Emba
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Posts posted by Emba
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I like Tetley's tea best, better than Lipton. ETA: I also use Luzianne quite a bit.
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There is a free Language Arts program online that is called The Good and the Beautiful. I used a little of the third grade for my daughter. It would require printing unless you can have DD do the reading on the computer or an e-reader. If you only printed out the worksheet type pages, it would be significantly less printing. But is a complete LA program - short reading selections, spelling, and grammar. Also a little bit of geography and art.
http://www.jennyphillips.com/home-school-curriculum/
I will say, the reason we didn't use it more was because I only wanted the literature sections, and then a lot of them were too preachy for my taste. But I did think it was well put together.
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I have no sense of direction. None. If your directions do not include left and right, I'm sunk. Tell me something is on the north side of a building, and when I get there, I have to just wander around until I find it.
Also, when I sit down in a restaurant, I prefer to have my back to a wall. I have never...well, very rarely...felt in danger from those around me, yet I want to keep everyone in view, like some kind of wild west gunfighter. I really don't know why. If I'm with people, I don't care as much.
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If I were frugal, which is not an if, because I am...I would keep going with the debt reduction, fix the timing belt, and deal with all the piddly cosmetic stuff for long enough to save money up for a "new" used car. But I don't buy new cars. I've never had one less than 6 years old, and I've been remarkably lucky not to have many big problems.
I understand the water-torture annoyance of all those small piddly things, though. I had a pickup once that always had some little thing wrong - the tail light was out, the battery went dead, the solenoid cylinder went bad and I had to occasionally use a pair of pliers to short it out (okay, that was more than a little annoying, but I was in college and too proud to ask for money from my parents to really fix it).
You have to decide, I guess, if you can stand it or not. :)
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For DH and me, three was when we were done. Two are adopted, one biological, and while my pregnancy went easily, the birth itself was a bad experience, and somewhat life-threatening, and after I was holding my adorable newborn a few hours later, I looked at DH and said "I never want to do this again." The baby stage is not my favorite stage. Sleep deprivation doesn't do good things for me. Kids are so much more fun when they can interact with you more.
I also feel I would be doing my other kids a disservice. I'm less patient than I'd like to be. I don't think more kids would make that better.
ETA - and DH was in total agreement. 2 would have been okay for him, 3 is fine, but the complications I had with the birth scared him and he didn't want to risk it again.
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Not usually BUT we live on a dirt road. If it is raining hard or has been raining very long, the road gets bad, and even with 4 wheel drive, I won't risk getting stuck unless I have to.
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Mispronouncing words you've only heard in your head is not just a homeschooler thing. :laugh: I was public schooled and read extensively (read here: every spare moment, including while walking to and from school) and I had a lot of very...interesting pronunciations, some of which were very embarrassing to me at different times in my life.
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There is a YA fantasy series by Garth Nix that might fit the bill, the Old Kingdom series. The main character is Sabriel, and she is able to go "into" death and bring people/animals out...I can't remember how it all works, but it was quite creepy. Death was a river. There was also a certain amount of parallel universe/alternate history going on.
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What about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? It seems like I was around that age when I first read it. I don't remember there being anything really over the top in it, but it's been forever since I read it.
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The Screaming Staircase, mentioned above, is from a series by Jonathan Stroud called Lockwood and Co. They are super creepy but still totally young teen appropriate (ETA: in my opinion).
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I have never ordered from here, but usedhomeschoolbooks.com (Second Harvest Curriculum) is somewhere I have looked before.
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Not sure if this is something that she'll like or not, but when I was that age, I read a lot of Louis L'amour and Zane Grey. I especially liked the Sackett books by L'amour. They pretty much fit your criteria, if I recall, but it has been years since I picked up a western. Westerns as a category I wouldn't recommend, but those authors (again, if I recall) are pretty clean.
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I am kind of glad that other people think this is rude, too. I usually try to be at a place no more than 5 minutes before or after the time stated on the invitation. My DH's family, on the other hand, tends toward early. One of his grandmas, when she says "Dinner at 12" means, we are sitting down at 12 an not a minute later to eat. The other set of grandparents arrived to my house at least 45 minutes early one time, while I was still rushing around crazy in the kitchen. I looked out the window and couldn't believe it. I think they wandered around our driveway for about ten minutes before they couldn't stand it anymore and knocked on the door. I was SO irritated.
My brother on the other hand... If we say dinner starts at 1:00, he may not get there till 3:00. Which is its own brand of rude.
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We all eat PB here, multiple times a week. Less PB & J than PB on crackers or toast, or in oatmeal, though. DH or the kids will pack PB & J in a lunch, no problem, but I only eat them occasionally for snacks. For some reason I have firmly categorized PB & J as a snack food in my head, not a meal food.
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Meatballs freeze well, and then all that is needed is to boil pasta and heat up sauce.
Shepherds pie might be good? Go heavy on the veggies, leave the skins on the potatoes, that would make it healthier.
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Do I remember right that Science in the Beginning has a notebooking component? Did you do it?
ETA - And if so, could you tell me if you thought it helped with retention/understanding?
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We have a samsung scx-4200 laser printer (B&W) that we got a long time ago. I love it, just because it is so cheap to print with. We either get the toner cartridges refilled at a place here that does that, for about $30, or buy cartridges online for about $25.
I have no suggestion for binding. My binding method of choice right now is a three hole punch and those 88 cent three-ring binders from Wal-Mart.
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Just noticed - Also on the search, there's a tab that says "excercises" which will only bring up the practice exercises.
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I know it can be done, because I've done it, but I can't remember how I did it. It also looks like maybe they've changed the site since then.
However, it seems like now, if you search for a topic with the search bar, it comes up with a list. Say, I searched for "angles". Then I click "angle basics". A video comes up, but also along the side is a menu with several videos (the little triangle icon beside them) and a couple of menu items have stars beside them. Those are the practice questions. I think you can either click on them from that menu, or you can watch the videos in sequence and then they will come up?
Anyway, try searching like that and see what you can find.
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This semester was my first homeschooling, and I was mostly focused on reading and math, because those were the problem areas that led to homeschooling. DD is now 4th grade, will be 5th next year. I chose the Christian Liberty Press third grade science this year, because it was cheap and I was in a hurry. It's terrible. Lots of experiments, which I like, but they don't always work, aren't explained well or sometimes even really connected to the lesson. I've been supplementing a lot, but the fact is, even though I only try for science once a week, it hardly ever gets done.
DD has some major gaps as far as science goes. We just figured out she didn't know what gravity was. I can't lay it all at the school's feet, since I am well aware that they could have learned about gravity and she was staring out the window, or talking to a neighbor, and just didn't absorb the information.
So I feel like I definitely want science next year to be a bigger part of our homeschool. She says science is her favorite subject, because she loves the experiments, but I feel like she also needs some written work to help cement the information in her head.
So I've been looking at several things. I want a Christian, creationist curriculum. Lots of experiments would be good, but using things that are easy to find, cheap. I like the looks of some of the Apologia books, but I want general science, not something so
I've looked at things like CLE, PACE, and Alpha Omega Lifepacs because even though I might need to supplement more for experiments, I think having the ability for her to work independently on science might help it get done. I ordered a sample PACE. It's so cheesy, and I'm not in love with it, but I think the color and the recurring characters would appeal to her.
So does anyone have any suggestions for me? I've also looked at Jay Wiles's Science in the Beginning. Has anyone used that?
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I love beans on pretty much any plate. There's really no logic to what is a "dinner food" and what is a "breakfast food".
Offer me collards, bacon and baked beans on a plate and I will eat it for breakfast, lunch or dinner. On a train or in the rain...
You're right, there is no logic, but some things just don't make good breakfast. I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador, and while my host mother gave the oatmeal I offered her a look one might give a dead rat (because they just don't eat it that way, they use it in small amounts to thicken soup and fruit juices), I woke up one morning and she had fixed boiled crabs for breakfast. I begged off with an excuse about a headache. She would also fix fish for breakfast.
Really, I stayed with host families in the coast and in the Andean region of Ecuador, and they didn't seem to have many breakfast foods as such. Most of the same foods would appear at any meal.
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I love my slow cooker. That's really the best thing I have to offer. That way I can prep earlier in the day or the night before, when i have more time. I've experimented with freezing things ahead, but my freezer is small and I'm TERRIBLE about remembering to take things out far enough ahead of time. Some people really make it work, though.
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Just throwing this out there because you mentioned right brained learning adn how your daughter learns well with stories - There is a series of "right brained" math supplements out there by Sarah Major that might help. Right Brained Addition and Subtraction and Right Brained Multiplication and Division might be helpful? I haven't used those, though. I am using Right Brained Fractions right now with my daughter, and she is doing well with it. She calls it the "fun math". In fractions, the numerator and denominator are given names, and they are the characters in the story (Num and Nom live in a house. Nom lives downstairs, and Num lives upstrairs, etc.)
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Has he read any of the Roald Dahl books?
Best tea for iced tea (real tea conversation only please)
in The Chat Board
Posted
I once wrote a blog post on how I make iced tea:
https://meditationsandbread.com/tag/iced-tea/