I skimmed most of this thread, but wanted to chime in that my dh and I took the GKGW class years ago and my dh thought Ezzo was arrogant and tried to baptize his personal opinions on childrearing with Scripture. My dh's opinion was that Ezzo was trying to "create" a good heart in his children through the use of discipline. So we didn't care for it. I'm saddened to hear about his estrangement from his daughters.

Grove City College

I'm no expert on this, but if you are interested in presenting the Young Earth Creationist point of view, Answers in Genesis has lots of free articles. Since you mentioned dating here's a link to their articles on radiometric dating.

My dd9 has been doing LoF Fractions alongside Singapore, which is our main math program. She does the work in Fred independently. I do check her Bridges, but she checks her own daily assignments. We are using Fred "for fun" though, not as our spine. I'm not sure whether we'll start Decimals and Percents immediately after Fractions. I'll have to think on that awhile.

I'm not sure I am qualified to respond to this since I've only used WS 2 & 3 with my dd and just started WWE1 with my ds. I don't think WWE covers as much as WS but that's mostly because WS goes to a higher grade level than WWE. I don't think that the levels of WS are supposed to necessarily correspond to grade level either. Personally I wish WWE had been around to start my dd on before going to WS, but she is doing well with WS so we'll stick with it. With my ds I've decided to work through WWE before going on to WS. So I guess my review would be, I like them both. :001_smile:

For extra "facts" practice we did flashcards and Calculadders primarily. Rainbow Rock had some good games for this as well. I also have Quartermile Math but so far both of my kids who've used it dislike it rather intensely.

Sort of. I keep buying things for the kids' schooling for this year out of my "fun" money. So I didn't technically go over the amount of money alotted for school materials. At least, that's what I tell myself. It's not like I have time for any hobbies at the moment anyway. I will quilt again....one day.

I also buy Jasmine rice in bulk. I like to use these for food storage. The kids like eating the cheese balls to help Mom out as well. :001_smile:

River on Fire - Adam Again House of Broken Dreams - Mark Heard Blue All Over - Mike Roe

HappyGrace, I love the Suffer Little Children/Show Me Thy Ways series! You are the first person I've run into who uses it too! (Other than the one person who posted about it on the old boards here years ago....the reason I looked into it in the first place.) Hijack over, back to your regularly scheduled, scheduling tips.

I'm still not entirely sure I "get" what workboxes are so what I say next may not help you if I am just totally off base. To organize our day's work I print out an assignment sheet in Homeschool Tracker for my two kids who are school-age, and we check things off as we accomplish them. They each have a "shelf" for their books and workbooks ( a link to what we use). I label spiral bound notebooks with subjects and my dd writes the answers to her assignments in these so I can check her work from day to day in her notebook without worrying about loose papers. I have a separate shelf with my Teacher's Manuals for when I need those. Without a program like HST you could just write up assignment sheets or put assignments on Post-Its inside the books. We also have a loose, informal subject order for what works for us. That's not written down anywhere but it doesn't change from day to day so it's easy to remember. Is that the purpose of the workbox? Just to organize the day's work? Does my bookshelf count as a workbox? I'm really confused.

No coffee here (though I like the occasional McCafe). But I go through a full pitcher of caffeinated sweet tea every day (2 quarts).

My Dr. recommended just plain old yogurt, as long as it has active, live cultures in it. Your homemade yogurt would be just fine. My now 3 yo (then 2 yo) dd had C Difficile once. Not something to mess around with. Get your gut in order. : )

Agreeing with the previous poster. My dh is an engineer with a BSME. Other than the Chemistry, this sounds like his first two years of courses...at least I don't think he had any Chem. After that I think the last two years of college were more specialized classes (he has a fluid/thermal specialization). He had VERY FEW electives in college. It was all math/science classes over in the engineering building on campus. You don't need your PE in the type of manufacturing jobs my dh has had. Most people don't have their PEs as a matter of fact.....but it doesn't hurt either. Edit: Nvm, he told me yes, he had Chemistry. Whoops...

We use Singapore as our main program. We supplement because we like doing lots of math? :001_smile: I don't think Singapore needs supplementing unless a child just needs a little more drill. I just try to gauge this with my kids and if I think something needs reinforcement, we add in some practice (flashcards, Quartermile Math, Calculadders). There are some topics that are not covered in Singapore that are in US math programs. Singapore picks them up in NEM (from what I've read, since I haven't gotten there yet). Supposedly the new Standards from Singapore solves that issue since it was developed to coincide with CA's standards iirc. The HIGs are useful IMO for teaching new concepts if you need a little hand holding (as most of us do sometimes). The answers to the textbook and workbook are in the HIG. The answers to the supplemental workbooks (CWP, IP) are in the back of the books. I just cut out those pages and file them at the beginning of the school year. Why the hoopla? Singapore teaches kids to think mathematically. The word problems especially can't be beat. They teach math conceptually going from a sort of pictorial/concrete respresentation, to the abstract. My kids also love the PC games that go with it. (Rainbow Rock, Vroot and Vroom, Wiggle Woods). My kids are learning math and really liking it. I've never used anything else in entirety though so I have no point of comparison (other than my dh's dislike of Saxon when he used it back in the day).

Fair enough. :) Honestly I wouldn't have known about BJU's policies either except that my father once mentioned it offhand when I was a kid and because of the old Steve Taylor song, since I am a connoiseur of 80's Christian Rock. :lol:

Perhaps you and I both lack self-control :). But I assume when you are referencing "wrong policies" you are referring back to the race issue and not the Catholic issue, since they are separate? I am having a problem with the word "forgive" here, because as a Christian, I forgave them before they apologized. Forgiving someone and letting them teach your children are two entirely separate issues as well. Here's another thing, if I am to believe from their apology in November of 2008 that they have repented fully now and want to turn the bus around, so to speak, that doesn't give me any sort of reassurance regarding the content of their curriculum. (And yes I know some have chimed in here to say there is no racism in their curriculum, but I'm sorry I look at the worldview of a publisher. Sometimes little things come through that may not be obvious unless you are sensitive to them.) We are talking about 2008 for goodness sake! I'm still using the curriculum I bought last year in March of 2008. They apologized in November of 2008! 5 months ago. This is recent, recent, recent history, not the distant past. I don't like being told I don't forgive somebody when all I am choosing to do is NOT buy their curriculum which was written and published BEFORE they repented. The Catholic issue being discussed here is separate since to my knowledge, BJU has not changed any beliefs with respect to Catholicism.

My dh has two polo shirts that have formed an awkward crease in the ribbed collar. He has lots of polos, but it's just those two that do it. I iron the collar out EVERY time but it comes back....even while he is wearing the shirt. I've read tips about how to keep this from happening (I'm supposed to hang the shirt up while damp, ugh.), but once it's there, can it be gotten out and how? TIA

I love R&S. We use their English, Spelling and Science programs. Like everyone else has stated, most of their "religious" elements in those subjects are confined to Bible verses and stories. We ran into one sentence in a spelling quiz in Level 4 I think that said something along the lines of "The Bible says women should not preach." We didn't find it offensive since we believe the same, but of course others may differ. I was just surprised to see it since the spelling word was "women". This could be changed of course since it was in the teacher's manual, not the student text. Their science texts are Young Earth in viewpoint. That's the closest thing to "doctrine" though that we've run across thus far.

:iagree: Not all school districts are created equal. I had a pretty rigorous public school education. (mostly in PA actually fwiw). I was shocked to learn in college that not all children were taught phonics in elementary school. Not all high school students had AP courses available to them. Not all high schools offered Latin. Not all high schools had their students reading The Illiad, The Odyssey, Beowulf and Shakespeare. Not all kids read Hegel and Smith in their economics classes. Especially at the high school level, I've looked over some homeschooling curriculum that would actually give my kids a subpar education compared with what I had. (Literature in particular looks weak.) Looking at the school districts my dh and I have lived in though during our married years.....wow, just wow. Not an AP course in sight at our local high school. NOT ONE. I don't have to do much with my kids to keep up with where we live now. (This makes me sad to say this since we love our community and our community loves their school, but honestly, we can do better.) My dh was homeschooled and there are some areas in which my education was weaker than his, and others where his was weaker than mine. My goal is to give my kids a better education than we had. My dh and I often worry though that if too many homeschoolers slack off in providing a decent education for their children, ALL of us will end up more regulated by the government. I know many public schools do worse, but there is a double standard at play here. Being homeschoolers, society will hold us to a higher standard. I think we can all agree we don't need more regulations to deal with. I hope that all made sense. This was a monster of a thread to wade through, and I had to skim it since I have a lunch to prepare. :001_smile:

Thanks for the heads up!

I find this hard to calculate since we do big stock up trips at Sam's and Aldi about once per month. We refill the house with perishables at our local grocery once a week. Let's see, we probably spend about $300 at Sams once per month and another $300 at Aldi once per month. We get most toiletries/cleaning supplies/medicines at Target and spend about $200 per month. Our local grocery ends up being about $50 per week. So that comes out to $1000 per month for our family of 6. (There may be a wee bit of fat in that Target $$ figure since I'm a sucker for sale items on the end caps.) We don't eat out much anymore. We usually do a McDonald's run on Saturday afternoon, and sometimes hit the Chinese buffet after church on Sundays. So meals out would add another $50 per week. We generally only eat out at a nice restaurant these days when there's a birthday or something. I make two hot meals every weekday (dh comes home for lunch). Breakfast is usually cereal. On the weekends, I make a big, hot breakfast most Saturdays, the aforementioned McD's run and leftovers for dinners. I'm scared to see what this figure does in the future when my littles (3 yo and 1 yo) actually eat normal quantities of food.

1. We are all born in sin because of the Fall of Man in Adam. "Through one man sin entered the world." We are dead in these trespasses and sins and totally lost unable to do God's will or be reconciled to Him. But, because God loved the world, He sent His only Son Jesus to die for us. Jesus was the second Adam. Like Adam, He represented mankind. Unlike Adam, He lived a life of perfect obedience. He then took our sins upon Himself and died as a substitute for us. Whoever believes in Him has eternal life and their sins are washed away. That's what I believe it means to be a Christian. 2. Jesus said we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and our neighbor as ourself. That is the sum of the Law and the Prophets. That's what I believe God wants of us.

Don't most Christians screen this stuff, too? We sure do. We don't have cable and can only pick up one broadcast channel (PBS). We rent all our "tv" through Netflix and all titles are screened and chosen by us. So I screen the worldview on that stuff as well. As for being more concerned about that stuff than racism from BJU I beg to differ. I want my children to grow up and stay in the faith. That outside "worldly" entertainment does have worldview problems sometimes that we discuss. BJU claims to be conservatively Christian like we are. I find it more problematic if my children feel they and their mother are unaccepted (part of the spirit of Antichrist) by their fellow Christians, when NONE of that is actually in the Bible. That's the kind of thing that could drive one from true faith. That said, this thread has spurred me on to read up on what has been said recently by BJU (the last time I researched this issue was back in 1999/2000). I am pleased with the apology given in 2008 by their new president. (At least I think I gathered from what I read, a Stephen Jones replaced Bob Jones III in 2006?) I read alumni put together a petition to address the racial issues they've had in the recent past. Anyway, if they are sincerely repentant now for all of that nonsense, praise the Lord! (Edit: I want to add the disclaimer that I couldn't find the full text of the new (2008) apology on BJU's website. I was stuck reading quotes on other websites. When I read their first "apology" in 2000 I got it directly from BJU's website. I know things can sometimes get taken out of context so I don't know for certain their new apology didn't have any of the same self-excusing language the old one did.) I'm sorry if I come off sounding harsh here, but I have been truly shocked over the years by the cavalier attitude many of my Christian friends have had towards racism. It sends the wrong message to the unsaved world too. I actually had a non-Christian friend in high school who asked me how I reconcile my Christian parents' interracial marriage with being a Christian and believing the Bible. Huh? She thought Christians believed the "races shouldn't mix". Really. This garbage hurts our witness. To reiterate, their "apology" in 2000 was no apology. I hope this new one is sincere.

I totally agree with you. We home educate for primarily religious reasons, but there are some academic as well. I had a very rigorous public school education and I want my children to have at least as much rigor as I had and hopefully more. First and foremost I want my children to grow up to love and serve God, but from a pragmatic standpoint they are going into a competitive world where they need to be able to earn their keep. I don't see the two goals as mutually exclusive. This is of course said with the stipulation that we are talking about children with no disabilities of any kind. Obviously if a child has challenges (either physical or developmental) homeschooling is a fantastic way to be able to work at their pace without the pressures of falling behind in an institutional setting. However, I assume you are talking about kids with no underlying challenges.