My son once forgot what a lower case "a" looked like, and insisted he could not write it. He had been reading and writing for nearly 6 years and was staring at a printed page of English text when he said this. Couldn't find a single "a" on the entire page! We school year round now. 🙄

Have you looked through this thread, to see if anything would work for that situation? Free Homeschool Resources

There are some brain changes that occur around 7-8. There is a lot of growing happening then, and I've heard many mothers comment that things are rough around that age and then eventually the kids snap out of it. My son has always been a bit of an "old soul", with some gifted/advanced stuff mixed in, so we are never in sync with what anyone else is up to. It keeps things interesting, but also makes me really poor at giving advice on typical kid stuff!

He's a capable reader for his age. I think the issue is that he can sniff out the agenda behind the request to read. He doesn't get books because someone thinks he might like the subject. He gets books because someone else thinks he should spend his time reading certain "worthwhile books", and the only books deemed worthwhile are ones where comprehension is easily evaluated. I think it's sucked the joy out of it for him.

Gotcha. Yeah, I wouldn't do that trip, either. "Spend $2k on a vacation no one wants!" No thanks! It sounds like she uses a lot of emotional manipulation to get what she wants, and then deflects that back on to you. 😕 You don't seem cold; you were logical and offered alternative activities. Could the new compromise be that just you travel to her place for a long weekend? Leave DH and the kids home to do what they do, and just you and your mom hang out? Or has the entered power struggle territory, where anything less than 100% her way is prolonging a fight? I"m sorry. 😞 We have variations of this fight with my dad and MIL periodically. I hate it.

So the $2000 would be if you follow your mom's plan? And if she came to you, it would just be the cost of gas? Is the issue about money or about emotional labor?

I would give her a few days to calm down and propose a plan that is not what she originally proposed and also not what you originally suggested, so it appears "neutral" and in the spirit of compromise. I don't know how far you live from your mom or who is the one that "moved away", so maybe this won't have relevance. But...I'm the one that "moved away" from my family, so the expectation is that I will do all the travel back to them, because it's "easier" if I do it. I get it; yes, it's easier for 2 people to travel vs all of them. In a petty fight with my sister about travel, she said "It's just easier if you travel", and I yelled back "Yes, it's always easier if someone else does all the work". When she says things like this, it feels like she's saying the stuff she has going on in her life is more important than the stuff I have going on in my life, and I should be happy to do the work. If your mom travels to you, then she's got all the work of travel plus the expense, for an experience that she doesn't seem to want. If you travel to her, you have all the work plus expense, for an experience that none of you want. She thinks her idea is perfectly nice, you think your idea is perfectly nice. Your expense and effort to travel to her may be greater than hers, but that doesn't make her expense and effort zero. Plus, if she doesn't bring the dog, she'll have to pay for boarding or a pet sitter, which isn't cheap and adds another layer of stress if she gets stuck in your state due to illness or changes in travel restrictions.

My dad was boasting that everything in his neck of the woods was perfectly safe and there was practically zero risk of Covid, (not true, but also not engaging in that topic with him). All I said to him was "Well, be careful and don't let your guard down". Got my head bitten off for being a drama queen. 🙄 Ok, nevermind. Run with scissors. Lick the doorknobs. Use utterly no care whatsoever. 🙄

I picked other. My sister and aunt are immunologists. I will get the vaccine when they say the data is good. I don't expect to be in the first round of vaccines, however. DH is high risk, so he may be offered it before I am.

My sister is a scientist and got the MEL kits for my nephew. She said it was really well done and she thought it as worth it.

This is what I am starting to see play out with one of my sibling's kids. The kid does not like to read, of the "Whine for 30 minutes to avoid 15 minutes of reading" variety. But all the reading he gets is from books that are pre-selected by the teacher, with the expectation of a book report at the end. So now reading is a chore. The poor kid was assigned reading on yaks, for pity's sake, and then the teacher scolded him for not taking the topic seriously. Come on, now. He was 7. How else was that going to go, lol? The parents asked me what they could do to "make" the kid like reading. Augh. You have to hit reset on the whole thing, to form a new association that reading != chores. I sent a couple of goofy Dog Man graphic novels, but I don't think that's what my sister had in mind when she asked for suggestions. My first choice was to send a book called "The Day My Butt Went Psycho" because a ridiculous book about butts will grab the attention of an 8 year old boy, but I don't think my sister would approve. 😆

Sorry it took me so long to get back to this, @Lori D. I fell down a rabbit-hole and started checking out guides and curriculum and had to pry myself away, lol. My son is 12, and he'll be the only kiddo working on this with me, (only child). I finally realized that what I want to do this year for language arts is to develop kiddo's writing skills and introduce the vocabulary of literary analysis. I think our conversations about what is going on in a book might be more productive if he had that terminology under his belt. He is more of a math and science guy, and I think approaching this by first "defining our variables" will lead to a better outcome, lol. We have Michael Clay Thompson for grammar, poetry, and vocabulary. I'd like to stick with that because he likes it so much. Do you have any suggestions for a writing program and/or a literature program that specifically teaches literary terminology? For writing, kiddo will need something fairly direct in instruction. Anything that's too touchy-feeling or is about "Playing with language!"or "Find your voice!" will sail right over his head. He's not there yet, lol. I was looking at Lightning Literature and Mosdos Press. Do you have any thoughts on those programs? Or something else?

These books are very basic and straight-forward for language arts. There is a separate book for spelling, writing, and grammar. The lessons are short, about 15 minutes a day. There is some overlap between grammar and writing, so I probably would not do both, but that depends on whether your nephew has had any grammar instruction before. Growing with Grammar

With School-at-home, the focus is on meeting the requirements of an outside body: the school. With Homeschooling, the focus is on meeting the needs of the child.

Dang, I've been saying it wrong. Well, now I feel dumb. 😕

Yes, clean the lint trap AND make sure someone runs one of those chimney-sweep looking brushes through the dryer vent once or twice a year.

Yeah, I would love that, too. I have often wished for a secular program like it.

I don't know if it has been revised. At one point, there was talk of Life level 1 being rewritten, but I don't know if that is still part of their plan. I am glad there are secular science options, but those products aren't a good fit for us. My son didn't find them very interesting. I wish there was more variety. 😕

Earth and Astronomy was not out at the time of my conversations with the SEA peeps. At that time, there was nothing for the younger grades that discussed evolution or age of the earth. There was Life and Earth & Space level 1. And none of that info about RSK4 was given why I asked. I was told "We will not discuss this", and that was the end. I wasn't on WTM back then, either. I am not lying about my experiences. I am also not going to search for 3 year old posts on SEA to prove I am not misrepresenting the conversation.

Our extracurriculars are back up and running, but we are not participating because they are only providing "hygiene theater" and not really doing anything to help control spread of Covid among the kids or staff. We're in Texas where the positivity rate is 21%, the highest it's ever been.

Which brings me back to an earlier point: the lower levels of the RSO products do not teach evolution, (at least, they did not as of a few years ago). The explanation I received from a moderator was that evolution was too big a topic for early grades, but Blair's books are "safe" because she believes in evolution, so even though they don't discuss it, it's ok. So technically, the low levels of RSO didn't meet their own definition. I don't have time right now to download samples and the TOC for each of the science books to see if evolution now discussed. But in level 1 of Life and Earth & Space, it wasn't there a few years ago.

This happened a couple of years ago, but I asked about Bookshark and was told "Not secular". I was confused by this because the program is basically a collection of books written by other people, accompanied by a schedule. It's all these Newberry and Caldecott award books that you find sprinkled through so many programs. So I was kind of like "Hey, I don't get it. If these books are ok for this program, why aren't they ok in this program? What am I missing?" All I got back is "Bookshark isn't secular and we won't recommend it or allow it to be discussed". I eventually got a response from one moderator who said that she really didn't know why it wasn't recommended, other than Sonlight owns Bookshark, so that is probably the reason, but if I need truly secular resources, I should use RSO and the other Pandia Press products. Maybe facebook isn't a great place for a nuanced discussion about Sonlight vs Bookshark, (or anything, really). I would have appreciated someone willing to have that conversation, though, especially if you are representing yourself to be an authority and educator on secular homeschool resources. *MY* experience with SEA is that it's very polarized and knee-jerk in responding to questions. This book is good, this book is bad, case closed. The times I've tried to have a nuanced conversation, I get shouted down for trolling, or told that we can't have those conversations because newbies could be confused and led astray.

You are correct; I double checked and Kate (forgot her last name) owns Pandia Press. That was my mistake. I thought it was co-founded with Blair. I have asked specifically for clarification on why a given product by a competitor doesn't meet the SEA definition of secular and been told, by Blair, that it just isn't, topic is closed. I wasn't trolling, I really wanted to know and I got blown off by several mods and Blair, and told it wasn't up for debate.

AtEvery single person in our local homeschool group is a conspiracy theorist. We lost all our friends here because they think covid is a hoax and will not be careful. It was like someone activated their Borg programming, because everyone of them started spouting the same nonsense at the same time. Oh, and they don't think that George Floyd is dead, either. That is a conspiracy, along with the coin shortage. I don't think these are relationships I want to try to preserve. How do you trust and respect people who believe lunacy? I can be civil with them, but I don't want to be around people who call me names behind my back because I don't believe in conspiracy theories.

No, but if you are a secular homeschooler that doesn't fit their definition, it adds to the feeling of alienation in the homeschool community.