Well, we’ve basically spent almost nothing on food this past week, as the whole family except for me has been super sick. Also, no money spent on gas as we haven’t left the house. Most of them are feeling better now, but if ds6 doesn’t start keeping more down soon, I’m taking him in to see if he needs an iv. 😞 He has made some improvement, though, so I’m thinking that won’t be necessary. I also earned some money on DietBet.com. I lost some weight over the past month and will be getting a payout within a few days. I found that my frugality is an effective motivator—knowing that I already put the money in and it’s up to me whether I get it back or not really kept me on track.

Hm, I went back to look at the past years’ threads, and I’m seeing patterns: oldest dd work on attitude, younger dd on reading, older ds on temper/character, make more time for current little. The pattern holds pretty well this year, too. Dd9: Deal with her bad attitude without taking it out on her family whenever she gets frustrated. Let her stretch herself in gymnastics and enjoy competing. Do our vending machine project and gradually turn it entirely over to her. Finish arithmetic and start prealgebra. Move into logic-stage history, whatever that will look like. Find a medium for her to move on in Latin beyond where I can take her. Dd8: She has made huge strides overcoming her dyslexia, and now sometimes even reads on her own time! However, she is not really at the reading-independently-to-learn phase yet. For example, she might be doing math she is totally capable of understanding and calculating on her own and with instructions she can read and understand, but it’s like she can’t divide her focus to keep track of both at the same time. I hope sometime this year we can get to the point with her reading where we are done with the last level of AAR and she is just reviewing her phonics through AAS, and she can work on other subjects without needing me constantly to read instructions to her. She would love to be able to do BA Online. Otherwise just continue on learning well in her other subjects as she has been. Ds6: Academically, I plan to just keep hanging on for dear life—he has the bit between his teeth and will pretty much go where he pleases, and I am just grateful that means learning and music. He is my unrulable child, but is growing into a boy who does a pretty good job of ruling himself. We’re now down to having meltdowns only once or twice a month, and I hope that this year we will see the end of them. He’s nearly finished Suzuki Book 1 in cello, and I am really looking forward to watching where he goes with his music this year. He is doing Sentence Island with dd8 and I because he decided to. He’s taken an interest in Spanish, and I just hope I can satisfy him with watching Salsa for this year, because I don’t have the time to add that in as a subject. Ds4: My goal here is to make more time for doing school when he wants to. He would love to do math every day if I were available for it, whereas now we’re managing about once a week. My other goal is to interest him in learning to read. Not so long ago, it was all numbers, all the time, but he’s really enjoying being read stories now. I think he may be dyslexic like dd8, but unlike her, he has absolutely zero interest in even trying to decipher letters. I think he will need the AAR approach like her, but I’m thinking about maybe drawing him in with Happy Phonics games. He will also get to start violin lessons with a real teacher this year instead of Mom, once he’s enrolled in the charter school in the Fall. Me: Figure out where I want to be.

What does it mean? And how is ‘aight’ pronounced?

I found three working electric razor scooters on shop goodwill.com for $10-$20 each, that are going to be the “big gift” for the three older kids. They were pick-up only at a goodwill about an hour from here, which is no problem, except that my kids are now all super sick with a stomach bug. I might need to ask my sil (who lives ~ halfway between here and there) to pick them up for me. I also found my dh’s gift (an appalachian dulcimer he’s wanted for a long time) for about $70 less than they are on eBay. Oh, and I got a lot of four binoculars for $12. My dh thought that was weird, but I think the kids will think they are the coolest stocking stuffers, ever.

I think they mean coordinating your family’s schedule with other homeschool families’ schedules, so you can get together with them more easily. Maybe? 8, is there going to be a sequel to TC? We loved it over here, and would be very interested if you wrote another level.

Thanks, everyone. I think we’re going with the hard copy.

You say dd would promise to do all the care for the cat, and then would not follow through. You can make it clear that animals in your home will be given the proper care by their owners, or will receive new homes where they are cared for properly. And then follow through. And this is something that should stand for your youngest, too. These aren’t your personal pets, and you don’t have the energy to be caring for animals for kids who want privileges they aren’t willing to live up to. You are assuming that your dd will do what your ds is doing, and she is receiving preemptive consequences for actions she hasn’t actually committed, while you are simultaneously allowing and picking up the slack for the child who is actually doing this, and giving zero consequences for it. I apologize for being so harsh, but I’m concerned this could be a relationship breaker.

If you told dd she could have a kitten after the move, then, tough as it may be, you will be going back on your word if you don’t follow through now. Add to that that you have followed through with the same promise to the sibling who is younger with the pet that is more labor intensive and will be for longer— Unless something really major had happened since getting the puppy, like major medical problems or something, I would think it worth preserving her trust to make the kitten happen. At her age, you shouldn’t have anything to do with it beyond dealing with an accident while she’s gone during the day, which is far less likely than with your puppy. Dd can handle everything else to do with it, including dealing with vet visits.

The number one most used toys across ages at the daycares I worked at before I had my own kids were the great big sturdy wooden building blocks. (Little wooden blocks get thrown, but kids rarely think of that with the big ones). They had unending replayability and every age group could use them to their own developmental level, unlike the megblocks/duplos and wooden train set toys, which were wonderful for the littles, if you had a big enough set to allow for repeat use in many different ways. And we lysol sprayed them, too.

My dd is almost 10. I've been thinking about doing this for about a year, but hesitating at the cost. So when I saw this one on Craigslist for $30 from a guy who mostly just wanted his garage space back, I decided it was time for the project!

Basically no one ever gets prosecuted for possession of most drugs. There are many “possession” convictions on the books, but those are almost universally pled down from charges of distribution.

In retrospect, I guess that’s not very similar to Prima Christiana, is it? Sorry.

My dd loves Minimus Latin. It is secular and would be appealing to a young, accelerated student. It has little comics told from the perspective of the mouse that lives in a Roman family’s house in ancient Britain. We use the Teacher’s Manual, the Pupil’s book, and the CD. I bought them used off of BookDepository.com

So, I bought my daughter a vending machine off of Craigslist. I am going to help her get it set up in a location and show her how to maintain it, and then hand over the reigns to her. I want to use this as a learning opportunity for her, as well as an earning one. I’ve been trying to come up with ideas for ways to do that, and thought I’d ask if anyone here has any ideas. Here’s what I’ve thought of so far: -the mechanical aspect. It is an older, mechanical machine, so we will be opening up the coin mechanisms to change the prices manually, and get to see how they work while we’re at it. -electricity cost calculation. Before we talk to a location owner, we can look at the refrigerator motor’s electrical usage, and calculate what that would cost on a monthly basis in our area so we have that information ready if asked. -public communication. We are planning on asking if we can place it in dd’s gymnastics gym, so it will be adults she knows. I thought we could practice beforehand and have dd do the asking, though I would be there to help as needed. -basic business math. We will go over how to calculate gross sales, net profits, and profit margin. Vending machine owners commonly pay location owners a percentage of their profits, so that would mean keeping good records and calculating that percentage to pay. Is there anything else that should be included in basic business math? taxes? I need to figure out what this will mean as far as taxes. Any thoughts?

Welcome! Nice to meet you! I use the textbook, Intensive Practice, and challenging word problems books with all my kids, and add in sections from the workbook as needed for some of my kids.

Thank you both for your input.

Or both? My oldest dd is in BA5 and Singapore 5. I've read the fence-sitters thread and I think I've decided on AOPS prealgebra, possibly with Singapore CWP 6 interspersed as an occasional brain break. Having looked at the samples on the website, I like how the online copy has everything together, the questions, videos, and solutions easily accessible, but I am concerned that if the solution is just a click away, dd will not be inclined to work too hard t trying to solve any questions that she doesn't immediately understand. How has this worked for those of you whose children have used the online book?

A Christmas Carol The Forgotten Carols The Gift of the Magi

Well this has been educational. I never knew that mattresses supposedly need to be replaced after 7 years, or that people routinely use full-sized mattresses for use by a single person. I used a twin until I was married (at home, in the dorms, and in my college apartment). Then we used a full-size mattress for the first five years of our marriage.

Your description reminds me very much of my older ds, only minus the vomiting/passing out and add in some violence and lack of self-control. My mil said that he looked like a cherub and acted like a demon. In order to change his diaper, I would lay him in the middle of the floor and kneel in front of him, twist one of my legs forward to place across his chest to hold him down, hold both his wrists above his head with one hand to keep him from either grabbing the diaper or hitting/scratching me, and change him one-handed as fast as possible. I’m sure it sounded like I was torturing him. On the upside, he’s now a charming six-year-old who generally funnels his intensity into his music and academic interests. We’ll wake up at 6:00 in the morning to the sound of him practicing his cello. He is now down to having a meltdown only about once every month or two.

A couple of short-but-deep ones that popped into my head were Flowers for Algernon and Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

Hmm. I wonder if I have this. We’ve been having what I believed to be a weird form of stomach bug go through our family, with most of the symptoms listed, and I’m realizing now that the severity of the illness has matched up with how big of a salad eater each of us is. I definitely eat the most salad, and have been the worst. I keep thinking I’m over it and then having it come back a few days later.

We do co-op on Wednesdays—it is an academic one, though honestly I would prefer a social group if we could find one that would let us in. My girls do Activity Days, which is a church group for girls, twice a month. And each kid gets to pick an instrument and a physical activity, so oldest dd does gymnastics and piano, next dd does violin and horseback riding (when weather permits), and older ds does soccer in the fall and baseball in the spring, and plays the cello. Youngest ds is learning violin from Mom.

I love Tiffany Aching, but moms looking for books for their kids should be aware that the books deal with some mature themes, increasing through the series.

I had an awesome teacher for fifth grade who did a Shakespeare play each year with his class. Elementary kids can really understand Shakespeare in the original language, but I think that is the way to do it--spending a whole year on one play so they really have time to delve in, get to know it and love it.