Are your little guys and gals having a hard time distinguishing their b's from d's? Although I am never one to raise alarm over this and worry about the dreaded "d" word...it does sometimes slow down reading progress and frustrate both learner and teacher. Here's the cutest thing I've ever seen to use as a visual reminder of which is which! See it at reallygoodstuff.com

After being SO enthralled with the preparation for our upcoming study of the 20th century, I'm now totally bummed. Check this out, all you lucky Ancient World folks...

http://www.lockware.net

hat tip: Trish P. :-)

I've spent the whole weekend working. No...playing. No...working....well, to be honest, it's been both. Work that feels like play. Since we're starting a whole new kind of curriculum in the fall, I want to make sure that we go into it as well-prepared as we can possibly be, and so I've started by working out some pretty detailed scheduling for the family and for each of my students. For those of you familiar with Managers of Their Homes, I'm working out a system much like that, except that instead of little squares of colored paper, I'm teaching myself to do it on Excel. I'm finally getting the hang of it, but mostly by trial and error as none of the books I've bought or borrowed have made any sense to me! I guess I'm just a hands-on learner, one that needs a lot of practice. And that's okay, because it really has been fun. We'll see come August how much fun it really is...right now the kids think it's great because I've personalized it with colors and fonts and such. Maybe when they realize they only have 15.5 minutes of free time a day they'll change their minds {vbg}