G'day all :seeya: I haven't been here since Thursday, and there are WAY too many posts to like, so please consider yourselves all duly Liked. :thumbup1: And special admiration to those folks who are doing NaNoWriMo. (I did it once, and have no intention of doing it again!) Y'all are very creative and hard working. :hurray: I have resolved to notice what my dc CAN do, instead of always worrying about what they CAN'T do. So... here are some of their achievements of late: 1. Mr. 13 submitted a couple of songs to the National Songwriting Competition. I don't know whether the judges will like the songs, but I'm so proud that he decided to enter because it's very rare that he does anything of his own accord; so this is a big thing. 2. Ms. 11 has been 'promoted' to the next level in swimming squad. She is NOT naturally 'sporty', so everything she achieves comes from sheer hard work, and I am really impressed that she is finally stepping up to the plate after 'cruising' for some time. 3. Ms. 8 played violin in a community service concert for an elderly people's club. Just one piece, so I thought it was be easy, but when we arrived at the venue, we found their piano was appallingly out of tune, and poor dd had to retune her fiddle to almost a semitone flat to match it, and play her piece virtually in E flat minor instead of E minor (a downside of having 'perfect pitch' is that it's very challenging to be fingering in sharps but hearing the music in flats). She performed valiantly and it sounded pretty good, considering. I have sworn never again to believe that there is a usable piano at a venue unless I have checked it for myself.

That is a sad looking violinist LOL What kind of music are you talking about? (Apart from Crowded House LOL best 80s band ever! And don't mention that they had somebody from NZ and somebody from the US, obviously the Aussie bit is the good bit :lol: )

G'day all :) Did you know that Bibles can breed? Just leave a couple on your shelf and before you know it there will be about 15, and hopefully one will be the sort you're looking for. See if the kids can train it. Read about BF Skinner. I read a book where the family went to live on a little farm on a remote Scottish Island. The kids went to the rectory for an hour or two of 'school' with each day and spent the rest of their time running the farm and solving mysteries. That sounded really good to me as a kid. I can think of many 'idyllic schooling' scenarios, but unfortunately they all involve more money and more talent than I possess. Mostly more money LOL Are you sure you aren't being influenced by the Mythical Composite Homeschooler? I tried Pinterest ONCE, just to see whether I wanted to use it. I didn't find it useful, so I forgot about it. But then it started emailing me to tell me that I have Followers, which is sort of weird, as the things I pinned were just random clicks because it forced you to select some items in order to sign up. Yes, me too. It is annoying how my kids keep insisting on being actual people, instead of the embodiment of my parenting fantasies. :biggrinjester:

That may well be true. I know I have one child who always wants to learn some obscure thing late at night when she needs to be asleep. She will get up at 11pm, knock on our door and start asking questions.

I think purses and bags each have a tiny portal to another dimension where small items such as keys can temporarily slip through. Ouch, take care of yourself and feel better soon.

Good morning / evening :) Y'all sound very achieve-y today. I read back a page or two the idea of watching Fiddler on the Roof instead of doing school, and I think that sounds extremely tempting. Also I have a 'Matchmaker' ear worm, although that is an improvement on Ms. 8's violin music CD. We have a wet, smelly dog in our lounge. He escaped this morning, and because he is totally feral and won't come when he's called if it's outside, the only way to retrieve him is to spray water in his pen (water is the most exciting thing ever, even more exciting than a fresh bone or the neighbor hanging out washing). So we retrieved the dog, and he chewed up the hose and got himself soaked, and then came inside to share his repulsive wet dog scent with all of us. Sigh. (I wish we could train him to come when called... It's weird, because he learns everything else quickly, eg I trained him to shake hands with the right paw in one session, Ms. 11 trained him to lie down on his side with a hand signal, and he can do about 20 other things on command. It's just recall.) Plan for today: trombone practice, clarinet practice, piano practice x2, recorder practice, violin practice x2, music theory, composer study (Jay Ungar!), math, memory work, girls have Guides, ds has a couple of hours of lawn mowing to do, and I have torturous business paperwork.

Trick or treating is getting more common over here - Halloween has only really taken off in the last decade - and I saw a few kids going around town when I was driving home, but nobody would come to our house as we are 2km out from the main road, and we have such a steep, rough driveway that even the JWs seem to have given up, preferring to consign our souls to perdition rather than navigate to our house.

The annoying thing that nobody tells you about junk food is that it's a one way progression, with no going back. For example, you can introduce plain popcorn as a 'treat' as soon as they are past the choking hazard stage, and small kids will love it. But they only need ONE taste of sweetened popcorn, and BOOM, the plain popcorn is suddenly boring, and nothing will ever convince them that it's a treat again. Or you give your child nothing but water to drink (good mama! smug mama!) and for an extra special birthday treat you let them have 1cm of pure juice in the bottom of their water. (Yay! Great excitement and rejoicing!) Then one day their Wicked Aunt gives them a glass of undiluted juice and WHAM that becomes the new standard, with the kids inventing new 'special days' requiring Special Drinks every time it's shopping day. And of course it gets worse with each child. Our first child had no junk at all. His birthday cakes were low-sugar carrot cakes topped with fruit. Second child got chocolate cakes with vegetables or almond meal sneaked in for nutrition. Third child expects a full-on Diabetes Special and then complains if there's no ice cream on top of it.

Easy way to remember those: complementary angles add up to 90 degrees, which is a RIGHT angle, because giving somebody a compliment is the RIGHT thing to do. Supplementary angles add up to 180, which is MORE, because when you supplement something, you add MORE to it.

I think it's OK not to have a specific reason, and probably good to go with your gut instinct. If your Ms. 10 is keen to socialize with these people, but you're not interested in getting to know them all, could you just let her invite the kid/s from that neighbor to your house sometimes?

We have coffee, but we don't have milk, so we're waiting for the KISA to dash to the shop. Today is a Partay Day. We are celebrating: 1. The local outdoor swimming pool is now open. This is awesome because it means we can drive there in 2 minutes, or bike or walk, whereas the indoor pools we swim at over the colder months are both a half hour drive away. 2. Ms. 8 is now officially in 5th grade violin. This is a big deal because in the Australian system, everything up to grade 4 is 'Level 1', and grade 5-8 is 'Level 2', which means that the demands ramp up a notch, but also students start to do more 'real music' (unabridged standard repertoire as opposed to pieces written for beginners). Of course all of this absolutely necessitates Cake :D

It is so secret that it can't have an obvious acronym, because that would be insufficiently secretive. Y'all are very organized. Our Xmas tree gets installed on December 22nd!

What a pity. Lots of home ed kids have used it.

Child who decided to have a leftover sausage for her Second Breakfast, squeezing the ketchup bottle and getting more rude noises than sauce: "I need tomato sauce, but there are only farts left in this bottle."

Poor you :( Arthritis is also very not fun. Does it get worse in certain weather?

That is very not fun. I hope you manage to have your nap and feel better soon.

Dh has just made coffee. Going by the number of coffee addicts appreciators here, it seems like a John Flanagan book. Today is Ms. 8's Spring Concert with the youth orchestra. She has to be there at 11.30am for a 2-4pm concert. I am not impressed: by the time we drive her 100km round trip, she will end up with an adult work day number of hours. I wish they would do the most junior kids' sound checks first (there are five orchestral ensembles playing and she is in the youngest) so that they wouldn't have such a long day of it.

Wowsers, I miss ONE DAY and again there are four pages. It's like another part-time job having to read ITT :tongue_smilie: Went for a long day trip yesterday to see a little zoo at the other end of the state while dh had a most-of-the-day work meeting. Set off at 6.30am, got to zoo about 11. Dh offered to do some of the driving, but since I generally get snoozy on long drives in the afternoon, I said I'd drive all the way up and asked him to drive home. Kids had a great time, we went and picked dh up in the afternoon, then I went crazy and bought a car. So of course I had to drive my new (well, 16yo but new-to-me) car all the way home, and of course by the time we got everything sorted out it was 10pm by the time we got home. I am officially an eedjit, and I am never ever again going to drive for that many hours in one day!

My kids have all enjoyed Timez Attack, and it was effective with drilling the facts. You can also get it for other operations besides multiplication, although we only used the multiplication tables one. An advantage of the program is that the basic version is free, so you could try it out and see if your son likes it.

That is totally ridiculous. Parents are paying the teacher for the entire piano learning experience, which includes studio recitals. He isn't entitled to deprive some students of a part of what they have paid for just because some other students aren't abiding by his attendance policy. He needs to firstly take it up with the particular students and parents involved, and secondly work on a way to communicate the importance of consistent attendance at the time of new students signing up. If he had properly explained this up front, students would turn up except in case of illness, family emergency, etc. Whereas if the teacher feels that the recitals are compulsory while the pupils and their families are under the impression that they are an optional extra, then clearly there has been a communication failure.

Yes, we spend half the year on Australian Eastern Standard Time and the other half on Australian Eastern Summer Time, which is the daylight saving that we are on now. Here are all the Aussie times in case anyone needs to check. :) I am wholeheartedly agreeing with you :D I am also finding it inspiring. Latin for us is one of those things which I really want to do but somehow never get to doing. I even got as far as buying Latin books, but we seem to be permanently stuck on life skills and basic 3R stuff. (For example, today Mr. 13 worked on "Altertude control", according to his logbook entry. Ouch! I seriously considered making future lessons contingent upon progress in spelling!) Congratulations on both counts: those are two very fine pieces of news :hurray:

Good morning Lynn :D It's 9.40pm down here, and we have been in dire straits because we were [gasp] OUT OF COFFEE! That's right, we survived two whole days with no coffee. (Well, OK, I admit there may be a small jar of instant in the pantry, but that's for guests who don't like proper coffee.) However, my knight in shining armour came home with coffee, so tomorrow is going to be a caffeintastic day.

Sorry I don't have any useful suggestions for you. I'm just going to loiter and see what others advise because some of it might be relevant to one of my kids.

Geez, now I have the Ghost Busters song going around in my head! I didn't realize what a rubbishy movie that actually was until we showed it to the kids for Family Movie Night. Some things are probably best left as sweet memories of the 1980s...

I'd say it's a 'pass the bean dip' situation. Your kid is already bored in school, so letting him get 'further ahead' isn't likely to increase the boredom significantly, but could alleviate overall boredom as he is at least learning at home, if not at school. I believe that schools prefer not to have very accelerated kids mainly because it is inconvenient for them, rather than because it's a problem for the student.