We are not pagan, although our values are more earth-centred than anything else. Over the past 5 years we have slowly moved to include Winter Solstice in our seasonal celebration. We do a low key Christmas, and also open gifts and have a great family meal on Solstice. I still feel like I am floundering - I haven't enough of a feel for Solstice, enough traditions, to completely let go of a secular Christmas celebration. This year we're in Australia, and it is the Summer Solstice, so a lot of the symbolism of the Winter Solstice / Christmas link is lost. Instead of celebrating the shortest day of the year and the rebirth of the sun, we are looking at the longest day and the disappearing of the sun (do I have that the right way round?). I'm not quite sure what to make of this, from a celebrations-and-ritual perspective. The best I could think of is to decorate our tree entirely with stars, and to focus on the idea of finding our own light to keep us until the sun begins to return. Any ideas? Nikki

Recently I knew dh was going away and I was working on sleep issues with ds, and was really at the end of my tether. So before he went I roasted a couple of chickens, and chopped and froze the meat in meal-sized portions. What you can do with precooked chicken is pretty much unlimited - pasta, pies, curries, wraps, tacos, soups, even pizza toppings. It was a life-saver. I have chopped and frozen tomatoes before. It won't work for everything, as they become watery, but if you are throwing them into a meal where liquid will be cooked off, it is fine. Personally, I find tinned tomatoes too much of a time-saver to skip on. I buy the cheapest no-brand types.

We're in Perth, way the other side of Australia from Sydney. We have actually seen remarkably few spiders, although everyone tells me they are All About Us, especially now it is summer. I tell people we had a special "no spiders" clause added to our immigration contract. Should have thought to add that "no flies" clause. It's redback spiders I'm worried about, and I check under outdoor chairs before I sit on them. We'd been here a couple of weeks when we went to a big hardware shop. Ds2 was hanging on the end of the oversized shopping trolley, bouncing on a hinged flap at its base when dd asked me "Is that a spider R is bouncing on? And does it have a red back?" It was and it did. Yikes. But that's the only one I've seen... I recently saw a local ER reality show where a toddler had been bitten by a red back which was inside a shoe he put on. Now the kids have to go barefoot for safety reasons. No, I don't like spiders...

Engineer dh says unplug and remove battery from laptop immediately. Allow to dry completely and hope for the best! He dropped his cell phone in the ocean, mine has gone into the toilet (!) and we've had 2 iPods take a dip in the bath, and all were revived with the quick remove-battery-and-dry technique. Good luck!

Oh, I sympathise! Neither of my kids need much sleep, and both have been a battle to put to sleep. Both have only readily gone to sleep with me next to them. And it took a long time. A long, long time. Eventually we went the "family bedtime" route, and it did make things much easier, but after a year of this I am a little burnt out, and we are instituting bedtime again. Dd9 is now no problem, but I am trying to get ds-nearly-3 to go to bed without me, and that is terrible. After 2.5 weeks he is still crying for up to 90 minutes before he falls asleep. Or I give in. I think the family bedtime arrangement can work really well if both you and dh are OK with it, and if you are both happy to adjust your schedule to get alone/adult time in the morning (e.g. up at 5am). I am sure you have thought of this, but if your dd is telling you when she will and won't cry, it might be more about manipulation than true despair or separation anxiety. You might just have to face it down. If you avoid bedtime, she must already know that she is "getting to you". We drew the line with dd when she was 6yrs old. At that point we told her she had to go to bed without someone lying with her. It worked, because we were resolute, although there were tears (and some bloodshed, actually - she flung herself onto the bed when I led her back one night and cut above her eye on the headboard!). Again, I really sympathise. Bedtime dramas are a horrible way to end the day, and it doesn't help that the image of docile children kissing their parents good night in the living room and taking themselves off to bed to sleep the night away is often tied to the definition of "good parenting". That's a lot of pressure. We also used No-Cry Sleep Solution. It definitely helped with dd - it cut the length of the bedtime drama, but didn't end it. Dd was 18 months then. With ds it never worked. He has always cried, even when with us, and a no-cry bedtime is just not going to happen. I hate the crying, it is against my parenting style and against my nature to not comfort him. Horrible. Nikki (who is tired and stiff after spending last night in a single bed with a ds who woke her 4 times asking to nurse, even though he knows it won't happen, and then yelled at her when it didn't)

If I could have my fantasy birthday (and I'll take any number, doesn't have to be 40), I'd go away alone for a few days with a couple of books and really good room service food. As this is my fantasy birthday, I would also look good in a bikini while lying around the hotel pool, and I wouldn't burn. AND I wouldn't feel guilty about "abandoning" the family.

We were using 100 Easy Lessons, and it was much the same. We just stopped using a book and started reading - when we came to a new phonogram, we addressed it. The trick was finding a book she was really interested in reading (and it wasn't a "first reader type, either, just a Barbie book she really wanted). I think at that stage she knew the individual letter sounds, th, ch, sh and the "magic e" as we called it. We managed fine with those and some patience on my part (always in short supply!). We also played around with the Explode the Code books. Dd is now 9, and reads and spells very well for her age, so not "teaching" phonics all the way through certainly hasn't harmed her. (Note that we did use a phonics approach, we just didn't teach phonics as something separate from the actual act of reading).

We didn't use the TM for Horizons 2. There was certainly nothing that I couldn't teach myself, but I did feel that I missed out on some of the big picture. There were times when I went "Oh, so that's why they were teaching x for the past 3 weeks!". We got the TM for Horizons 3, and to be honest, we don't use them much, although it saves a great deal of time when marking (as all the answers are given). As a teaching aid, I found the TM to be lacking. It wasn't detailed enough for me. If I am not sure how to teach a particular concept, I generally have to resort to the Internet.

Same here to all of the above! Dd9 started talking before 2yrs, and I swear hasn't been awake and silent for more than 15 minutes since. She talks in her sleep too, sometimes, just to fit more words in a day. She starts conversations that go nowhere, just so she can be talking. She sings. She talks to herself I thought ds-nearly-3 might be different, but no, he just took longer to start talking. I can suggest iPods for the car. While dd was an "only" that was the only way dh and I could have a conversation without her butting in. Everytime you've had enough talking, you could load them in the car and drive to the shops. In another state, perhaps.

Can you just skip the homework pages? We use MPH Science, but just the textbooks and workbooks, then add Science kits. (I will add that I have shuffled chapters from different books together to fit in better with the Science kits, but that's probably not necessary. I just can't resist meddling with an author's intentions.) We are also going to pull Science from our normal schedule next year, and do it during our weeks off (we work 4 weeks on, 1 week off, year round). Nikki

First of all, there is a library! I lived for 5 years where there was no library, except for the school library, which was one of the reasons dd went to school. The area we live in now has an online reservation system which operates through 5 or 6 linked libraries. I can link to the state library system through the local library's website, although I do have to fill in a piece of paper to actually get interlibrary loan books. The burden of it. ;-) I can decide which of the libraries I will collect reserved books from, and I can return at any of the linked libraries. They e-mail me to collect reserved books, and they e-mail me when books are due to be returned. I can renew books online. Interlibrary loans have to be renewed by the branch, but they do that gracefully. We don't get charged anything to join or use the library, although when we were first here, and were in temporary accomodation we had to pay a refundable deposit to get a temporary library card. We can each take 12 items, and they don't limit different types (in the library system I grew up with we had different limits for magazine, audio and video loans). My am so smitten with my library system that it is the primary factor guiding where we will buy a house. I will thoroughly investigate nearby library systems before we make a final decision, just in case there's something better out there! No need to look at the schools, of course.

Thank you both for the information. I was in fact looking to supplement Horizons 3 with a Singapore word sum book anyway, then did the placement tests for Singapore, and realised that the gaps between Horizons and Singapore were bigger than I expected, particularly in the area of word problems and mental maths. I thought I'd finish up the year in Horizons, with Singapore to supplement, then perhaps make a switch back to Singapore (dd found Gr1 Singapore too repetitive). I was wondering whether I would have to backtrack to find where mental maths was taught, so it is helpful to know it is covered in each level. It didn't occur to me to look for mental maths techniques separately from a curriculum, so thanks for the idea. Since I realised the gap in dd's understanding, I've been showing her how I think through problems, but would like to do it more sytematically. Nikki

Yes. I skipped her version of Gilgamesh when dd9 was 6 or 7yrs. We still have it, and will read it next year, I think. Ludmila Zeman's three Gilgamesh books suited us better. I was quite happy to leave the seduction scene at "they explored the ways of love together". Nikki

We have been using Horizons 3, and I have just realised that my dd9 really can't do mental maths at all. My fault, as it seems natural to me, and I just assumed it was for everyone. I have heard a lot about how good Singapore is at teaching mental maths. I am adding 3 of the supplemental Singapore books, all of which show solutions. I am hoping this will be enough to set us on the right path, but in the event that it's not: 1) Am I correct that Singapore explicitly teaches mental maths? 2) In which level / book is this taught? We'd prefer to buy new syllabus books directly from Singapore, so info on those books would be appreciated, although any responses welcome! Nikki

:iagree:I think family size and reasons therefore are interesting. I also think religious views and choices are interesting, but I'm not brave enough to ask about those!

I make both kids sleep with me. And if I had 5 or 7 or 12, I'd find a way to fit 'em all in. :) I'd write more, but the wind is blowing and a branch is knocking against the window, or at least I hope it's a branch, and the computer is a long way from the bedrooms where everyone else is asleep, so I'd better run... Oh, me too! But because I'm, well, me, I then spend the night wondering whether it is only hours talking on the cell phone which might be giving people brain tumours, or if 8hrs spent clutching a cell phone under my pillow might do it too....

What am I afraid of? Waking up and hearing someone in the house and knowing I have kids to keep safe.... I grew up in South Africa, so I had lots to be afraid of! Crime rates are high. Everyone knows someone who was involved in a serious "incident", although mercifully no-one I know personally was seriously injured. I think I'm a very realistic person, so I don't get to play the "it won't happen to me" card. I can recognise when behavior or location was a precipitating factor in crime, and I can see that many crimes are random - that's what terrifies me. When my sister was in her early teens a male classmate climbed into her bedroom one night (1st floor, he climbed up a drain pipe - she knew who he was, but there was no way to prove it). That definitely played a role in my sense that we're all vulnerable, but having kids, and being responsible for them made my fears much more primal. I am not really afraid when someone else is in the house. When I'm alone, I worry about protecting the kids. I cannot sleep at all if they are in a different room to me. Even when dh is home I'm not really comfortable with it. We lived in Oman in the Middle East for 5yrs, and I felt much, much safer there. Australia feels much less safe, but I do recognise that the media plays a large role. In Oman the media is state controlled, and bad news doesn't get printed. So for me, that's another factor. I spend way, way to much time reading scary news stories.

I get so annoyed when I receive a Christmas letter from someone who hasn't bothered to write to me all year! I always appreciate a quick note that implies "we're not close anymore, but I value the role you once played in my life", but I really hate having to wade through 6 pages of details about people who don't have much place in my thoughts or life. That's all about them and and says nothing about their relationship with me!

As I understand it, the WTM approach is not to have the kids read "kiddie versions" of things they could reasonably understand themselves (i.e. don't "dumb down") but to read "retold" versions of books that are simply not appropriate for young learners. For us, this means if we were to read Dickens, I would either give my dd an audio book, read to her myself, or wait until she could manage it. Shakespeare is a different story. We have begun with versions by Geraldine McCaughrean and E. Nesbit, will read more sophisticated versions in the logic stage (and perhaps even read or listen to a comedy in full) then read the orginals in high school / rhetoric. The WTM is designed to be repetitive (i.e. the 4 year history cycle), although exactly how you interpret that is, I imagine, open to interpretation. Nikki

We are off schedule because we did Ancients over several years as afterschoolers. Then, when we were full-time homeschoolers we took several months to successfully add SOTW2. I have decided to try to get back on schedule before the logic stage, and my solution was the following: 1) Skip Modern Times this cycle - I will try to introduce good fiction books drawing on themes from modern history. But that will be an extra, not part of our scheduled history. 2) I took the remaining time, and split it evenly between SOTW2 & SOTW3. 3) I "regrouped" like chapters into thematic or cultural blocks. Each week we might might listen to 1-3 chapters on audio (usually in the car), but we focus our attention on one particular aspect - usually a historical figure (e.g. reading several biographies and doing a narration our outline of the person) or a piece of literature (e.g. reading a version of Beowulf and narrating). This is working well for us. We are gaining a familiarity with the historical periods, but not "overloading" on information. And we will begin the WTM 4-year history cycle again with the Logic stage/Gr5.

Have you noticed that whenever you read about children who turned their lives completely around against all odds and expectations, there is always the story of someone who cared for the child when there was no earthly reason that they should have? I'm not saying that will happen here, but it's something I'd keep in mind.

We just switched our LED tree lights on tonight - no complaints here. They are coloured star lights, bright and pretty.

We are also starting 4th in January - dd will be 9+2months. We are going to cover pretty much the same as you, with a couple of additions: Literature study (Mosdos) Another language (Arabic, and really only aiming to read and write the script and some basics like numbers and colours this year) Composer study (Meet the Great Composers) Typing (Type to Learn 4) Only Mosdos is a "qualitative" addition. Arabic will be regular but not intensive, typing will be "fun" and the composer study is a once-a-month. I have been trying to finalise my "shopping list" this afternoon, and am starting to feel a bit overwhelmed. It looks like a lot. I know in school she would be doing more cross-curricula work, and that would be ideal, but is really, really hard to do with discreet homeschooling resources, I find. Nikki

WildIris, your reply was very helpful to me! I am never sure how to correct my dd9's work, as she doesn't take criticism well (at least not from me). If I retype what she has written, I can insert comments as you have done, then leave it up to her to edit. I think that will work really well for us. Thanks! Nikki

My ds2 has just had dental work, with much more to come (waiting for his final baby molars to appear, as there seems to be pre-existing weaknesses in the enamel that will need fixing). Given his age, I made the decision to go with a paediatric dentist. Expensive but worthwhile. I got solid information and a good "vibe" from the receptionist, and found the dental nurse/hygenist/assitant (not sure what she was) more informative than the dentist. I would assume a worst case scenario (tooth extraction or multiple cavities) and ask how they would handle it. I would also ask how they would handle a very anxious patient. It was very important to me that ds (who can be sensitive about being touched by people he doesn't know) was not upset. He sat on my lap during the visit, facing me and lying back with his head on the dentist's lap. They declined to do more than the absolutely necessary work, as doing too much could "push him over the edge". As it was he coped with the limited work very well. The bulk of work will be done under general anaesthetic, and I will go with him to theatre. I would also ask about orthodontic work. Current thinking is to see the children early, but the "old school" still only want to see them once most of their adult teeth are through. I might pop in and have a look at their waiting room. Is it set up for children?