissell. I wasn't terribly happy with any of them. The Eureka died after 2 years. The Dirt Devil died after 6 years. I have a special loathing for my Bissell. It is vastly inferior to both of my previous vacuums. The Eureka and Dirt Devil were bagged vacs; the Bissell is a bagless. We're heading into Year 3....

I'm looking into Classical Writing and I was wondering what level should I start my kids on after they finish up WWE4. Aesop, Homer, something else?

I'd recommend getting a copy of Learn Latin first. I had Latin in high school, but had forgotten much of the grammar. I picked up this book on a bargain rack in Barnes and Noble years ago and it was a great crash course. It's funny to boot and aimed at adults with no Latin knowledge.

This may be true of some video games, but honestly WoW requires a bit of strategy. It would teach a child tactics, cooperatively working in a group, and politics if they end up in a guild. There is a bit of math as well. Sites like Elitist Jerks make my head spin with the amount of thought that can go into some of this. Games like WoW are a far cry from a sidescrolling platformer like Super Mario, or a puzzle game like Bejeweled.

:iagree:

You can order just the workbook. I like the TM though. I'm too lazy to come up with my own test sentences :lol:. The TM also gives you some handholding for presenting the lessons. I wouldn't say it is necessary though.

Oh, please don't use Gerbers....try Indian prefolds from Little Lions. They are super super absorbant. Much better quality. I wish I had used these from the beginning. They are really not that much money.

Dh doesn't want to turn the water heater up until the kids are all a little older so I need the heat boost from the element. I use the nonheated dry most of the time though.

Now I know I have a crockpot curse (I've gone through 5 crockpots in the past 11 years). But it would appear I have a dishwasher curse as well. I'm now on my 4 th dishwasher in 6 years. PLEASE give me dishwasher recommendations! I just want something that cleans the stinking dishes and doesn't break if I look at it cross-eyed. Over the years I've had a crappy Maytag, a crappy Kitchenaid, a crappy Kenmore, and now a crappy Frigidaire. The Maytag never cleaned anything properly on the top rack and the latch kept breaking. The Kitchenaid's element burned out and had a wonky interior that didn't fit any of my dishes (it was ancient and came with our house). The Kenmore's element burned out. Now the Frigidaire's dead. Nothing lights up. Sigh. At least DH kept the old Kenmore in the garage, maybe we should just replace the element. :glare: Anyway, so please tell me about your favorite brand of dishwasher....I mostly want to hear about ones that don't die after 2 years....or in this case, less than one year. I'm off to hunt up paper work to see if this clunker is still under warranty.

:iagree: And I like the monkey analogy :001_smile:

Another thing: I'm probably going to regret posting anything about this. Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm but a simple lay person who worries too much), but if this pandemic gets to the point where folks are dropping like flies it will basically be "too late" to control the spread because the "worst case scenario" happened. If the powers that be try to control the spread before a "worst case scenario" occurs they will be charged with overreacting. I really do think folks are interpreting this whole event through their own lens of risk aversion. I'm quite risk averse (and hate getting sick), so I tend to take things quite seriously. Others folks are less risk averse and so this all appears to be blown out of proportion unless the truly historically horrible happens, at which point it's too late to do anything but make more coffins.

Target has some without padding.

No, we don't let the kids play in our room.

I used Sonlight for 3 years (Cores 2,3 and 4) and this is largely why I am parting ways with them. Looking over their high school cores, they just look "light". They look "light" even if I compare them to my own public school, high school education let alone a "WTM"-style education. I am really thankful we used them for the three years we did and I plan on reusing those cores with my other dc. I think going through SL cores helped to foster a love of reading in my dd. That said, after going through three cores my dd is very weak on the chronology of history for those years. She can't place things on a timeline (even though we did a timeline). I figure we can pick that up in this coming rotation of history and maybe some of this is just her age, but especially after trying TOG this year, I think we'll be moving on. I want my kids to have a good feel for the flow of history before we move into Great Books study in high school and from what I've seen I don't think that Sonlight can build that solid foundation without some major tweaking on my part. I could be wrong though, I've only used 3 cores. After I showed my dh (who usually leaves all the curriculum decisions entirely up to me) TOG and SL side by side, he practically ordered me to stick with TOG.

I heart my Zojirushi 10-cup Neurofuzzy. But...I also got by for years with a cheapie Salton. They both make better rice than the stovetop method. The Zojirushi lets you do brown rice though. The old fashioned cheap ones won't do brown rice well.

Oh my goodness I love this! I love being able to print from a PDF instead of scanning in pages from workbooks. I would LOVE to see the activity guides for SOTW in PDF format.

I'm happy with our Krups 2 slice toaster. It is certainly better than our old Black and Decker toaster oven.

The Big Preschool Workbook from School Zone is my all-time favorite. They are very colorful and have a variety of different sheets. They are a good value for the money.

I think TWTM recommends beginning spelling in the 1st grade.