Sorry for the thread resurrection; I was out of town last week but wanted to chime in :). SBP

This would be the deal-breaker for me. Our rabbit has defeated all my attempts to cover/protect the power cords. He gets past my blockades and chews through my heavy plastic cord covers. Even getting shocked isn't enough to deter him from chewing cords. After replacing my den lamps for the second time I decided that we couldn't let him hop around the house anymore. He can come in if the kids are holding him/playing with him, but other than that, he's in a big run on the back porch. For what it's worth, though, if we could resolve the power cord issue, I'd much rather have the bunny around than any cat. He really is sweet and funny and affectionate, in his own way. They have tons of personality and really do like to be with their people. (They don't necessarily want to be held by their people every minute, but they do like to be around them. I compare our bunny to a toddler; he'll snuggle sweetly for a few minutes and then he wriggles and wants to get down and go exploring.) If you're considering having a house bunny, though, I'd use gates to limit him to rooms that have limited/no power cords and a hard, easy-to-clean floor until you're sure he's litter trained. And even then, I wouldn't make his world too big. A room or two is plenty for such a little guy. SBP

:iagree: My children don't get to decide about orthodontia any more than they would get to decide if they wanted a cavity filled. No one wants to have a cavity filled, but there will almost certainly be long-term health and aesthetic issues arising from letting one go untreated. I agree that minor imperfections can be overlooked, but it sounds as though you know that your DD's issues are more serious than that. If you can afford to fix them, I really think you should do it without involving her in the decision. Chances are very, very good that she'll thank you for it one day, even if that day isn't the day she has to get a tooth pulled. SBP

I love Caesar's English and think that of all the MCT materials, it's the piece that could best stand alone if you have other LA materials you like and are just looking for a vocabulary resource. I'm not sure my children would have been ready for it as third graders, however. For us, starting it in the 5th/6th grade range was perfect. Retention and absorption for my students has been phenomenal. They really own the words once they finish CE; it takes the student way, way beyond just knowing the definition. Another vocabulary resource my children loved - and this was around 3rd/4th grade - was Vocabulary Cartoons. We started out with me scheduling it, giving quizzes, etc., and then things got busy and I just put it in the bathroom :D. I honestly think they got just as much out of it that way! And retention was great; they still reference the cartoons when one or another of the words comes up. The one that would get a thumbs down from me was Wordly Wise. We tried that one year, and it just seemed like busy work to me. They didn't hate it and seemed to do fine on a chapter by chapter basis, but long-term retention wasn't great. Good luck finding something that works for you :) SBP

I have two doing it now. I call them both 7th graders around here, but DD would be 6th if she were in PS. Neither is struggling with the day-to-day exercises in EV, which are challenging without being overwhelming and have led to some great discussions. DS, however, is struggling some with the composition assignments. We've done IEW prior to this year, and I think I've held his hand too much with regard to structure, and he really hasn't learned how to do it himself. Plus, like many boys his age, he's extremely reluctant to write twelve words if two will do. My goal right now is to get him to expand his quality content without resorting to a lot of contrived dress-ups, which is the part of IEW that drove me absolutely batty. I love, love, love MCT's philosophy on style and am just going to hope that by continuing to work with DS and expose him to the high quality examples in EV, I can help him begin to realize some of that same quality in his own writing. I think they're a little less open-ended than PT, from what I remember. At the end of each chapter of EV, there's a list of "options" to choose from - a list of potential exercises relating to the material covered in that chapter. Most center around the geography theme of the book, and some aren't even writing assignments: "Use a globe to trace the journey between x and y countries," for instance. Some call for the student to write a paragraph or two, and some call for a five paragraph (or longer) essay on a certain topic. The most advanced assignments, IMO, are the one that ask the student to analyze the advanced essays covered in the chapter, identifying and discussing certain elements or comparing them with essays previously read. My dc aren't ready for these yet, but we might come back to them at some point. So there's a definite range of assignments, and the teacher can choose the ones that best fit his or her students' current abilities, adapt them (or not) to other subjects being covered, and circle back to the more difficult assignments as the students progress. I love it! ... but one of the reasons I love it is that it works so beautifully in the context of the entire MCT LA program. I'm honestly not sure that I'd love it quite as much if I were doing it in isolation. And as a teacher, I feel that a bit more of the burden is on me than it was with IEW, where every single little thing in every writing project was quantified and checklisted. I'm really learning to grade my children's writing for the first time with MCT and am struggling with balancing praise and censure, making my expectations clear, and making sure the assignments match their abilities. All things I didn't much have to think about with IEW. That said, I am enjoying teaching it infinitely more, am learning from the program every day, and am more comfortable with it philosophically than I was with IEW. Hope something here helps :) SBP

Beautiful, beautiful room! You did a great job!! Thanks for sharing pics :) SBP

The jury's still out... DS12 did outgrow crying. I can't even imagine a school situation that would make him cry. DD11, on the other hand, got much worse last year (dratted hormones...) and still has had a bad day here and there this year. It's hard to discipline because she's SO fragile on those days that even looking at her wrong leads to more tears. What I've found that does help is that we've adopted a tradition we call "Sundae Friday". Anyone who's had a good week - worked pleasantly and cooperatively - gets taken out for ice cream on Friday. But I've told DD that shedding even one tear during the week makes her automatically ineligible. She's had to watch her brother get ice cream without her a couple of times, and that's done wonders for her self control. I see the tears well up every now and then, but she makes an effort to control them, which is what I want to see. Anyway, it's an idea. :) SBP

It really depends on the child, but what worked with my DD was setting up a toddler bed in the same room with the crib. We bought some cute "big girl" bedding for it (don't remember what now, but something she liked) and told her that if she got out of bed, we'd have to move her back to the crib. She got out of bed once, and we picked up the mattress and popped it back in the crib, and she had to sleep in the crib that night instead of her cute big girl bed. That was all it took. I don't think she ever got out of bed again. But as a toddler she was highly motivated to be a "big girl" - potty trained in about a day, learned to read at 3 - pretty much anything her brother was doing, she felt strongly that she should be doing as well. So the threat of the crib worked for her. I doubt it would have for my son at the same age. Good luck :) SBP

:iagree: Yep, this is how we did it six years ago, and they still remember every last one. Fun and painless :). SBP

My kids usually get that reaction, too. But DD11 came home from church last night with what I thought was a funny story. She said that in the course of conversation, she mentioned the report she's currently working on, and one of the girls in her small group looked absolutely shocked and said, "But... I thought you were homeschooled!" DD said that, well, yes, she was. "So why do you have to write reports?" the girl asked. Um, because it's still school? DD was a little annoyed once she had time to think about it and realized that the reason her peers tend to be jealous of homeschoolers is that they think we sit around and do nothing all day long. :glare: In the meantime, no matter how many of her friends express homeschool envy, DD really wants to go to school. I think it's all just a case of the grass seeming greener somewhere else. SBP

Yay! I'm so delighted for you and your DD :). SBP

We're doing that exact combination, and I don't find it overkill at all. Right now they're reading Tom Sawyer for LL7, which has been fun because SO many of the Caesar's English words can be found in there. But the reading schedule LL7 provides is very gentle - only four chapters a week, I think - so they're spending six weeks just reading, with no real LL "work" at all. We can get through a lot of MCT in six weeks, and if the workload in LL7 increases when they've finished reading the novel, I imagine I'll feel comfortable easing up on our MCT pace, having gotten so much under our belts already. And just in skimming over the Table of Contents for LL7, the only place where I can see much possible overlap with what we're covering in MCT is in the unit on poetry, which frankly is an area in which we could use some double coverage. :tongue_smilie: HTH! SBP

I use Home School Tracker + and love it, but if I didn't have that, I'd probably keep grades in Excel. I've never used a pencil and paper gradebook, but maybe someone else will have some suggestions. Good luck :) SBP

I rather feel that art falls into the same category as creative writing. If your child is interested in it, then by all means, encourage it! If not... well, personally, I just wouldn't sweat it. I try to expose my kids to the great works of art & art history in the context of our history studies, and the one who expressed some interest in "creating" art has had a few outside art classes, including a couple of cartooning classes he really enjoyed. (And the teacher was a male - not sullen at all but very laid back and all the boys thought he was really cool.) Eventually other interests prevailed, though, and the limited $ we have for outside activities was directed elsewhere. And he seems to be OK with that. So for my .02, if your DS doesn't like "creating" art, I'd just suggest letting him explore some activities that do interest him. That's not advice I'd ever give about the three R's, btw, but art... I do think that can be child-led :). SBP

I've only just heard of The Lost Tools of Writing, and I couldn't get the demo link to work, but the price... :ohmy:! I put Lively Art of Writing in my shopping cart at Amazon. That fits my budget much better :D. Thanks for your response :). SBP

This is tremendously helpful - thank you! I think we're bogging down in meter, when what we need to do is push on through and then revisit it, as you say, as we encounter relevant things throughout the year. For some reason, I'm having a lot of trouble thinking outside the box with this particular resource. We started out at the same pace you did - lesson stuff one week, writing stuff the next, but I didn't feel like they were getting enough writing done in their other subjects, so I elected to press on through EV. So we do a lesson one week, I assign writing for the next, but while they're working on the writing assignment(s) for chapter 2 (e.g.) during their afternoon time, we're forging ahead with chapter 3 of EV during the morning LA class. I think what's thrown me a little is that I expected Lightning Lit to be more demanding (time-wise and composition-wise) than it's been so far. If the pace of Lightning Lit picks up, I might not be as worried about finishing Essay Voyage early, KWIM? I just feel like becoming a strong writer requires lots of actual writing time, and I haven't been wonderful up to now at coming up with writing assignments across the curriculum. I'm determined NOT to drop this particular ball this year. Thank you so much for your response! SBP

Anyone?:001_smile:

I think Dorothy Sayers said it best: To have learnt and remembered the art of learning makes the approach to every subject an open door. Every subject. Including Power Point ;). SBP

We're six weeks in to our school year now, and I'm trying to evaluate what's going well and what's going not-so-well. MCT is definitely going well. It's far and away my favorite part of our day, to the point that I'm a little afraid of gushing like a besotted schoolgirl every time I mention it. However... The weak link (for us) is definitely the World of Poetry book. It's not so much that the book itself is weak, but it's the one element of the program that I really can't seem to figure out how to teach. The way I have it scheduled currently, I have the kids do Practice Voyage on M, W, F and we do World of Poetry on T, Th. So Poetry two days a week, for about 15 minutes. I know that's not a lot, but I think if I tried to do more or more often, I'd have a mutiny on my hands. Right now, we just read a few pages, and they take turns reading the poems he uses as examples. Sometimes I'll get out poetry from other sources, and we'll try to mark the meter (which is the section we're on right now) or find some other element mentioned in the lesson. Usually by that time, everyone is yawning and I'm wondering what I'm supposed to be doing. They're getting exposure to the various elements of poetry, but I definitely wouldn't brag about their retention of any of it. And the thing that makes me kind of sad about it is that my kids have always liked poetry and enjoyed memorizing it. I'm starting to see this experience as killing their enjoyment of poetry when, in the hands of the right teacher, it could and should enhance it. Advice? How are you using this resource in your school? My other question is about Essay Voyage. We're loving this resource and using every single bit of it, but we're getting through a chapter a week right now, and at this rate, it will only get us through this semester. So for those of you that have used or are using Essay Voyage, what do you do with the rest of the school year? I know I can go back and assign more of the "options" (which I'm tweaking so that they'll correspond with our history studies) and just keep revisiting topics in EV as they apply to the writing we're doing in other subjects. I would also be open to another resource if anyone has suggestions. The Elegant Essay? The Lively Art of Writing? Does one of these (or something else) follow Essay Voyage well? Suggestions and BTDT stories would be most appreciated :). SBP

We added "Getting Started With Spanish" once I realized it was out. We loved the Latin book, and I knew from that experience that GSWS would only take 10 or so minutes a day. I'm considering having them do Spanish I as an outside class next year, and I thought this would be a nice, gentle introduction. So far it's going well :). SBP

Best year EVER, which is pretty amazing considering how much I did NOT want to keep homeschooling at the end of last year. But we're six weeks in now, and I can honestly say that they've been the smoothest and least stressful six weeks I've had in 7 years of homeschooling. Must go knock on wood now. SBP

:iagree: This is our approach. They do have books they have to read on their own, but I still read aloud most of the historical fiction or classics from the time period we're studying. I think they get more from them this way, and we can all experience the book together and have discussions about it. We might not get through as many books this way, but we get a lot more out of the ones we get through. We did HO ancients last year, and I felt that the literature requirements were extremely light. Unless they require significantly more for the middle ages program, I can't imagine that it would be too much to do the books as read-alouds. Good luck in finding something that works for your family :) SBP

I've never used LC, but we are using First Form and really liking it so far. Yes, it's dry, but it is well-put-together, easy to use, and seems to be getting the job done. We tried LfC when it first came out (our first Latin program, when the kids were around 3rd grade) expecting FUN based on those same reviews. What we got was... a Latin program, and one that moved too fast for my kiddos. I didn't see anything remotely fun about it. Not that that's a deal-breaker for me, usually. I'm a card-carrying member of the No Fun Mom's Club, and as long as my kids are learning, whether they're having fun isn't a big issue for me. But the disparity between what I was expecting with LfC and what we actually got was just huge. I kept looking through it, trying to find the fun and feeling like I was the only one who couldn't see the Emperor's new clothes. SBP

It's been a while since we've used these, but I saw obvious results on the language mechanics sections after a year of using Daily Grams, and DD's reading comprehension scores improved after working through a couple of the Reading Detective books from Critical Thinking Co. I don't think that there was ever anything really wrong with her reading comprehension, but having never done a "reading curriculum" (we've always just used whole books a la TWTM) may have put her at a disadvantage on the standardized tests. The Reading Detective books seemed to help with that. Best, SBP

My 7th grader is doing: Math: Saxon 8/7 & LoF Decimals and Percents LA: MCT Voyage Level Languages: First Form Latin, Getting Started With Spanish Literature: Lightning Lit 7, Additional Lit from TWTM Middle Ages list Bible: Christian Studies, Book 3 Science: Rainbow Science History: The Human Odyssey (K12) PE: Running (Couch 2 5K), Kempo Karate Other: Boy Scouts Best, SBP