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KathyBC

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Everything posted by KathyBC

  1. We're north of Kamloops, so it might be a bit of a drive! ;) But perhaps I'll see you at the Homeschooling Convention in May. :)
  2. We're in a similar place - we haven't gone to church on a regular basis for years. Part of that is the drive, though we make the same drive for other commitments. In the past I missed the singing but no one else in my family feels the same way; in fact, it bothered my dh and boys quite a bit. Lately I have become an emotional sprinkler and find it difficult to sing about this amazing thing Christ has done without gushing all over the place, so I'm actually relieved to avoid that experience. :001_unsure: I sometimes wonder how my kids will meet other christian kids (besides the handful they know now) and future life partners. Both dh and I feel we'd like the kids to get some kind of missions experience as they get older. So while the future is not all mapped out, I expect we will have to get back on board at some point. You and I are definitely not alone, however. While reconnecting with former co-workers on Facebook, I was forwarded this new terminology: "Free Range Believer" "I think that is great term to describe us believers who are no longer a committed part of Sunday morning institutions. We haven’t left Christ. We’ve not lost our passion for the body, but many of us have found it far easier to grow and help others grow without all the overhead, machinery and rituals of organized religion. To some of us it has been a cage that did not promote healthy spiritual growth, but actually stifled it by all the personal expectations and political necessities of an institution. Now, I know not everyone feels that way and many continue to find great life and growth in such places. If it is helping you know God better and live more deeply in him, good on you! But it is also fabulous that others are finding more opportunities for growth in the freedom from some of the restrictive realities of many of those institutions." Sound familiar? I googled it and found a couple neat blogs. Here's one: http://lifestream.org/LSBL.May01.html So maybe like homeschooling, we won't be counter-cultural for very long?
  3. It's hard for me to translate these statistics into a homeschooling paradigm. If a ps student is not reading at six, a lot of emotional baggage becomes attached to that. If a child is not held back from learning or aware that he is 'slow', how does that change things? All evidence I'm aware of in that scenario is anecdotal, to be sure, but it is prevalent.
  4. We mostly follow our local public schools, starting in September and ending in June. We are finishing week 16. With our history stuff we're on week 13, which is about where I planned to be.
  5. I voted. I'm only halfway through WIW, but plan to do very little beyond reading over the holidays (ah, bliss), so should be ready for January's discussion.
  6. I really liked the three simple workbooks Get Ready for The Code, Get Set for The Code and Go for The Code to teach all the consonants and their sounds to my younger two, along with http://www.starfall.com .
  7. As another can-barely-draw-stick-people mom, I have appreciated having the Draw Write Now books kicking around the house. We use Artistic Pursuits, and hope to move on to Draw Squad next. But for just casual, fun stuff they are really great.
  8. I enjoyed The Thirteenth Tale - suspenseful and engrossing, but not disturbing. The alphabet mysteries by Sue Grafton (i.e. A is for Alibi, B is for Burglar), etc. are great for light reading. And I'll second or third Elizabeth George, Alexander McCall Smith and Janet Evanovich. Evanovich's Stephanie Plum mysteries make me laugh so hard I cry. The violence is not explicit, the s@x is a little bit more so, but they are very, very funny.
  9. I think the usual order for HWT is Get Set for School in pre-k, then Letters and Numbers for Me in K. I like to focus on letter and number formation with HWT, so that when we're doing anything else, we can just focus on content and I don't worry over-much about neatness or perfection. We loved Get Ready, Get Set and Go for the Code from ETC to learn the consonant sounds at the beginning of K. If your child likes to circle and x things, they're great. As others have said, if you are already using a reading program, they're not absolutely necessary.
  10. If you can at all afford it, I would recommend Teaching Textbooks for pre-algebra. They use very easy-to-understand language and there is a solution available to watch for EVERY problem. Key to Algebra might be another, less expensive pre-algebra option that explains things in simple language. I hear you about friends. :grouphug: I would try to find a class or activity in which to enroll that would interest your dd - sports, arts or crafts, music - or some sort of volunteering opportunity. Even if she doesn't meet someone with interests in common, she will get something out of it.
  11. Together, the NDP and the Liberals do not have enough seats to accomplish anything. They NEED the BQ.
  12. I'm getting confused with all the multi-quoting, so I'm not singling your post out, I'm just losing track of all the interesting conversational threads. :) My understanding is Trudeau never had better than 38%. Even Chretien couldn't do better than 43%. If Harper only got 37%, that means the other parties got even less. Putting them all together might sound fine to them; and in an extreme case, such as the financial scandals that brought down the Liberals, Canadian voters might accept such a coalition. But we just voted 7 weeks ago! This maneuver has nothing to do with loss of confidence in the government - it is political sabotage for their own gain. IMNSHO. I absolutely appreciate hearing other points of view, no offense implied or intended. The views of this poster do not reflect the management, are not set in stone, etc., etc., etc. :D
  13. I question whether those same voters would have voted for the alliance. TSX point drop biggest ever It doesn't look economically positive at the outset, although there are so many other factors right now, it's hard to tell. And I agree - we could be so controversial we might almost... DISAGREE! Wierd. :lol: :iagree:
  14. Ya, can't agree with you there, either. I don't want people to get along so badly that separatists make the decisions for the whole of Canada. Cutting taxpayer funding to political parties is revenge? He needs to get revenge because he got re-elected? :confused1: IMO, we need less CBC spin, more independent thinking. There,Cleo, is that better? :D
  15. Sick of Harper? Not me. We have a conservative economist in power at a time when we could rilly, rilly use one... so instead let's do a backroom deal and give the one political party whose sole aim is to leave the union veto power. (If I understand the whole thing correctly, which I may not.) I definitely agree with ya'll, though, that enough's enough already!
  16. Anything by Jim Kjelgaard - Wild Trek is specifically a wilderness adventure. Lost in the Barrens by Farley Mowat, and its sequel Curse of the Viking Grave are classics.
  17. Third vote for Vos. My 12yo ds is reading The Message on his own this year, but still likes to listen when I read The Child's Story Bible to the younger two.
  18. This happened with my dd last year, right around this time. We moved on to the grade 1 workbook, included lots of math readers from the library, and when she hit a wall, we stopped and played math games, RightStart and Scrabble Yahtzee among them. This fall we picked up where she left off last spring and it went well. She's almost done, so I suppose we'll follow the same procedure with the grade 2 workbook.
  19. :iagree: To that list I might add The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith Cry, The Beloved Country
  20. We bought Tinkertoys at Toys R Us a few years ago. The wood is not of the same quality as in the past - it splintered and broke quite easily. My builder boy spends the most time with K'nex.
  21. Lard works very well in biscuits. Other than the BHA, BHT, lard is pretty natural. :) You could try making your own to get around that, but it seems like a lot of work.
  22. I second R.E.A.L. Science, both Life and Earth & Space.
  23. I'm reading Who Killed Canadian History? by Granatstein. Anyone else read that? I agree with most of what I've read so far, but am stuck here: He posits that lack of federal oversight, the province's each having their own educational standards, is a big part of the problem. I don't know that having a federal curriculum would make it any livelier than it is, KWIM? I'd love to discuss this book. Must sleep now, though and rise early for child's hockey weekend. Drat. All the interesting topics come up as I am parted from my computer, lol.
  24. :iagree: I will attempt to behave myself at my son's minor hockey games this weekend. :lol: The politics I could live without; but I can't help cheering for our team like a lunatic. :blush: Gasping in horror... GO CANUCKS!!
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