swish and set are both card games that are fun for 2 or more. We pack them on trips because we all like them and they don't need much space. A game and a carry out gift card would be a nice stay home date.

Ear pain is what finally sent me to the allergist, where I learned that I'm allergic to lots of things. I start allergy season with Allegra and then move to Zyrtec. Some doctors recommend cycling through different medicines because people sometimes become acclimated to one if they take it for too long. I take benedryl at night if I need it. I have been known to take tylenol for the ear pain. It seemed like the sheer amount of inflammation was trapping the fluid, and sometimes when I took an anti-inflammatory like tylenol I would feel the pain recede and then suddenly feel a lot of fluid drain, and then the pain would stop. Good luck - I've been doing allergy shots for 3 years and the combo of shots, antihistamines, and some changes around the house (replacing dust-catching miniblinds with shades, more frequent use of the dustmop, etc) have been life-changing.

I did a summer REU and was also in labs that hosted REUs when I was a grad student. If you are interested, definitely apply to several, since most don't accept many students. These can be a great introduction to research, but they can also be situations where a prof tells you to shadow somebody for a week (standard when you are getting started in a new lab) and then sort of forgets about you. Some labs have a well-planned set of work, and in others you may wind up doing odds and ends. In my own experience, a collaborating professor a few doors down came and rescued me from a lab where I went in every day and waited to be told who to help that day. These experiences are often far more work for the mentor than the benefit that they get because it can take a month or 2 before a student really starts producing good independent work...and by then they are done. But, some faculty/grad students/postdocs see these as a chance to do some hands-on educating and lab work while their teaching load is light, and in these cases you can learn a LOT. Besides these programs, I strongly encourage students to work in a lab if they are at a school that has research facilities. Every lab has a different culture, and until you've worked in a few you don't really get a good understanding of what the 'standard' lab environment is like. If students need paid work, starting as a dishwasher/media maker may lead to being able to do some bench work. My alma mater required all students in my major to do a research project as seniors. These experiences definitely made the transition to grad school easier, and really helped make the theoretical class material more understandable.

I looked to read this and saw that I had posted a lot last fall, so I thought I'd update. Because it was a little young for my 5th grader, we moved quickly through the island last year. We then started on town, and finished everything except the last of the poetry. We will be starting Voyage this fall. I was a little dubious when we started - the format is unusual - but this program has really helped my reluctant writer. The exercises in Grammar Town seemed to help him understand what I had thought I was explaining - order matters, word choice matters, flow is important... Writing is still not a favorite, but it has improved dramatically. The vocabulary in Caesar's English was wildly popular with my history-loving kid. Poetry has been a big help - my STEM self was always willing to read poetry, but I could not have explained it as he does. I've also been reading through Treasure Island from one of the trilogies - we'll be doing that in the fall, too. I like the way that he uses footnotes to define archaic words and includes occasional boxes with notes about alliteration or rhythm - they are instructive without being disruptive. So, we're still not to the literature level, but this was the first year that we enjoyed any part of writing or grammar. This is a quirky curriculum, but with the right student it is amazing. I hope that it works for those of you who ordered it!

Did you check the number of questions that he actually missed? One of my kids scored above the 90th on everything except spelling, where they were around the 50th. When I checked the actual number of questions, they got 36/40. So, most kids could get around 90% of the questions right - it wasn't that my kid did poorly, but that the test was fairly easy relative to what the average kid that age could do. I know that it varies between grades, but your kid may be doing OK with spelling despite the results.

I've got 2 stories. I had some birth complications with my first baby, so my 6 week dr apt and subsequent stop by the drug store for assorted supplies was my first solo outing with the baby. I was pushing the cart up and down the aisles and noticed that this guy was always behind me, no matter where I went...food, diapers, feminine supplies, cosmetics...I was getting nervous when he made eye contact and said "I don't mean to scare you, ma'am, but your baby is so beautiful that I couldn't stop looking.' We were in the southwest at the time, and bald blonde blue-eyed babies were rare, but still, bizarre. The second occurred about a year later - we were out at a casual restaurant to celebrate my birthday, and the waiter made a comment about my 'grandson'. I said that no, this was my son. Instead of being embarrassed, he asked if I was sure! He made 'Are you sure this isn't your grandson?' comments a couple more times when he came back to the table, until I finally said 'I'm turning 32, celebrating my birthday with my almost 1-year-old - is that really so hard to believe?'. While I no longer looked like I was 20, I didn't have gray hair or some other marker of age...and the guy said 'Wow, we're about the same age', and showed me a picture of his toddler! The whole situation was so strange...it would have made more sense if the guy was 16 and everybody over 20 was 'old' but we were the same age, with kids the same age.

It's specific to each kid, I think, and whether they are getting frustrated. My son, who has been in speech therapy for apraxia for 5 years, was a fluent and advanced reader before he started therapy. They were shocked that a kid whose speech was so bad could read so well. We had worked through 'Hooked on Phonics' and I could definitely tell that there were plenty of sounds that he couldn't say, but he was able to read them and able to understand the different words when he heard them. But, if a child is getting frustrated with learning to read, they could still do lots of other school things - math, have history, science, or literature read to them or presented as videos, etc. If there are apraxia issues handwriting could be challenging, but it probably wouldn't be an issue with other speech diagnoses.

Years ago, I was asked to fill in with a music group that I had quit because I didn't want to deal with arranging childcare for my toddler. The director said that they would pay their daughter to watch my kid during rehearsals. Their daughter was trying to raise money for a trip and they wanted her to earn it, but they didn't want her bothering other people. They were willing and able to fund the trip but wanted her to earn the money.

What I dislike is the fact that smart students are expected to be great at everything - classes are set up so that an A is usually attainable. I would love to see a system where its OK to get a C in AP English (ie you are average at advanced English) or an A in regular English, which frees up time to take 3 science classes, or focus on art, or whatever. In a homeschool environment you can sort of do this - check the boxes for some subjects while really digging into others. I still want students exposed to lots of subjects, though - even if they are just 'checking boxes', I want them to know that all of those boxes exist. Sometimes they find that they love a subject that they never would have thought was interesting if they hadn't been forced to try it. 'What they are good at' can change over time, too, either due to mental development or hard work. At some point when I was in elementary school they did testing (maybe for the gifted program?) and told my parents that I was smart and would do great as long as I didn't go into science or math. My parents told me this...the night before I defended my doctoral dissertation in genetics (molecular biology). To be fair, I still didn't particularly like math or physics, although the fact that I had to struggle with them as a student tends to help me do a better job of teaching them - if there's a pitfall, I know where it is.

We've only been doing karate since fall, but I can answer a few of these. The 'pay a flat fee and come however often you want' is how our school runs, too. They like you to come to at least 2 of the 4 options each week. Sometimes we go to 2, sometimes we go to 3 or even 4. There are times that everybody does the same thing (general exercise, certain games) and times when they divide them up by belt type to work on specific skills. There are usually 20-40 kids each day - 30 is typical, so 8-10/group when they divide them into small groups. They are sticklers for age - when you have a birthday, you move up to the next age group after your next stripe test. Young kids (5-6) absolutely move through the early belts. There is a limit to how far they could go - at our school, you would never be able to get past the first few at such a young age. But, you can't progress through the belts faster than a new one every 6 months at the very fastest, so by the time you got to something advanced you'd be several years older. When we started, my kid was 7 and has earned a new belt. There are other same-age kids who are several belts ahead because they started young. But, the higher belts take a long time to earn - much more than 6 months, especially for a younger student trying to remember that many techniques. ETA - I can't imagine a kid goofing off in a class at our school. They have a good time, joke, and sometimes roughhouse with the kids, but they emphasize respect. If a kid misbehaves, they have to do some sort of exercise, usually 25 burpees. Once they've done them, they rejoin the class. I have only seen a kid argue once...after twice refusing to accept the increased consequence, he was told that if he didn't do them, he wasn't welcome back for 2 weeks. They run a tight ship.

I went to a marine biology camp as a kid - it was fun, but convinced me that I didn't want to be a marine biologist. :-) I spent 2 summers working as a counselor at a summer science camp while in college, and we had a lot of repeat campers and younger siblings, so I assume that they enjoyed it.

We use amazon and also scholastic - the preschool at our church will let me place an order for scholastic books when they do. We love the yearly scholastic books warehouse sale - it's become a 'last day of school' tradition. I also usually get some things from our co-op's used book sale. Occasionally I will find myself at an outlet that has a book overstock store that I will plunder through - sometimes it's junk, but sometimes they have something good.

Last fall I decided that my 5th grader's writing needed work - every assignment took forever, I dreaded the occasional writing assignments at co-op...my kid was smart and had plenty of words to speak, but writing was awful. I decided to try MCT's island level. It didn't really do a lot for writing, but its long discussion of how adjectives and adverbs modify (change) rather than describe made and impression - we stopped looking for the shortest way to write everything. My kid loved the series and I liked the poetry books, so I got the town level. As with Island, the grammar was good. When we moved into Paragraph Town, there were more writing assignments and I was dreading them. They were weird at times but they seemed to make a difference. My kid tended to write as a 'brain dump', and the silliness of rearranging sentences to put them in random order (turning the paragraph to nonsense) seemed to flip a switch - of course structure mattered! One paragraph needed to flow to the next! Rough drafts turned from chaos into something that looked reasonable. I don't know that this weird approach will work for every kid, but it made a difference for mine. Since he loves the vocab books (full of history) and I've been pleased with the poetry (my STEM self needs lots of help teaching that) we've ordered the Voyage level for next year. I've also gotten the kilgallon grammar, and I'm hoping that if we do each a few days per week, we'll continue to improve next year.

Have you asked what, exactly, it is that she likes that makes her want to do it? My daughter didn't want to quit dance, although she didn't seem to like it, either...when I asked what she liked, she said the costume and getting flowers at the recital. I asked if getting a costume (cheap on amazon) for Christmas and getting flowers after her violin recital meant that she would try something else, and she was happy. When she quit putting an effort into baseball, I asked what she liked...trophies. So, if there was a chance to win a medal at karate, and you get different belts to wear...and now she is in karate, which she loves more than she ever liked dance or baseball. I always tell the kids that I don't want to put more effort into getting them to their activities than they put into doing the activity, so if their enthusiasm wanes, I find that sometimes the reason that we're still doing the activity isn't really because of the activity itself. One of my kids has stuck with the same set of things for years, and the other has tried a couple of new things - sometimes it takes a while to find a good fit. And, as the mom of a baseball kid, I agree that the likelihood of getting hurt increases as the kids get bigger. My son gave a distracted teammate a black eye in practice when the kid wasn't paying attention and the ball hit him in the face.

On any given assignment your kids could find the pattern - I found this to be the case for the grammar that I did in school 30 years ago, too. But, there are. cumulative reviews/tests and the occasional review question scattered through the work, so if they aren't remembering, you should find out fairly quickly.

I used these for a couple of years with my kids. The instructions give enough information that you should be able to start at grade level - every year seems to contain the basics of nouns, verbs, punctuation, etc. Writing should be fine, too. With spelling, check some of the samples and see if its a good fit. We had some years where we just needed a 'get it done' system, and my kids learned the basics of punctuation and writing. We've gone in a different direction now for several reasons (using MCT's series, which, with it's stories and discussion, is the polar opposite of what we had been doing) but my older child was diagramming sentences in 5th grade with GWG.

We used Handwriting without Tears. Your younger student could use the regular cursive book; and your olders could use the 'Extra practice' book. We used the regular books (first print, then cursive) from K-4, and in 5th we use the extra practice cursive. there's also an extra practice print if you have a child who prefers that.

This is going to sound crazy, but have you tried antihistamines? You know how some people get a twitch around their eye when their allergies flare? Your esophagus is a bunch of muscle, and it can twitch, too. I had a friend who went through all sorts of awful testing, and her issues turned out to be allergies. I have more 'normal' allergy symptoms, but when my allergies are bad, I get some reflux. It might not help, but it's easy enough to test it by taking some benedryl, so it might be worth a shot.

I've never really had problems with my kids forgetting skills over the summer (they'll be starting 3rd and 6th in the fall), so we don't do a lot of structured practice. This year I'm asking my older child to do Life of Fred algebra 1-2x/week in the car or while we wait for the other child, and my younger child will play a math game 1-2x/week (multiplicity, sequence numbers, or a few minutes of flash cards). They read all the time. Sometimes I'll pull out something semi-educational for fun - we'll watch Donald in Mathmagicland, Schoolhouse Rocks, a documentary, visit a museum, cook together, etc. We live on a few acres and have a large garden, so they also help with planting, weeding, picking, and shucking, shelling, or snapping what we will eat. One child still practices music, while the other works on sports. Speech therapy also continues over the summer They both do camps in the summer - sports camp, church camp, scout camp, continued karate, etc. I also want for them to have a lot of down time. I find that my kids need to truly 'settle into' having very little to do and no schedule for the day before they get creative, messy, or are willing to struggle with a difficult project or book. For them, the mindset of 'I don't have time before I have to go somewhere' is huge, so, with camps and some lessons continuing over the summer, I don't want a lot of formal school...which doesn't mean that I don't get them to do everyday things like double recipes, calculate hours for a trip, or show them interesting articles or videos, but I don't do a lot that resembles our regular school year.

Day-ta...in the years that I spent working in university research labs, that's what I heard most often.

I would expect a 7yo to be able to do sit-ups - we did them in school, and my karate kid does them in class. My son is a scout, and at different levels of cub and boy scout there are fitness exercises. It doesn't set a goal of how many of each that you should be able to do, but there is a list of exercises to try, practice for a few weeks, and note your improvement. Since boy scouts aren't about hard-core physical training for athletics, it might give you an idea of the kids of things that 'average' boys can do for exercise.

One of mine was very thin - at one point, he was 90th percentile height and 10th percentile weight. Our doctor started him on milk at 9 months (he continued to comfort nurse, but it wasn't his primary food source). We did full fat yogurt, sausage and egg every morning for breakfast (sausage patties are crumbly and easy to eat, I'd cut the egg into squares), avocado, cheese cubes, bits of fruit from canned fruit cocktail when I was on the go, yogurt smoothies/drinkable yogurt/kefir...he also liked frozen foods like blueberries and green peas. He wasn't a fan of carbs in general, but pancakes, muffins, roasted potatoes, even french fries or chicken nuggets would help add pounds (they certainly do when I eat them). These days he's 11, can eat 1/2 of a large pizza or a pound of meat in a sitting sometimes, and still is in the 90th percentile in high but is up to the 45th in weight. Keeping him fed, especially during sports seasons or growth spurts, is a full time job. And, you have my sympathies with the doctor thing. We had some crazy experiences with doctors before we left the hospital - sometimes I wonder what they could possibly be thinking.

Once I switched types, I felt better in days? maybe a week? Definitely by the time I got through one month's worth, I was back to normal. The crazy feelings (anger for me, sobbing for friend) were better very quickly.

When I was in grad school, a close friend and I both started on the pill around the same time. We lived about an hour apart. We had plans for her to come down one weekend, and her fiance called and said that he was bringing her because she had been sobbing uncontrollably and he was afraid for her to drive until they were sure that the new pill was going to work better. I'm usually wildly upbeat, but found myself sitting in class wanting to throttle the professors...it was scary. I went back and requested a different pill and was told that the one that I took was what they gave everybody (it was the same one that my friend had started on, too - it must be a favorite of campus health centers). They switched me to a tri-phasic one and I was fine. There were still some unnoticeable affects - when I quit taking it a few years later, I was shocked that I felt more clear-headed (a short-lived phase, since it was followed by pregnancy brain and baby brain twice over the next few years, then moving brain and now homeschooling brain). But, tell your friend not to let the doctors insist that the pills are all the same - they are definitely not. I don't know why some are so insistent, while others immediately say that they'll try until they find something that you like.

At our co-op, the high school science classes meet for 2 hours each week, while most other classes meet for 1 hour - we offer physical science, Bio I and Bio II, and chemistry. There are also some literature classes, language classes (I think Spanish, Latin, and we recently added French). There are some courses that are offered every other year - public speaking, economics, etc. There are electives like fencing, choir, rock band, and PE. I think that our co-op is set up such that, if you wanted to and planned, you could take everything that you need to graduate from high school as a co-open class. Most students don't - they may take their science at co-op, do math at home, take classes that require a group (choir, public speaking) at co-op, and do literature at home, for example, or any other mix that fits the interests of the families. By their senior year, some students are taking so many dual enrollment classes that they choose to come to the co-op for just an elective, as much to see their friends as anything else.