[Does anyone sell used books...]

I have thought of doing this too, but wasn't sure if there is a profit for part-timers. Thanks for the info.

[Just another reminder to join paperbackswap]

Right.

 

Also, if a person specifically goes to your bookshelf (because they "know" you), they can get the copy from you even if you are not first in line.

 

I didn't know this! I might have to start adding my it to my message board sigs. I love PBS! I go there first too and think it is excellent deal compared to buying from half.com or amazon.com considering you only pay to ship and than you receive for free.

 

Also, I got my mom and my MIL to give me books since they didn't want to actually be bothered with paying for shipping to swap.

[s/o The Interesting Homeschool Article]

I am actually homeschooling so that my children don't learn that they are the center of the universe. It is one of our top reasons. The rest is hooey. I do know people homeschooling for the "wrong reasons": too lazy to get kids to school or to school them themselves, control freaks, etc. But I don't really know anyone doing it to justify staying home.

 

:iagree: I'm here with you!

 

She is putting every homeschooler in the exact same boat -- which doesn't work for any situation about anything. Something about homeschooling is bringing up something inside her that she has yet to resolve and she is just lashing out here. Hopefully since she let it out she is moving on to a higher understanding of homeschooling or just on to something else.

[s/o Anyone surprised by the level of frugality practiced by some of our fellow]

Questions like this drive me nuts. Even after tons of research there doesn't appear to be clear cut answers.

 

How much water does it take to create and dispose of a disposable diaper? You are forgetting that disposable diapers do not come out of thin air! Just about if not more water than it takes to wash those diapers for years. And when I'm done with my cloth diapers, I can throw them in my compost pile. But I'm only on my 2nd child now and they are still wearable for the next.

 

On the cloth diapering site I visit, there're a whole lot of ladies who use "family cloth" (cloth TP), as well as "mama cloth" (for aunt flo) and cloth diapers and napkins too.

 

I'm one of those moms. I do all of these things and I do them not to be "green" -- because I started doing this before the term "green" was around but I do it because I find it to overall reduce my impact on disposable items. I don't use disposable paper items in my house because they are onetime uses and than into the garbage (or hopefully compost!), and I was not able to continue to do that as I found it wasteful. For me it started with paper towels and than I had children, so I used cloth diapers and wipes, than I started using them for TP, and than I started to use them for my aunt flow. And it works fine, we don't have any contagious diseases.

 

I soak them for 30 minute, do a regular wash and than do a cold rinse. I hang them when I can, oddly mostly during the winter over the wood stove and dry them in the dryer the rest of the time. I don't like to use the dryer either because that is also wasteful use of energy so I hang as often as I find the time. I'm sure it is a new concept for a lot of people, but I guess since I've been doing it for so long and we haven't had any issues with it, its just part of our lives. We do have TP in our house though for guests of course!

 

Now back to the original question... I think that for each family they do frugal or what seems to be frugal things for different reasons. Personally I try to both reduce my impact on the earth and also I try to save money, but nothing like some of the frugal people out there. Some of them are truly amazing at what they can do! I do have my weaknesses, so hopefully the things I am frugal with, will make up for the places I am not!

[Remember the boy voted out of class.....]

First, forgive me but what is an honor roll look like in the 2nd grade? I can barely remember what it was in high school!

 

I'm glad he was able to get to a place where he can learn!

[Thinking about next year already?]

Atleast I am not the only one! I figure I'll be able to watch the classifieds better that way and get some good deals. Also I will have time to look it over completely, instead of just partially. Even though I had our curriculum about 3 months before we started, summer just was not a good time to review curriculum as we were too busy. I will be getting things I know work for us now and will probally continue to work next year and research research research for the rest!

[Games like Starfall but for more adv. phonics?]

Sue,

 

Starfall does more than just letter recognition.

part 1 of their site is ABC (that's letter recognition)

 

part 2 is Learn to Read (and that covers a lot...)

http://www.starfall.com/n/level-a/learn-to-read/load.htm?f

 

part 3 Fun to Read

part 4 I am reading.

 

 

make sure you at least see part 2 of Starfall's site? play the word hunt games too. If you already like starfall that is.

 

Not sure how it lines up with ETC or anything.

 

-crystal

 

There is way more to Starfall than just the ABC part, so do take a look there. My DD loved Starfall and there are no ads there at all, which is great! She would click all over and she enjoyed the part called about me. Even though she couldn't read yet, all the areas seemed to be fun for her to try.

 

Also if it's not a stretch, Starfall now has a more.starfall section for $30/year. As soon as they released their new K program, they also opened up a new section on their website. Since I have been using Starfall for years and we've enjoyed their puzzles and other phonic products, I decided to signup and support them.

 

This was very much worth it for us. Some things that are new are some motion songs (encourages them to dance and move), math songs, section on just vowels, Back Back Bear section with making short sentences and reading books, color section on recognizing the color 'word', and a music player that plays a lot of the songs the kids have been listening to throughout starfall.

 

More.Starfall.com

[Are you guys watching this?]

From one of the articles I read, they were on one on of those Wife Swap shows? So possibly they are used to the attention and going on Larry King was just an extension of their past media life? I'm with most of you in wanting to just be home and hugging the living lights out of my kids after going through something like that. I might also possibly pass out from exhaustion.

[Discovery Streaming - frustrated :(]

I personally find the quality not so great also, but we decided in the end that trying to gather those videos from other sources would be a big pain. Netflix is way cheaper than Discovery Streaming and their quality is excellent and I can stream it to my tv with my xbox. Discovery Streaming recently stopped letting homeschool subscribers download their videos so we are stuck on the computer to watch it, unless I want to run a line through the middle of my living room. Not that big of a deal considering we are usually on the computer to watch youtube and other free video sites on our studies, but likewise I pay for this service and I'm disappointed that the options (such as downloading videos) was stripped from our subscription without advance notice and that the quality of the videos were not that great (but I knew this in advance). I was hoping dearly that they might step it up over the next couple of years, as the standard for high quality content surely should increase. Or we can pray that Netflix gets to stream their content at somepoint :c).

[Switching from Noeo Chem. III to Rainbow Science]

What level of Noeo is it getting boring at? I was thinking of using the Level 1 Chemistry for my DD for her 1st grade, do you think the living books for science at this age would get boring? We are looking for a very indepth and strong science program, since we all love science a lot, but we are finding that the living book curriculum we are finding might not meet our needs completely. Seems at least in the older levels it won't work at all.

[Singapore Users--please help me order!]

I was under the impression that we didnt need the workbook, so we only have the textooks for the KA and KB... I guess I should get the workbook and check it out.