I come from a very reading family--there are 5 of us. I am a natural speller and have never struggled with it. My brother and my baby sister have always been terrible spellers--as adults they are still not very good at it. They both read constantly and always have. So IMO reading can help, especially if you're already a natural speller, but there are plenty of people who read all the time but still struggle with spelling, it just doesn't transfer or something. Some people just aren't natural spellers, irrelevant to their intelligence or love of reading. (As an example, my sister used to read a lot of books about astronomy. Then she would draw an accurate solar system, and mis-spell every planet name: Mrcry, Erf, Pudo...)

Yes, I'm about the only person I know IRL who does classical education. Our park group is almost entirely unschoolers, but they're lovely people and I like hanging out with them--we just don't talk much about curriculum! That's what this board is for. :001_smile:

I'm not sure that giving money to a tele-evangelist counts as tithing. I do believe that blessings come from tithing, but that doesn't mean you'll be rich--blessings don't have to be material. Heck, wealth can be a temptation and a burden too.

You could read "The Well-Educated Mind" and start a program like that! I do like the idea of doing Henle, I kind of wish I had (I do in the summer now). But to tell the truth it never occurred to me to undertake such an ambitious program for myself.

Another vote for the V. C. Andrews novels. My best friend became obsessed with them in junior high and gave them to me to read. I don't think my mom knew about it, though--she was always very vocal about her disapproval of horror and trashy romance novels. She barely tolerated Sweet Valley High! I didn't get around to reading a few Stephen King and Dean Koontz novels till I was probably 18, and while I didn't like them, they didn't disturb me as badly as the Andrews stuff, I suppose because I was older and there wasn't any incest. Oh, and I should never have read all those Piers Anthony books. He's a filthy old man. Ew. I remember one in particular--I had no idea of the content and I wish I'd never seen it.

Coming up with a name is one of the hardest things! We took a scripture about raising children and then turned it into Latin, so we are Lux et Veritas Academy. And then I worry that it sounds pretentious. :001_rolleyes:

I think this is really true. My kids can spend a lot of time playing Robin Hood or something, and they make up more elaborate, involved stories with a lot of characters (when they have friends over, anyway). I think their friends enjoy it too. Playing Rock Star just doesn't have the same scope for imagination. :001_smile:

I am a big fan of folk and fairy tales. So I hereby endorse those two quotations. :p But I like the real fairy tales, not the Disneyfied versions. If your kid reads a whole collection of stories--not just the few that have been prettified and turned into films--then there is a huge range of story themes, many of which have clever heroines who save themselves as well as girls who marry the prince. I do think there's a lot to be learned from fairy tales. Children naturally have violent feelings (all sorts of feelings) and I believe that fairy tales can help them to learn to deal with their fears and violence, more on their own level--that in fact, stories can teach that the dragons can be killed. These old stories have been around for so long--I can't help but think there's a lot of value to stories that have been passed down and polished through so many generations. Most of the stories have heroines who are beautiful because they are good--and the goodness is more important than the beauty, it's just that the beauty is the outward sign of the good within (though not always, sometimes the girl is wearing a bearskin or something). At the same time, I haven't let my daughters watch a lot of Disney princess movies, and I am really bugged by the whole "princess" thing, even as I understand that little girls naturally love sparkly princessy stuff--I just limit it very severely and make sure it's my girls' imaginations that do the work, not Disney. (No branded dress-ups, no "Princess" t-shirts, no Disney toys...) I feel quite strongly that all that stuff is a betrayal of what is true about folk tales (and, Chris, the very good truth you mention that they are daughters of a King). What is a fairy tale? -- Well, as a librarian, I'm strongly tempted to reply "Anything in the 398 section!" but that's not quite accurate, since we have modern fairy-tales by authors like E. Nesbit, Oscar Wilde, and so on. And fairy tale writers frequently write fantasy novels too, many of the best of which are long, elaborate fairy tales (like C. S. Lewis or George MacDonald). I am a Christian, but I also find enormous value in folk tales, fairy tales, and myth (as did Tolkien, Lewis, and many others). It's really important to me that my girls' imaginations be peopled with Robin Hood, King Arthur, the princess' hedgepig, Puck of Pook's Hill, Aladdin, and many other characters from old stories--hopefully more than, say, Hannah Montana. :thumbdown: Of course I also want them to have a strong grounding in Scripture, but I don't see those two things as contradictory.

Hah, that's funny, since my little red-haired daughter thinks the Wendy's logo is either a picture of her or of Pippi! Yep, there are a lot of redheads out there in Bookland. :001_smile:

If everyone panics and buys food when they think there's a food crisis, then there will be a food crisis. But if a large number of us have already stored plenty of food, then we won't be going to the store and buying a lot of food right when everyone else is. Food won't be so scarce, prices won't rise as much, and the poor won't be hit so hard. Thus, food storage is an anti-crisis mechanism for a whole community, not just an individual family, and it helps the poor. Food storage is also economical for anyone on a tight budget; if you start slowly by buying, say, 10 cans on tuna when they're on sale instead of 2, then you won't have to buy it when it's not on sale. So food storage, even on a small scale, is good for poor people because it cuts down the grocery bill. It can start with an investment of $5/week.

What people affected by Katrina needed was more like the emergency 72-hour kit that is often considered part of food storage. It's supposed to be 3 days' worth of food, water purification tablets, a little radio, that sort of thing all collected in a backpack you can grab and take with you in an emergency. That way, if you're sitting on the roof of your house waiting to be rescued, at least you have a bit of food and so on to keep you going.

My husband isn't exactly stellar at spotting the hamper--though he does OK--but he is very good at noticing my cycles. Quite frequently he is the one pointing out to me that I have PMS, and then the little lightbulb goes on above my head. "Oh, that's why I feel icky!"

Yeah, wheat is recommended because it lasts a lot longer than flour. It's also more versatile: you can sprout it for a lovely nutrition-packed veggie, make it into bulgur (which is delicious, try it), hot cereal, or bread. So you might want to think about investing in a mill one of these days--it's pretty fun to mill your own flour, your kid will love it. (I loved it as a kid, anyway.) Baking your own bread from your own flour saves a lot of money (not that I ever do mind you, but I could!). One of my favorite food storage cookbooks is Food storage for the clueless--despite the annoying name it's a great book with lots of good ideas for the beginning storer. So you won't do dairy? That means no dried milk, so you might want to look into whether there's such a thing as soy yogurt you can make yourself. Beans are excellent (sadly my daughter's allergic to them :( and I'm still working on good protein substitutes), you might also like to look into doing lentils. Salt is important--you want about 6 pounds for a year's worth, I think. Look carefully at the condiments; I thought I was being clever to buy and store mustard on sale, but it expires a lot sooner than you'd think.

Hm. I find that to be a problematic statement, even leaving out the question of whether children are a God-given gift. I would have serious reservations about the quality of the entire text. I haven't yet gotten to the logic stage, so I don't know how to express it right, but I feel that statement has serious logical problems. But I can't stay to elaborate.

Not gonna happen. No way.

I have been really happy with this year (2nd grade girl), and I think our curriculum choices have worked out great. Unfortuately, just as I was feeling smug about how on-track we were, my daughter got sick for a couple of weeks and now I feel way behind! I'm now trying to wrap up in a few more weeks and plan for next year. Math: I've been amazed at how quickly she picks up the concepts. Memorizing all the facts is more of a challenge for her, so Saxon 3 has been perfect this year--plenty of repetition but always new stuff to do (that mostly isn't difficult for her). Now that we're close to the end, it's gotten quite fun in several lessons, with negative numbers and such. We probably won't finish the whole book but that's not necessary at this point, since a lot of it is just brief previews for next year. SWB rails about putting 3rd-graders into Saxon 54, but I'm not sure what else I could do--she just picked up the math more quickly than I expected, and here we are. English: I like R&S grammar and have been switching out weekly with CW Aesop A. Also we finished SW C today. I've been very happy with our progress in all of these, and I've learned some grammar myself too! We still have 3 chapters to go in Aesop, though. Sigh. I've been pretty light on the grammar and spelling--we just whiz through the lessons with no trouble at all. Maybe next year I should do a little more grammar just to challenge her a bit. Latin: I dropped the ball for several weeks a couple of months ago, so we're not as far as I'd like. I'd sure like to finish LC I this year, but we'll see--still 3 chapters to go. We have a lot of fun with Latin though, and she wants to start Greek as well next year! History: we're several chapters behind because I just hate to smush history in and not do it thoroughly. I love medieval history so SOTW 2 was great. But we're only to the Reformation... Science: Astronomy has been lots of fun. If only we'd made it to the observatory more--well, we can still go any time we want. I'm really looking forward to some fun chemistry next year. For the summer, I'd like to keep doing some Latin and history to finish up what we've got. Maybe start her on the Greek alphabet? My 5yo girl is going to be starting K in the fall, so I want to really focus on reading and Saxon K with her--ideally she'd be reading pretty well and finish Saxon K over the summer. Also we plan to swim and play in the creek a lot, learn to sew on a machine and do some cooking.

There is a woman here I attended college with (sort of), but we didn't know each other well. I don't think it was here that I recognized her, though--it was somewhere else online and then I saw her here too, because we're both doing classical homeschooling.

My mom was always so nice about the junk we gave her. I can remember being so happy about the beautiful doohickey I had picked out and bought myself (whatever it was) and it always made me happy to see those things out and being used. Of course, I grew up and realized that I had given my mom a lot of tacky, ugly junk! But she was very gracious about it and I think the joy I got out of it and the lessons I learned about generous giving were worth the few dollars I spent.

It depends. I drop my 7-yo off for Musikgarten, but stay for her dance class. The 5yo only gets dropped off at friends' homes. My oldest has food allergies so I'm very paranoid about parties or anything with food.

Look at your library--there's a book with recipes and crafts, but I can't remember the title. The Anne cookbook, or something like that.

Um....splunge?!? Actually I pretty much agree with Diana up there. Their former policies make me very unhappy. Although the policies have changed, I doubt that the administrator's hearts have--it hasn't been that long. OTOH I really know very little about BJU or anything Southern, so I'm speaking from a position of near-total ignorance. I don't buy BJU materials for several reasons, but their record on racial issues alone would give me very serious pause.

Yeah, the whole thing just reminds me of people I knew growing up, side ponytails and all. My husband spent the first 15 minutes of the movie going "I don't get this at all. What?" and then he liked it after that, but it was still completely strange to him.

IME the pants run very long.

Yep, tether him. Tell him it's his puppy costume. :001_smile: Seriously, I'd get a tether. I know people look askance at them, but I think they're really better than a stroller for an active, curious kid--at least he gets to run around and look at things, and you know he can't get away. Besides, who could resist having a puppy costume?

Yes, most do. Evidently people figure out ways to get around it, though. We recently had to move all the DVDs behind the desk, because they were getting stolen. Why anyone would want to steal our DVDs, which are all donations and not exactly recent releases, I do not know. Easier than Blockbuster?