This article by Sarah Sunshine Manning (Shoshone-Paiute, Chippewa-Cree) might be of interest to some of you. Thanksgiving Myth Creates Fairytale of Land Theft, Betrayal, Genocide http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/11/23/manning-thanksgiving-myth-creates-fairytale-land-theft-betrayal-genocide-162517

Old Navy has some swing dresses with high necklines right now. They would be cute with leggings. Girls' sizes http://oldnavy.gap.com/browse/category.do?cid=7404#size=59-1%3A668%7C36-1%3A1112%7C57-1%3A647%7C58-1%3A657&pageId=1 Women's sizes http://www.oldnavy.com/products/swing-dress.jsp Try shopping the petite section so that clothing fits her shorter arm and inseam length better, too.

This is how my husband was last year when his was removed. It wasn't awful, but it was much worse than I was expecting from all of the "oh, it's an easy surgery!" remarks.

When I posted earlier I meant to add something. Putting a lot of toys away and rotating works, sort of. Sometimes when your 4yo wants to build with blocks and they aren't in the current rotation she might empty your pantry and build cities with canned goods and boxes, and crayon people might reside there. Apparently the only way to have a tidy house when you have young children is to be a minimalist, and even to never have a fully stocked pantry.

Screen time is all 3 of my kids' currency, so if they want screen time after school they have to pick up to my standards before doing so. It works fairly well. My standards aren't too high, though, so you all might still think my house is a disaster! lol

Math Mammoth ---> Teaching Textbooks

We're listening to The Green Ember right now. It is fantastic! http://www.audible.com/pd/Kids/The-Green-Ember-Audiobook/B00T50R42I

The boys and I highly enjoy everything we've watched or listened to by Dorsey Armstrong. http://www.audible.com/search/ref=a_hp_tseft?advsearchKeywords=dorsey+armstrong&filterby=field-keywords&sprefixRefmarker=nb_sb_ss_i_1_6&sprefix=Dorsey https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/professors/dorsey-armstrong

Thank you! I figured I should trust the placement test, I was just second-guessing myself. It helps to have someone confirm.

My sixth grader does not like math. He has been doing Math Mammoth but really prefers a video lesson to teach the concepts, so we're planning to switch to Teaching Textbooks. I had him take the Math 6 and Math 7 placement tests and he scored the following: Math 6 Section 1: 15/15 Section 2: 11/15 Math 7 Section 1: 11/15 Section 2: 9/15 Math 7 says the student should get 10 or more correct on section 1, and 8 or more correct on section 2 to be ready for Math 7. He would have had 13 on the first section if he had reduced the fractions to their lowest forms, but instead, for example, he reduced 12/18 to 6/9 instead of the correct answer of 2/3. On section 2 he did not know how to do the 4 "multiply or divide each pair of fractions" problems, and once again didn't fully reduce two problems. So, assuming I can get him to understand he needs to always fully reduce, he could have scored 13/15 and 11/15. Do you think he is ready for Math 7? I would just buy both levels, but holy smokes it's expensive!

We're in our 7th year of homeschooling, primarily using the WTM, and this is the first year I have bothered with 3-ring binders. For the first time I feel organized, whereas before there were always papers floating here and there in this notebook and that. I don't have separate binders for all of those subjects, yet. I have one of the large ones separated out with tabbed dividers for each subject. At the end of the week I pull all of the completed work out and put it in the 3-ring binder. Once we get far enough into our year that the binder is getting full, I will buy another and put the language arts subjects into it to free up room. I can't imagine having a separate binder for every subject, though. My bookshelves would be full of mostly empty binders for so much of the year, and it is so easy for my boys to review things with the one binder. I know they wouldn't want to pull down a bunch of binders whenever they needed to review. I wish I had started doing this long ago! The only subject that has its own binder is history, because we have different sections for medieval world history (summaries, men & women, wars & conflicts, religion & mythology, art, inventions & architecture, maps & worksheets, timeline, the Plague! Problem Studies for One unit we're doing), American history, and American geography.

No advice, but I'm right there with you. My son is almost 12 and in 6th grade and skips counts for every multiplication problem. Memorizing them just isn't happening.

We dropped it halfway through last year. We started using Killgallon Sentence Composing then and added Blackbird & Company's Intro to Composition: The Essay this year. We're enjoying both far more than we did W&R. The Blackbird & Company books are rather expensive, but they are so much more effective than W&R was.

It looks fantastic; I can't wait to use it with the boys! Thanks for sharing!

We live near a former animal sanctuary that was shut down for “repeat deficiencies related to housing and care of the animals.†They had 12 tigers, 3 lions, 3 bears, and 2 wolves. In inadequate cages. Our community is seriously lucky that they didn't escape and kill someone. At least your local escape was a cub? There's some comfort in that.

I just pulled up an old thread to read through again and realized that linking to it here might be a good idea. This thread discusses why TWTM recommends some of the things it does. That was one thing I felt was missing from the book, of which I only own the 1st edition. It would be fantastic to have explanations of the reasons for narration, dictation, copy work, outlining, when to pause in math and solidify facts and understanding before moving on, why grammar is important, etc. The thread also discusses study skills, which would be a fantastic addition. http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/254880-sonan-in-mass-come-and-elaborate/

We have been enjoying Joseph Gordon Levett's TV show Hit Record. Not all episodes are funny, but they are surprisingly educational and just plain fun and interesting. http://www.hitrecord.org We've been watching on either Netflix or Amazon(we have both, I can't remember which has it.). William Shakespeare's Star Wars is fun! http://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/William-Shakespeares-Star-Wars-Audiobook/B00E3C43YK The Three Stooges are what we always turn to when we need to laugh. We love Charlie Chaplin, too. Or America's Funniest Home Videos. The kids love to torture me because I generally find one or two things per episode so funny that I laugh until I can't breathe. No educational value there, though! Monty Python and the Holy Grail. That's all I can think of right now.

This is my favorite zucchini dish. Baked Stuffed Zucchini http://www.bhg.com/recipe/printview/zucchini-ripiene-al-forno-baked-stuffed-zucchini/

We're having Lime Chicken Soft Tacos http://m.allrecipes.com/recipe/25371/lime-chicken-soft-tacos/?internalSource=search%20result&referringContentType=search%20results, pico de gallo and chips, and refried beans. That is rather sandwich-ish I guess, so I don't know that it fits your criteria.

This! We have no school room, no play room, and only 2 bedrooms. We have lots of bookcases in our living room for all of the school stuff, and all toys that are kept downstairs must fit into a small storage ottoman. The toys in their bedroom are kept in under-bed storage bins.

Yes!

I just asked on their FB page. I'll let you all know if I get an answer.

That I will self-sabotage my own plans to scale back and focus on skills, particularly in writing and critical thinking, by adding more subjects because I start panicking that we aren't doing enough. :-/

I've ordered from them quite a few times and been very happy. They do a much better packing job than Amazon, in my opinion!

That's why I didn't link to it. I did actually post it, then thought better and edited my post.