Honestly? I prefer the format of MA online and I like that their problem sets often “trick” the student, so they are forced to read the question multiple times slowly. I still like AoPS, but for our child MA is a better fit.

My 4th grader uses MA. We love it! He is particularly good at math and a fairly independent learner, so the pacing and goal setting is ideal for him. He switched from AoPS and the teaching and testing style is similar IMO.

This is such a great outline! I was thinking about the twin sins of idleness and self-indulgence yesterday, and why they were particularly coded “female” in my childhood (as opposed to say, lust, which was uniquely male). The “busy at home”, “bread of idleness” and the “gossipy women going house to house” scriptures were the sort of antithesis to the aspirational feminine virtues of self-control and industry. There was this story repeated in my church, about a well-loved and respected older woman who got cancer and would still put on makeup and smile so as not to worry her adult children. She never complained or bemoaned her plight. Her grace under suffering (or stoicism?) was modeled as this particularly feminine heroic ideal, and it always stuck with me. Maybe that’s why I feel so guilty about “laziness”, that resting when others are working is a sort of “calling attention” to your burden (?). I have no idea if any of this makes sense, but this feminine amalgam of Proverbs 31 industry and warnings of gossipy, idle women are coded in my religious DNA. But it’s often hard to separate (for me) what is biblical and what is temperamentally warped in my own constitution, so I appreciate your scripture counterbalance.

I love this thread! I don’t really need anything, but I would love an electric blanket, a heated vest, really just a body heater attached to my person. 😄 I would love more hagiographies of saints (especially St. Catherine of Siena) and memoirs of women like Susannah Wesley. Tea, yummy dessert teas.

I am in the first trimester and have three sweet children under 10 years old. I’m so thankful for them! But wow, I’m tired today. 🙂

This is so sweet, thank you. Idleness and self-indulgence were the major “Christian girl” sins taught growing up (since modesty and chastity were a given) and here I am…in my 30s and still feeling guilty.

I was raised with hardworking parents in a Baptist community that prizes hard work, and married a hardworking man. I feel so guilty about laziness, eating “the bread of idleness” so-to-speak. I’m pregnant with our fourth child and just tired. Like physically, I just want to lay down and do nothing. However this makes me so anxious and I have that Proverbs 31 woman scolding me with the hardworking ghosts of women past who definitely didn’t allow their children to watch Netflix in order to nap. 😞 I’m sure I could go to therapy for this but obviously that would require the self-indulgence of an hour spent discussing my feelings. *sigh* No real point here, other than commiseration with anyone who is tired today.

Aaaaah bless you! Thank you!

Someone posted a book a while back that helped her organize homework with her ADHD son. I think it had a yellow cover. I am searching high and low for that thread to find out what the book is called, to no avail. Does anyone know what I'm referring to or did I just totally dream this up? My son is 9 and I am desperate to help him develop a simple system to organizing his schoolwork (tasks, due dates, papers, etc.) independently. Thank you!

If you have a large-ish family, how do you announce fourth,…n pregnancies to family or friends who think it’s excessive? When people say “was it planned?” or “do you have the space?”, how do you respond? Thank you!

This is fascinating topic. I know a lot of women who either get no presents or late-night-run-to-the-store trinkets from their husbands. I wonder if these husbands would feel weird getting nothing for their birthdays or Christmas? I get the exact same thing from my DH for my birthday every year and I love it: an Amazon gift card, my favorite candy, a soda and Hot Cheetos. For Christmas, it’s the most current generation Kindle. Maybe the bar is low, but I’m happy to get something 1. I like and 2. is wrapped and ready on the occasion. I wonder if it’s easier to men to be told “I want x and z for my birthday” than to wait for them to creatively think of a gift.

Everyone has their own bed in our house (DH and I have a queen). 8 -, and 6 year old brothers have a bunk bed, but inevitably fall asleep together on the lower bunk. 4 year old sister falls asleep in her own bed, but ends up in our bed sometime at night. The boys come to our bed in the morning too (it gets crowded). My parents were very strict about not co-sleeping for good sleep hygiene. Is it weird for none of my kids to sleep alone? Will this effect their sleep cycles longterm?

Thank you! I love that you spoke German exclusively to your children. 🙂 I am just *now* speaking German with my kids in front of others. It was so deeply ingrained in me that you speak the common language in the company of others that I hesitated for a long time. But now I’m realizing strangers really don‘t care that much what you are saying to your kids. It was a weird etiquette hurdle to overcome but now it seems much easier to stay on language all day!

Thank you! There are many great curricula, but for whatever reason I can’t seem to find this type of information. 🙂 I am looking for a good tag system (like sticker labels to match parent-and-child) and ways of “streamlining” the Sunday School process. How do you manage volunteer schedules? How often do you email parents? Stuff like that. I guess people assume that stuff is more intuitive than the class content itself, but it’s not for me!

Thank you, I just ordered it after reading the intro!

If you teach/have taught Sunday School for children, what is the best resource or guide for how to set up a children’s ministry? I am looking for some direction on pager systems, volunteer guidelines, communicating with parents, etc. Thank you!

The US is huge and distinct in its diversity. I grew up in Europe and roll my eyes at arguments about “but Sweden/Switzerland/Norway does education/healthcare/etc. this way” like Switzerland literally has 2 million people less than the population of Los Angeles. I really don’t think people grasp the universe of difference between the size of the US and other advanced economies.

The US is generally more violent than other first-world countries; you can eliminate all gun-related homicides and the number of stabbings, brutal beatings, etc. are still enormous. If you look up the Gini coefficient, it is one of the single most studied and replicable sociological indexes; any communities that have very wide economic variances between richest and poorest are far more violent than communities with smaller wealth gaps. The absolute poverty of the community matters in that sense less than the relative wealth gap. The US is striking in its enormous chasm between the wealthiest and poorest. My neighborhood (Los Angeles) has multi-million dollar homes and luxury cars and simultaneously the largest population of homeless people in the country. It also has very strict gun law, which does nothing to control the violence. There are so many historic and cultural reasons for this, but it won’t get any better. I think we are heading towards more segregated living.

Thanks for the responses! It gives me a better sense of how others do things. Maybe I am overestimating my child, but it seems like 20 minutes isn’t sufficient to cover much ground in math or German (the subjects we concentrate on at the moment); I feel rushed in work and discussion. Maybe I can try extending it by ten minutes and see how things go.

I would like to increase the time spent on individual subjects with my 7 year old. Until now, he has done short sequences with breaks, multiple times per day (e.g. math for 20 minutes in the morning, repeat in the afternoon). He reads on his own for 1 focused hour daily. I would like to switch to more block scheduling, but because he is accustomed to short bursts of concentration, he is resistant. How can I get to longer stretches of school?

Perhaps I’m missing the generational data, this looks like a study on the last 3 years?

“The Millennial generation is on a much lower trajectory of wealth accumulation than their parents and grandparents.” https://www.newamerica.org/millennials/reports/emerging-millennial-wealth-gap/ Generation Z has a higher obesity rate than any generation prior: “The percentage of obese children in the United States aged 6 to 11 increased from 7 percent in 1980 to 18 percent in 2012, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). And, during the same time period, the percentage of obese teenagers aged 12 to 19 increased from 5 percent to 21 percent.” https://www.binghammemorial.org/Health-News/childhood-obesity-on-the-rise “Generation X and millennials are in worse health than their parents and grandparents were at their age.” “Both generations were worse off when it came to "physiological dysregulation," which includes problems like elevated blood pressure and cholesterol, excess belly fat, and substances in the blood that suggest the body is in a state of chronic inflammation. https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/news/20210325/gen-x-millennials-in-worse-health-than-prior-generations

Also increased childhood obesity and its myriad of effects on lifetime health outcomes.

The principle is Don’t Make Things Worse. Ideally, successive generations do better than their parents (by whatever metric that is, but health and financial stability are the ones which are getting worse now).

I’m in a much smaller home than my childhood home too, and I love it. 🙂 I also qualified “providing equal or better” with ability and choice for this reason!