Welcome! Glad to have you here! I don't have twins, but I do have two who are 19 months apart with a competitive, fast-moving younger boy and a slower, methodical older girl with dyslexia. I have had to really emphasize that this is not a race, and to come down on him when he wanted to compare/brag about what he was doing compared to her. (Especially when she was in 1st and he was in K, I just took to sendng him to fold 3 pieces of laundry every single time he would start in about reading better or trying to jump in with answers to her work faster than her.) It's easiest to avoid when they are in very different curricula. In math they do well with the same materials, but since we use both singapore and Beast Academy math, I have used switching back and forth between those two in different orders to help avoid the obvious direct comparison between them. My other suggestion is to make time to focus on the areas of strength of both. My son's areas of strength get a lot of attention because they are core academic areas, but I have made sure to include time for art classes and poetics and calligraphy for my daughter for her areas of strength, too.

Wow, those are some crazy low prices. I thought milk was amazingly cheap here, at $1.68/gallon. We used to get milk for about $3.60 to $3.80 in our old town. When we went to the city 3.5 hours away where I could get milk for just under $2.50/gallon, I would buy 16 gallons and wrap them up with ice under blankets for the drive home to put in the freezer.

Yeah. We told them at least two years younger than our youngest, but now I’m thinking that’s really not enough.

Last week I packed ds’s rock collection into a case in his closet that I didn’t think she could open. I’m still not sure if she did, or if ds took out some of his rocks to look at and didn’t put them away (he is my five-year-old). I’m wondering if there is some way to make the boys’ door close and latch shut whenever someone lets go of it? I was looking at the spring-hinge things that automatically close a door, but if you set them tight enough to actually latch shut, they would swing so hard they would slam in someone’s face and hurt them.

😞 She got ahold of two of my youngest son’s big rocks from his collection (about five or six inches across) and chucked them at my other son’s head. He moved, and only one hit him on the shoulder, thankfully. Dh is saying that if we see more behavior that could really harm our kids, she has to go. He has written a letter to her caseworker letting her know about this, advising that he believes she should be in a home with no other children under the age of ten except bio siblings, and basically chewing them out for not sharing with us when she was placed the letter her previous foster mom wrote about her behaviors. I don’t disagree with him, but the thought of sending her away makes me feel physically ill. This poor, poor little girl.

Update: We are doing okay. Things continue to improve. It's tough, but mostly normal difficult little kid tough, with episodes of trying to harm herself or raging only a few times a day, now. (Except on visitation day. That is still heck. But next week her visitation is switching to late afternoon instead of first thing in the morning, so at least it will only be a few hours until bedtime after visitation!) She has done or has appointments for assessments to get her the therapies she needs. They finally gave us the toddler bed they had offered to supply for her. We are settling in together. One of her sisters is really suffering (the one who is placed without a sibling, the other two are together). She's run away from one foster home, and writes in her journal every day that she hopes somehow she will get to be with her sisters. We set up Skype meetings between our little one and her so they can see each other more often, and it sounds like it's helping a bit. I really, really wish we could bring her here and let her be with her sister. I keep thinking we could squeeze them into the girls' room with some bunk beds. But we don't have an empty seat in our car. We've talked about getting a larger car when this one breaks down, and I find myself thinking about getting one sooner--but our furnace and AC just went out and need to be replaced, so I don't know if we can add a car payment right now.

I have been trying to further baby proof like this, and to only tell her ‘no’ when it’s really necessary, but it’s still necessary a lot, between normal toddler stuff like not coloring on the walls and you can’t take your banana into the living room and rub it into the rug, and the tendency to throw things at people. I also try to couch it in very gentle terms, with a natural response to it built in, because that seems to set her off less. So, instead of “No, don’t color on the walls!” more like, “We don’t color on the walls, so let’s wipe it off now. Here’s some paper.”

She is about to turn three, but is developmentally delayed. She has visitation with her sisters once a week.

My husband and I call me by my name when speaking to her, but she hears my kids calling me Mom or Mama all the time.

She has been referred for therapy, but hasn’t started yet. Her mother up to this point in life has basically been her nine-year-old sister.

I haven’t had much time to respond, but I appreciate it, everyone! Pen, thank you so much, I got them to send me the paper materials. The other night I went to the grocery store alone while dh was here with the kids. As I was coming home I realized my hands were shaking—all jittery, like an adrenaline rush. I have fallen asleep about one paragraph into reading materials the last two nights, but I appreciate the suggestions and am trying to get to them. I am working with the theory that #1 priority is helping her feel safe (even if that means sitting with her for 1.5 hours or more at bedtime) and #2 is stopping what we are doing to teach gentleness every single time there is an incident—and we are making progress! She is smiling. She is even laughing. She is now only trying to harm herself about one out of every three times she is stopped from doing something she shouldn’t, versus pretty much every time. She now will listen about half the time if I give her a direction, instead of screaming every time. Her attempts to hurt others are lessening significantly. She is starting to respond to us with words other than “no!” when we talk to her. She is coming to us wanting comfort when she is sad or winding down from a rage. And today, she started calling me “Mama”, far sooner than I thought would happen. (Deep Breath). We can do this!

They cancelled the September foster parent training and rescheduled for November. Help.

Thank you, I will look up those books. Our first Foster Parent Foundations training meeting is on Wednesday, so I’m hoping to learn how to connect with other foster parents then. I understand they’re desperate, but surely they would retain more people interested in foster parenting with more preparation and support, right? I called her caseworker with a question and left a message on Thursday, and still haven’t heard back.

Wow, I am exhausted. About halfway through the day on Friday, something shifted, and things have been really rough since. Hitting, throwing, screaming, running away, forcibly throwing herself to the ground hard enough so you are trying to catch her to keep her from hurting herself. And hitting herself in the head and face, hard enough to leave a mark, whenever she gets in trouble. We are making baby steps in the right direction, though. Today was better than yesterday, which was not as bad as Friday.

Yes, dh is a public prosecutor who specializes in sex crimes with minor victims, so he has experience with traumatized children. And I am a former preschool teacher. But even so, I’m still shocked. It’s gone way more smoothly than I expected so far. I’m guessing maybe as she gets a little more comfortable with us we will have more to work through. Apparently they had another family inquire about becoming foster parents last week, and they placed a sibling group of three with them the day before yesterday.

Last week we decided to look into foster care, and I made a phone call to find out more. Yesterday, we got a call asking if we would take a little girl as an emergency placement. I was sort of thinking, “Well, yes, we could do that, but—you really just give children to people you spoke with once on the phone?” Though, apparently her supervisor had met dh through work. A few hours and a lot of paperwork later, and they dropped her off. Our heads are still spinning.

I don't think the fine motor would make a difference for BA Online. You might have to help her on some of the questions when she gets to the chapter on decimals, and they have to grab and move the decimal point to the right place. It doesn't read the questions out loud, so for non-readers, I would have to sit with them the entire time to read every question to them. I could do that, but I figure I will either invest my time to do all the reading and/or scribing needed to scaffold for the kid, or I will invest my money so they can do the program semi-independently online. (We do still read the guidebook pages and do the practice questions together before they start on a section). I don't want to pay both time and money. Sorry I took so long to respond. I've been moving and haven't been on the forums in a while.

I read the guides and questions to them at that phase, and I start out mostly scribing for them and gradually transition to them doing more and more of the writing. That way neither being very young, nor the one’s dyslexia, or another’s fine motor skills being behind, ever slowed down their math learning. However, they can’t do Beast Academy Online until they can read the questions to themselves. My youngest is very motivated to work on his phonics specifically because he wants to do BA Online like his older siblings.

Modern Hebrew for me. And if dd wanted to delve into Biblical Hebrew later, Modern Hebrew is a great foundation for it.

I’m curious, too. My second dd has taken an interest in learning Hebrew. I think it’s too late to add much for this coming term, unless it’s something super easy to implement, but I would live to hear about some ideas for the future.

WOW. Those numbers are pretty stunning. One note—sometimes there may be more economical options for universities than state schools. My church has a private university that is half the cost of instate tuition for my state school, and much better ranked. And they offer some very good merit aid scholarships. Of course, the other side of that is that it is much harder to get into than state schools. I have a goal to give each kid the amount that tuition would cost there to apply towards whatever they decide to do with their higher educations, and am totally overwhelmed by that amount. But it’s more like $20k per kid than $200k.

My oldest will be 5th this year. Wow! Here are our plans: Language Arts- MCT Voyage for grammar, writing, and poetics. Not sure whether to include the vocab component, especially since seeing that Essay Voyage includes quite a bit of vocab, too. Also R&S Spelling 5 and Spencerian handwriting. Math- AOPS Prealgebra & Singapore 6 CWP. My plan is to just intersperse the CWP in between AOPS chapters to give her a brain break. History- OUP The World in Ancient Times. I have the books, but I’m really not sure how to implement them. I’m also remembering all my earlier ideas for interesting things to do along with middle-level history, and I’m trying to decide if I’ll go nuts if I try to find time to incorporate those. (I have three more elementary students after her.) Geography- I have no idea. Science- BFSU II. Need to do a better job of getting this done this year. Foreign Language- CLRC online intermediate Latin class. Music- Piano lessons Art- probably just using different media for an hour every week or two.

My youngest will be a Ker this Fall. How did that happen?! We’re going to sort-of-unschool like I did with my next-to-youngest. He did however much or little he chose, with the only stipulations being that if he wanted music lessons, he had to practice on schooldays, and he had to write something every week. Phonics—He’s doing All About Reading. I am considering adding the Happy Phonics games. (He may be dyslexic. We will see.) He is super motivated to learn to read so he can do Beast Academy Online like his older siblings. Math—Singapore Handwriting—HWOT Music—Suzuki violin lessons He’s very excited to get to start lessons with a “real” teacher (as opposed to mom). Tag-Alongs—He will join in however much he wants to with his older siblings on BFSU for science, SOTW1 for history, Spanish of some kind with his brother (Salsa maybe, tutor maybe, something else?), memory work, art.

So we could use just the student book? That’s good to know. What do you think of the Classical Education Edition vs. the older version? We already have Ancient Rome well covered, so if the difference is primarily adding more about Rome, I don’t think we need that.

We do MCT’s language arts here, and love it—with the exception of the vocabulary components. Building Language is fine, but the material covered is so basic while the output expected is really tough, especially considering that it comes before poetics are taught for that level in their recommended sequence. My oldest had a rough time with it, but I’ve learned and changed the order of the books and simplified the output requirements for my next two, and it’s going better. I thought the vocab would get better, as so many people here love Caesar’s English. Also, it looked like it actually taught words my dd didn’t already know, unlike most vocab programs I’ve seen marketed for her age. Last year I had oldest dd doing CE I, and she absolutely hated it. But I bought the ibook version because it was cheaper, and I was trying to get her to work on it independently. And I think maybe, possibly, that the delivery method and me pushing her to be independent instead of us snuggling up together to work on it like we normally do with MCT might have been the problem. So after much deliberation, I think we’re going to give it another shot with CE II, no ibook this time. What do we actually need? And which version? I usually buy just the teacher’s manual for the other components, will that work for CE?