I agree, Uncle Tom's Cabin was kind of a sleeper for me until I actually *read it* at age 30. People who disparagingly sneer Uncle Tom have No. Idea. I would be honored to be truly like him. And the book doesn't just present the worst slavery stories--it portrays a range of owner behavior/motives--even the owners who were truly trying to help made a wreck of things. It really shows how the whole system was unredeemable and untenable. Seriously one of the best books I ever read.

I am doing a WTM-purist Great Books study, and while I aspire to having the children also do more formal rhetoric, in reality, it's hard to get to it because they are doing team policy debate. (It teaches many of the same skills . . . but still, I'm hoping to squeeze in some more formal rhetoric somewhere.) I do have the children write short persuasive essays on each major literary work they study, as well as two essays per chapter of Spielvogel. So it's not like they are not writing at all outside of debate briefs. (I also require writing in some other courses, such as worldview.) I prepared course descriptions for all four years of the rhetoric-level literature/history Great Books study, with very specific works of literature (I didn't want TOO many titles, which is sooo easy to do!). If you want them, feel free to PM me. We are near the end of Year 3, and the system is working well for us.

Landmark Books Rosemary Sutcliff "big kid picture book" retellings of Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid Sonlight books for free reading Art of Argument

I cannot handle multiple verbal inputs. Doesn't matter the form. I very rarely watch TV, so it's hard for me to consider it just background noise and it's hard to tune out. I HATE TVs all over the place in restaurants, with the fire of a thousand suns. If we are listening to an audiobook in the car and someone wants to say something, I have to pause it. Every. Time. If I come to your house, either talk to me or watch TV. Please don't try to do both!

Go through your rooms one at a time, asking about each item: "Do I like you enough to move you 3K miles?" When we were prepping for our cross-country move, that question put a lot of things in perspective in a hurry. DECLUTTER is SO the name of the game.

You can't fix crazy, but you don't have to pay for it by paying a sitter for a rare night out to be miserable. And there's no guarantee (actually, kind of the opposite) that if you do what they want, that they will accept you. I think declining is the wisest thing to do.

Oh yes, I definitely understand. I complain regularly that I'm the only one making things go. Except my rope analogy is the flip side of yours--I think I am pushing limp rope uphill. I am the pusher, and everyone else is the limp rope.

Well, we are not doing school TODAY, because my students are competing at a speech and debate tournament ; ), but yes, we do school. I outsource Greek as well as a supplemental Latin translation course for my eldest (she loves Latin so the fun translation supplements the slog of grammar she completes at home). My husband oversees the math and science. I make sure they put in the time daily, and he grades, answers questions, and in science, does experiments. I do design and teach my own WTM-purist Great Books courses (which cover history and English), and a directed reading + short persuasive papers Worldview course, but Latin is "do the next page" Memoria Press which they have been used to doing for years, science is straightforward Apologia, and their math books are written to the student. We also use Chalkdust's SAT Math videos for SAT prep, my eldest uses Chalkdust for Geometry, and my youngest (possibly engineering bound) will probably do Chalkdust Pre-Calc when it is time. So while we don't "outsource" much, not all of the subjects are Mom-intensive. The Mom-intensive ones tend to be in my area of expertise, while I choose curricula with more helps for subjects I am not good at.

Inquiring minds would like to know what happened . . .

Yes, we do have dust storms, although they are not as bad as they used to be (because a lot of land is irrigated). The bad part is that they often come during spring or fall planting, when the big circle fields are just dirt. Then we can see a lot of dust. Almost all of the spiders I have seen are non-poisonous. Annoying, but not dangerous. I have not seen scorpions at all. We do have rattlesnakes now and then, in remote areas. There are lots of pools, and there is a small waterpark at the Court Club (a popular YMCA-like business). And there are plans to build a bigger waterpark, I believe. There is also a waterpark in Hermiston, OR, which is 30-45 minutes away. Many of the parks have beaches on the Columbia River as well. Yes, there are multiple places to get swimming lessons.

Wow, lots of negative opinions. I have a different opinion. We moved here from the east coast seven years ago. Yes, it is semi-arid, with sage and tumbleweeds, but they have been irrigating here for over 50 years. We do have trees, green grass, etc. The Columbia and the Snake Rivers are beautiful and help cheer the area up a lot, I think. (I think Tri-Cities is prettier than Walla-Walla because of the rivers.) Yes, we have beautiful clear blue skies about 8-9 months out of the year, and it can get pretty hot in late July and early August, sometimes breaking triple digits, but because the heat is dry you get instant and real relief in the shade. And, of course, everything is air-conditioned anyway. There are lots of nature and active things to do here, and we think it is a terrific place to raise a family. The overall population of Tri-Cities is the fourth largest metropolitan area in the state. Because things are spread out a little, we don't have huge traffic jams. We do have four distinct seasons; the one downer is that we still have windstorms sometimes, but they are way better than they used to be because of the irrigation in the area. We do have a quantity of migrant workers in our area because there is a lot of agriculture here. We have plenty of shopping here, although we do lack Trader Joe's and Ikea. We like it because it is sunnier than the west side of the state. We do have 3-4 months of gray days, but they are sometimes alleviated by sunny days even then. It is not the same as the heavily-wooded area of Virginia I moved from, BUT I came here determined to appreciate this new area of the country for its own self. Being able to see for miles is very, very cool. We like it here a lot. Oh, and yes, at Hanford they are still cleaning up some nuclear waste. The waste is in underground tanks that they are hugely heavily monitoring to make sure the waste does not migrate into groundwater. Hanford is 20-30 miles up from the actual towns and very remote. People definitely do not go around worrying about contamination.

Showing progress depends on the laws in your state. What state do you live in? During high school, you would want to keep records and produce a transcript for colleges. Documentation K-8 is usually minimal (unless you live in a portfolio state like PA) and progress is often measured by standardized testing.

A unit study is where you group a bunch of subjects (often humanities subjects) around a theme, like medieval times. There are lots of ways to do unit studies. In addition to the Well-Trained Mind, there is one other book that I recommend to new homeschoolers: Cathy Duffy's 101 Top Picks This book talks about learning styles, then homeschooling styles, and then, and only then, reviews curriculum through those filters. It can cut down on the overwhelm of looking for curriculum. I strongly, strongly recommend it.

I haven't had time to read the replies. Now, I never had twins, so you're going to have to be really flexible. But I popped in to this thread to say that we always started with math and then Latin (starting in third grade--before that it was phonics), which became very engrained over the years. The result is that it is so automatic that no one thinks to protest doing math (no one's favorite subject). And if math and Latin happened, I felt like we had succeeded, no matter if no other subjects happened that day. So that habit is continuing to deliver dividends.

Do you wear shoes? I wonder if standing up that long on the concrete is messing you up. We moved to a house with tile on the lower floor (where we spend most of our time), and within a few days, I had to wear shoes if I was going to be down there for more than five minutes. In fact, I still have to. I would wear a trainer with good support and see if that makes a difference.

They can have time off if they actually go out and play in it. Usually, it turns to rain within a couple of hours here so I've learned to let them go out right away. Now that they are older, my daughter often opts to stay inside and do school ; ). They have a good view of the snow from the schoolroom so don't feel too sorry for them. But if the snow lasts longer than 2 - 3 days (very rare, once every five years), I would let them off until they were tired of playing in the snow. After about the third day, they are usually less enthusiastic.

I fell down the stairs on Dec 29th and tore my bicep, a week before I had to do a ton of printing and office work at a national-level debate tournament. Fun times. And then I got a cold just before the tournament, another on the heels of that one at the end of the tournament, and started my cycle as the tournament ended. All on very little sleep. Obviously I have not felt very well for a while!

Ugh. This is painful to watch. Now we can't quite finish our sentence before we cut into the next one? Sorry, off-topic rant over.

I "third" the recommendation for The Disappearing Spoon. We are in the middle of the audiobook right now!

I just deleted a bunch of stuff off my iPhone to be able to fit all four volumes on there! Looking forward to listening to these on the way to speech and debate tournaments!

Here!

The only justification I could see is cancer/chemo for the primary teacher. I can see that taking up most of a year. But short of that? No.

I hate shopping, coffee, sports, and Elf on a Shelf. I think that if a home doesn't have a bunch of books that it is sad. Genuinely sad. I could care less about pop culture. I hate zombies and vampires and totally don't get the fascination. I don't twitter. My occasional FB statuses are highly likely to be about books or grammar. I hate the word selfie, and most of them should not even be posted. I double hate the word "hoodie" that seems to suddenly be ubiquitous within the last couple of years. ETA: I am not as crabby as this list makes me sound! Here's a positive one: My idea of a really super fun weekend is a debate competition where I get to do a ton of judging of team policy debate. Nerd city.

When I helped my grandmother go through her stuff to pare down, I found my father's baby teeth. They were about 50 - 60 years old. And BLACK. Yuk. While I have saved my children's baby teeth, I told them they will get them when they move out and they can do whatever they want with them--I'm not saving them any more after that!

We don't have a TV and my husband and I both hate sports (and by the way still survived in the working world), but I still think the rule is unfair.