I don't know if it is the same everywhere but my youngest son had yearly evaluations at the children's hospital and that information was used to prove the need for the evaluation by the school. The recommendations in the children's hospital report were used as a starting place for what accommodations and therapies would be applicable and appropriate to be given during school hours and what sort of supports and therapies would be given at home and outside of school hours. Every year the IEP was updated and every year they took into consideration and kept a copy of the hospital report in his IEP but it wasn't the only thing that was used in drafting the IEP. The IEP was drafted at big meeting with me, the teachers and therapists and the SPED coordinator AFTER they all did testing and evaluations at school and everyone had their own reports about what they thought would be helpful for my son. My older son and my oldest daughter both had 504s at one point. They both received occupational therapy to work on pencil grip and handwriting under their 504s. I don't know if that's just something our schools did or something that is normal for 504s because they each only had a 504 for one school year before it was not necessary anymore. I have much more experience with IEPs. Two of my son's had them, one for documented medical diagnosis that required accommodations and therapy and one for unspecified learning disability and suspected mental health issues that required many accommodations and visits with a therapist during school hours and outside of school hours. Getting accommodations at school isn't a quick and easy process but no one can stop you from getting that process started. Go to the district SPED coordinator. Ask how to request services for your child. Submit a copy of the hospital report with the request for services. If they believe he is a risk and ask him to leave, it might be for the best. I wouldn't want my child at a school that could not provide the necessary services to keep him safe and learning. IEPs can specify that a child is best served by home bound education services if they do not believe they have the necessary staff or services to provide the child at school. Oh and getting an IEP or 504 doesn't guarantee it will be followed. I had to repeatedly make conferences with one of my son's teachers because he flat refused to comply with the accommodations that had been set forth in his IEP. I ended up having to go up the chain of command starting with the SPED coordinator who then had to get the principal involved. In the end, we got my son put in a different class and the teacher was formally reprimanded for refusing to follow the IEP. I share this not discourage you but to show that you have to be willing to keep at it and keep talking to people until you get actions or get something in writing. Even though our experiences with SPED has been positive for the most part, I have had to push and pester and go up the chain of command when something doesn't sound right.

When my ex-husband was stationed overseas, we were part of an opt in virtual school that provided a stipend for us to spend on curriculum in exchange for our homeschooled kids to be counted as DODS students so they also had to participate in testing years. It was a very well run program and we had complete freedom in the choosing of curriculum (even religious if you wanted but you couldn't use stipend money to pay for it) and the day to day running of our homeschool. If something like that could be implemented to the general public in the states, I would definitely consider it. Many of the books I find at the thrift store are school library culls and some curriculum that is no longer used.

We live below poverty level and homeschool. I would not want government money with any strings attached for homeschooling. My husband is physically disabled and receives disability. I cannot work full time outside the home because I am his caretaker as well as our son's. We could not afford nurse care for dh and daycare for our son for the hours I would have to work to work full time and the wages around here are atrocious. We could never break even. We homeschool because when we enrolled our son in the local school district's Headstart program, the teacher blatantly ignored multiple doctor's orders to not feed him anything or allow him to receive food from others due to food allergies and texture issues. Then she would wonder why he was fine one minute and vomiting the next. This happened multiple times before we pulled him. We also had doctor's orders that were given to her that stated he was to have nothing applied to his skin at school including lip balm, sunscreen and face paint. You guessed it, she applied all three. The final straw was when he came home with a face painted Batman symbol across his entire face that required a doctor's care because he had blisters forming under it from allergies. For weeks it looked like he had burned his entire face somehow. His doctor actually suggested we consider homeschooling after the number of times we had to bring him in because of the school's lack of concern for ds's allergies and conditions that were on his IEP. All that to say, our decision to homeschool was not purely philosophical. While he was not being offered drugs (to my knowledge), the environment proved to be unsafe for him due to negligence of the teachers and staff. I had homeschooled my kids from my first marriage. My ex was military and we always had plenty of money for curriculum. But during the nasty divorce, I lost the vast majority of the homeschooling curriculum that we had collected over the years. So I was pretty much starting from scratch again when my new dh and I started homeschooling our son. And with much much less disposable income this time. I pick up books from the thrift store when I have a spare $5 - $10. I've been able to find lots of classics and even some curriculum. I spend an average of 25 cents per book and I'm very choosy about condition since allergies and a huge problem. The few curriculum items I have bought from the thrift store averaged $5 an item. To be honest, I don't think I've made a trip to the thrift store since last fall. We just haven't had the extra money lately. But we have plenty for our son to read. Our internet is prorated because we receive food stamps. This isn't a local program; there are lots of programs out there to get internet for low income families. It's not the best, downloads are not lightening fast and videos often have to buffer but it is very usable. Our computers are hand me downs with thrift store monitors. Again they aren't the best but they get the job done for us. We "splurged" on a $60 ink jet printer last summer when we received some unexpected extra money. The printer is HP Instant Ink compatible so for $10 a month we receive ink in the mail at no extra cost any time our printer needs it. So far it has been fantastic and cost effective for us. I don't print every little thing for school but I don't feel limited at all even though we technically have a 300 page limit per month. We print whatever we need to and have only crossed that limit once. It cost us an extra dollar that month. Our son has a tablet for his speech therapist's apps and other school apps. We paid $30 for it on sale. It is slow and clunky sometimes and it is only able to connect to the internet by wi-fi but we get tons of use out it. Absolutely worth the $30 investment for us even though it was a tight month when we found it and bought it. Tons of free apps that are great and we've even shelled out the $8 or so a piece for two of the Dragonbox apps. Again totally worth the investment for our mathy little guy. I use lots of free curriculum from the web. I was honestly amazed to find out how much more was available for free compared to when my older kids were little and still homeschooled. MEP math, Progressive Phonics. Ambleside Online, blogs that offer freebies, Teachers Pay Teachers freebies and low cost items. I've used bits and pieces of all of them and there are more (that I just can't think of right now) that I know I've looked at and just decided they were not for us. We had a thunderstorm roll through last night and that brought up a conversation on what makes lightening. A 15 minute conversation and couple of Youtube videos later and 5yo ds was satisfied and can now explain what makes lightening. No expensive curriculum necessary for that interest led science lesson last night. Our local library is deplorably outdated and I don't use it at all but we have to go monthly to a bigger city 90 minutes away for dh's dr appointments. I just found out that we can purchase a non-resident membership to that city's library for $30 a year that gives us access to hard copy items from the library and e-books and services online. It is on my to do list to scrape together the funds to make that happen. It's not easy but we make it work. Our son is thriving and actually ahead of his peers already in math and reading. We have to make some sacrifices that others with more disposable income probably do not have to make but it is something we are willing to do for his health and well being. Not everyone is willing to make those sacrifices and there is nothing wrong with that either. But I absolutely believe that everyone should have the opportunity to make that choice for themselves without interference from government agencies or anyone else.

My oldest went to public school in 8th grade. We were able to specify regular or honors track but they wanted to observe him for the first couple of weeks before doing any more specific placement. The school didn't do any testing nor did they care about any testing we had done. Definitely meet with a guidance counselor at the school before paying for more expensive testing.

If you are viewing the homeschooling community as a whole based on those who post on an online forum and the personal experience of one homeschool parent with a fairly young child, I don't think you are going to get an accurate representation. If you judge the safety of driving a car based on the amount of business an auto repair shop gets from accidents, I think anyone would agree that is not a logical way to assess the safety of driving. If you judge how often homeschoolers curriculum hop based on the number of posts on a busy online forum gets about changing curriculum, your results will be similarly skewed. People tend to ask questions on a forum when they are having issues but people who are not having problems with curriculum are not likely to post about it. A parent of a young child just starting out homeschooling is more likely to curriculum hop a little to begin with. Unless you have some teaching experience or strongly held beliefs about how to teach a certain subject, it is unlikely you will pick the perfect curriculum the first try. As you learn more about how your child learns and become more confident in your teaching abilities, it becomes easier to pick a compatible curriculum for them the first try. I'm still using the same phonics and kindergarten programs to teach my youngest son (5yo) that I used to teach my oldest son (19yo) when he was 5yo. I did curriculum hop a little because I ended up with kids in between those two with learning disabilities that needed addressing but for a developmentally normal child, I have no need to ask questions on a forum because I already have what works for me and my kids. I also agree with the others that successful homeschooling has less to do with curriculum and more to do with individual attention and time available to address any problems. Even the best institutional school teacher cannot give the time and attention needed to make sure that none of the children that pass through their classroom slip through the cracks academically. A homeschooler has the luxury of never allowing their children to slip through the cracks.

We are really enjoying Mystery Science. We just have the free subscription for now but we will probably pay for a full subscription soon. I also like that I can download the lessons so that I do not have to have an internet connection all the time to watch the videos. Our internet can get temperamental out here in the boonies so being able to let it download overnight so we aren't disappointed when we are ready to watch but the internet is out, again, has been a lifesaver. Also we have to drive 2 hours + to get to somewhere that might have the semi-obscure items that some science programs say should be easy to find. For example, the small Walmart 20 minutes from us and the even smaller Walgreens do not have 30% peroxide, neither food grade nor the hair bleach variety, needed to do the elephant toothpaste experiment. I either had to order it online and pay exorbitant shipping or wait for our next trip out of town and get it at Sally's or a larger Walmart. I love that the activities and experiments with the Mystery Science lessons call for easy to get household items and don't tend to be terribly fussy to set up.

We've done 3 big moves while homeschooling, two international moves and one halfway across the country move. my best advice, try not to worry about school any more than you have to. Don't set any big learning goals or projects during the move, just keep chugging away on basics like you said. Make life easy for yourself and use "just do the next thing" type curriculum for this year. That way you aren't trying to plan lessons and move house. I found that even though I usually despise following someone else's lesson plan, it's a life saver when you are too exhausted from moving or other life circumstances to plan lessons. Get some workbooks or make some with free worksheets online. When the move throws you a curve ball and nothing is going to plan, you can have them pull out their work book and at least keep practicing skills so they don't lose them. Again, in general I don't like worksheets, I prefer hands on lessons, but during a move a stack of worksheets ready to go can be a lifesaver and helped me feel like we were getting some school done during hectic days. Audiobooks, educational videos and educational video games are all great to have handy as well.

Agreeing with the others, it's not busy work if he is getting something out of it. If you really want a workbook oriented boxed curriculum, check out Rainbow Resource's starter packages. If you would rather go with Sonlight or Heart of Dakota, you can always supplement with a variety of workbooks he will enjoy. There are tons of free options on the internet or you can pay for a subscription to somewhere like Education.com and print out as many of their workbooks as you like or you can order printed and bound workbooks or you can just pick up workbook from any brick and mortar store you can find them in. Anywhere from Dollar Tree to teacher stores to Costco to Walmart/Target to book stores carry workbooks. Pick them up for cheap when they clearance back to school sale items just after the local schools begin their year and you will always have a supply of workbook fun for him.

What did you download them on to? (computer, tablet, phone?) Theoretically, you should just be able to double click the file (or touch the file on a tablet or phone) and it should open and play. Do they end in .zip or .mp3? If it is .zip, then you will need to extract them first. You should be able to right click on the .zip file and find the option to extract. Once you have extracted the files, then you should be able to see the mp3 files. Then just double click and play.

Living in a rural area without access to internet speeds that can consistently support streaming video, I prefer to be able to download video content. It is frustrating to watch a video that is constantly interupted by buffering. Sometimes I use small clips or downloaded videos, again the buffering thing... I don't really have any favorites but I don't like presenters that have a tendency to go off on tangent after tangent, however funny or interesting to them these side stories may be, instead of just getting to the main topic of the video which is usually the whole reason I wanted to watch in the first place. If it is something that must be streamed to watch, 20 minutes or less is about the limit for our slow internet speeds. If it is for the kids and can be downloaded, I usually keep it 30 minutes or less. If it is a video for me or a serial that we might binge watch, the length doesn't really matter as long as it is downloadable. For streaming, mostly Youtube

Definitely easier to gently correct when they are toddlers than to undo bad habits when they are preschoolers. Handwriting Without Tears is definitely an option to look into even if you only do the Wet Dry Try with the chalk board and the little pieces of chalk. You can also get tripod pencil grips such as these or these or these. You might get a variety of them to see which ones work best for your child. Make sure every pencil has one and every crayon is broken down short or they will find the one that isn't broken or doesn't have a grip and ONLY want to use that one.

Agreeing with the others, improv is the creative writing of music. Some thrive on it and find it fun, others are intimidated by it but it is by no means necessary to enjoy playing an instrument of any kind. I could see a musically inclined student finding improv portions of the lessons fun and something a little different to keep things fresh and interesting. But I could also see even the most enthusiastic student freezing up and losing interest in playing at all when asked to just "go where the music takes you" when they have very little musical background to draw from to begin with. It is certainly not something I would ask a student to do during a lesson, especially beginner lessons, but I wouldn't discourage a student who wanted to improv while practicing a piece they has already mastered playing "properly" as your son put it, lol. I love his take improv btw, it made this former music tutor smile. :laugh:

What about tickets or a membership to a kid's science museum or playcenter? We don't celebrate Xmas anymore but when I was married to my ex-husband and we still did, I would always ask all the grandparents for memberships or tickets for experiences rather than toys. I didn't care if they bought the membership or tickets for our family or for them and the grandkids to spend a day together doing something special but I always tried to stress that we had more than enough toys for them to play with and then some but if they really want to get them something, then use the money you would spend on gifts to pay for them to experience something. Thankfully most of them listened and took the kids to MLB games, Nascar races, bought us zoo and museum memberships, paid for subscriptions to magazines, websites and monthly boxes, took them out to fancy restaurants once they were older kids/teens.

You say she would definitely be reading CVC words in public school kindergarten but you really can't say that for sure. Many kids are just really good guessers or can pull enough from context to "fake it until they make it" which to me, looks impressive on the surface but is that really reading? I don't think so and lots of reading specialists would agree. Not to mention plenty of kids struggle with blending at 5 - 6 years old but you aren't going to find people gushing about how their kid is developmentally normal, are you? Most people like to talk about precocious success stories much more than stories about average or late successes. So far, I have taught 6 kids how to read. One was reading at age 3, one at age 4, two at age 6, one at age 9 and I'm currently teaching my 4yo (he will be 5yo on January 2). The ones that learned at 3 and 4 were just voracious learners in general and I didn't teach much, they just picked up reading on their own. The two that learned at 6yo couldn't blend at 5yo but just needed time and patience to learn how to blend. It isn't an innate skill for everyone and it takes longer for some kids than others. The 4 year old I'm teaching right now is slowly catching on and I believe he will be reading within a year or so. But the one I want to tell the most about is my oldest who didn't learn to read until he was 9 year old. I'm not one of those who just waited until he asked me and he just happened to be 9yo before he asked. I had been trying everything to teach him to read since he was 4.5yo. He just simply wasn't read at 4, or 5, or 6.... I worried, I fretted, I tried every kind of approach to teaching reading, I tried rewards, I tried consequences, I tried everything! When both his next youngest brother and sister were reading but he was not, I had him tested. He tested fine, no learning disabilities could be identified and he had perfect vision. And while wondering what to try next, he just finally started reading. Within a year he was reading at grade level. Within 2 years (he had just turned 12) he was reading above grade level and loved to read big thick novels like you would expect a 12 year old to be able to read. He is 19 years old now and nobody knows that he was an extremely late reader. I'm not saying that being unable to blend at 5yo means your child will be a late reader, quite the contrary, she is still within the realm of normal right now and will more than likely be reading within a year to year and half but even if she does become a late bloomer, all is not lost. She will not be doomed or unable to learn, it will just take a little more on your part to make sure she still has lots of opportunities to learn by reading to her for longer.

Since these are older kids, you don't have any littles to tote around with you and it looks like many of these activities occur in the same geographical area (ie you aren't driving over an hour to get to one lesson and then 2 hours in the other direction to get to the next, there is no way you could), I'd say as long as you are all happy with the arrangement, then you are fine. If anyone is asking to drop something, I would let them since they already have so many other outside activities. When you list it out like you did, it certainly looks like a lot, possibly more than it is since you have 3 teen/preteen children. But when you list it as activities per child, I think it looks a little different: Mr. 14 (T) theatre company rehearsal (W) concert band (Th) drama class and theatre company rehearsal (S) trombone lesson (fortnightly) Ms. 12 (M) Girl Guides (T,Th, F,S) swim training sessions (W) art lesson, vocal lesson (fortnightly, alternate weeks), concert band (S) riding lesson (fortnightly) Ms. 9 (T) violin lesson, circus class, and swimming lesson (W) Girl Guides (Th) riding lesson (fortnightly) (F) swimming lesson (S) orchestra, drama class Friday Home ed group (fortnightly, all kids) Your son is in band and theater, your older daughter has Girl Guides, intensive swim training, fine arts lessons and riding lessons and your younger daughter has Girl Guides, music, drama, swimming, riding and circus classes. Your son has fewer outside activities than your daughters, but I bet that is his personality. Your 12 year old has many activities but I bet she is more extroverted than your other kids. Your younger daughter has lots of activities too but it looks like she trying out all the different things she has watched her siblings participate in and is trying to decide which ones she enjoys most. I bet in a year or two she will find where she fits in and will drop the classes that are less interesting to her. When I was homeschooling my older children at those ages, I had a similar schedule but it was just for a season in life. Soon my older children were able to drive themselves to their activities and take their siblings along to their activities if needed and life seemed to calm down a bit. Plus, even during that season in life, there were times where certain activities took a break for a few weeks giving us time to catch our breath a little and catch up on anything that had been pushed to the side during busier times. If everyone is happy, including you and your husband, with all these activities, then as I said before, you are fine. This is just a season in life and while it seems never ending when you are in the trenches, it really will pass by in the blink of an eye.

When he could write his name correctly, was he writing letter b's for anything? Could it be that he didn't have anything else to confuse with the letter d with at first and now that he is writing other letters he is doing typical reversals? Was he taught to write b and d with different starting points? Letter b starts at the top line, comes down to the bottom line, then does a bunny hop to the middle line and tucks under. But the letter d starts just below the middle line goes around like the letter o then when you get back to where you started, go straight up to the top line then trace straight back down to the bottom line. I find that reversals of b and d are less of an issue when the two letters are written completely differently.

Sight words here too. I went to a Spalding/Writing Road to Reading school district as a child. That's what I used to teach all my kids as well though I did make my own little changes as so many of the spinoffs do. I don't always agree with the changes some of the spinoff programs make but there are some parts of pure Spalding I don't exactly agree with either so I just do what makes sense to me. All six of my kids have learned to read and spell with Spalding/WRTR methods. Sight words make me cringe and twitch.

Our little rural district actually uses Singapore and/or Math In Focus depending on the grade level believe it or not. That's what they have been using for at least the last 5 years since we moved here. The public schools I went to in Phoenix as a kid used Saxon from middle school on up through high school. I don't really remember what was used in the elementary grades though. Only reason I know about our local district is because our older kids were enrolled there at one time. Plus we have family members who are teachers and I talk to ds's SLP (who works through the public schools) a lot about curriculum because she is a homeschooler as well.

Like the others said, I wouldn't hesitate to pull her out Monday morning. It wouldn't matter to me how much money I had already spent on tuition, my child's emotional well being is so much more important. It's not like she has not given it a good try. Two months of having to deal with snotty preteen girls everyday is enough to make full grown adults come home crying in some cases. I would consider it an expensive lesson learned and bring her home immediately. She will need time to deschool and recover emotionally anyways, so I would spend the month of November letting her read books she loves from her own collection or the library. After the first week, I would let her help me research curriculum options and have her think on what kinds of activities she might like to be involved in. The next week is Thanksgiving so we would unschool a bit and have her help plan and prepare Thanksgiving dinner as her school project for that week. Then after Thanksgiving we would finish up any curriculum ordering and waiting for boxes to arrive. Maybe find a fun Christmas unit study online to do in December. Then officially start your new homeschool in January when she has had plenty of down time from her bad institutional school experience and is ready to tackle the new adventure with you. If need be, you can school through the summer to make up these deschooling days. You don't necessarily have to but you can if you need to. Good luck with whatever you decide to do. Middle school is just rough especially for girls. Mean girls is a totally valid reason to bring a child home to school and you are certainly not the first to consider it nor will you be the last sadly.

When all my kids were still little and still lived at home, we lived in military housing mostly so about 1000 - 1200 sqft depending on the house and 7 - 8 of us living in the house all at the same time. How do you give workspace to everyone? TV trays (like these) work great as portable work desks. Lapdesks are another option as are clipboards. My kids love to sit outside to do their work in nice weather. Clipboards are great for holding onto a math sheet while sitting on the porch. How do you manage storing each person's individual materials? Each child had their own crate and I had my crate of teacher things and items that where shared between kids. Crates were stored in a cube bookcase beside the dining table. It wasn't fancy and there was certainly no hiding the fact that we homeschooled but it was just a season of life, we survived and no one was worse for the wear because of it. What do you do with books that you need to hold on to between children? If it will be a few years, it goes into deep storage like the back of a closet or a tote under a bed somewhere or something like that. Then I just keep a list of what is stored where in my household binder so I can find it when I need it. Living in smaller houses most of my adult life, I learned not to hold on to everything. If there is a good chance that something better will come along or I can repurchase for a decent price when and if I need it again, then out it goes when we are done with it. How do you organize materials in storage (especially when you have no attic, no basement, and not much room for bookcases)? Lots of decorative storage containers for storing things in plain sight. Pare down everything as much as possible and really scrutinize how much you really need, well everything. Everything that remains needs to pull at least double duty to pull its weight. Store things in non-traditional places, such as pots and pans that don't get used as often in a tote under the couch or extra non-perishable food items under a bed. Keep a household binder that lists where everthing is stored in case you forget and update it monthly. Consider it part of your cleaning routine since you have fewer things, it should take less time to clean up so adding this little chore should be too big of a deal. E-books and PDFs are lifesavers when you don't have much room in the house for books. For the books you would rather have in hardcopy, every little nook is a potential place for a bookcase or bookshelf. Our current 1300 sqft house has a slightly oversized hallway (we always wonder what they were thinking to put in such tiny closets but an almost 4 foot wide hallway) so the hallway is lined with bookcases on one side. It narrows the hallway a bit but you can still comfortably walk down it. It doesn't look like Martha Stewart lives here but we are happy and that's all that matters.

Four year old boys are not typically the type to sit down for much of anything. Out of my four boys, only one would sit down for any length of time at the age of 4. You've gotten some great ideas for working with a wiggly preschooler, many of which I've used with all my kids at different points in time. One of the best things you can do is instead of making a preschooler come "do school" is to bring the school work to them through play. They learn and retain so much better when they think learning is a game or fun activity. If he is having problems with eating and speech, it would make sense that he doesn't verbalize what he knows about letters. He may know more than he lets on because his speech and oral motor skills are the barrier, not his academic prowess. If he isn't showing more letter knowledge after about 6 months or so of therapy, I might start looking into more possibilities. That also assumes he is getting plenty of exposure though things like the Letter Factory videos, hearing letter songs and things like the Super Simple Songs alphabet and phonics videos on Youtube, Alphablocks also on Youtube, point out letters when you are out and about ("Look at that sign, it says Burger King. See the first letter with the two big bumps, that's a letter B (or /b/ sound if you would rather teach sounds first) just like at the beginning of your name! Do you hear the /b/ in Burger King and Brice?") With the drawing and cutting, does he have access to those materials on a regular basis? Does he have a pile of scrap paper and some safety scissors he can use when he pleases to practice cutting? Does he have a pencil box with crayons, pencils and washable markers in fun colors and drawing paper that he can use when the mood strikes him? Do you ever sit and just draw with him? My current four year old (and the only child still living at home so more or less an only child) loves when I will sit and draw with him and show him how to draw simple line drawings of things (house, car, stick person, stick animals etc) We also found a really cool youtube channel called Art Hub for Kids by a guy who is a professional artist and a dad. He walks his kids through how to draw all kinds of cool things and really has a talent for breaking the drawings down to be easy enough for even a young child to follow. He has some videos aimed at kids under 5 years old and my son loves these videos and can draw amazing things when he is interested in sitting down and doing it. You might look through the videos and find something that your son might find interesting to draw and see if that sparks his interest. You son does sound pretty normal to me. My 4 year old is also speech delayed and has eating/feeding issues that he has been in therapy for since just before he turned 2. Therapy is one of those things that while you would like to see steady progress, sometimes they just wake up one morning and it finally clicks for some reason and they make a giant leap in abilities seemingly overnight. I'd say just keep doing what you are doing for now and if therapy doesn't seem to be helping with his phonological abilities in 6 months to a year, it may be time to see if there are other underlying issues at play.

I was actually was mistaken, they are 1.3mm not 1.9mm but still, they are the best pencils we've had in a long time. I bought them at Walmart back to school sale and then ordered more from Amazon once we knew we liked them. https://www.amazon.com/Paper-Mate-Mechanical-Pencils-Assorted/dp/B00CRGP8B6 Those are the ones I ordered. The set I got at Walmart had only 5 pencils I think but had an extra case of leads (which we haven't had to use at all yet) and an extra case of erasers (which we have had to replace a couple the mysteriously disappeared from the tops of a couple of the pencils. I suspect nargles may have ate them. :rolleyes: )

I wanted to be an architect when I was a teenager. I took drafting in high school and college before I changed my major to computer science. I learned to use AutoCAD back then to do 2-D and 3-D renderings. I honestly have no idea if that's still THE software for drafting or not anymore as that was almost 20 years ago now. Plus it is quite expensive if you can't get a student license. I still do some drawing and rendering especially when we are doing home improvement projects. I really like SketchUp. It's fairly easy to learn and lots of tutorials out there on youtube if you can't figure something out. The only drawback, as compared to AutoCAD, is that the free version, SketchUp Make, only does 3-D sketches to my knowledge.

I bought 1.9mm triangular mechanical pencils at the back to school sales this year. I wish I had known about these when my other kids were younger, they are the best! Nice thick leads that don't break very easily (I actually have yet to have one break under normal use and my older boys are the type to write so hard in a notebook that it imprints for several pages after the page they wrote on), replaceable erasers, buying more lead and erasers is inexpensive... I have arthritis and these pencil bodies are nice and thick too and don't make my hands ache as quickly as normal mechanical pencils do. I have a 4 year old that is learning to write his letters and these pencils have been perfect for teaching him to write. He has no trouble at all using these mechanical pencils. I had not thought about looking for colored mechanical pencils with the thicker leads... off to do some shopping now lol.

I also have 6 kids, mostly older than yours (19b,17b,16g,11g,9b and 4b) but when I had lots of littles like you do right now, I didn't like doing lots of extracurriculars either. I hate feeling stretched too thin and it doesn't take much to feel stretched too thin when you already have 6 little people who need you. I tried to make sure any extracurriculars we did do, benefited or included as many of the kids as possible so that we didn't have run around like chickens with our heads cut off getting everyone to their activities. Park days, even if it's not a homeschool group sanctioned park day but just taking the kids to the park and letting them play with whoever was there. Or just letting any group that we were a part of know we would be at such and such park with all of my kiddos if anyone wanted to join us. The great thing about extroverts, like someone else mentioned, is that not only do they make friends everywhere they go, but they don't tend to be terribly picky about potential friends. My extroverts didn't care what age, gender, interests, schooling type, socioeconomic... they would/will literally befriend anyone who happens to be around. They also tend to be the type that makes sure everyone is included. Don't forget, there are also neighborhood kids, cousins and other family members including their own siblings, neighbors (my 4 year old extrovert loves to ask the elderly neighbors about their day and they love that he is such a friendly little guy. He was so excited to see that someone moved into a rent house nearby that has been vacant a while. It didn't matter to him that they don't have kids, he wanted to go over and talk to them lol). Also, this is just a season, it is ok to be too tired to do tons of activities. Now that my teenagers can drive themselves to their own commitments, they are involved in more activities. They do not seem in anyway damaged by doing fewer extracurriculars when they were homeschooled. My 16yo is my older extrovert and even she has been fine with seasons of life where we are homebodies and seasons of life where she has tons of activities. I guess all I'm trying to say is that if the only thing keeping you from homeschooling is that you are afraid he will be miserable socially because of his personality, why not give it a try? He might surprise you and love some other aspect of homeschooling more than he loves being social. If it doesn't work out, you can always re-enroll him in school and then at least you know for sure instead of agonizing over hypotheticals.