Is it striking anyone else? We are this close [ ] to finishing several things. Ds14 has about 3 weeks of math left. Math with him has always taken so much our homeschool day that it seems like school is almost done. It isn't really, but we are finally above freezing and the sun is shining. The kids have spent a good part of the last two days playing outside.

CC is getting big in our area. I like some things about it, but I could never join. I cannot give up a day plus prep time and still do the things I want to do. Plus, the expense. How do so many one income families afford it? Now that CC has said people only have to pay if the group wants to call itself CC (was there a lawsuit?), I wonder if groups will drop the name. That would be so much money just to call it a CC group when they could do exactly the same thing for only the cost of the materials.

Yes, my kids will follow that law strictly. They'll follow the speed limit, too, if they want to drive. Dh and I often drive about 5 miles over the limit, because that is about how it goes here. When my kids are driving, they are getting passed all the time. Still, they'll drive the speed limit or be parked. Driving is a skill that takes a lot of practice to become proficient. One of my kids is almost proficient; I'll feel comfortable with her driving alone in a couple of months when she gets her license. But I'll only feel comfortable with her driving alone, because I know she will follow the law and be careful while driving. Ds14 is doing fine, but he is a year behind on practice from Dd15.

Unless these are outsourced classes, she should be fine, right? My Dd15 is only about a third through her Spanish book for this year and really needs to work on certain verb tenses and vocab. She will be working more on it until June. Even though she'll be gone half the summer, we'll have time to finish up. As long as she learns to my satisfaction (I was a high school Spanish teacher, so I have a decent idea of what level of proficiency I'm looking for at this point.), I will award her the credit. It would be harder to do that if it were several classes, but I don't think there is anything that would be insurmountable over the course of the next three years (working in summer or whatever) unless she already has grades on record from outside classes.

Would you have time to read through them yourself this summer? I am going to try to read just about all of the books from Omnibus I and IV plus any others listed in WTM this summer, so that I can choose which ones to have my kids read next year. It is embarrassing to admit it, but my own education was pretty lacking.

Don't be impressed. It is nuts. LOL If I were actively choosing our schedule, I would order it differently. It definitely affects our school days. I do work hard to make sure each child is being taught, though. And next year, Dd15 will be driving. She is my very fast worker. I'm hoping that in addition to driving herself to her jobs and volunteering and taking herself and Dd9 to piano that she can pick up Ds12 from school. I don't mind dropping him off as it is usually early before the kids are really working. I envision our days going much smoother if I am home another 2 hours per day on average. Regarding the second paragraph, I think I mentioned individual tutoring in my first post in this thread, so we've come full circle. I am sure I could be doing better by each of my children in each subject - in a perfect world. At some point, I have to be able to say it is good enough. That is hard for me to do, and I tend to worry over it more than I like. I am comfortable with them learning the math formulas, though, as long as they have good understanding. I taught and taught and taught my oldest fractions (she was 7, I think, when we started); it was important to me that she truly understand them, but I was okay when she started to flip and multiply when dividing fractions. She had a good understanding of what was happening by then.

My kids 15-3 all enjoyed Incredibles 2.

I'm rarely surprised anymore by anything I read here, and I am really, really trying to respond to this nicely. To be honest, the nicest thing I can think of to say about the above is that it sounds...shallow. I don't feel like I have a big family, so I am not taking it personally. At least not for my sake. I know that my sister says that my house is one of the few places she feels comfortable visiting with her family (8 kids- You can absolutely get to know and have relationships with 8 kids. They are individuals, not a monolithic group.). They are great kids. Since we are both raising kids, we don't go out of our way to do things with each other's kids. We will occasionally have fewer kids for some reason, and then we may do an extra something for the kids we have. Anyone trying to make everything fair for 13 kids is nuts, but stopping for ice cream with the littles or the middles or the bigs one time and taking a different group to a movie another time is fine. My sister does make a bigger deal over my little girls sometimes. Her oldest is 16 and the rest of her kids are boys. It is fine. She loves and is pleasant to my boys, even if she isn't fixing their hair for church. LOL We do birthday gifts more than Christmas, since it spreads out the spending. We told our brother with one kid long ago that a family gift is fine. And it is, because it isn't about the gifts; it is definitely not about the money. It is about love and good will.

Ticket to Ride. We recently started playing Ticket to Ride Asia, which has team play. I'm looking forward to playing it with some friends of ours.

I have seen many complaints about Abeka and BJU and some, but fewer, about Rod and Staff and CLE.

My kids do fractions and long division concurrently. As to why I would introduce an algorithm (and please read this as friendly discussion, not argument) - I have five kids. I spend a good 5 hours on math each school day. Once Dd9 understands something, a "trick" is fine. I need time to play with math manipulatives with my 4 year old and work through Geometry and Algebra with my 14 and 12 year olds. I don't spend much time with my 15 yo, because she is mostly self-taught. I've got a kid who does band at the school an average of 4 times per week, a kid who volunteers one morning per week, two kids with piano lessons on morning, and three kids with play practice one afternoon. Plus, my Dd15 does odd jobs occasionally during the school day and is going to regularly start giving piano lessons next week. I am the only driver. My school day usually starts at 7:00 and ends at 5:00, because I need that much time to read aloud, teach, discuss, and DRIVE! Once a kid truly understands something, we do whatever is fastest and easiest. Dd9 hasn't worked sheets and sheets of long division problems. We do a few long division lessons (with about 8 problems each) and then review them a problem or two at a time. Then she uses them for story problems or whatever. She knows very well when dividing 144/3 that the 4 she puts on the top means 40 and the 12 she subtracts is 120, so I flat out don't have time to do manipulatives with her. The algorithm is fast and easy.

Thanks. I wasn't sure what the question meant. I fully admit to often having self-doubts about how I'm doing with the kids, but I can state confidently that they have good number sense and are fully understanding any algorithms I have them use. They've all picked up long division easily and naturally because they understand what it is doing.

I just made up an example, but, yes, they could? Unless I am not understanding what is meant. How many times does 3 go into 14? 4, so subtract 12. How many times does 3 go into 24? 8, so 144 divided by 3 is 48. That seems about like what they started with? My 3rd grader is now using long division for longer, harder problems, but that is about the difficulty of what they do in 2nd grade to learn the algorithm.

I'm pretty sure all of my kids have done some long division by the time they were 8. My oldest was comfortable with it when she was 7. The others were at least doing things like 144/3 at 8. But they are homeschooled and get personal tutoring. I would not expect a public school to be much into long division until 4th grade.

I would be interested. Thank you.