The only one we watch around here that I don't already see listed in Science Max.

Hands down, The Scarlet Letter. I flat refuse to subject any of my kids to that book. "Hester's truth is not Dimsdales' truth" was so etched into my brain by my 11th grade English teacher that I still repeat them immediately upon hearing the name of that wretched book decades later. I had a hard time getting into My Antonia and Jane Eyre but I didn't hate them in the end. I actually liked Great Expectations, Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath and Cyrano de Bergerac. The Lottery, The Necklace, The Cask of Amontillado, The Death of a Salesman and Moby Dick were memorable but not favorites. I know we read Antigone, The Old Man and The Sea, parts of Dante's Inferno, Animal Farm, Paradise Lost, several Shakespeare plays and I think Flowers for Algernon but I don't remember anything about them really. I remember reading The Outsiders in eighth grade but all I remember about it is that I didn't much care for it. lol

If at all possible, I tried to do major initial potty training during school breaks so I could focus my full attention on it. But if I had to re-train after a set back, I handled it the same way a daycare handles it, routine. I took my little potty trainee to visit the bathroom every hour to hour and a half or so and made sure I built those breaks into our school routine. A timer is handy to remind myself to stay on top taking the little one to the bathroom. If I had to clean up an accident, I either gave my school kiddos a quick break or something independent to do while I cleaned up the mess.

I've never used FB in connection with homeschooling. We have all survived but we are a family of mostly introverts.

I found an entire set of MUS blocks at a thrift shop for less than $10. Never hurts to look in thrift stores. You could also put word out in local homeschool circles that you are looking for MUS blocks. Someone might have a set they would be willing to sell you or let you borrow. For a 5th grader, I would be tempted to just print some "MUS blocks" using MUS inspired clipart. I would think printed "blocks" would work fine for an older child but YMMV.

We think we have narrowed down her location to the 3rd bedroom which, unfortunately, is full of random stuff. It isn't used as a bedroom, so no bed to hide under but lots of boxes to hide in under and around sigh. I might just put the food and litter box in there and check to see if she's coming out for those. None of our beds are accessible underneath so we can rule that out. No fire places. Both closets she could have gotten into have been double checked and closed. Dh has a reclining chair that we can't not recline (he's disabled and it's a special chair for his disability) but we'll check it over before opening it. The gears on the bottom are easily accessible and easy to see if the cat were there. I'll update when we find her. She does have to come out eventually, right? :-S

We have an extremely open floor plan. The only thing that is close off-able is bedrooms and I really don't want to shut her in a bedroom or for the bedroom to be associated with the litterbox. The only bathroom is too small to put the litter box in. I have the litter box in the corner of the dining area that we don't use for right now. I'll probably make something like this eventually. But for right now, it's under a tall shelf in the corner that's not too busy and doesn't see a lot of foot traffic.

that has disappeared in your home? Ds was given a 3 month old kitten today. We got home, brought the cat supplies in, turned our back for 30 seconds while she explored the house and she is just gone. She's in the house somewhere, we are sure she can't have gotten out. But we just can't seem to find her anywhere. I'm sure she just needs to some time to adjust to her new surroundings but I would have at least liked to have shown her the litter box first lol. We had two cats when I was growing up but I don't remember not being able to find them lol. Any ideas on how to find her or should we just let her come out of her hiding spot in her own good time? UPDATE: WE FOUND HER! She found herself a hidey hole among the boxes in the 3rd bedroom. She's eating and drinking now and has been introduced to the litter box and the dog now. Now, what to name her, lol.

No Ping didn't have the ring around his neck but while he was hiding and avoiding being last, he ran into cormorants that were fishing birds with the rings around their necks. More good conversations about the tough topic of animal cruelty at our house.

Huh, we really liked Ping. For us, it was about being attentive and the consequences of not being attentive. Even though I don't spank personally, we knew people who did so the concept wasn't foreign or traumatizing to any of my kids. It spurred some nice talks about why we don't spank and alternative ways the duck keeper could have handled the situation. Even in kindergarten and since we were "re-rowers" those conversations became more sophisticated and nuanced each rerow. Sometimes, even if I was rowing with a younger child, my older kids would chime in or talk with me later with even more sophisticated views on it. I firmly believe that the vast majority of books are good books, some are just better used as an example of what not to do. Ping, The Rainbow Fish, Angus Lost, Harry the Dirty Dog, The Cat In The Hat and more fall into the "what not to do" category for us. I think books are a safe way to explore family beliefs (like your family's choice of punishment for infractions of family rules), relationships (what is a good way to make friends) and breaking the rules in general (lots of talk about character and why we follow the rules and when it is okay to break rules such as in an emergency).

One of our personal favorites is the Days of the Week song to the tune of The Addams Family lol ;-) Also Scratch Garden's Days of the Week video was a hit with my youngest.

Math and Latin, fencing and piano, drawing and horseback riding, then Montessori school too.... when does she have time to just be a 7 year old? Does she have time to herself to explore and wonder about the world on her own? That sounds like a huge load of things, never mind that she is only 7 and still has a lifetime ahead of her to learn some of these things. My personal opinion is that if you want her to slow down and enjoy life as a child, then it is the adults in her life that need to slow down so she can slow down. Having the greatest teachers in the whole world won't make up for a lost childhood. If I were in your shoes, I would have her pick the activity outside of school things (so the fencing, piano, drawing or horseback riding) and do just ONE of those for a season. See if she slows down and enjoys life when she has more free time to just be a kid and enjoy it. Just my 2 cents....ymmv

Here's medical power of attorney by state They generally need to be notarized at the very least to valid. And as mentioned above, no one has to accept a power of attorney, notarized or not.

If a dog would eat it out of a trash can if they found it, I usually feel safe giving it to the dog. Honestly, until 5 minutes ago, I didn't know about dogs and onions being a problem. I'm sure I've fed them things with onions and we haven't had a problem in all the years we've had them. They are medium sized dogs in the 50 - 75 lb range. I'm pretty sure they would turn their noses up at raw onion if offered but small pieces in some cooked food, I'm sure they have eaten them. But then again, we live where the dogs catch their own snacks of birds, rabbits, rodents and other things. They often bring home carcass parts of animals that look thoroughly disgusting to me but the dogs are quite proud of themselves and have never eaten something that made them sick. I can't remember the last time one of them got sick to be honest. Both have a clean bill of health from the vet despite their diets. So I guess it is all in how much onion is in there and how much of a risk you are willing to take.

I highly recommend Gary Pilarchik's Youtube channel, The Rusted Garden. He goes over sterilizing soil and lots of other things you've mentioned here. I use his grow light setup and it has not failed me yet. I tried growing salad greens indoors and it did work but I'm terrible at remembering to water indoor plants lol. So yes it worked and worked well but you have to remember to water the plants if you want them to grow to their full potential.

*****UPDATE***** So we saw the developmental ophthalmologist today. The whole experience was really nice, we really like the doctor and her office even though we had to drive 2 hours to get to her. Her verdict is that, at the very least, he has an eye teaming problem. His eyes cross inward when he tries to focus. The result of that explains his reading problems to a tee. She referred him to vision therapy (which we have to wait for insurance to approve so it's going to be a couple months at least before we can start) and she prescribed him glasses to wear when doing "near work" like reading and writing. Before he starts vision therapy, they are going to run a whole battery of tests. The paper they gave me says they plan to do Base In Ranges, Base Out Ranges, Accommodations, Word Sentence Copy, Developmental Eye Movement Test (DEM), Visagraph, The Dyslexia Screener (TDS), Motor Free / Visual Perceptual Test, Test of Auditory Analysis Skills (TAAS), Birch Belmont (AVIT), Gross Motor, Jordan Reversals and VEP: amblyopia plus any additional tests that are indicated during the testing session. They gave me a whole bunch of information about the testing and vision therapy in general but I haven't had time to read through it all yet. She also said he has a "unique" optical nerve and she wants to refer him to a specialist for more testing to rule out things like pseudotumor cerebrii which his dad has. Still chasing speech, OT and PT evals. I just called them again today. Waiting for a phone call about scheduling psyc evals. Just a lot of hurry up and wait. I am glad to know it was nothing I was doing (or conversely, not doing) that was causing him reading issues.

We love Zoey and Sassafras around here! There is a 7th book coming out in October, Grumplets and Pests. FYI you can get the ebook version of Dragons and Marshmallows on the Zoey and Sassafras website plus all kinds of other activities to go along with the books. Free Zoey and Sassafras e-Book

His speech is great except for a few non-age appropriate articulation errors. When he was released from speech in K for being on target, it was expected that he would need to go back before 2nd grade. Yes. Constantly. He has so many little quirks that scream autism. Inflexibility, his play style (lining things up but not really "playing" much), the loud noise thing and more) No, not that I can think of. He has a tendency to get carried away some times but he's not actively being aggressive if that makes sense. He is very straight forward and has to be helped, again and again, to remember socially acceptable conversation and that not all questions should be asked in the moment. He can be very aggressive in his questioning of things. Nope, I wish we did though. I am curious about myself and him and dh for that matter. Actually, it is quite the opposite. We are open to trying meds but we would rather try other things first. But then there are the days where everyone is in tears over his behavior and we just need to do something, ya know? We just had one of those days this week which may be why it sounds like we want meds. I'm just trying to gather as much information as i can on all the different options. Meds or evals just happened to be what our doctor suggested. So on the PROMPT trained SLPs, all of them in my state are 2 hours or more away. How often would he need to do PROMPT sessions? The videos I've seen of PROMPT they seem to touch the child... a lot. Ds has never liked people in his bubble too much. He's getting better about not freaking out about it but he still likes his space. Any ideas about that?

Some just general things I want to put out there. Ds's doctor is our family physician, not a ped though she does see a lot of children. She is absolutely the best doctor we have ever had and will go the extra mile for us for anything. She will absolutely do anything we like, in the order we want to do it, as slowly or quickly as we want to pursue it within reason. I'm not worried in the least about any sort of struggle there. Ds has childhood apraxia of speech. He spent 4 years or so in speech. Graduated out but was expected to go back so the speech eval was because we saw the apraxia showing up again, not because of the ADHD suspicion or anything like that. But since we are going private ST this time, they are also going to do OT and PT evals as well. We have mentioned to them that we are concerned about ADHD and they put it in the notes. Like I said though, we are still waiting on a reschedule due to paperwork not being submitted correctly on their end. I'm not at all worried about going to the doctor or evals in the aftermath of the virus. I am not bothered at all, it is getting appointments that is difficult. There are many places still not taking appointments at all around here despite the fact that our county still has less than 50 cases total. So all that out there, I plan to ask the doctor which medication she would recommend first but I would also like to know from those with experience, what medication would you have tried first if you had it to do over again? I know it is different for everyone which one ends up working but I'm just wondering if there is a med that people or their doctor's prefer to try first.

Ok, just taking some time to read through everything, follow links etc... I did finally get him an appointment with a developmental optometrist 2 hours away next week (only because of a cancellation otherwise we were looking at late July/early August). The speech therapy place does, speech, OT and PT so he will be tested for all three when we finally get all their paperwork together at the same time (He was suppose to be eval'ed in early June but paperwork didn't get submitted correctly so we are still waiting for a reschedule). So he has some other just off the wall.... quirks I guess is the best thing to call him. He is scared of loud noises still. Vacuum cleaners, public restroom toilets, any sudden loud noise he over reacts to. Would that be a retained reflex (moro reflex)?

Thanks for clarifying, that makes sense. I've been trying to get him in to any optometrist since March. Dh and I both wear glasses and at his last eye exam they said he would need glasses but the prescription was so low they didn't want to saddle him with glasses for nearsightedness at the time since it shouldn't affect his school performance in their opinion. We are definitely going to a different optometrist but trying to find one around here who is accepting appointments is little like a needle in a haystack right now. I'll have to check and see if the university hospital has a developmental optometrist. We have to take dh there anyways to see his neurological optometrist. He very much enjoyed the test you linked lol. He scored right where he should be, late first grade/early second grade. Most of his mistakes I could directly tie to his speech issues. But the bigger issue was getting him to stop moving and wiggling and keeping his attention. He was distracted by the dog, by a bird outside, by the dog again, just randomly got up and started walking around the table, wanted to pretend he was a horse while doing the assessment.... It's those things that make me think ADHD. None of his 5 older half siblings were like that at all. Paying attention for 10 - 15 minutes was no problem at 7.5yo but this kiddo can't seem to pay attention for more than a few minutes to save his life. Bull in a china shop is a phrase we use for him a lot. He does seem to be getting aggravated at his lack of ability to focus and his speech (which we are working on getting him back in speech).

He can sound out words with any of phonograms he knows (He knows most of them, maybe 60 - -70% of the phonograms) but getting him to do it... an act of congress would be easier some days. He avoids avoids avoids reading anything unless he is forced to read it. But when he is forced, he can do it. He can literally make it take an hour or more to read a few pages. He is distracted by everything. Whines about it being too hard even though he can do it when it comes down to it. I'm constantly redirecting him to the task at hand. But he can read and manipulate numbers and do math with very little redirection but still very distractable. I don't get it. He is also very distractable in his play, constantly jumping from one activity to the next without finishing any of them.He also shows prefectionist tendencies and doesn't even want to try things that he isn't 100% positive he can be successful at even if he has been successful at it in the past or we reassure him that we will help him and that it is absolutely ok and expected to make mistakes, that's how you learn. Nope, he's not having it if he thinks he can get out of it (which he thinks that most of the time) I just had him read me the following fluency passage (well below what he can read) I have a cat. She is on a mat. The cat is tan. My tan cat is bad. She has a rat. I see the rat on the mat. I had to keep reminding him when we see capital I by itself, it says its long sound (he knows this and has known it for a long time). He melted down on the second sentence which took about 10 minutes to redirect him. After the 4th sentence he wanted to know why the cat was bad, more redirecting him back to reading the passage. After the 5th sentence he disagreed that catching a rat was bad if you are a cat because that is what cats do... had to redirect him. He freaked out because the last sentence was long. I told him yes it is longer than the others but I only see one word that might be a tricky word for for him (on but I didn't tell him which word I thought might be tricky for him. I only thought it would be tricky because part of the meltdown in the second sentence was because he insisted that "on" was "not" until I forced him to sound it out. He surprised himself by reading the whole last sentence without tripping over any of the words. That was actually one of his better attempts at reading a passage. He read the whole thing accurately in the end but with way more redirection and correction than any of my other kids ever needed. Even my late reader (couldn't read fluently until 9.5yo), once he had the working memory to work on fluency, didn't need that much redirection. At 7.5yo my late reader didn't even know the letter sounds solidly so I can't really compare. I took a look at the dyslexia app and it looks like it is only available for Apple products at this time. We don't own Apple anything so we will have to wait for an Android version. I'm not sure I understand what you are saying about ADHD meds. Are you saying we should consider trying them because it can help anyone or that it will appear to help without actually addressing or finding out the actual problem? Thanks for taking the time to reply, it has given me some things to think about.

*****Update down thread***** Ds is 7.5yo and has always been homeschooled. He's great at math but not yet reading on his own (though he loves to be read to). He knows all of his letter sounds, blends and some digraphs and trigraphs and can write them all but doesn't write spontaneously. He loves word play and sound games and rhyming. But he just cannot or will not read on his own. We thought maybe dyslexia but his doctor doesn't think that's it after questioning him and having us fill out some screening forms. She told us he scores high on the screening for ADHD inattentive and hyperactive and mildly positive for Oppositional Defiant Disorder. None of that is surprising to us as we kind of suspected as much. She said she could prescribe meds for him or we could get psych evals, our choice. (He has now interrupted me 5 time since I started writing this despite being told to go outside and play.) Before covid I would have been all about getting the evals done but with everyone going to bare bones schedules or video appointments, it could be a long time and a not so great screening appointment if it is not in person. Dh and I are simultaneously worried about meds making him a zombie and how long we can continue with his lack of self control. Neither of us can decide if waiting for evals is better or just taking the meds is better for now and maybe do evals at a later date. Our doctor is great and really will do whatever we want to do within reason so no worries there. So those who have been there done that, what would you do if you were in our situation?

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