Hmm...well, it would depend on when in our journey you asked me how they felt about it. To begin with, they thought I was crazy and the kids were not going to get what they needed. This isn't because I am lacking in intelligence or they thought I was too dumb to do it. It was b/c of the kids that they had seen coming back into the system from homeschooling. All that they had seen of homeschooling was children coming back 2 and 3 grade levels below their grades. Some were in 5th grade and couldn't read. Now, they are very supportive. They can see the kids are doing well and thriving. They know that the kids do well on standardized tests. I have had my dh's stepsister administer tests for me. I donated a train table/set to her preschool class. So I guess you could say both sides have learned about homeschooling in good and bad ways. I never knew that people would pull their kid and not school them and all they had seen were people who pulled their kids and didn't school them. They are the first to "like" our fb posts about school, field trips, and the kid's achievements now. We enjoy going to their school things as well. I think there is a healthy respect for each other's choices now.

It is on a cable channel now. I forget which one.

If he is behind with the math at his school, why not ask the school for a loaner copy of they younger grade math that they use. It probably followed a different scope and sequence or taught it differently than your son learned. If K12 left gaps for the new school, then I wouldn't go back to K12 to fill in the gaps.

You can buy it from K12 directly. The schools do require that you return it at the end of the year or if you drop the program. https://ecomm.k12.com/ecommerce/public/coursePricingDetails.xhtml?cid=815998 Click on the contents of the standard kit for $45 and you will find the guide.

:grouphug: I am hoping it all gets settled and our insurance will pay for what we have already done. I just can't believe how a professional can lie like that for money. I am looking into getting Dianne Craft's book and starting at the house myself. He already does HWOT, click n spell, and keyboarding. So we are just going to get the Dianne Craft book and go from there. We have a medical diagnosis from her pediatrician for dysgraphia so we are going to get 504 accommodations which will include ds getting to use a laptop for the writing portions of standardized tests. He just has to learn to type now. ETA-I just found out that the military cut ties with this therapy place for insurance fraud. They were telling parents they were treating for one thing and costs and billing for another with much higher costs.

Nope, the OT place called to find out our coverage. They knew what was covered. They want me to pay the $$$ now. DS doesn't have the issues they have been treating him for at OT. We did go over the specifics before evaluation and before treatment. We are only covered for specific things. The OT place lied. They told me they doctored his eval so the insurance would cover it for their diagnosis. Their diagnosis is not covered by our plan and it is basically not worth the paper they typed it on since they just put he couldn't do anything. He plays baseball, soccer, and basketball in leagues. He doesn't have balance or coordination issues. He hits off machine pitch. He played first base. Does that sound like a kid with the coordination of a 3 year old? He has never had any issues but with writing. I am just so mad that a place would basically lie from the get go about what services they offer and what evaluations they are performing. His script from his Dr. for the referral was specific to a dysgraphia evaluation. We never asked for him to be evaluated for anything but dysgraphia. I could spit nails. They told me the eval was $75 and I paid up front. They are charging my insurance $445 for that eval. If he had issues it would be one thing, but the child doesn't and I am mad that he has a bogus report in his medical records. I even told them when I was checking if they evaluated for dysgraphia that I would need to go somewhere else if they didn't. When I questioned their report after the OT eval with his abilities in sports and such, they told me they put his motor skills so low to make sure that the insurance would cover it. That is insurance fraud. They flat out told me that they lied on the report so my insurance would cover for more services than he needed. We have lost hours of school, time, and money going to a place where they put him in a gym and had him run obstacle courses that were easy for him. Not once have they worked on his writing issues. It is insurance fraud and a racket to boot b/c I am going to have to fight tooth and nail not to owe $1,000's for treatment that was not needed. They led me to believe that they tested him for dysgraphia and were treating for dygraphia right up until my insurance started denying claims for their bogus treatments for "lack of coordination". We are local union insurance and these ladies in the insurance office have seen my kid play ball since he was 4 with their grandsons. At 4, he had better motor skills than what that report says he has at 9. I thought we were doing the right thing going to get him tested, but this has been a nightmare. No wonder insurance is so high if professionals lie to get paid.

Ok. We are in month 2 of OT. The OT evaluation which says ds has the gross/fine motor skills of a preschooler is bogus. We went for a dysgraphia evaluation and came out with this crap and they put the diagnosis as lack of coordination. Such bs. He plays sports and is actually probably one of the top 3 kids in his PE class. So now insurance will not pay for this b/c they only cleared OT eval for dysgraphia and OT for dysgraphia. I didn't find out that they weren't treating him for dysgraphia or that they probably can't treat him for dysgraphia until we were already over a month in with $100's of money into the OT for an issue he doesn't have. The idiot therapist came out of his visit last week so excited he went across the monkey bars and conquered his fear of heights. Umm... lady he has done that since he was 2 and he went down a 75 ft. zip line last week. Do you want to see the video? I flat out asked the therapist where those numbers came from for ds's motor skills and she told me that he was really hyper and chatty the day of the testing so if he didn't do something b/c he was chatty or if he didn't get what she was asking they marked he couldn't do it and it was good for us b/c then the insurance will pay. I am so mad right now. Mainly because the amount they told me the evaluation was is now $370 higher. Our insurance only pays $1000/yr to OT and the first month of OT for lack of coordination (which I don't think he has and we didn't take him there for anyway-we took him for dysgraphia-he has trouble writing nimrods!) If the insurance pays, we have used all our benefits for this year on useless OT sessions. I am just so grumpy with the pure out fraud of all this. I called and specifically asked for a specific type of evaluation and they said they could do it. This has been such a waste of time and money. I am livid. I don't even know where to go from here.

Barksdale isn't bad. It is a nice base. Homeschooling in Louisiana is pretty easy. You either do home study where you file an application with the state for approval or you send in a letter stating your intent to homeschool as a private school not seeking SBESE approval. There are a lot of hs groups and co-ops in the area. It does seem that once you come here...you are normally here for a while. It is pretty hot and there isn't a whole lot of seasons. Get used to shorts and sandals. Mardi Gras is a plus. Lots of festivals and music even though it is up in N. LA. Look up Shreveport, LA. It is a twin city to Bossier City with the Red River separating them. Barksdale is just a bridge over from Shreveport. http://www.shreveportbossierfunguide.com/

http://www.softcup.com/ Walmart sells them. You can't feel them and you toss them after use.

I am going to be blunt. You gave her the keys and permission to try to back your van into a difficult spot. It is your van and you gave permission. If you let someone else drive your vehicle, you are taking on the risks and responsibilities of that decision. It is your car so it is your insurance. She shouldn't have attempted to do it, but you gave her the go ahead. You may can see if the scouts have insurance for such a situation. I don't think the blame lies entirely with the other woman. You gave her keys and said go ahead when you knew it would be difficult in your vehicle. I don't think the courts would side with you on this one because you gave full consent in front of witnesses and did not discuss insurance or what would happen should your vehicle be damaged. This was avoidable. You should have told her it was impossible and not given her your keys. This happened to my cousin 2x in 2 weeks when she was trying to sell a car and letting people test drive. Those people were not responsible for damages. She willingly gave them the keys and permission to drive the vehicle. It would be different if she did not have permission to move the vehicle. It all boils down to giving her consent to drive the vehicle and attempt a tricky parking situation.

LOL. My son made dirt angels his entire t-ball season last year. It doesn't help that in the rec leagues there can be up to a 2 year age difference for the kids. My son was 4 and most of his team mates were 6. We specifically didn't do t-ball this year b/c I knew he would still be the youngest on the team.

I could have written your post but about my daughter and my niece. The height thing, the classes and activities thing, and especially the boy/girl part. I honestly think that it is a following the crowd thing. I had boyfriends in middle school and met up with groups and such, but so did everyone in middle school. My dd12 has a cousin dn13. dn13 has had about 5 boyfriends this year. At first, I was a little shocked by the amount of "dating" at that age, but then I remembered meeting friends at the mall and walking around with my "boyfriend". Personally, I am happy that dd12 is just to the texting boys stage and crushes stage. I do feel that dn13 is becoming more accelerated with certain types of maturity and experience than dd12. Honestly, I am glad dd12 doesn't have to deal with the drama, emotions, and hormones brought on by these pubescent relationships. These kids are not going to be boyfriend and girlfriend forever but they use terms like in a relationship. My dd doesn't have to worry about that right now and I am glad. My dh has 5 younger sisters. So far 3 have gotten pregnant their senior year or just after graduation. I don't get encouraging relationships at this age.

We did HOD for several years. It fit a time in our lives. The list that you have compiled and what your dd loves is very different than HOD's style of learning. At one point, I had a similar list that I tried to add on to HOD. What I realized was that we were essentially running 2 curricula for one school year. There were overlapping materials and certain skills. You had to basically choose what you were going to do HOD and what you were going to tweak and use another curricula. Doing both HOD and adding in a list of that size, was impossible and left burnt out kiddos. I also realized that my children thrive with the workbook style of learning in some cases and did not thrive with some of the CM styles or HOD methods. If you add all of that list, you would really need to drop everything else from HOD except History and Bible. That is a very expensive history and Bible curriculum for just the history and Bible in it. It gets more and more expensive the higher up you go. If you go to the CTC and higher guides and put in just the economy package with the history and Bible elements, you can see that it is several hundred dollars. The history in HOD has a lot of projects and cross-curricular skills that may replicate some of the skills in the curricula on your list. This will make a lot of extra work on same skills for your child and it may cause burnout. I guess what I am trying to say is that if that list is working for your child, then no I don't think that HOD would be a good fit overall. It would be a completely opposite learning style than the list you have. It would also be a very expensive curriculum for just Bible and History.

I have taught this age in a co-op setting with classes similar. It is hard when there are so many differing levels of skills in a class that meets so seldom. I think a brief outline of the class lessons by date of the co-op with a brief description such as cutting, pasting...and what book you are rowing. As for the name writing, I wrote each kids name on each paper for them. A few did know how to write their names. Most didn't. It was easier for me to write their names on the papers before we started or after the lesson was over if it was a craft or something. I personally hate that the pre-k/K class in co-op is academic. Each parent does different things with their homeschool. My k'er is stuck in the older preschool class b/c of his birthday and the teacher doing the phonics hour is doing handwriting with them. It drives me batty b/c we don't use triple lined paper but use HWOT and he will be 1st grade by October. We do the co-op b/c of my older kid's needs and my younger is just along for the ride. I wish they would just have music and movement, storytime, and arts and crafts instead of phonics, numbers, and storytime. I have to correct some of the things mine has been taught at co-op. He is now starting his letters wrong. He was starting them all at the top. Now he is doing it horrible. So I wouldn't advise saying anything to a parent about their child's lack of skills. Write the names on the papers and give the parents a heads up when there will be cutting and pasting.

I have had similar ages and grades at one time. When mine were 4th, 3rd, 1st, and pre-k, I felt like a ping pong ball. My big kids needed to learn to multi-task and to follow through with quality work. My littles needed me constantly for the teaching. I did start a daily plan and student planners for the bigger kids. I recommend a set schedule with an order for the subjects-not necessarily times for each thing but a routine. We also did educational games for when they got through early or needed me while I was schooling the others. Now I have a 7th, 6th, 4th, and k'er. My big kids are very independent with their work from their daily plan. My 4th is learning time management this year. I would suggest a- daily plan student planners clear expectations of their work follow through reward system Our reward system was simple. We had a treasure box filled with stickers and goodies from the dollar store and dollar section of Target. I do think it took training that year for my biggers to become more independent of me without taking advantage of the lack of constant oversight. I often got my big kids into a routine with school several days to a week before adding in my littler ones. That way they had a good feel for their work and what was expected of them when I could devote my attention to them. I also could tweak their routine during that week. Was it the one-room schoolroom homeschool that I daydreamed about in the beginning? No, but it is ours and I feel the good, fun times have outweighed the rough patches. You just have to find what works for you and what makes your home school work for your family. These are some things that worked for us.

The only time my Mom signs our names is when we go in together for a gift. I think that is a bit odd and right up there with Santa Claus after marriage. It is a little nuts.

:iagree: We have used it and it is really good. They retain it without hating English.

With us being in a virtual this year, they evaluated ds first. Then we took him to the local therapy place for an evaluation. I called our insurance first. I then had to call around and make sure that they were in network. We have a deductible so we had to pay for the evaluation up front. It ran about $75. We have to pay 20% at each weekly session which runs about $23 a week. We have a cap of $1000 a yr for OT. They are doing a spelling and reversals program as well as handwriting without tears while we do HWOT at home also. They do lots of exercises to improve processing and sequencing. It has been worth it b/c he is already improving after 3 weeks. We thought about getting him tested last year, but they were iffy b/c the local schools offer services. The insurance balked on testing him privately. It was part of our reason for doing virtual this year. When I called and said that the teacher evaluated him and recommended outside evaluations for dysgraphia/dyslexia there wasn't a single issue with the insurance. My military friend had the same issue with getting testing done outside of the school system by Tricare. They actually told her to put her daughter back in school and go through the school. They would not write her a referral. The school had to recommend it. She is fighting that battle now. I would recommend calling and talking to your insurance. Find out exactly what services they cover and whether you have to pay a percentage or deductible for this service. I will tell you that we got a diagnosis without a psychologist. We did the evaluation at the therapy place then took the results to our pediatrician. She wrote up his diagnosis in a letter for us for the insurance to cover it. We do OT weekly for an hour.

Dyslexia doesn't have to show up in reading. It can effect writing more. We had ds 9 who will be 10 evaluated for the first time this year b/c he too writes reversals still and can't spell to save his life. He was diagnosed with dysgraphia. He may also have mild dyslexia. They are working on his processing skills weekly and it really does help. My best advice would be if there is a concern to talk to her pediatrician and get an evaluation. It will give you answers whether it be it is nothing or it is in the dys-family. It is so much nicer to know what is going on than to keep guessing.

It is still normal at this age. I think 3rd grade is the point where you should start to be concerned if there is still reversals regularly. The shoe thing is really common too. Handwriting without tears is really great to use if you do some of the extras. The wet-dry try was the most beneficial to my kids. I would invest in the little chalkboard and buy a cheap sponge at the grocery store and cut it into triangles. Finger tracing, sandpaper letters, and more will help. I found after Montessori that my child had picked up a lot of bad handwriting habits b/c it was child led so much. They would demonstrate it to him, he would do it correctly, then on his own he just didn't do it properly. We still love Montessori, but my son got sloppy when he was working on his own and really needed oversight on his handwriting.

I agree it is a like a preteen girl. You never know which child you are going to get...the good natured funny boy or the sulky distracted boy or the really quick to anger boy or the suddenly crying but there is nothing wrong boy... At least with preteen girls everyone expects the hormones. With boys, it is so different. Mine has severe mood swings. Four months until 10 though!!! :D

Just for reference, K12's Math Red (4th grade) is where order of operations and the properties are first introduced so by 6th in FGA they are zooming through them. I find Math Red comparable to the 6th grade math we did with homeschool. :confused: It is very advanced.

We are buying the Sadlier Oxford math from Sadlier Oxford's site. We just do the assessments on K12 and I mark all the lessons complete in the unit. We actually learn our math through Sadlier Oxford math.

We are in our first year with a virtual academy. We did kindergarten math independently last year. It was Sadlier Oxford math and much, much better than the math plus. So far I love a lot of it. The K12 curriculum is great. The umbrella school-not so great. I just pretend I am homeschooling and hope they don't send me a nasty letter. ;) We are doing Fundamentals of Geometry and Algebra as well and there is not enough explanation for anything. I have sent my dd to Khan's Academy to watch videos on topics. Mostly I have to teach it to her after she does the online part for K12. That blue book is useless as a Teacher's Guide. Also, you don't have to go in the order of the book. You can click on courses and go to whatever unit and lesson you want and do them in whatever order you think makes better sense. We also still have other maths that we will use instead of K12's computer learning and then have the children do the assessments. FWIW, I love the Pre-Algebra set up and learning. FGA just seems like this crash course they are rushing through to get to Pre-Algebra. We are ignoring the Math Plus and doing our own math and having the kids take the assessments. The only thing we have hated is the Math Plus. I love that it is scheduled for me. I love the color coded progress bars. It is a lot of what I already used-GUM Grammar, HWOT, Wordly Wise....I love the 6th grade history as well.

Co-ops are hard. That is just the truth of it. There are always pros and cons to them. With the ages of your kids, I would rather do a park day on my own time when it doesn't interfere with nap or school.