My MIL does similar things. I find it mildly annoying, but after 20 years with dh, if I got annoyed every time MIL did something like this, I'd never be happy. :) She once commented on fb on a picture of my mother sitting with my kids "Nice to see you looking so happy. What are you doing with MY grandkids on your lap?" My mother thought this was hilarious, so I chose to think so, too.

I did not grow up in an environment with this kind of thinking, but dh's grandmother was full of tips on avoiding evil. Wearing shorts was a big problem ("thou shalt not display what is not for sale"--which is a quote from dh's grandmother, not the Bible) as was the board game Risk (there was a picture of a cannon on the box, which was treated as problematic in a self-explanatory way.)

I kept my last name, and our kids have my last name instead of dh's. Dh says he has never regretted either choice, though it has made for some interesting conversations with people over the years as they've tried to discreetly ask if our 3 children that look exactly like him are actually his. We like it best when people come right out and ask, though once dh told someone he is SURE he is the father, but isn't sure who the mother is. :lol:

My family of five just did this in late April/May. We had a wonderful time! We saved money by staying in a vacation rental rather than a hotel room, and cooking our own breakfasts and dinners. We stayed in DC for 8 days (with a day trip to Mount Vernon), then spent a day at Harpers Ferry and Antietam before spending a night in Gettysburg. We also spent some time in Lancaster County, PA and one day in Philadelphia before heading home. My kids had a blast and learned a lot.

Our family is Lutheran, and our church's VBS is not like that. However.....that story is a crack-up. :lol: (And is commentary I could apply to much that goes on at our church. Just not VBS. I can *totally* see some of the older ladies in our church having the conversation about swaying....a little.)

Just to confuse things (hey, MavMom, btw), I've attended a Lutheran church for the last ten years. For the first 7 or so it was an ELCA church, but left to join the LCMC (Lutheran Churches in Mission for Christ) due to a perceived move away from mainstream, historical church doctrine by the ELCA. The LCMC is a growing body of associated Lutheran churches that are mostly independent from synod authority. (Read: they left the ELCA). LCMC churches are more conservative than ELCA churches, but not as conservative as Missouri synod churches. There is no teaching in my church re: the papacy as the antichrist. This varies between synods--as others have said, there is no vanilla "Lutheran" in the US. If you'd like to take this to PM, I'm open to it, here or, you know, over there. ;) We do know a Missouri synod Lutheran in common, so I could refer you to her, too, unless you've already had this discussion and I didn't see it (because I don't read that board).

If you see me today, say hi! I'm carrying a To Kill a Mockingbird bag from B&N , and will be wearing a t-shirt with a vintage image about donuts. (What a silly sentence. :)) I will likely see you both for coffee, though I do need to pick up something in the exhibitor hall during that window.

It was great to meet you both! (I was the one in the Great Gatsby t-shirt.) :)

I'll be there. I mostly lurk here, so none of you know me, but felt funny seeing the conversation without saying something. :)

That's what we use on ours. Sometimes I use the sliding glass door as an extra board for lessons.

Thanks for the suggestion. They do--good idea! The website said they host a monthly "build your own telescope" workshop. These people grind their own lenses in some guy's garage and everything--wow. Dh went all misty-eyed and drooly when I asked if he'd be willing to support ds in that effort--I'm guessing that's a yes. :D

Me! Yes! I do! My oldest will be a 9th grader this fall. We've homeschooled all the way through, with an eye to educating the whole person rather than a brain in a jar. We've tended toward a lack of structure, which was born somewhat of necessity. Ds#1 and dd (as well as dh) have ADHD, and ds#2 has Asperger's. My hands have been kind of full, kwim? All three of my kids are technically gifted (they were all tested in the process of figuring out their various neurological and learning disabilities), but none of them is a real "star" in any area. As we approach high school, I've started to read the boards here for some extra guidance, and sometimes, despite the wonderful words of wisdom I have gleaned here, I read and I literally hyperventilate. I am not a person who misuses "literally"--I actually hyperventilate. :) I have spent most of this school year feeling incredibly torn trying to figure out what rigor looks like for my kids, what expectations are enough, how to get there, etc. Looking as ds#1's writing skills has led me to tears on more than one occasion, but then I look at his peers' performance and feel like he's doing so much better at home than he would be at school. It boggles my mind that the kids in our community being schooled in our "State Blue Ribbon" district are exiting high school with such low levels of literacy and critical thinking skills, but also with the Golden Ticket to great colleges that a bazillion APs bring. Dh and I were both high performing students who went to college at a top school--the pressure to try to recreate that with my own son has been just incredible. Balancing that urge with the knowledge that we've been well-served by a pretty laid-back approach so far has been difficult for me. Okay. I realize I am rambling. Suffice to say--I'm in a similar spot. :) ETA: I am not in any way criticizing the way anyone else chooses to homeschool. I realize upon a reread that my "brain in a jar" comment can be read that way. I want to clarify that "brain in a jar" education was a mentality resulting from my own experience as a student that I had to fight in myself when we started our homeschool journey, and that the struggle has reappeared this year as we approach high school.

My son would like to take astronomy next year. He will be a 9th grader. We have Understanding the Universe from the Great Courses, and we plan to buy The Cosmos textbook to go along with it. This does not feel like quite enough for a full credit to me. Has anyone done astronomy with a high schooler? What resources did you use? How did you handle labs? I have some ideas of some directions we could head, but I don't want to reinvent the wheel if some here has done something they just loved and would be willing to share what it was. Thanks!

I'd by lying if I said I never yelled, or that my kids are always perfectly respectful. :) I don't know of any books about yelling. For us, it has just been a commitment to hear each other out in a calm way, accept feelings from others we don't necessarily agree with, and having a explicit understanding that people in our home want the best for one another. Sometimes this means, in practical terms, a little voice inside me that says "do not yell. Do not yell. Do not yell." (I am actually talking this through with my 13 y/o as I type, and he says he can tell when this voice is talking to me. :D) I am known to enjoy more hot baths and therapeutic red wine with chocolate than average when I am a successful non-yeller. ;)

In my experience, respect begets respect. If you intentionally create a culture of respect in your home, your children are likely to be respectful. Talk about respect--what is it? What does it look like in practical terms? Treat your children with respect--parents often forget that respect is a two-way street. Respect is different from obedience. Obedience can be compelled, but respect cannot. In my experience, it is easier to allow respectful behavior to arise organically from feelings of respect than demand respectful behavior from a person who does not respect you. In our family, the keys to respect have been trust, fairness, and communication, along with an understanding of *kinds* of respect (for authority, for basic humanity, born from long experience with a person, etc.)

I noticed that as well. I live in CA, and by the time I hit that point in the (very long) article, the author had done such a good job of fear-mongering, I wondered what regulations I was neglecting in my ignorance. ;) I am not against all regulation all the time--I think it's an appropriate conversation for states and local communities--but I think this author used some extreme examples to make broad generalizations about the correlation between homeschooling and educational neglect.

We started out with a private ISP but have filed the affidavit for the last 8 years. What specifically do you want to know?

This is me, too. I have some long-time relationships at The Homeschool Library that I cherish, but there isn't enough traffic there any more to completely meet my homeschooling discussion needs. I also appreciate the wider diversity of membership here.

Oh, that is useful information for me. I'm one county away, and am on the fence about it.

Hey, Dawn! (Waving "hi" at your familiar face.) :) Giving up something for Lent is just like any spiritual practice--it can become habit for some (or at some times) through repetition, but it does have a spiritual reason. In it's most basic form, people give up something for Lent to mirror Jesus's fasting in the desert for 40 days. The goal is to draw closer to Jesus through living out his suffering in a symbolic way. You see this often in the giving up of chocolate/alcohol/(historically) meat, etc. For others, giving something up for Lent can mean breaking a bad habit you shouldn't have been doing in the first place (i.e., people often give up gossip). It can mean living out the sacrifice of Jesus for us by giving up some small luxury in order to do for others (i.e., someone with a Starbucks habit could give that up, and use the money to give to a charity that serves the hungry). Not comprehensive, but I've been interrupted and my train of thought has left the station.

We used plastic cups to hold the supplies, then used a shower caddy to hold the cups. It was convenient and worked very well.

When my kids were smaller, I saw a rock tumbler on clearance at a store and put it in a cart. Dh came up and said "WHAT is that doing in our cart? GET. IT. OUT." My dh is usually a pretty mild-mannered fellow, so this really surprised me. I asked him why, and he got all distant and hollow-voiced, and with a thousand-yard stare, said, "My sister had a rock tumbler when we were kids." :lol: After he recovered himself, he told me about the noise issue--theirs was kept in the garage (which was a separate structure) and he couldn't sleep in the house when it was on due to the noise.

Dd9 has ADHD, OCD, and cyclothymia (a sort of mild bipolar). These are being controlled entirely by Omega-3s and a supplement called Travacor, which is essentially huge doses of B-6 and B-12. For the Omega-3s, we've used both Nordic Naturals and Carlson's with good results. This has been extremely effective in smoothing out the effects of all three issues.

From my own experience--let me tell you that your experience likely has nothing to do with the socioeconomic status of the girls or their families. We left a troop that (no kidding) met in a *mansion* (we are not mansion people) due to all of the same behaviors you've described here. When we switched troops to a more middle class troop, guess what? Largely the same issues. I think much depends on the leader. The leader needs to set firm, clear expectations about behavior and then be consistent about enforcing them. 25 girls are too many to do that with in an effective way, IMO. At this point, dd9 goes to the meetings where there is a community service activity or a party, but otherwise only shows up to sell cookies (which she loves) and go to camp (which she does without her troop).

Another fan of Dewey, here. I used to have an excel spreadsheet that served as our library catalog, but I lost that in a hard drive crash (sad day!) so now I keep track of everything on librarything.