I was looking at one of the Asus netbooks first but I read so many negative reports about how slow it was that I started looking at others. What don't you like about it?

Actually, I was leaning towards an Acer because Consumer Reports rated it as their number one choice. It is the Acer Aspire One A0722-0022. Which one do you have? Is it speedy?

Wow, yes, 18 months is definitely not very long. That would be very disappointing. It would be interesting to see some stats on them.

I am looking to buy a netbook and have been doing some research on them. I find such conflicting information and reviews that it is very confusing. I am planning to use it for day-to-day web access, such as amazon, blogs, researching homeschool stuff, email, news sites, etc., reading books, reading pdf's, word processing, etc. That's pretty much it. I want something that is lightweight and travels easily but speedy enough to use daily without getting frustrated at response time. Anyone using a netbook that they love?

Although the right to bear arms is not one of them, as you said above, the right to life is. Many in the U.S. believe that it is their right to protect their own life and they need a gun to do so. This article explains how many in the U.S. feel about guns and their right and responsiblity to protect their life and the lives of their loved ones: http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=215107

I am of the camp that believes school personnel should be allowed (not forced) to concealed carry.

:iagree: I too have found this to be annoying in the past and I think it is disrespectful to the OP and the others who would like to discuss the topic. It would be better for those who are not interested in the topic or feel it is eventually going to blow up to just go to another thread to post their jokes and funny pictures.

I'm so sorry for your loss. I lost my mom on August 4th and it was also very unexpected. It is still somewhat surreal to me at times. I feel for you, your mom and your whole family. It is such a devastating thing to go through and having it happen just before Christmas makes it even worse. I am so sorry and I will be praying for you, your mom and your family. Our sons were only 6 at the time my mom died so we did not take them. If they had been at the age of your children, I would probably ask them what they want to do and go with that. From watching my nieces and nephews, they are pretty good at knowing what they are ready for. My nieces and nephews all wanted to attend their grandparents funeral when they were around that age but I really think it depends on the child. The funeral home we used was very good about holding our hand through everything. They arranged our meeting with my mom's pastor also and, between the funeral director and the pastor, they were able to help us through making all of the necessary decisions. My mom's pastor really did not know my mom all that well because, for health reasons, she had only attended Sunday school for many years and had not gone to the worship service. He asked that us kids write something about her that he could use in the service. I ended up writing something up that everyone read and agreed they liked and he ended up reading it as it was. I can't provide any insight on what you should do about spending Christmas with your mom or doing your normal thing. For me and my sister, we ended up changing the location of our traditional Thanksgiving get together because it would have been too hard for us to do our normal thing. I'm not sure we will ever go back to doing it the way we did when mom was with us. For Christmas, we are going to do our normal thing but my dad and his wife will be there so hopefully that will help some. Be patient with yourself and allow yourself to grieve through this. It is a process and it takes time. My prayers are with you and your family.

We have done something similar to this, without the regular breaks every six weeks, although I might consider that. I am still trying to find what works best for us. We are on our break now but we waited too long for a break and I was definitely feeling burned out the last couple of weeks. We school 4 days a week and go to co-op on Fridays. I count co-op as school since my sons are taking P.E., Spanish, Art and Drama. We fit everything else in on the other days, although our days are sometimes longer than I would like. We need to work on being more efficient with our time.

We are starting second grade in January and we will be starting Prima Latina then. I was not confident in my ability to teach it, since I have never taken a Latin class myself, so I purchased the DVD. So the lady on the DVD teaches about a 20 minute lesson once a week and you spend the other days doing the other pages in that lesson/chapter. I watched the first day and I am glad I purchased the DVD this time. I may not need it in the future but I think it will be a big help for this first year. Good luck to you!

My sons are adopted and are 6 weeks apart in age. Early in their lives we became good friends with another family who has twin girls and the kids have had lots of time to play together over the years. For a long time, they clearly all enjoyed each other and they would also often divide up into twos to play, one boy and one girl who had similar personalities and the other boy and girl who also had similar personalities. But sometimes they would reverse that also. Now the girls recently turned eight and my sons recently turned seven. The four of them will still play all together at times (hide-n-seek and other gender neutral games) but it is very clear that the two girls are much closer and play together much more, even when all four are together, than they once did. I think a lot of it comes down to they are now at an age where the girls enjoy 'girl' things more and the boys enjoy 'boy' things more which naturally results in the girls wanting to play together more (and therefore are closer) and the boys wanting to play together more. Basically, even though they are triplets, I think it is the natural thing that tends to happen around this age, where the boys enjoy doing more traditional boy things and the girls enjoy doing more traditional girl things but they still cross over here and there also.

This sounds like you are moving toward give him even more choices and independence when it seems he is already struggling with what he already has. I would go with the majority of replies and see if giving him a bit more guidance and handholding might help. Also it seems that giving him one day of assignments at a time might be less overwhelming for him. And having him check in with you when he finishes an assignment and possibly let you know which assignment he plans to tackle next might be a good handholding/accountability step. Did you build up to giving him a week at a time by starting with one day of assignments at a time to see if he could handle that? What approach were you using before you started emailing him a week worth of assignments?

I would definitely count the days you have already done, even if you are restarting some subjects. To me, the counting is really for the state's requirements. I am more concerned with making sure we do the work, do it right, the kids understand it and we finish the curriculum. For example, we finished Math Mammoth for 1st grade a couple of months ago but I felt my sons didn't really comprehend it well enough. So we started CLE Math for 1st grade and we are doing multiple lessons per day, they are understanding it well and they like it better. As soon as we finish it, we will start 2nd grade math and we will continue with that until we finish, even if it means we have to do math through the days we take off as vacation or even some weekends at times. I am confident we can catch up pretty easily so that when we start 3rd grade in January of 2014 we will be using the right book. We may even be a little ahead, since I don't like to take too much time off of math because they forget too much. If I had to report our days to the state, I would report our official school days and would likely leave out any days where we just did math...but I would count days when we went on field trips and I would also count our co-op Fridays, when my sons take P.E., Spanish, Art and Drama. I'm not sure if I really answered your question or not. I hope I did.

We have finished some subjects and still finishing up some and have already started anew with some others. However, we will officially finish 1st grade at the end of next week and we will start 2nd grade in January. I was not planning to start any of our second grade material until January but my sons were begging to begin SOTW Middle Ages so we started it today. I am seeing it is a good thing though because it keeps us to our routine. I was thinking we would start having shorter days in these couple of weeks before Christmas but I think that might have caused some issues when we ramped up again. Full steam ahead!

We are just finishing Vol. 1 and we did the 42 chapters in 36 weeks. We do history on Mondays and Wednesdays. When we start a new chapter, my sons color the coloring page while I read a chapter aloud to them. We do the narrations and the comprehension questions and then we do the map work. If it is one of the shorter chapters or just a chapter that we are less interested in, we move to the next chapter the next time we study history. If it is a longer chapter or a topic that we find very interesting, we spend the next history day reading library books. Sometimes we narrate those also but I often forget (must do better with that). If I found library books that the boys can read to themselves, I assign it to them to read during our 45 minute read-to-self time. They would easily have time to finish it and read something else of their choice (mom approved) from the library. We have read-to-self or assigned reading 4 days a week so, depending on the library books, they may get to read a one or two during that time. It seems most of them are ones I need to read to them though. We have all learned a lot of very interesting things from the library books though. To me, the study would not be nearly as interesting without them. We do science on Tues and Thurs. One son loves science the best and the other loves history the best, but we have all really enjoyed our history study this week and are really looking forward to starting Vol.2 in January.

We will be starting 2nd grade in January. English: First Language Lessons 2 plus possibility some exercises from R&S's english (Mon-Wed) Writing: Writing With Ease 2 (Mon-Thurs) Spelling: All About Spelling 2 (Mon-Thurs) Reading/Literature: 45 minutes per day either reading-to-self (mom approved) or assigned reading from our history studies (Mon-Thurs) 30 min to an hour of Read Aloud time (Mon-Thurs) Latin: Prima Latina (Mon-Thurs) Math: CLE Math 2nd grade (Mon-Thurs) History: Story of the World Vol.2 The Middle Ages (Mondays and Wednesdays) Science: Still deciding (Tuesdays and Thursdays) Bible: We have been using Bible Study Guide For All Ages but I think we will be switching to something I create myself. (Mon-Thurs) Music: Practice 30 minutes daily (one son takes violin and the other takes piano) I am teaching my two same-age sons so our day takes a bit longer since I am doing everything with two kids together. We have probably been spending around 3 to 3.5 hours on our first grade work. I anticipate 2nd grade taking between 3.5 and 4 hours. We go to homeschool co-op on Fridays for the following: P.E. - 1 hour (plus both boys take swim lessons once a week for 30 minutes and swim at the YMCA once or twice a week) Spanish - 1 hour Art - 1 hour

I am beginning to think schooling on the calendar is good for this February drudge. Since we are starting our new year in January, we are excited about starting new books and new subjects. By the time it starts getting tiring, we are at spring break and we can look forward to some time off and fun times during the summer.

We recently switched to CLE after trying Right Start, Singapore, and Math Mammoth. We tried RS in K and switched to Singapore somewhere in the middle of K and used it to the beginning of 1st grade and then switched over to MM. We finished MM for 1st grade and then we started CLE Math for 1st grade because I still didn't think my two sons were really having success with MM and I thought they were struggling with some of it. Not long after starting CLE Math, my sons both said they hated MM, which was a big surprise to me. I think they might not have realized how much they hated it until they tried something they really liked. CLE is working wonderfully and they have no issues whatsoever understanding it. And they enjoy it, which is worth a lot. Now they feel they are good at math. When we first started CLE, I skipped over things that they already knew. Sometimes I would just cover a topic quickly to introduce new terminology or a new method or something. When we started seeing more of the things I knew they really needed reinforcement on, we started doing every problem and all of the speed drills and flash cards. Even though we had done tons of math before CLE, neither of my sons had their addition and subtraction facts down. They are now really getting them down cold. We are covering two lessons per day so we are moving along through it very quickly. But this time I know they are understanding the material and they are not struggling with it. That brings a lot of peace of mind. I hope it works out for your sons too.

I bought a violin for myself when my son started taking lessons. I was doing very well with it for a while but then he decided he didn't want me to practice with him any more because it make his practice time take longer. I was still having to help him with his practice time at that time so I ended up quitting because I didn't want to spend his time plus my time on practice. He no longer really needs my help during his practice so I really should pick it back up and start again. I think if you are going to your child's lessons with him/her you can pick up the majority of what you need. You still might need a lesson here and there (maybe once a month or every other month). The thing that has really put a damper on how well I was doing was that I was just at that point where I really needed to learn to read the music because the books were not providing as many helps. If you already know how to read music, you will be ahead of the game by a long shot. I still have my violin and I don't have to feel guilty about having bought it because I know my sons will eventually grow into it. So even if I don't start up again, he will use it. But I would really like to start again because I love the sound of it and it really is a joy to play, except that it was making me have muscle contractions in my upper back. Other than that, it was lovely. Good luck!

Thanks so much for all of the suggestions. I also own R&S and I like the looks of the assignments so I think I will just do some of them orally. Thanks for your help!

We will be starting FLL2 in January. I also have a copy of R&S 2nd grade English books because I wanted to compare them. I really like FLL2 and want to stick with it for 2nd grade but I also like some of the assignments in R&S. So I am looking for something that will complement FLL well by providing some assignments, such as circle the nouns/verbs, etc. Something that does not require a lot of writing but still has the children doing something to show they are understanding the concept. Any ideas?

I started teaching my sons to read before Kindergarten and they were already reading pretty well when we officially started Kindergarten in August of last year. We finished Kindergarten by December and my sons were both ready to start 1st grade material in January so that is what we did....and here we are! Since their birthdays are both in the fall (late Sept and early Nov) it really works out quite well for them age-wise. If they were in public school, they would be some of the oldest in their 1st grade class. At this point, we are just progressing at their learning speed.

We didn't have any gaming systems in our house until I decided to buy a Kindle. I really like the Kindle for reading books, especially when travelling. We have allowed our sons to put games on the Kindle and now it is used more for games than for reading. Our rule is that playtime comes after work, so school work, music practice and chores must be finished first before any screen time. The boys are allowed to watch one short movie (30 minutes) each week day and allowed one longer movie on weekends or holidays. They are also allowed to play Kindle games for 15 minutes each on weekdays and 30 minutes each on weekends. They enjoy watching each other play almost as much as playing so this is really 30 minutes of screen time with games on weekdays and one hour on weekends. I don't regret allowing this much screen/game time. I think if we removed all restrictions they would spend too much time at it though. One of our sons especially has a tendency to become obsessed with things and it can last for an extended period of time. What does annoy me though is that every time they go to play at their friends' houses, they seem to only end up playing games or watching movies/tv or both. The neighbor boys do not like coming to our house to play because they want to play video games or watch movies. I like them to play other things together so maybe I am just out of the loop. I feel badly that their friends don't want to come here to play though. DH is planning to build a pretty neat tree fort soon, with a slide, fireman's pole, zip line and rope ladder that can be pulled up into the fort. So maybe that will make things a bit more fun for friends. My sons love to pretend and spend the majority of their free time playing/pretending something and also playing/pretending with Legos. I would much rather they spend their time like this rather than sitting in front of screens.

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I hope this is true. There is so much confusion and speculation out there that it is hard to know what is true. I heard that the state exchanges would only have one plan and I don't think insurance will be made available across state lines, from what I have heard. That has always been a big controversial position, with one side wanting to make it available across state lines and the other not so much, from what I understand. We are self-insured also. I have heard/read that, if you already have insurance, this won't affect you much. But then I keep reading about insurance prices going up and companies cutting the number of employees or cutting employees hours so they are part-time to avoid having to provide insurance for them because they can't afford to provide what Obamacare says they must.. So, by the time we really see this implemented, there will likely be a lot more people without insurance. Really, there is so much information flying around, it is hard to know what is true and what is not true and how this is going to affect everyone. It would be nice if some non-partisan group would put together a paper explaining how this is going to affect everyone, in layman's terms.