:lol:

Not Canadian, but we have the same issue with SOTW barely mentioning Australia. As somebody else mentioned, we simply add in supplementary Australian history as needed, plus of course they learn some of the history behind Australia Day and Anzac Day each year. And I also dream of taking the kids to Canberra, but the funding the government grants for that only covers a small portion of the cost so I don't know when we'll be able to do it. Tbh though, I find the religious bias more of a hassle to tweak than the US bias.

I think your program outline looks great. What are you going to do for Poetry? I am liking How to Teach your Kids Shakespeare so far.

Would it maybe be easier to focus on finding just one family to be friends with and then expand the circle to include more families, rather than trying to "break into" existing groups? I think making friends as a home schooled kid, or as a home educating family, is way harder than making friends at school. I am pretty rubbish at social skills, yet I always managed to have some friends at school. When you see the same people almost every day for years on end, it's unlikely to never make friends with any of them. Also home edders tend to do things as families. At school, I had my friends, my brother had his friends, and my parents had their friends. All different friends. Whereas now we expect to have families where we're friends with the parents and all the kids are friends. Also, home edders do tend to be people with strong convictions and independent ways, so maybe it's easier to rub us up the wrong way as a group?

I would assume that the attitude displayed on the T-shirt is held by the store and its staff as a whole, because I don't think it's generally considered appropriate to have any kind of strongly worded messages on clothing at work otherwise. For example, I have a T-shirt that reads "Birth: every home should have one" and I wouldn't dream of wearing it in any work or formal situation, unless I were working as a home birth midwife or doula.

If they won't tell you what they'd like, fix what you fancy and they can put up with it. I don't often bother cooking things 'to order'. If I know all the kids like something - or even if one of them loves it - I'll put it into the rotation somewhere. Or if they want to cook something particular they can (the meal has to include a substantial amount of vegetables and a source of protein, so they can't declare that dinner is ice cream, marshmallows and nothing else). We also don't cook alternative meals. If they have tasted what's on offer and don't think they can eat it, they are free to get themselves something from the Always Available list (fresh unprocessed fruit, vegetables, nuts and dairy products) so occasionally one of them will end up having an apple and a piece of cheese, but mostly they eat whatever we're having. Sometimes I would love to have them upstairs in the nursery, eating with their governess so I can have adult conversation with dh. Only problem is we don't have an upstairs, a nursery or a governess. Darn it!

Yes! I'm heartily sick of articles entitled "10 Easy Ways to Save Money" where 9 of them are things we already do and the 10th involves Coupons (which are not a Thing over here). Eg. Reuse your lint sheets. Um, I never heard of those. I dry my clothes on (gasp) a washing line. Next!

Vehicles that travel 20kmph below the limit while there isn't a passing lane, and then speed up to exceed the speed limit when you get to the passing lane and try to overtake them, then - yes, you guessed it - slow back down to their original speed when the overtaking lane has ended.

I'm not actually following the CK Teacher Handbook or following the grade level suggestions, but instead I use the Art Resources packets 1-4 as a jumping off point for our own discussion / investigation. How this works is I select one A4 card to display on our 'Learning Wall' and depending on level of interest, time available that week and other resources I might have found, we might have a little as a 5 minute talk about the work and the artist, or as much as a few books and audiovisual items, and/or creating our own art in that style as well. Geography I have a real mixture planned, but one thing I am determined to do again is the 'Blob' lessons again. (NB When I went to pull out the activities for this I found it was CC, NOT CK my bad memory! So in fact the only bit of CK I'm going to be using is the checklists of mountains, lakes, etc from the Sequence book) We started this some time ago but didn't keep up with it, and I just think it's a fantastic idea. I am hoping that with really pushing the Blob drawing map of the world, plus working on Seterra and a few other resources, the kids will get a better idea than I had about what the world looks like and what nations are where. I never really picked this up through school; in fact it was only quite recently that I read a book about Armenia and felt embarrassed that I had no idea where that was (well I had some idea it was in Eastern Europe, but that was it). That got me started on practicing identifying all the countries of the world on a map, and I thought how handy it would have been to have learnt that at school.

We tend to do both, but treat them as different subjects. Or to be more accurate, the 'appreciation' side of things isn't really treated as a 'subject' at all, more of a fun activity (in the case of art: we really just look at famous works and talk about them, and sometimes read a bit about the artist) or just something we do (in the case of listening to music). I really dislike the idea of having the dichotomy: music-that-mom-makes-us-listen-to (AKA Classics) vs normal music (stuff kids would listen to of their own accord). Our attitude is that there are many many different sorts of music and it's great to explore them all. All of our kids have 'favorite' pieces of music from many different genres, and they don't think that operas or symphonies are any more difficult to listen to than top 40 songs because we have never taught them that. Yes we do have output in the form of pieces played and pages in their art portfolios, but we haven't done anything like art history at this stage, and to be honest we'll be unlikely to do that unless the kids are interested. The littlest does basic music theory but that is mostly to help with her reading skills (she is an ear player and resists following the score).

I know typingclub.com is free of charge, and I am sure there would be other free products available if you have a bit of a search. I wouldn't pay to learn typing, because honestly it's not that difficult, it's just a matter of practicing until you reach the speed you want.

I agree with the others who have posted. You presumably decided to consult her in the first place because you need good professional obstetric advice and care. She isn't providing this, so you need to find somebody who can. Of course it will be somewhat uncomfortable informing her of your choice, but once you have done this you will feel much happier because you have prioritized the well-being of yourself and your baby. Hopefully you will be able to maintain a relationship with her as a friend, even though you aren't her client any more.

I see the light! All I need to do is produce another 7 children and then nobody will ever suspect that I'm a barbarous heathen ;)

Sorry, but if you implement something in a way that is too intense, that's your fault, not the program's fault. TWTM isn't some kind of educational boot camp where Susan cracks her whip if you slacken off from the cult's dictates. It's a work that presents a set of principles, a general approach and a slew of suggestions which we can implement to whatever extent we think it will work for us. If somebody doesn't want the responsibility for deciding this sort of thing, perhaps home education isn't that person's best option.

That's an interesting article, thanks for sharing. I'm not sure about the causation with that study, as the linked info does not specify how the sample of children was selected (ie did they control for the myriad of potential confounding factors? because kids whose parents are able to provide piano lessons are likely to also provide a whole lot of other beneficial things). Also the kid in the picture needs help with her bowhold. However, I am starting to feel a little bit over the constant litany of "do music because it'll help with math", and "do music because it will aid your brain development" and so on and so forth. I am wondering why the study of music has to have a justification, as if it's not worth doing for its own sake. Am I the only person who feels that music is wonderful and good and worthwhile even if it doesn't effect anything else?

Sounds like you handled it very well, Mama. :hurray:

Yes, I have been told by a Christian that because some of my principles coincide with theirs, I must in fact be Christian at heart, I just haven't realized it yet. What's more, I suspect that comment was actually meant as a compliment!

Well the kids actually enjoyed school today. This week we are doing prehistory activities so we kicked off with the toilet paper time line, then did stone tools and eating like cave people, plus some of our prehistory books and television shows. Even Mr. I Hate History like it :)

Sounds like a great idea, and has the advantage of being able to be done automatically rather than increasing moderator workload. If the spambots somehow pick up on that rule and post 15 rubbish posts before putting up the links, another option might be to require a given number of Likes before full posting privileges are conferred.

And also (warning: I am about to stretch the books/food metaphor more than it deserves) don't feel you have to stay on your raw vegan / paleo / liver cleansing / whatever diet all the time. I am firmly in favor of allowing yourself some literary junk food from time to time. If you enjoy historical potboilers, marshmallow-light chick lit, murder mysteries, Dan Brown, or whatever, that is perfectly fine as long as you don't let that crowd out your more literary fare.

Deleted because I was getting way off the original topic ;)

Apart from the replies you already had, don't forget that books are like food in that you have to be in the mood to enjoy them. If you feel like chocolate cake, salad won't satisfy. And vice versa. Similarly, if you try to read Wharton when your mind feels like Dickens, or Joyce, or Shakespeare, or Austen, you won't enjoy that. And just as there are some foods you don't like even after trying them lots of times in different ways, there may be some authors you're never going to love. If something is so famous that you feel embarrassed about never having read it right through, but you honestly can't get into it, do yourself a favor and watch the movie instead. It really is OK to do that! ;) Ps - I love the passage you quoted :)

Thanks for the ideas Denise (the site isn't letting me Like) I'm about to start on this with my eldest and interested to see how it will go. As a kid, I actually found the way negative numbers work to be intuitively obvious, so it hadn't really occurred to me until recently that it would be something I have to teach the kids. But it will be good to have a toolkit of strategies ready.

On the one hand, I believe that written "output" tends to be vastly overrated. Kids at school have to do a lot of writing, but as home schoolers we have so many other options and we don't need a written summary to figure out whether our kid has taken something in or not. So in my home we will quite often discuss topics over dinner in preference to requiring writing. On the other hand, I suspect that taking 10 minutes to write a sentence means your child needs to extra support with at least one aspect of writing (I'm not sure which from your post. Maybe too much perfectionism?).

I mostly wash them after I've worn them, but then I mostly only wear sports bras, not dainty expensive don't-like-being-washed ones.