He is risen indeed! Happy Easter :001_smile:

I loved that book. It was one of my favorites so far this year. I hope you like it!

I didn't post my update for week 15. That week I read The Gendarme which was okay, and The Detroit Electric Scheme which I really liked. I posted their reviews on my blog today. For week 16 I read Protecting the Gift by de Becker which was great and started Still Alice by Lisa Genova mid-week. Yesterday we went and watched Soul Surfer at the theater. I cried. Then I came home and read a bunch of Still Alice. It also made me cry. I was wiped out by bedtime! Tomorrow I'll move on to Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other by Sherry Turkle. Hopefully, it won't make me cry!

I know there have been a lot of questions about ClassiQuest science. I just posted a blog entry that describes a typical week at our house. I hope this will give you a better idea of whether or not you would like to use this curriculum for your family.

I just put ours up tonight. It's a photo re-cap of our spring break last week.

:grouphug: I'm so sorry. I had a false positive at home test about a year before I had my first son. I understand how you're feeling.

I'm guessing this wasn't a favorite? I have it on my list so I was wondering what made it painful?

I had a detailed response all typed up to this thread but I lost it. So this time, I'm just going to mention that I recently posted about the challenges we faced implementing this program on my blog. If interested you can read it here. Be aware that ClassiQuest is basically a skeleton. It organizes the study of biology into a logical progression (in my opinion). You go through and learn about the topics from various encyclopedias. Then you complete a lab associated with what you learned. You are basically taking the information you read and applying it with the lab. Many of the labs are taken from Janice Van Cleave's Biology for Every Kid. Those that were written by DuBois outline the procedure to follow to apply the reading. You can see Lab 29 on her sample as an example of a lab written by DuBois. This would also be the extent to which she adds any commentary. I didn't investigate her credentials because I don't feel like she is the one teaching us. She has organized the information for us and set up a framework of how to progress through a lesson: reading, vocabulary, labwork, report, timeline, memory work. The teaching is coming from the encyclopedias themselves and the kids are learning how to apply it through the labs.

:iagree: I loved that book! This week I finished Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. It was tough to read in spots but definitely worth it. My review is here. I also read Stumptown Kid by Carol Gorman & Ron Findley. This started out as me previewing it for my son, but I was quickly drawn into the story so I read the whole thing. I'm debating on whether or not to include it in my count. If I count it then I will have completed 13 books so far. This week I'm reading The Gendarme by Mark Mustian. The inside jacket tells me that it "depicts how love can transcend nationalities, politics, and religion..." I thought this might be just what I needed after the tough stuff in Unbroken but so far this too is a war story. WWI this time around and I'm still waiting to find the love :001_huh:

I don't have any words of wisdom but I wanted to send you a big :grouphug: and a huge CONGRATULATIONS! Exciting times at your house :) I'll also be praying for a safe and healthy pregnancy.

I'm reading this right now. I hope I can make it through!!!

I finished Radical by David Platt. My review is here (cc). This week I'm reading Unbroken by Laura Hillebrand. It's a WWII POW story which is not my typical genre. It was on Amazon's top 100 for 2010 and I've been pulling from that for some titles that take me out of my comfort zone. We'll see how it goes.

I chose other because I think it depends on what your goals are for your child and what you as a parent have the ability or desire to teach. This year I wanted my son to learn Latin so he is taking it at our co-op. Could I have taught him Latin? Sure, but this was our first year with TOG and I had decided that I needed to learn how to teach that curriculum so I didn't want to spend my time trying to learn Latin as well. In this case I had no desire to teach the subject that I wanted him to learn. Looking to next year, he'll be in 8th grade and the only co-op class he'll take is Latin II. Everything else I am going to cover at home including science. Looking out further I would like him to take Speech in 9th or 10th grade but that would be tough to implement at home. This would be a case of me not having the ability to accomplish the goal. Also, when he takes a foreign language like Spanish, I would like him to be taught by a native speaker. Another case of me not having the ability however the Spanish teacher at co-op is a native speaker. So I'm listing out my goals then looking at the best way to reach those goals. They may or may not include co-op classes.

We started using this in January and I've been happy with it. We are using all 3 encyclopedias. I've added books, videos or web sites as necessary. Sometimes the USE will have a web site that I think my kids will enjoy so I'll assign that. The meiosis vs. mitosis concept was a bit of a struggle so we watched some You Tube videos explaining that further as well as reading a separate book. When we got to the bacteria week, I added in a separate book on bacteria just because I liked the book. Last week was fungi and this week was plant anatomy. I didn't add anything additional for either of those. I pre-read the information each week to determine if I think my kids will need a little more info to understand the concept. It's been quite a change for them coming from an Apologia by Jeannie Fulbright background! I'm not using this with any other program. We take about 90 minutes twice a week to get everything done. For us, it would be too much to add in anything else.

You can print the lab forms directly off the web site. Here's the link: http://classiquestscience.com/ It says "Free Lab Report Forms" under the green book cover. Hope that helps,

Mine is up.

Wow! Thank you.

I need the teacher's notes to be able to carry on a conversation about what was covered. If I were going to read all the books along with the kids I could see not needing the teacher's notes, but around here that would never happen so I chose no, I wouldn't buy it.

Our co-op has a $50 registration fee. You pay this in May when you register for the following year. In October or November you pay another $40 fee that I think goes to cover the facility. Each teacher charges monthly tuition and there is a separate supply fee charged for each class at the beginning of the year. The supply fee typically costs $15-25. Some classes charge an additional supply fee mid-year.

Loved them!!! Thanks for the laugh :lol::lol::lol:

We went to Teaching Textbooks. We left for a couple of reasons. First, my middle son really struggled with the way Demme presented multiple digit multiplication, like 36 x 17. I couldn't get it to make sense to him for the life of me. He eventually got the hang of it but he became quite math averse for a while. I was worried about the same thing happening with his younger brother. Second, my oldest started to struggle. It was tough for me to come along side him because Demme's way of doing things was completely new to me. I would have to watch the video, make sense of Demme's way of doing it, and then regurgitate that to my son. If he still had questions about "why," I didn't feel confident with my explanations because often it was so different from the way I'd been taught. So we finished up last year and switched to TT in September. I've never looked back.

Last week I read Siblings Without Rivalry. You can read my review here. This week I'm reading Radical by David Platt. After that I think I'll be ready for something that lets me get lost in the story...no analyzing or contemplating required :tongue_smilie:

Ours is up. Looking forward to reading everyone else's.

This made me :lol:

I finished The Birth Order Book by Kevin Leman and enjoyed it. I was hoping to get a few ideas on how to handle some sibling rivalry issues around here. I suppose it did in an indirect way. This week the theme continues with Siblings without Rivalry by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish.