Oh...we are ordering that in about a week. I copied the questions for my daughter to answer and reserved the book at the library. Lo and behold, I accidentally ordered the young adult version...da dum dum... I gave it to my daughter and she read the first chapter. "Mom, this is REALLY hard to follow." "Naaa, it's fine. Just keep reading." She couldn't answer any of the questions and I looked at the book...yeah, it was a high school-aged fiction book with the same title. I think the SL book is pretty good - from the looks of the questions in the Reader Booklet.

Which one? The Sonlight Core 2 one or the high school version?

I have one of those... I'm at a loss as to what to do also.

One of my sisters was born VERY premature, so I know exactly what you mean. It was probably 4th grade before she was "caught up with her class". The school actually tried to fail her several times. My parents ended up putting her in a private school with very small classes (and that helped her a lot). She just graduated last week from nursing school with her BSN, so...:auto: Woohoo! If you are looking for something easy-going, have you seen Oak Meadow (would be cheap with 3 5 year-olds)? One of my kids fits into the OM mold. :tongue_smilie: Also, Sonlight P3/4 now would be a lot of fun (like someone else suggested). We're always a little Charlotte Mason-y, so I like Winterpromise also. Also, make sure you read the WTM. :D I always say "go light" and take it easy, but I'm all talk. As you can see from my signature, my poor children are being tortured to the bone. (evil laugh-he he he) And there are things we do that wouldn't even fit on my signature line (another evil laugh - he he he). 2nd grader already has a PhD in Cursive Handwriting and Pronouns. :tongue_smilie:

My husband has had his paycheck messed up 5 times now with his new employer - like missing half each time. It's very frustrating. It's no biggie for the pay department...but makes you wanna cry when you are going to be late on all your bills because they can't get your paychecks straight... I understand where you're coming from! It is very frustrating.

OK, this is completely WTM-unrelated, but funny for those of you with 4 year-olds. I was called into the dining room by my 4 year-old daughter. She was wearing a purple leotard with plastic diamonds stuck all over it. There were 3 plastic cups and a little plastic robot on the table. She said, "Mom, I'm going to do a famous magic trick." She lined the three cups upside down on the table and put the robot under the middle cup. Then she said, "Mom, guess which cup the robot is under." I lifted up the middle cup and she was very upset. Then, she said, "Mom, close your eyes this time." I closed my eyes. I heard her lift one of the cups and put it back down. "OK, which cup is the robot under?" I happened to lift the middle one and there was the robot. She got really mad at me again. "Close your eyes again!" I closed my eyes again, waited for her to tell me to open them and checked the middle cup. Sure enough, that darn robot was under the middle cup again. Then she said, "Mom, you're in Checkmate!" and she went to her room.

We're making 300 bucks a month profit off our rental...That's $3600 a year (not to mention all the tax deductions). I'm going to apply that to the principle and pay off the loan early. I do hope you sell it, though. Good luck!

You know...you can actually make a small profit on renting...plus, we were thinking of holding onto our house and selling it when the kids are in college. It could potentially pay for a big bulk of their college. It would be nice for them to not graduate with a huge student loan debt. The market has GOT to get better by then. LOL!

:grouphug: We just spent 8 months in that same exact nightmare. Good luck and I hope everything works out for you. We never could sell our house, so we rented it out (to an awesome tenant). If you can't sell...you could always rent it out. Our house was on the market for months, but we found a tenant in 2 HOURS. No kidding. There are a ton of people out there renting with great credit. We're renting right now and our credit is in the 700's. There's a lot of people suddenly moving around the country for jobs right now.

Sonlight also sells Maps and Globes as part of Core 2. We did no geography with Core 1, but we'll be starting this with Core 2. The other poster is correct - there's also the Geography Songs in Core 2 (I think it complements Maps and Globes).

Our kids are doing the same thing - except their spelling is WAY worse than forgetting to double a consonant. I ended up buying WWE 1 and 2 yesterday. I think WWE 2 was for 2nd-3rd grade. If you go on the link for Peace Hill Press and click on WWE, there's descriptions for each level and it says what grades the levels are recommended for... Good luck!!

Darn its...we do BJU Spelling also, but my kid knows every word in this workbook...kind of a waste of money for us.

I should break this down by semester... Summer/Fall: CLE LA 200 Singapore Math 1b, 2a Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day Sonlight Core 1 Sonlight Readers 2 Interm/Adv HWOT Cursive Map Skills 2 Suzuki violin Piano Winter/Spring: Writing with Ease Music of the Hemispheres Grammar Island (Thanks, People) Singapore Math 2b, Kumon workbook review of math Mind Benders Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day Stratton House Science - the microscope one Sonlight Core 2 Sonlight Readers 2 Advanced - finish up HWOT Cursive - finish up Map Skills 2 - finish up moving from Violin to Cello Piano

:iagree: You're right. It's slot-car racing. I KNEW there was a term for the way people drive here!!! :smilielol5: I went to Fort Worth this morning and had our poor gecko in the van with us (long story), so I was trying not to drive too jerky and people were f l y i n g past me and swerving over to cut in front of me... :rofl: Gecko made it home safely, BTW...

:lurk5:

What would Supernanny say? :tongue_smilie: LOL! I sometimes threaten to drop my 6 yro off at the nearest elementary school the second he starts complaining. :auto: He shapes up immediately. No more Star Wars Readers...no more Horatio on the Bridge...no more 3-D volcanos...no more Swimming Creatures...no more homeschool get-togethers...no more trips to see authentic dinosaur footprints...no more Geography workbooks...no more CURSIVE in 2nd grade! (AHHHHHH!!!!) evil laugh...

I forgot to mention something... We paid almost $200,000 for our house in Missouri. From what we've seen, you can get an absolute mansion for $200,000 here (by my standards). Our house was a little under 1300 square feet and was very old (needed a lot of work). I think something comparable here would be half that price... We were actually laughing at the mortgage payments on the houses here in front of the home inspector...he gave us a strange look...and we told him we had friends in MO and IL who paid 2500-3000 a month for their mortgages - and their houses were NOT that special. Under $1000 a month seems bizarre to us. I don't think he believed us. Oh well...another thing to consider if you move here...

We moved to Texas last month from Eastern Missouri. Yep, it's very different here. Here's an outta-state-person's opinion. Here's some negative stuff about it: They've got HUGE property taxes. They also have strange laws when you buy your house. We went through the entire house-buying process and ended up not closing. They told us "another 45 days". We were in tears and ended up just renting a house (just to have a place to live - geez!). We're in the DFW area and they have kinda nasty traffic sometimes. Oh, yeah and the people drive really fast. :auto: After doing lots of reading about their public school systems here, I found out that Missouri schools were light-years ahead of Texas schools. :confused: We moved into a subdivision where the kids are completely wandering alone, unsupervised, at all hours of the day and night. One group of 7 year-old girls was standing in the street when we drove past and they smacked our car with a broom and sprayed "water" (?) or something on our windows. My husband slammed on the brakes, got out of the car and had a little talk with them... Oh, yeah, we were robbed in west Fort Worth the second week we were here. They took everything. They even tried to take my van and took off with my keys (never to see them again). OK, here's some positive things we've noticed: People are very conservative here...(could be good, could be bad) But, a lot of them are financially conservative and I LIKE that (big Dave Ramsey fan here). Most of the people are REALLY family-friendly. In The Land of MO, we usually got weird stares and comments from people about our squad of half-white/half-Asian children. Everybody here has been really friendly and we're usually not the only big family when we go to a store! Woohoo! The groceries are like HALF of what they were in MO. I have no idea why this is and I've asked several cashiers if they "got everything". But, darn it, it seems to be true. The gas prices are really low... :auto: Everything on the north end of DFW is really new, really BIG and flashy. We've driven many-a-places with our faces stuck to the windows. We recently went shopping in a city called Frisco and had to wipe the drool from my mouth several times. We just don't have &*%* like that in Missouri. After travelling through Missouri, Chicago and Detroit, I have concluded that there is no recession in Texas. Experts might say there was, but NO WAY. Our houses lost like 20% of their value and our entire neighborhood was short-selling/foreclosing. The neighborhoods here seem very stable. The stores here are also full of people and they were barren at home (complete with flying tumbleweed). The homeschooling laws are awesome here - especially compared to MO's hours-logging junk that we have to do. There are actually other people who homeschool here. In MO, we were the neighborhood weirdos. There are a lot of cultural places to visit - museums, nature centers, etc. I was ecstatic. If you can find a job here, it's not a bad place to move to. In fact, it's probably one of the "safest" (financially-speaking) states to move to right now. Some of the cities actually have property values that are increasing - hmph, go figure... Well, there's my outta-state-person opinion... :auto:

We have to do Christmas in January for financial reasons. :angelsad2: We moved the week before Christmas and everyone took turns clearing out our bank account. :tongue_smilie: It is hard to explain that to relatives, though...especially relatives with no children who live in apartments and only buy food for one person (yes, all our siblings!). :D

I saw some stuff like that when I lived in North Africa - but not so high (and with no water). We used to jog the trails for our workout in the morning and we had 3 ueber-friendly dogs who followed us through the trails every morning. It was surreal.

I have a 4 yro daughter and there is N O W A Y that kid could sit through anything remotely school-related. She has the attention span of a fruit fly. However, if I were going to do some stuff with her, I think breaking the lessons into 5-7 minute intervals might be OK... We also do Sonlight (just started Core 2) and the 4 yro doesn't like to listen in either - I think the stories are just too difficult to follow. Have you looked at Sonlight P3/4? I think the read-alouds are pretty good for that age (the K looked cute too). As far as the older kids - a firm schedule (like the other poster said). Maybe you could even get your oldest daughter her own academic schedule book - so she would know what's coming and can plan accordingly (I'm going to try this with my 8 yro next year). As far as 6 year-olds...:nopity:I have one too... When he gets out of line, I point towards the public school and tell him I can have him start classes tomorrow and he always shapes up... (we didn't have the greatest ps experience, if you can't already tell). Supernanny might say that's a bad parenting idea, so maybe you could give her 2 warnings and then remove a privilege. :D

Does anyone know a link to the free Texas test that was mentioned earlier?

I agree with the comment about this being a cultural thing. My husband is from another country and they have absolutely no boundaries. In fact, one time when I was over at my in-laws house, we were all talking and my MIL gets a shirt out of her dresser and starts taking off her shirt to change (right in the middle of the room). I turned around and must've had the weirdest look on my face because my MIL and FIL started laughing. Come on, People! I don't wanna see that! :leaving:

:iagree:AHA!! I don't follow that schedule, but that makes sense that the reader would start at LU 105. We're on 106 and he's made it through 4 stories now. He couldn't read anything out of it for the first 5 months. A little coffee makes it allll clearer... :tongue_smilie:

Just wanted to share that one... :D After 7 months of unemployment, 8 months of seperation, 3 months of not having a place to live...the nightmare has finally ended. We rented a house and our entire family is living together again. :party: The kids are ecstatic. They actually have bedrooms.