This does look like a good resource. I found it free online.

That is heartbreaking. Aside from all of the suggestions above I would suggest that she needs audiobooks or someone to read aloud to her for next school year. If she hasn't progressed significantly by the start of school she is only going to continue to fall farther and farther behind. Having someone reading her books to her (or audiobooks where available) will at least expose her to the content, help with completing assignments, and keep her from failing completely.

Penn Dixie in Buffalo is fun if you want to dig for your own fossils. http://www.penndixie.org

Score for Waldorf Education: -6 Score for Traditional Education: -21 Score for Unit Studies Education: 5 Score for Montessori Education: 19 Score for Thomas Jefferson Education: 5 Score for Unschooling: 19 Score for Classical Education: 17 Score for Charlotte Mason Education: 17

http://weneeddiversebooks.org/where-to-find-diverse-books/ is a good resource.

This sounds great! I might have to grab a copy of that book.

We're doing something different for 6th. I really want to focus on critical thinking, logic, and philosophy. I want to have big conversations, and form connections. I want to worry little about content, but greatly about skills. I also want to do more math on the whiteboard so I can see where he's struggling and correct before he repeatedly makes the same mistakes. I feel like I've dropped the ball a bit with regards to math by letting MM do all the teaching. This student finds thing so much easier if I walk through a few problems with him first. So....... -MM6 -The If Odyssey and Big Ideas for Little Kids to teach philosophy -Suppose the Wolf Were an Octopus to teach critical thinking -The Sherlock Holmes Puzzle Collection and other logic puzzles -guided note-taking and French dictation -writing I'm still undecided on, we have a lot of resources I could choose from (WWE workbook, WWS workbook, Bravewriter, W&R, MCT, and probably more I'm not remembering LOL) or I may just use WWE along with Suppose the Wolf Were an Octopus questions to create assignments. He'll continue to work on dictation skills through the guided note-taking I have planned. -electronics w/ the littleBits Popular Science Super Bundle -Plague: Problem Studies for One -project time to work on his own interests, which are currently robotics and programming -continue guitar lessons

Katie isn't the only one crying. Also, lard isn't just fat, it is specifically PIG fat. So thanks for that. It feels great to know that people think I'm a pig.

http://oms.stoughtonschools.org/teachers/abontya/Images/Formallab

I use this recipe, but I've never made the frosting. http://allrecipes.com/recipe/best-brownies/detail.aspx

Tour the States by Renald Francoer

Going through my old posts was interesting. Thankfully the only pictures I've posted were my own.

So can I send in the registration form now? If I wait to do it until closer to the deadline I'm afraid I'll forget. :-/

Definitely don't skip the picture books! That said, reading The Complete Tales and Poems of Winnie-the-Pooh is a great introduction to chapter-style books. Each story stands on its own, but the common characters and subject matter give it the chapter-book feel. That book and the Beatrix Potter tales are how our family has segued from primarily picture books to primarily chapter books. My Father's Dragon and Mr. Popper's Penguins were other stories that kept my boys' attention when they were quite young. My daughter just turned 3 and we haven't tried any chapter books for her yet, aside from whatever she picks up from listening in on her brothers' read-alouds.

PT is Paragraph Town, part of Michael Clay Thompson's (MCT) English language arts program. http://www.rfwp.com/series/mct-writing-program#book-writing-paragraph-town

We are also using W&R Narrative II along with TC and PT! We did skip the first section of TC because I felt that Nik had a really good grasp of the grammar portion, but perhaps we will go back and do it.

We did, and after a rocky start when my 5th grader realized we were starting at 9 instead of 10 from now on we had a great day! I wish I had taken a picture of my living room, though, because my 3yo made a monstrous mess! Paper clips, beads, paper, pipe cleaners, toys, and books everywhere. Trying to teach with a 3yo around should make for a very interesting year.

Sometimes I open mine 6 times a day! lol They will break after a while, but I used the same spine for the boys' weekly notebooks for the entirety of last year, opening them a minimum of 36 times, and only one had a couple of the rings break. A couple of broken rings isn't an issue when there are so many holding it together, and most people probably don't open and close them as much as I do, anyway!

I updated my plans a bit, changing our Spanish and Spelling and clarifying how I use multiple resources by including the days of the week we do them. We start Monday, so I am knee-deep in books trying to make sure I have our first few weeks ready. We will probably be moving in the next couple of months, too. We've lived here for, wow....thirteen years, so packing and moving will be quite a job. Add an almost-three-year old to the mix and I'm hoping my careful planning helps get us through this first quarter!

I know, right?! All I could see was this mountain of work I was going to have to do over. It was pretty easy to fix, too.

I really enjoyed the sample and can't wait to read more.

This is EXACTLY what happened both times. I tried taking it apart the first time but I guess I'm even less handy than you are. lol I bet I didn't remove the squishy pads, and subsequently the screws underneath, which is why it wouldn't come apart for me. I'm going to have my husband take it apart tonight and fix it. Thank you so much for your reply! As for contacting the company.....I did that when the first one broke and the woman I corresponded with was not at all helpful. I should have known The Hive could have helped!

That's the second one I've killed. We start school next week. The boys get weekly ProClick notebooks full of all of their assignments for the week. Now I have to either buy another one or three-hole-punch everything I've already done and put them in 3-ring binders. *sigh* What a pain! I've followed all of the instructions on number of pages to punch, etc. I love, love, love the way the spines work, but the machine is not made for frequent use. It's also not easily fixable, perhaps not fixable at all. I don't think I will continue to recommend it. Has anyone found another binding machine that works with the ProClick spines? ETA ~ It's fixed! LatteMama's very technical ;-) directions had it fixed quickly. Thanks again, LatteMama!

Ready Set Happy http://www.16guidelines.org/publications/29-ready-set-happy We used this with a homeschool group and it was fabulous! Bonus, it's free! (Or make a donation if you can afford to.) From their site..... Ready Set Happy uses a slightly different list of the 16 Guidelines: Humility Patience Contentment Delight Kindness Honesty Generosity Thoughtful speech Respect Forgiveness Gratitude Responsibility Principles Aspiration Service Courage

Here is the part 1 of the Teacher's Guide. I can't find part 2. :-/ My computer had to be wiped clean and my backed-up files are a bit of a mess. If anyone is interested I will search harder. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B97VumpziE6VU1cyRjVZRkRQcGs/edit?usp=sharing