:grouphug: I am so sorry. I will keep you and your family in my prayers. :grouphug:

That's what he plays...electric guitar! From a couple of replies, it sounds like this is typical. As for my end goals...I guess they would be that he finds an instrument he enjoys playing and sticks with it long enough to become proficient at it.

This sounds similar to my ds and his instructor (both flighty but we love 'em!):) The instructor never gave/sold us a book though. I like that idea. Maybe we can go look at some books this weekend with ds. Thanks for tip!

He started with acoustic and did that for 6 months. Once he proved he was committed, he switched to an electric guitar and has been doing that for the last year.

I have a question for you. My oldest has taken piano for 5 years. He spent several years with 1 teacher and then switched to his currect teacher 1.5 years ago. Both teachers have similar set-ups. He has books he practices from for X amount of time and also does theory. I think I understand how piano is taught. Next boy (Z-man) wanted to learn guitar so he took guitar lessons for 1.5 years. He loves his teacher who is very positive and gives great encouragement. Z-man took a break from lessons over the summer but wants to start guitar up again now. However, I'm not sold on his instructor. He's very free spirited. Sometimes he'll pick a portion of a song (it's never the whole song) for Z-man to learn and other times Z-man is to pick a song he'd like to learn for himself. He does great with the stuff this guy teaches, but I feel like he only learns what the teacher shows him. There's no theory, or flash cards, or books. Z-man wouldn't be able to pick up a beginning piece of guitar music and play a note of it today. Is this just the difference between teaching piano & guitar? If we decide to go with a new guitar instructor, what kinds of questions should I ask to make sure I'm getting a quality instructor? Thanks for any tips,

I think you'll be happy with this choice. This is our first year with TOG and I purchased DE only. I printed out everything except for the Rhetoric sections since I was trying to save ink and money. It's worked out pretty well, but I did spend quite a bit of time printing. I would have rather spent that time familiarizing myself with the curriculum. For Y2 I've decided to go ahead and get DE + print since it's on sale. It will save me some time and I'm sure their printing will look a lot nicer! Once you've seen the color pages you'll also get a better feel for whether or not you'll be happy with black and white in future years. You will definitely want a copy of the Usborne Encyclopedia of the Ancient World. This is used in multiple weeks for UG and Bookshelf Central says you could use it for Dialectic as well. Walk with Y'shua is consumable so you would need to purchase that unless you went with an alternate or decide not to do "History-In Depth". I've been able to get most other books between our 2 library systems here. You'll want to look into what your library has available.

Yay! Doing the happy dance with you :party:

I say I'm 5'7"....officially the doc says I'm 5'6" 3/4 :)

This is what I did when my kids were younger. We tried a couple of homeschool groups but as mentioned previously they are set up mainly to support school-aged kids. We enjoyed the 2 years we did Moms Club.

:iagree: This is our first year using TOG and I'm really happy with it but I know there are others who felt differently after trying it. You mentioned that you want something that is all laid out for you with what pages to read. With TOG it will tell you what books (or portions of books) to read but it's laid out by week, so you'll need to decide how much to get through each day. The layout of the 3 week sample is not the same as the actual unit. The sample is much more specific regarding what should be done each day. The best way to get a true feel for the program would be what the PP mentioned above.

You use "me" when it's the direct object of the sentence or the object of the preposition. Like you mentioned, you use "I" when it's the subject. Sometimes it sounds a little weird to actually use me especially when it's a compound object of the preposition...like Jill went to the ball game with Bob and me. Many people will think it should be "Bob and I" but not when it follows a preposition.

Love it!!! Good for you :001_smile:

I need about 8 hours. I'm usually asleep by 10:30 and up about 6:30. I think it's enough because I usually wake up on my own with no alarm.

Thanks for the reply, Tina. I have 11 yo doing UG based on volume. In years past I've done the majority of reading out loud. With TOG they're more independent so I've tried to take the volume of reading into account when choosing the level. I was taking "boring" to mean "too technical" or "not interesting" rather than "too easy." I'll have to try and get a better description out of him! Thanks for your honesty here :) Maybe it's just the week(s) we're in right now.

This is our first year with TOG. In the past we've used Sonlight and Winter's Promise and I tried to follow more of a CM approach. I went to TOG because I like having all my kids learn the same time period at their own level. With the other programs, while we all learned together, I always felt that somebody wasn't working at the right level. I like TOG and I want to commit to it for our history from here on out. Having said that my kiddos aren't as crazy about it. They're used to "living books" so I'm getting a lot of comments about the books being sooooo boring from my older 2. I have my 11 yo doing UG history, in depth, and literature. I have my 13 yo doing D history. I give him UG or D literature depending on the book. He struggles with making connections so I think TOG will be a great help to both of us. It will show me how to show him the connections to make through our discussion time. I also think at some point he needs to learn how to read a book for information. Anybody else struggle with the book choices for TOG after following CM? How did you make it work? I know that I can substitute books but then I don't know if the information for the discussions will have been covered. The discussion and making connections will be a huge help for my oldest who tends to get bogged down in minor details. Maybe we keep plugging along and after a few months they get used to it????

I'd be interested in helping.

:iagree: Also, soccer cleats that have gotten wet. Even if they're dry now but have been pretty wet in the past, they'll stink. I've sat down on the garage step to put on my tennis shoes and I'll think some cat must have come in and sprayed. Then I realize I'm sitting right by wet soccer cleats. Pee-uw!

We just re-did our kitchen this summer and went to s/s appliances from white. The finish we have is brushed stainless. The fridge does seem to show fingerprints all the time. I have 3 boys and they're constantly in and out of the fridge and freezer. It should probably be wiped down every day but I haven't worked that into my routine yet. The dishwasher shows water marks on the outside. You know...wet hands from rinsing off the dish...opening the dishwasher door...drops of water dropping onto the door.... And I agree that they do scratch easily! I've already scratched my cooktop in two places and don't even ask about the stainless steel sink! But even after saying all that, I still love the way they look (when they're all wiped down) and I would buy them all over again. :lol:

Our church does both. I really enjoy the hymns because they bring back memories of when I was a kid. The church we went to then did mostly hymns. But dh didn't grow up with hymns and those always seem to be the songs he dislikes during worship.

I love the ones I get at Chico's. They fit great and aren't too tight. They are a nice quality and come in several colors. I just got a couple new ones a few weeks ago and they were on sale for $12 at the time.

Dairy Queen :auto:

Thanks for posting this. My dh thinks the Heath Bar Blizzard is the bomb! We'll have to stop in there tonight. :)

I agree. Usually the first thing the kids want to do when they get together is play video games. I'll usually say, "O.K. you can play for 1 hour but then you'll need to turn it off and find something else to do." I don't get too much negative feedback because my kids are used to this and it seems that most of their friends have screen times limits at their house too. My youngest (9.5) had a friend over yesterday. They played Wii first off for about an hour, then were shooed outside to play. They rode bikes but got too hot so then came in to do a board game. After that, back out to shoot hoops. Back in for another board game. It was a lot of in and out moving from one thing to another. After dinner they asked if they could play Wii once more so I gave them a 30 minute limit. I want my kids to interact with their friends when they come over rather than stare at a screen. But to them they are interacting, just in the form of a video game. So I've decided I'll continue to limit screens when no one is over but when friends are over it's like a "special occasion" and I let it slide a bit. The same isn't true for neighborhood friends, however. They're here every day so that doesn't count as a "special occasion" and the screen restrictions apply. So they have standard neigborhood things they do with these friends...big games of tag, capture the flag, air soft battles, and playing in the woods. If any of these friends spend the night though, then it's back to "special occasion" and I let the amount of screen time slide.

Oops...I was going to recommend Bragg's as well (we love it) but I just looked at my bottle and it is made from soybeans so....never mind. Sorry! Hope you find something that tastes great!

I believe WinterPromise would need to be adapted in order for it to be secular. I used Winter Promise Human Body & Forensics and one of the books is definitely Christian (but that's o.k. with me :)).