Since you and your husband are okay with it either way, what do your kids want to do? I'd look at it kid by kid. We homeschool because it's the best option for one child, but the second loves school.

I know a mom that has a policy that her kids eat as much of their halloween candy as they want, but must eat it only on halloween night. The epic binge of candy prevents her kids from eating a ton of candy over time and having cavities. This mom even makes a big show of throwing it in the trash. Her kids don't know that after they go to bed, she sorts through the trash can and hides the good stuff in an old teapot and snacks on it over the next week.

When you take a toddler to a trampoline park and wonder if she's the only one who needs diapers...

We just rolled over two old 403b. It wasn't a big deal, just annoying to notarized the spousal waiver and sort everything out.

I tried towards the end of the year last year and just didn't have enough time. I think in the end we spent a week in history reading the stories in this book http://www.amazon.com/Stories-Opera-Husain-Shahrukh/dp/1846860989/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423073252&sr=8-1&keywords=Stories+from+opera and summarizing one of them, along with watching some you tube excerpts from the most famous operas and writing a few biographical paragraphs on Wagner and some other famous composers. I wanted to actually see an opera too, but it never came to fruition. I hope you have better luck; we didn't have time to even skim the surface.

I graduated at 16 from public high school and went off to college. Looking back, I am not sure I'd recommend it. It was hard in high school to not be able to get my drivers license when my classmates could, or to have to get my parents signature for stuff in college, or to be not legal to go to bars. It was almost a running joke that I was younger than my classmates and it weighed on me, feeding insecurity and self doubt about my ability to be a college student. I did fine, I was responsible, but I think I would have felt more confident if I were the same age as my classmates. I turned down the option to skip my daughter a grade in public school and I have no regrets. In my opinion, it's better to be the most advanced in a grade than the youngest.

I'm okay with that. Not every wedding is a formal affair and texting is a valid way of communicating.

My daughter (who admittedly has an overdeveloped sense of her own maturity) found the story of US too childish at age 12. I can't imagine trying it at 14 or 15. We're using American odyssey instead and it's going fine. We are doing the book over a two year period to also incorporate literature and lots of videos and extra stuff. When planning originally, I had decided to do books 1-5 in 7th and 6-10 in 8th.

I bought the book 2 along with the answer key and a quiz book for the 13+ exam by the same author ( aligns surprisingly well) from book depository. I think it'll be a good overview.

Gap coverage is exactly it... We've had a great time doing Ellen McHenry's unit studies and crash course science videos, but my daughter wants to go to public high school and I don't want to send her in lacking some basic knowledge that I forgot to teach that everyone else knows about. The book looks comprehensive but not too challenging. I'll probably add in some videos and an experiment or two to flesh it out. It's nothing earth-shatteringly amazing, but I think it'll serve our purpose well.

We do cooking along with history/English. It's a supplement, not a course itself. We've done about three or four meals a semester for the past four years . Some were more fun and tasty than others... The most memorable meals have been: Roman (with garum), medieval monastic meal (eaten in silence), and an early explorer meal (including hard tack and salted fish). We're studying US history now and will soon make a meal based on records of slave rations and authentic recipes. Last year we did a world geography/history/literature focus and had meals for each area - Middle East - Old Testament meal Africa - Ghanian meal (with fufu), modern South African meal (Bunny chow, milo) S America - Mayan meal (including nixtamalizing corn with potash) Australia - Modern Australian (Sausage rolls, Vegemite on toast, lamingtons) Asia - (we cheated and had Chinese friends invite us over for dinner and show the girls some techniques and recipes) Europe - Pre French Revolution aristocrat feast, Dickensian Christmas dinner, workhouse meal My goal is always that we aim for authentic recipes and techniques whenever possible. Sometimes there's no historical record and we improvise or have to change or guess quantities or ingredients, but we always aim to be as historically accurate as we can. I think our original inspiration was the British supersizers program. We generally just use the internet to find recipes. I should add - these cooking and eating together experiences really stand out in my mind as some of the most fun we've had homeschooling. What other kids have opportunities to eat jugged hare, grind wheat to make bread, experience the unpleasantness of a ships rations or the grandeur of an aristocratic feast? It's been pretty awesome.

It can be any order you want! We did/will do: 5th grade biology (McHenry cells, botany, brain, human body) 6th grade chemistry (McHenry Elements, carbon chemistry) 7th grade physical science (Derek Owens) 8th grade general science review (Galore Park SYRWL Science 2)

I have the SYRWL science 2 book and we will use it next year as a general review of all the science we've studied. It isn't very in depth but surely is broad! I'm pairing it with the 13+ science exam practice book by the same author, just for more practice. SYRWL french was good but we discontinued it when her teacher left because I don't know french. Latin Prep was fun. The only thing to consider is that the order for memorizing cases is different than US Latin textbooks.

I'm a fan of pre-algebra / middle school level integrated math. If you are trying to catch your child up for high school credits, I could see moving them through... But why skip a year of math? There's some good stuff in there.

7-8 seems about right. My almost 13 yr will stay sleeping/reading until noon if I let her. Everyone else gets up around 7ish.

Using k instead of c sounds intentional, not a misspelling. Years ago, I had a foster child named Destany which was actually a misspelling. Her mom just didn't know how to spell destiny and didn't ask anyone. I think it's an awful burden to give to a child.

If the child hasn't studied much English, set aside all your homeschooling plans and work on increasing vocabulary and fluency. Use games appropriate for pre-readers (ie hi ho cherry oh, snakes and ladders), card games like war or backgammon for counting, twister for colors and body parts, educational bingo games for words or shapes or whatever... Use online activities like star fall and brainpop ESL. Read repetitive books aimed at preschoolers. (Dr. Seuss type) Listen to nursery rhymes and kids music with repetitive lyrics. Watch shows aimed at preschoolers - Sid the science kid, Curious George, little einsteins, yo Gabba Gabba or whatever strikes his/her fancy... You can start with some phonics and writing practice with ETC 1. If you want to work on math, focus on language of math first - numbers, signs, shapes, operations. I'd do a placement test to see where he/she is at, but cross off word problems. I'd stay away from content areas until the child is more fluent. If the child balks at babyish activities and is ready for learning English grammar in a more adult way, let me know... Otherwise think about what is appropriate for a preschooler and start with that.

http://scienceofmom.com/2011/11/08/can-breast-milk-cure-my-child’s-eye-infection/has an accessible rundown of a few studies. It looks like breastmilk won't hurt, that viral conjunctivitis clears up on its own regardless of treatment and that some kinds of bacteria are sensitive to breastmilk and some are not. I might try it if I was breast feeding an infant with pink eye, but I still think it's icky to recruit a lactating woman to donate breastmilk for an 11 yr old's conjunctivitis as I've seen on my local crunchy mama forum.

Athleta! They have really cute short/tankini options.

Breast milk is great food for babies, but seriously... I've seen posts from women whose kids have pink eye and they're requesting lactating women donate breast milk to them. It's totally snake oil.

Diphtheria? Mumps? Mononucleosis? Subacute thyroiditis (I had this... Terrible neck pain, but not throat pain, lots of weight loss, but it's pretty rare).

I use the spectrum test prep workbook for a week before my daughter does end of the year tests. It's not that I think she'll get a better score, it's just that it's good to do a generic review of stuff that's common to her grade. For instance, she's working on algebra, but maybe dividing decimals is on the test and I've let her use a calculator all year, so doing arithmetic by hand for a week is good review in general. Similarly, we've often missed some topics in science or social studies that are on the test, so it's good to get a brief taste of those things.

We used Singapore and whenever my daughter got stuck, we just jumped over to math mammoth for a while until she was ready to move on... I think it was elapsed time word problems and fractions of sets and long division when math mammoth gave extra practice and a slightly different approach. They complimented each other really well.

We stayed at hotel Jeanne d'arc in the marais. It was an awesome location and the hotel was reasonably priced for such an expensive area. http://hoteljeannedarc.com/?lang=en

If you use a textbook that is white-washed, you can add in more details: John Green's crash course us history, American Experience documentaries, Stanford history education group lesson plans. We constantly talk about bias in readings and how previous generations and our own generation portray different people and events in history.