My hair responds well to dampness too, LizzyBee. One thing I've noticed lately (it's been hot and occasionally humid here, probably why I'm noticing things about my hair...) is that most of my hair is wavy, but if I separate out the front section and keep it away from the rest, it'll go curly while the rest stays just wavy. I have no idea if the rest would curl up if I could keep it separated too, but the area that used to be my bangs (before they curled up) I can keep separate most of the time. But I do have this lovely halo of curly flyaways all around the rest of my head. I might try the TJ's conditioner, or the Giovanni. Thanks for the recs!

I'd say do everything you can. We don't have anyone fluent in our house in any language other than English, but trying to approach our 2nd language study from every possible angle has been highly effective. My older daughter has a pretty good accent (according to her French tutor) and is learning well, and my younger is picking things up left and right. Have fun!

I could've done it in K with my daughter (it's definitely gentle enough), but looking back I don't know that it was even necessary in 1st. I'm not planning on starting grammar with my youngers in K; it's not really needed until later. It might just be that my kids have strong verbal skills, so YMMV. :)

:hat: bump

Thank you Evanthe! Sweetie did several levels of Mind Benders a couple years ago; I'll look and see what level she got to. Maybe I should call the company and chat with them... Thank you for suggesting alternatives!

Hello! I have a rising 5th grader, so I'm planning for next year. SWB suggests using Building Thinking Skills 2 to start with for 5th grade logic. I was wondering if anyone has done that with their accelerated child and how it went. Was it the right level? Would you do it differently if you could do it over? FWIW my family runs verbally accelerated, with strong philosophical skills (if that makes sense). We're that family at church who have kids who "get" things beyond their years, if that makes sense to anyone. Thank you!

Hello! I listened to one of SWB's lectures, about preparing for high school, and she suggested getting 5th graders a planner and having them use it every day. Has anyone done this? What does it look like at your house? Thanks!

Hello all! I'm prepping for next school year and was wondering if anyone has already put the words/stems from MCT CE1 into Spelling City yet? I don't really want to reinvent the wheel if I don't have to... Thanks!

I was looking at this one online; have you used it? I wonder about placement. Placing her at grade level might not make much sense because her reading level is much higher than 5th grade. Thanks!

Thank you! A friend is bringing her copy of that to park day for me to look at. I'm worried that it'll require too much input from me to actually happen. I'm not entirely sure what is the most important right now... she's starting to ask what larger words mean (usually because she has encountered them but they're not common enough for her to have a variety of contexts to draw a clear meaning from) and it would be helpful to her to be able to pull apart words to figure out what they mean. I don't think the entire history of words is necessary, though she very well might enjoy that.

Hello! I've got a kinda specific question, so I'm not expecting a ton of responses (I'm just saying this to start with to remind myself of it later :) ) I'm looking for a word root study workbook/program for my older daughter. She is quite verbal, capable of reading graduate level material. Her spelling is so-so (but improving even without a spelling program), and she's also a little distractable. More importantly, I'm *very* distractable (currently unmedicated ADHD) and I also have a newborn. The newborn in particular is why I'm looking for a workbook word root program... it's more likely to actually get done. We already have Ceasar's English 1 because we were planning on using it this year, but with the pregnancy it fell to the side. Same with Marcia Henry's Words. Both are too parent-intensive for me to realistically plan on getting done this year. Are there any good programs that are workbookish that are comparable to Ceasar's English? Or does anyone know a way for a kid to do Ceasar's English independently? Thank you!

Well, one place where people fall away is generally related to liberalism/conservatism. I've always tweaked AO, but the farther we go I'm tweaking it more and more. It often beings with unwillingness to use This Country of Ours, which calls Native Americans "savages" along with other issues. Science is another area that I'm tweaking heavily -- we not only accept evolution, but I also think that teaching current science is useful and is best done with more modern books. I have a friend who has used AO in the past, but she didn't feel like she ever managed to truly do "AO" because she couldn't pull all the elements together. The booklist was doable, but getting all of the additional pieces in was tough. I still struggle with that part... I've figured out how to get the readings done, and the composer study, and sometimes the artist study, but hardly ever the nature study. Like other mom/homeschool things, it can be guilt-inducing to not do things "right" and that causes folks to fall away. :)

:grouphug:

Thank you for the responses! I'm trying to look through the games and see how I should approach this... It might go over beautifully and it might bomb, given this child. But it's nice to know that others have had positive experiences with games. I actually have a lot of math resources to help... We've been trying RSB here and there, and I love what it does, but it's hard to "sell" to my kid. We also have the Kitchen Table Math books, but I haven't gotten my head around how to effectively use those either. :)

Hello! I have a child who tends toward challenging to teach. I was thinking today about options for teaching her math next year (K-1st), and started wondering about the RS math card games. Has anyone used it as a curriculum? Or even just used it extensively, playing most of the games? Has anyone encountered a blog post about doing that? Any help would be welcome! Thank you!

I've never had plopping do anything. I assume it does for other people, but afterwards my hair basically looks exactly the same as it does when I don't plop it. Maybe my curls just aren't strong enough? They're fun but kinda wimpy? Hmm...

Hello! I find hair forums to be overwhelming, so I thought I'd ask here ('cause ya know, the Hive isn't overwhelming :lol: ). With each pregnancy my hair has gotten slightly curlier in some places. It used to be straight, but now I've got definite curls, especially in the front. But it's like they're not springy enough to pull themselves into their lovely curliness when they're newly clean... it can take a while for them to spring up. When it was hot last week they were very curly, but this week they're not springing up at all (we live in a very Mediterranean climate). Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm on the crunchy side of the spectrum, and experience shows that I'm unlikely to use a lot of product beyond conditioner and maybe one other thing (if it works). Thank you! :)

In my city a nice ~1500sqft house (3bd, 2ba, no basement) on a corner lot (though not a big one) goes for over a million, and that was 2 years ago and housing prices have been rising. Just to get the land for the OP's house would cost millions. If you move farther out, the prices get better, but I'm guessing that to still live in the general area in that house the cost is well into the millions. Hilarious comparisons, though! :)

This house is so small... there are two small closets (one in each bedroom) that are already full of everyone's (pared down) clothes and bedlinens. There really isn't any extra room for storage. We already have wall-to-wall shelving in the living room, which holds my & dh's books, some school materials, the upcoming baby's diapers (he's due in a week), cleaning supplies, our TV, printer, official paperwork, craft supplies, extra kitchen stuff, games, etc. It's an interesting challenge. We really, really like the house, but we're still figuring out how to fit. :)

Help! We've moved into a teeny house, and the girls' room is packed. My elder has a desk area that has a lot of the homeschooling books, while my younger needs space to keep & play with her legos. We currently have low shelves that a lot of the toys and books are on, and while we might spring for more tall shelves it's not really in the budget this month. So it feels like we need to get rid of some books. Kids books. We have a whole shelf of French childrens' books (we're learning French), and we have a bunch of picture books, and a couple shelves of chapter books. We've been doing AO or AOesque for homeschooling, so of course we have a ton of books from that. The girls are 5 years apart, so this year I'll have a 5th grader and a Kindergartener. We go to the library every week, and honestly the girls mostly read library books for free reading. I'm stuck... how do you take a deep breath and declutter books? Or would you vote that we wait until we can afford the tall shelves? Thanks!

I've read that when the sounds of Spanish & French are mapped next to English, Spanish shares a lot more sounds. French has several sounds that English doesn't have. I had a friend who chose French based on that, figuring that it would be good for her kids to learn to hear those different sounds and that they could pick up Spanish later while they'd never have a good accent if they waited to take French. Spanish certainly makes more sense, but maybe you should ask your kids. My elder is totally anti-Spanish "because it's so popular". Not a great reason, but learning a second language is challenging enough that it's best to have the kid on your side. She also wanted to study Japanese, so we're following that too, and it's been even easier to encourage her to work than it has been for French.

Hello! We're down the Peninsula, in Mountain View. Welcome!

I double checked with a psychologist friend who said that small amounts of stimulants will make many people focused, but larger amounts would make them shaky/wired/unfocused. I don't know what "small" and "large" are, so I guess it's not entirely helpful. There's a checklist of behaviors here: http://www.drhallowell.com/add-adhd/ that might be helpful to look at (under "ADHD in Adults") and also the DSM-IV criteria. The book "Delivered from Distraction" by the author of that site was really helpful to me. Good luck!

Not much to share... dd is taking Japanese at one of our local Buddhist temples. I do know from a friend that the Mango languages has a good accent, but avoid Rosetta Stone because the accents they chose are apparently quite unusual/odd. I have a couple links on a Pinterest page: http://pinterest.com/anabelneri/hms-coquelicot-japanese/ but I'm sure there must be more out there. Good luck!

Oh, ok, that's not a ton of writing. I'll have to look at what to have dd do, but maybe a SOTW page or two would be sufficient. That is so relieving! It seemed like history was going to take over the whole day! Sweetie really likes history, so it's Ok, but it makes it hard to plan anything else. Thank you!