We would absolutely buy our daughter a horse if money were no object. Heck, if we were keeping it on our land we'd probably buy her a couple of horses so they could be paddock mates.

Your dog sounds lovely. If only you lived near us, our 5mo GSD would love to be friends!

That is what I am hoping for the sake of my Ms. 9. She has been horse-crazy since she was about two, and it shows no signs of abating so far. Most of her spare time is spent on drawing horses, playing with toy horses, talking to her horsey best friend about horses, pretending to be a horse, and reading about horses. To make this worse (and better), I suspect she may actually have some level of talent / natural ability, and this sometimes makes me sad that we will never be able to afford for her to have her own horse or even take lessons often enough. However we press on with letting her ride as frequently as we can manage, and I talk to her about how much more her first horse will mean to her if she has waited, worked and saved up herself. We are fortunate enough to have a riding school where the owner is open to the idea of my daughter working for lessons when she is a little older. To your 'feeding the monster' question, I would respond that I honestly believe it works in the opposite direction. Many (most?) little girls have fantasies about galloping about on horses, but a good dose of the reality - ie, the fact that they will spend much more time mucking out stalls, grooming and cleaning tack than actually riding; and the fact that to learn riding properly takes actual work - tends to weed out a lot of kids. When my child came home rhapsodizing about the joys of picking up horse poop, that was when I knew she was likely to stay horse-mad for a while ;)

Thanks Katie for being generous enough to give us a glimpse of your and your brother's personal experiences.

Nice to "see" you again :)

I always think the term 'dry pail method' is slightly funny because it sounds more technical than it is. I call it 'chuck it in a bucket'.

Yes, it's not difficult to 'keep up'. My 11yo with learning difficulties has gotten through 4A, 4B and 5A in half a year of intense work. We now have until the end of 2015 calendar year to complete 5B, 6A and 6B in order to meet my goal of having him "on grade level", hence the slowing down and aiming for a broader and more enjoyable experience. (Side note: ZOMG he was calculating averages FOR FUN in his bedroom during Quiet Time today! Hallelujah!)

At a minimum, you only need the one actual book. Anything extra really depends on your preferences and budget. If your kids love listening to books on CD and/or you want to reduce the amount of reading to them that you have to do, then by all means buy the audio version. If you're happy to read out loud (or your 8yo likes reading to the youngers) and your kids enjoy listening to you, don't bother with the audio. I personally didn't find the book at all onerous to read, but obviously ymmw. Tests, I don't think many people actually use them. Unless you really want to test your kids, it's easier to simply notice how much they retain on a particular section by the way they talk about it, play history games, build ancient civs with their Lego or whatever.

I agree, using they as a neutral singular as well as plural is by far the easiest and most natural-feeling way to go. However, if somebody should ask me to refer to them as zie or whatever else, I'd try to do as asked, because I figure that the small amount of inconvenience I experience is an insignificant price to pay for making that person feel a little more comfortable and respected.

Yep, that.

Well, personally I'd be pushing for all of us to stay home. But that's just because I'm an extreme introvert and will grasp any excuse to avoid a party :lol: For you, I'd say if dad and the healthy kids want to go, let them go while mom gives herself and the sick kids some TLC at home. Unless there is going to be someone particularly vulnerable there (premie baby, anyone who is immuno-compromised) in which case I'd play it safe and all stay at home.

No, but watching with interest as my Mr. 11 would love to learn this stuff.

:grouphug: It sounds like this is very hard for you right now. Losing some of your hopes for your child and having to accept limitations on what she will be able to do causes grief, and grief is always painful. Like any kind of grief, it will never go away completely, but it will become easier over time. You will get past the stage of feeling totally overwhelmed and arrive at a place where you can, most of the time, focus on the positives and look forward to your daughter fulfilling her own unique potential, whatever that may be.

We don't ever stop completely - I am one of those insane moms who takes math pages away on holiday with us, and yes the kids did do their math on Xmas Day - but we do pare down to an absolute minimum when we have something special on such as family visiting from overseas.

I also found that MM worked better once I got a bit more courageous with crossing problems out. I used to feel that if in doubt, more practice was better, but now I don't hesitate to omit questions - or even whole lessons - if the kid clearly understands the topic thoroughly and doesn't seem to need more repetition. As a result, all the kids are working through the books much faster, so I can devote more sessions to 'for a change' stuff such as LoF, Murderous Maths, math-related stories, computer games, and so on.

Our standard 'go-to' food for any informal meal with other families is the Great DIY salad. We buy a ton of salad vegetables plus a good variety of meats and non-meat alternatives, bread (gluten-free if necessary), dressings and a few extras like kalamata olives and semi-dried tomatoes (those mainly for the adults). Give each diner a plate and let them have at it. We always have fruit available as well, and I haven't yet had a kid who wouldn't eat *anything* that was available.

Yes, it's not uncommon. IME the key is to do a quick evaluation of your own mood and not go on the forum if you're not in the right frame of mind. Sometimes you might be here looking for some specific help or information, and sometimes you might be here more for virtual socialization, but either way, it helps to keep in mind these principles: 1. Your daughters aren't the same as anyone else's children. Therefore what is best for my kids probably wouldn't be best for yours. 2. Home education, like the rest of life, is such a huge smorgasbord of possibilities that no one person can even look at everything, let alone do everything. Therefore there will always be valuable, fun and interesting things that you don't have the time, energy or money to do. And that is OK.

I will be teaching it to only one of my three children: the one who is extremely poor at written expression. I think it's a fantastic tool for kids who, for whatever reason, wouldn't otherwise be able to produce any sort of essay at all - sort of analogous to teaching certain autistic kids 'clues' for deciphering facial expressions - but not necessary for most kids who are progressing 'normally' with their writing. I agree with the suggestion that really good essays don't slavishly follow any particular formula (I always got top marks for my essays and I hadn't even heard of 5 para essays until fairly recently), but for kids who aren't likely to ever reach 'really good', they can at least aspire to a solid C level piece of writing (which would be a triumph for my son who currently can't tell the difference between a whole sentence and a fragment/clause).

@ Binip, sorry no wonderful advice here, but I wanted to send you hugs :grouphug: and a large dollop of sympathy, because I know what it's like for nearly everything to be a major issue, and the frustration when 'normal' parenting techniques just don't work well with your kids. The fact is that the standard repertoire of reinforcement, consequences, and other guidance methods (let's face it, they all really boil down to different mixtures of discuss, demand, bribe and blackmail) don't actually do the trick with every child. Yep, I could have written that (except that my son doesn't like playdates). Reminds me of a week years ago, when we decided that Mr- then-barely-2 needed to stay in his bed all night (I wouldn't make that decision now, but that's a whole other post). We sought professional advice on how to 'train' him, with the proviso that we wouldn't be doing anything involving crying. We were advised that every time ds hopped out of bed and left his room, we should gently, quietly and firmly lead him back to bed. This was supposed to teach him that getting up is boring and doesn't get him any playing, attention etc. We were instructed to allow a bit of extra time for this as he might get up and leave his room 10 or even 20 times before he accepted the staying-in-bed rule. Our kid ended up coming out 215 times! And he didn't 'accept' the rule; he stopped getting out only when he had physically collapsed and couldn't climb out anymore (he couldn't even get in the last 10 or 20 times). When I phoned our mentor the next day, she said that in all her 30+ years she had never heard of a child being that determined. It does get better as they get older though. I think gentle parenting is a long haul proposition. I remember when we had tooth brushing battles we were sorely tempted to simply hold the child down, sit on her and brush the teeth by sheer brute force. Because that would have been easier than going through the whole 'reasonable parent' procedure every morning and night. But we persevered, and now the kids all brush their teeth without any complaints or dramas. Yep, I find myself saying that one sometimes.

Probably not exactly what you're looking for (and in any case we are now implementing so much structure that I wouldn't class us as unschooling any more), but fwiw I have gradually moved from trying to 'strew' a lot toward a greater emphasis on offering a learning-friendly environment. This means that instead of trying - however subtly - to get the kids to learn things, I put my efforts in trying not to prevent them from learning. Because the thing about child-led learning is that it's not always convenient. They tend to ask important questions when we're in a hurry, make a huge mess with their experiments, and bring in new creepy-crawleys for identification just when I'm in the middle of doing the taxes. Obviously there are times when I have to tell them that now isn't the time, but there are also plenty of times when they can be accommodated with minimal effort.

Yes. I'm definitely a fan of long books with lots of characters :) Les Miserables is another one that springs to mind. (And it also has some of those detailed digressions that I find fascination but which, I am told, some philistines actually skip!)

I have read it and I love it, but I only read it for pleasure and never actually studied it at school or college, so I don't really know anything about it except what I know from reading it, iykwim. Personally, the main reasons I like it so much were first, that it covers a lot of topics I'm interested in and second, because the main characters' thoughts, feelings and motivations are presented in a way that seems authentic. Especially Pierre, just because he is a sort of Everyman on a spiritual journey but at the same time he is such a wacky idiosyncratic individual. One of my favorite book characters ever.

We are not church goers but we went to a carol service this evening. Beautiful old Anglican cathedral with an ornately carved rood screen featuring, according to Ms. 6, "Jesus on the cross and two goddesses". (I'm pretty sure they were angels. And I'm pretty sure I have told her before that Christianity has one god and no goddesses.) Although it's not just the kids around here, because I was the person who mistook an armadillo for an aardvark (surely an easy error to make, cause you know, they are both mammals and the both begin with A).

Same to you :seeya:

We never started with believing in Santa. Sometimes our kids are so darn skeptical that we suspect Santa would never have "taken" even if we had decided to make the effort. Or maybe it's an aspie thing. Btw for those who are not wanting their kids to find out from a movie, commonsensemedia.org has a handy list of movies to avoid.