Does this system mean that basically your year 12 achievement level is predetermined by where you are in grade 6 or thereabouts? Or can students 'catch up' by doing summer school or taking more than one math subject in a year? '

Oh and Year of the Caffeinated Beverage sounds all kinds of awesome :cheers2: (those are not beers, but frothy cappuccinos served in beer mugs)

G'day, Snow bunny is the cutest thing ever. What did the rabbit think of the snow? I love sauerkraut. I'm going to make some as soon as I find a suitable crock to do it in (our old one cracked). We don't use vinegar, though, just cabbage, salt, and fermentation. I would love to do jury duty, even if it wasn't an exciting case. I must have a deeply buried sense of power hunger?! Although it would be super inconvenient, with the kids and all. Renai, you should have just taken out a contract on the, um, bad man (I have resolved to talk more Lady Like this year; it's f-in' hard though!) I didn't remember what the Mandela effect was, but now I looked it up, and I think I'm going to get obsessed with it too! The last few posts went over my head because I don't speak Sports. Kids and I are going shopping today: grocery shopping and op shopping (Ms. 8 and I cleared out all the clothes that either don't fit her or she refuses to wear, and she now doesn't have enough clothes because we chucked more than half of them!). The Bloke is still languishing in bed with his broken nose, although he insists he's going to work tomorrow. We'll see... (oh and I will pass on the suggestion re tales of heroism and daring LOL)

I updated my signature. Now I'm all shiny and new. (Like a virgin LOL)

Hmm, just realised that since it is 2017, I should be updated the kids in my siggy...

That sounds nasty. Who woulda thunk it? The Mediterrean thing sounds lovely to me. I am now officially motivated to find out what snickerdoodles actually are, and how to make them. Full marks for being virtuous! You are so seriously cool! We officially finished all the leftovers today. Which means I have to actually fix dinner! Outrageous! Glad to hear he is feeling better. I hope Dancer is on the mend soon. Pity about the little handprint getting broken. My kids finally seem to have grown out of breaking quite so many things. But we do have a Sad Nativity Donkey who only has one ear. Our excitement of the day is that The Bloke has a broken nose. (No, he wasn't in a fight. And no, he wasn't drunk. Ms. 8 accidentally bashed him on the nose.)

Hi, I haven't been keeping up this week as we have had house guests and have been very busy, but just popping in to wish you all a happy New Year and hope that 2017 is a bright and fulfilling one for you :)

I think that would make an excellent blog post.

I have been reading the Mazerunner series this week! I bought the books for my teenrager, and then decided I should read them first, yk, so I can discuss the story with him (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!)

Somebody has a THREE STOREY HIGH blow up plastic Santa in front of their house. I suspect it's so kitschy and awful that it's actually cool.

If she cooked the novel, that would make it a ..... potboiler :hat:

Happy birthday Renai. Happy birthday 8yo twins. Sorry about the news re Mr. H. Go people who are house cleaning. This is kind of embarrassing, but we have spent a couple of days cleaning out our girls' bedrooms, and the bedrooms were so filthy dusty that I am now suffering from a full-on dust allergy-induced cold, and considering stealing my husband's hayfever medication. Now we are laundrying, schooling, and musicking.

Oh the CUTE!

That sounds quite cool. I sort of wish my kids could learn knife making now!

We do basic chores first thing, because I like to clean up after breakfast, and because the animals need to be fed and watered promptly. But we do other things as needed throughout the day.

I'm still trying to make a decision on some of these things. We are pretty 'basics' oriented: I will do everything in my power to get them up to speed on the '3Rs' and have them continue to make progress in those areas throughout their education. Also I require music, not negotiable, because that's a basic to me. Pretty much everything else will be up for negotiation, eventually. For instance, right now I am making Mr. 13 learn history despite that fact that he has no interest in 95% of it, but at some point I will decide that it's 'enough' and let him drop it. It's a matter of deciding how long to insist on things. Right now, I have asked them all to pick a LOTE to study at an introductory level. Ds isn't interested in any languages, ancient or modern, nor is he interested in sign language. He is currently suggesting I let him do 'computer language' instead. Should I get him started on coding and be happy that he is (sort of) willing to do something? Or should I insist he try a year of an actual language before deciding to be a monoglot?

Question of the Day: WHY does "We are in a huge hurry. Please do [Thing You Need to Do] as fast as you possibly can" or any variant thereof, inevitably result in kids being more slow, inefficient and generally useless than usual?

Doesn't sound like that much of a disaster. They have retained some vocab, and are OK with continuing, so obviously you have done something right! I am thinking I'll start by just popping them on Duolingo for a short period each day, and worry about curriculum later on. I know Duolingo has some shortcomings (I had a go at their German course myself to see what it was like), but at this point, doing something seems a better option than doing nothing lol A double year seems quite ambitious. I was thinking you're a little crazy, until I remembered that when I pulled Ms. 8 out of school at the end of her Prep (5yo kinder) year, we actually covered grade 1 over the summer break and started her in grade two that February! She still thinks it's wrong that she is about to go into 4th grade, while her friend from school starts 3rd, but she really needed that much acceleration just to get her to the point where she was going to start learning, so I'm guessing it's a similar situation with Gemini?

I always thought TOG sounded kind of 'nice', but I could see without much investigation that it would never work for us, so I wasn't tempted.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Do. Not. Buy. Things.

We have finished our maths lessons with not too much drama. Second bit of schoolwork for the day is working on our Landmarks of the World unit. So I gave each kid a Landmark card and a couple of books; their assignment is to look over the books, check additional references if they like, and write or type up 6-10 important facts about their item. Then they have to locate it on the map and/or globe, and give a very short presentation, telling us where the thing is and talking briefly about the salient facts they found. Well, from the reaction of my Son and Heir, you would think I asked him for a 50K word thesis! Have to breathe deeply and remind myself that in his language "I can't do it! I'll die!" means "I am not 100% familiar with this activity. I may have to exert some effort. I am a little uncomfortable about the prospect."

I haul everyone out of bed (including my husband) most mornings. I would rather not. In my ideal fantasy home educating world, everyone would wake up naturally, feeling well rested, drift out when they are ready, and start learning. Theoretically, if a kid is going to be awake for, say, 14 hours in a day, it should make no difference whether that's 6am to 8pm or 10am to midnight. But in our family, I have found that an hour in the morning is worth about three hours in the afternoon or evening. And if I don't make an effort to keep things early-ish, we naturally drift later and later. Then it's a scramble to do basic stuff before the after school time activities begin, and there's no point in trying to start anything challenging in the evening, so we end up getting virtually nothing done.

You can also look at it from the perspective of, 'do I really want a person who will reject somebody, based on nothing but their age, as a friend for my child?' There are plenty of people who are open to all-age friendship, so really if a kid doesn't want anything to do with your daughter because she is 'too young', it's their loss!

After many years of fascination with names and naming trends, I have concluded that there is simply no accounting for taste, and there will never be agreement on what is best or most appropriate. As far as spelling goes, I have noticed that many people just cannot spell names, no matter how simple, common or straightforward they seem. My son is called George, and people ask how to spell that; I mean, seriously, isn't 'George' the only way to spell it in English? Unless we went for 'Jorj' for that extra special alternate (or Duggar family!) spelling? My daughter Elizabeth gets asked whether it's Elizabeth with a Z or an S. She has also had people assuming that Beth must be short for Bethany (which it can be, of course, but surely everybody knows it can also be short for Elizabeth?) And my Amelia gets all kinds of spellings, as well as queries about whether her nickname (Milly) stands for Millicent or Mildred. I suspect that even if a kid is Bob Smith, people would be uncertain of spelling.