Ok, just made the social group. I'm a sucker for that kind of thing. http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/groups/205-add-moms/ :) ('cause you know I need the distraction!)

:grouphug: I was there just over a year ago. I clearly don't need medication to function -- I have a graduate degree and run whole programs at work, and did those things before realizing that I had ADD. I'm exactly the kind of person who wouldn't be noticed as having ADD -- smart enough to compensate, I had a supportive family, and I'm not the hyperactive type. Oh, and I'm female. But there have been times in my life when my usual coping strategies don't work, and my inability to follow a regular schedule for more than a week at a time can really haunt me. I hit one of those times last spring, and finally started trying to get help. Low and behold, I have ADD. And can I say, those meds were amazing! I got so much done! I don't mind labels much, as evidenced by the fact that I told all kinds of people. At my church program, it has been really helpful to be able to label when I'm likely to struggle with something, and it's not because I'm a bad person. I've been told by people that I'm lazy and childish because I don't send out Christmas cards. I find it ridiculously challenging to send out Christmas cards on time! It takes a huge amount of effort! But it's because of the ADD, not because I'm lazy. My brain just doesn't function that way, and I'm perfectly happy to own that. I'm good at other things. My favorite book so far about ADD is "Delivered from Distraction". It's written by two doctors who have ADD themselves, and they see it as a gift. It's even written in small chunks, so it's easy to pick up and put down. :)

I'm so glad we're chatting again like this. Has anyone thought (like me) that having a social group would be nice so we could chat with each other more often and post new questions for each other without being dependent of ancient threads or other ADD moms finding it while it's still at the top of the pile? Kinder OPGTR Smithhand Manuscript (maybe not so ADD-friendly, but it looks like it will suit my kids) RightStart B (Ok except that I seem to have taken on the project of turning every lesson into worksheets :biggrinjester: ) Calendar notebooking A friend is teaching BFSU1 5th AO (tweaked, but at least AOesqe) SOTW (though I ignore the workbook thing; we're doing it WTM 5th grade style) MEP A friend is teaching BFSU2 Smithhand Cursive (see caveat above) MCT Calendar notebooking

Hello! I don't suppose anyone has worked through MCT's Practice Voyage and diagrammed the sentences? And might have them available that others might benefit from their work? I would be quite grateful. (Can you tell we just watched Downton?) I know it's not hard to do, and I've already begun doing them myself in preparation for doing it with my daughter. But I know that she is already feeling a bit put out by doing the four-level analysis, that when she learns we're going to diagram the sentences as well I'm afraid I'll have a full-fledged mutiny to deal with. She generally rather enjoys diagramming, but the slightest sense of having to extra work just throws her for a loop. And I know my own pattern -- after a week or so of dutifully preparing the diagrams in the evening to make the next day go more smoothly, I'll forget and won't have it ready. Thus I thought I should ask here in the off chance that it had been already done. Thank you, in ever so wistful a fashion, Anabel

OP, I saw in another thread that you're in Wisconsin. Have y'all checked out the Yerkes Observatory? http://astro.uchicago.edu/yerkes/ I have a friend whose husband is an astrophysicist (works for NASA), and went to UofChicago, and spent a lot of time up at Yerkes, and still goes sometimes for his research. Here's another thing I've learned that might be useful... while the class might go to Tahiti, they probably aren't having the typical Tahitian experience. My friend's dh goes to Hawaii all the time, but it's to a telescope way up on the side of a volcano, where they can get away from the lights. He's always packing sweaters, etc. for his trips. Astronomy is not a resort-rich lifestyle, at least as a full-on scientist. The money is in industry (I'm just sharing what my friend said -- I have no idea what "the industry" is in relation to astronomy). I'm guessing, given what my friend's dh does, that the pp was right when they said that doing math is huge for that field. Also, he seems to do a lot of tinkering -- the idea of building a telescope is about right, but also learning electronics and how to build and fix electric/electronic equipment would be useful. Good luck!

Brilliant! Thank you.

Hey y'all! We have been doing MCT for a couple years but have not done the practice books. We also did FLL last year. This year we are doing the Voyage level, and we are going to do the practice book, but do you think we will need to look at the earlier levels to get the hang of four level analysis before we start the Voyage level? Thanks!

Hello! I'm down the Peninsula from SF... my kids are 10yo, 5yo, and 3mo. :)

Hello! Like many of you, I'm trying to declutter to make my house easier to clean live in. But my kids don't want to let go of their stuff, even if they never use it. Most of the decluttering/simple living books I've seen don't address kids, and those that do essentially say that kids might be convinced into decluttering, but if they're not you just have to lump it. I haven't seen anything that is really helpful in this area. I was just watching a TED talk on living more simply, and that's the kind of thing I use to keep myself going -- I read simple living books, blogs, videos, etc. Has anyone seen anything like that for kids? Intentionally directed at kids? I mean, I know that advertising works on kids, so maybe a simple-living-for-kids advertisement would go a long way. Thoughts? Ideas? :)

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Hey... I was wandering around Charlotte Mason Help and noticed in the HUFI booklist pages that there are directions for studying foreign language. I've got them all together now on my blog (http://homeschoolingpoppies.blogspot.com/) but I was wondering if anyone has followed those directions? What did it look like in practice? Thanks!

Interesting! I've started the course but I'm following the discussion here to see if it's worth investing my time. So far it seems like she hasn't said much that is new and/or that impacts us much as homeschoolers. Has she mentioned Liping Ma yet? She was at the Stanford school of education too, though I can't seem to find the dates. :)

I'm using this childrens' Bible with my 10yo: http://www.amazon.com/Big-Book-Catholic-Bible-Stories/dp/B007MXDS9I/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1374211588&sr=8-5 It's nice because it uses a real Bible translation, and it has prayers and connections to liturgy and the Catechism, and sometimes simple family activities to go with the different passages. I'd read through the passage with the kids, then we could talk about it and maybe look up or talk about the suggestions at the end of the chapter. Simple, inexpensive, and effective. :)

I've been worried about the assignments; I have a newborn and while I'm mostly sitting with him all day (and clearly I'm online :001_smile: ) I'm worried that I won't be able to complete the assignments. What kinds of things are you being asked to do? Thank you!

:lurk5: I'll be looking for this thread again next summer, when I have a rising-6th grader about to do Modern history. I'm so excited for all these suggestions! Could you put up or link to what you finally decide on? (If you have your 5th grade reading list around, I'd appreciate that too!) Thanks!

I'm considering something similar too. I was putting together a calendar notebook for my K-er, and thought my older dd could benefit from similar activities. Next thing I know, I've got a list of potential pages, including math facts practice, logic pages, lists of readings, history pages... oh my! I'm assuming I can't put in a page of math facts practice for every day. Our regular math curriculum (MEP) has a single page for every day of a 36-week year, and it's about 1" thick. So I'm narrowing down what might go in. Though I like the idea of breaking it down into smaller chunks -- then I could put in her facts! :)

The Learnables is doable with a child that age, and it has audio. My daughter liked it up to a point; we certainly got through the first level without trouble. Listen to music in the car. "Baby's First Words in French" is a CD I found at the library that was well done with good accents. "Lyric Language French" has Ok accents and teaches a lot of vocabulary. I think both are out of print, but libraries may have them. I also looked for everything else in French the library had and we listened to that too. At Christmas we have French Christmas music, etc. There's a lot on iTunes these days too. Muzzy isn't perfect, but it's a good way to get into the language for kids. I wouldn't buy it new, but if you can find it at a library or very cheaply then I'd do it. There are some fun apps if you have an iPad or iPhone type thing. My daughter likes the Mind Snacks game, and learned a fair amount of vocab that way. Sweetie also uses Alex et Zoe, but she has a French tutor so that helps. The teacher's manual is in French, so that made it hard for me to teach (I don't speak French) so a tutor has been great. Good luck! French is fun. :)

Thanks for all of the feedback. I'll have to consider how to use this... using the bottom of the MCT Practice pages is probably the way we'll go! The trick is that I don't fully know how to diagram yet; I have Rex Barks but haven't worked through it, and likely won't (that's my realistic side speaking). So it does sound useful. Okey dokey. Thank you!

I just needed to share and didn't feel like Facebook was the right place... It's just been a hard day for my younger daughter. She didn't have anyone to play with at the park (her sister wouldn't play with her), and now her best friend just went home in the middle of a sleepover. My elder daughter's friend is still spending the night, but my younger once again has no one to play with, while her sister does. It's hard. She loves her friends so deeply, but the love is so rarely returned or even treated well. I hurt for her tonight. :crying:

Hello! I have a practical question. Many of us here have been teaching our kids how to diagram sentences (myself included). I didn't learn to diagram sentences in school, so I'm wondering how your kids use their diagramming skills (other than to do their grammar assignment)? (I'm considering leaving the diagramming groupies to join the full-time MCT groupies to simplify life) Thanks!

Thanks Mystie! I was going to listen to it again eventually, but hadn't gotten to it yet. :)

Thanks! Yesterday I printed off the samples from BTS3, both from the Figural book and from the Verbal, and gave them to dd. She worked all the Figural pages without any input and got almost everything right, and the Verbal only slowed her down because she didn't want to do the writing :tongue_smilie: . I might try calling Prufrock. I did email Critical Thinking Co. and tried describing the situation, but the response was: When you "Click to Look Inside" Building Thinking Skills Level 2, you will see that only half of the book is verbal. The first half of the book is figural/spatial. Since the people I talk to who jump into Level 3 without first having done Level 2 are often frustrated and overwhelmed, I would recommend starting your son on Level 2 so that he can gradually build skills that will be new to him, while reinforcing other aptitudes. So I'm not sure they're going to be helpful. (I also found it interesting that she assumed that my child in question is a boy :glare:; my original request didn't specify a gender.) Continuing the process...

Oh yeah... my eldest seriously disliked the format but the content was fabulous and she had great retention. We had been doing Singapore before RS and she liked the format but didn't get a good sense of numbers at all. We switched into Right Start B, and she developed an amazing sense of numbers, place value, etc, which has been a great foundation for everything we've done since. Since she hated RS's format, we switched to MEP (which I really like too) but the foundation Right Start B gave her was fabulous enough that I'm doing it with my next child too, before we go back to MEP. If Right Start offered a workbook/textbook format, we'd've bought it in a heartbeat, because dd would have been willing to do that. I know others love that it's oral, though, so it just goes to suggest that RS-B is awesome even beyond being a low-writing curriculum. :)

I feel like there should be an "a-ha!" smilie. I would use it right now. I hadn't realized that they had their own forum. I come to the Hive for all things. Thank you!

Thank you! Anyone else?