DS is Pokemon obsessed too, besides reading , I never really thought of it for school. We have some of the How to Draw books, he loves them. He plays with a local league and has learned all the rules and has won a city championship and placed 4th in the state championship for his age group. I was just telling a friend we don't teach logic, guess we do in a round about way.

Ok if she pulls him now, she would either have to test or get a teacher evaluation before August am I reading that correctly?

She's brand new to homeschooling and is completely lost.

I have a friend that is looking to pull her child from school. They live in Virgina, I've looked up the laws for her but can someone tell me exactly what she has to do. Thanks.

Have you contacted FPEA for any help http://www.fpea.com/ They would at least know the law and may be able to guide you in some way. :grouphug::grouphug::grouphug:

I've always told DH I can do one thing and one thing well, either he gets a spotless house or educated children. But I can't do both of those things and run my photography business. Of course he chose educated children.

I check a lot of things against Amazon's price, and a lot of times Amazon is cheaper. They also drop prices on things like crazy, so if you check at just the right time you can get an awesome deal. Today for a little bit there was a box set of books for 1st-3rd grade girls for something like 14 bucks, they are regularly 60 dollars plus.

Comepletely worth it imo. The 2 day shipping pays for itself add in the video streaming and the kindle lending library and it just makes it more worth it. Love Amazon, I order most everything from there.

There is an app for printing from your Kindle, phone etc, I got it when Amazon gave it away for free. I haven't played with it yet though. Remember Amazon gives away a free Aneroid app away daily.

Thanks everyone for any help, Rowan and I are at a loss of what to do.

For the littles, tot trays or busy bags, sensory bins, homemade playdough. It keeps my little one busy and she thinks she is doing school too. The older kids should have daily chores. If the house is like it is now, I will scub school for the day and have everyone help clean the house. Including the 2 yr old. We do a lot of unit studies and field trips. We sacrafice math and language arts for them because to me they are important. I have decided this year to follow our rabbit holes. If we don't finish a text book, it is ok. Most info will be repeated next year and PS hardly ever completes their text books. I am too busy to create these unit studies myself, so I buy ones already made. Right now we are doing Amanda Bennetts new passport series. It covers ebery subject except grammer and math. I guess what I am saying is, even math and language arts don't have to be done daily. You have to find the right balance for you based on what you feel is important.

"He should know his times tables by 4th grade, but he doesn't. He HATES working on multipcation" Drop the curriculum for a couple of weeks, play yatzee, play monopoly, play Timez Attack, make a memory game out of index cards. I am aganist the kill and drill method for math facts so I had to come up with other ways for ds to learn them. He doesn't have them completely memorized but he is close. I keep a multiplication table on the wall were he can't see it from his desk. He can look at it at any time but he can't stand in front of it to do his work. This way all the wayback to hus desk he has to repeat the fact to himself. I am going to move it futher away soon.

Most of my fun stuff comes from the Dollar Tree and the dollar section at Target. I scan the clearence aisle everytime I go to Walmart and Target. I take advantage of Micheal's 15% teacher discount and I do swagbucks which I turn into Amazon Gift Cards. This is how I keep fun cheap.

We like REAL Science Odyssey, because it is hands on and experiment based. Also because it is one of the few secular sciences there is. Earth does touch on evolution and like the pp said needs to be supplement with out books.

We are using WWW / GWG , because they suit ds's learning style better.

AAS1 4x/wk Phonics Pathways 5x/wk, 2-pages 4x/day! WWE3 (?) 4x/wk FLL1 4x/wkournal Writing 5x/wk Print Writing (HWOT) 5x/wk This is overkill. Chose a spelling program that incorporates phonics. Use the copy work from FLL to practice handwriting. If he is working in FLL 1, then I really think WWE 3 would be way too advanced and fustrating for a 7 yr old. I would do the WWE level that matches his grammar level or drop it all together. And if you are doing WWE, I would drop the journal writing. I would also drop the notebooking. Like the pp said you can't read and write your way through history and science. I agree with the pp, way too much busy work here.

If you go to the Amazon app store they give a free paid app away for androids everday, I also find them easier to search than the app market.

I don't like to taste my alcohol. My favorite drinks: Frozen margarita no salt Grape Smirnoff Ice Sweet tea vodka mixed with sweetened iced tea and a splash of lemom juice I just found today that I like a lot, Arbor Mist Raspberry Sparkleing Wine. It is my the champagnes. It is a bit tart but good. Two glasses and I am relaxed.

Honestly you are trying to do too much in one day and way too many worksheets / book work for my taste. You need to block schedule and condense. There is no reason it should be taking you 13 1\2 hours to do school. Honestly, I would let go of some of the worksheets. For science and history I would combine all 3 and do hands on activities and experiments. I would also drop one of the three WWE, handwriting or journal writing. Or alternate them. All 3 four times a week is overkill. It doesn't have to look like school to be school.

I feel the opposite of just about everyone here. I think that changing curriculum to find one that suited us, was the best thing I could have done especially with math. Sticking with Horizons that was making us miserable or Teaching Textbooks that I wasn't sure about the upper levels would have been detrimental to us. Moving to Life of Fred and seeing it working, and how much he enjoys it, helps me appreciate it more. The same can be said to all subjects. Changing curriculum, and finding something that works for our family, instead of sticking with something that makes us all miserable, is the best thing we could do. To me that's the beauty of homeschooling, if it doesn't work for us, we can change it and find something that does work.

Boy

Don't be jealous, it's a scary having a kid so far advanced. I was just showing how 3 days a week doesn't hurt us because I'm trying to slow him down some anyway. I agree with your friend, that's too much. We don't do flash card drills, I don't think DS has seen one. Instead we played games, yatzee, monopoly, times attack to learn multiplication facts. I'm not a big fan of drilling facts and he's the type of child that will tune you out if you even tried. I prefer he learn the concept and know ways to find the right answer. Right now I have a multiplication table on the wall away from his desk, he is allowed to get up to look at it and go back to his seat to finish the problem, this makes him repeat the answer to himself all the way back to his seat. There are times when I purposely block it so he can't see it so he doesn't rely on it. I think you need to write down everything you are doing for each subject and see what can be eliminated. This is the beauty of homeschooling - 1) if it doesn't work you can change it 2) you don't have to do everything every day

We do Life of Fred, we do 3 chapters a week. My oldest is 3 grades ahead in math right now, so 3 days a week for us is not a problem. I can see where it would be for some. At 3 days a week, I can slow him down some so we aren't flying through math. Even at this speed we will start Pre-Algebra this year and Algebra in 5th grade and be finish high school math by 9th grade (this scares the crap out of me). 2 hours of math, every single day, seems like a ton to me. It really does. Even for a non math kid. I think I would have to ditch the Abeka for another program that is just as good but takes less time, if you want to continue doing it everyday. My mathy kid would have tuned out the lecture 15 minutes into it, 50 minutes seems like complete overkill. If you don't want to drop Abeka and go to math 3 days a week, 3 hours / 3 days a week is better than 2 hours every day, it's only an hour less than you are doing anyway. That's enough time for 2 lessons and bookwork.

Block Scheduling - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_scheduling Basically it's fewer classes a day, but for a longer period of time. So instead of doing 8 classes every day, you do 4 one day and 4 the next. There are some classes we do everyday like spelling, and some we do twice a week like science and history, some we do three times a week like math and grammar. A lot of schools have gone to this type of scheduling it has been working for them. It works for me, because I don't have to do everything every day, and I don't feel the pressure to do so either. Even if you choose Sonlight you don't have to do everything the Teacher's Manual says. You can do what works for your family, and leave the rest behind. We are moving to Oak Meadow next year and I already know that I won't be doing everything that the manual says to do. Just use the manual as a guide. Make it work for you, don't work for it. And I just looked at the ages of your children, I would do one history and science lesson for all 3 and have them do age appropriate worksheets , projects, experiments etc.

One thing I would do is drop one of the maths, you don't need 2, 1 is more than enough. The younger two do not need spelling, phonics, and grammar. That's just a bit of overkill. If your doing spelling, find a spelling program that also teaches phonics and drop the phonics. Block scheduling is your friend, you don't have to do it all in one day everyday. For me that is the quickest way for me to get burned out. We had started this year like that and a month in I was ready to quit. I went to a 2 week block schedule (basics for 2 weeks - math and LA; and then extras for 2 weeks - science / history ). It worked good on the basics' weeks but not so much on the extras weeks. Now we are trying this schedule M- F - handwriting, spelling and vocabulary ( we use Soaring with Spelling and Vocabulary and it combines the two) M, W, F - copywork / writing, literature, math, grammar Tues / Thurs - science / history / geography This gives us about 6 subjects a day and about 3-4 hours total. My goal is to have most of the seat work done by lunch so we can spend the afternoon doing field trips, exploring nature, and other hands on projects.