I've read on here before when people are talking about testing, some have mentioned that they had testing done at a university for a lot less. How does one find out about opportunities for that? Whom do I speak to?

Thanks. I have never noticed any indication of hearing trouble (I am hard of hearing myself), but it definitely makes sense to rule things out. I'll look up Toe by Toe.

My second daughter just took the DORA for the 4th time (every 6 months for the past 1.5 years). She has shown no improvement, except in vocabulary. The phonemic awareness subtest has declined the past two times. Technically she would now be close to grade level, since her birthday in most areas would make her an older Kindergartner. But--something doesn't seem right to me. This was my most obviously gifted kid as a young one. We started phonics very early, because she begged me to teach her to read. We have consistently, systematically worked on phonics through last school year and this. The past six months, after her last assessment showed no improvement, we backtracked and intensively reviewed sections one by one starting over from the beginning of blending. I think her reading of more basic words is much smoother than it used to be. Or at least, I thought so. Maybe she has simply memorized all the words in the early sections of OPG? This is the same kid who knew all her letters and sounds at 15 months, but took three years from when she wanted and was trying to learn her numerals before she could consistently remember what a 4 looked like (but meanwhile she was subtracting 2-digit numbers in her head). There's a little voice saying, "Well, some kids just struggle. Some are advanced and some are behind. Am I really sure that it's not just that I don't want that to be my kid?" but--my gut is saying no. Something is going on with her. I don't know what to do next, whether to pursue professional testing, or if there's some other way to assess what we need to do differently? I am concerned about costs, but we'll find a way to afford what is needful.

-Charters that provide curriculum libraries, support, and public funds for educational expenses similar to these ESAs, for the homeschoolers who don't mind jumping a few hoops in exchange for a couple thousand dollars per kid to use on tutors, lessons, books, etc. -Legal standing as private schools for those who want minimal interference (and therefore they can use the coverdell accounts mentioned upthread that are unavailable to most homeschoolers). -Hybrid charters that allow students to do one, two, three, or five days a week on-campus doing selected subjects in a classroom while homeschooling the subjects they prefer. -Tons of different co-ops. -Language immersion schools. -My sister's boys attend a public school with an alternative organization, and in the afternoons community volunteers come in to teach electives in their areas of expertise, so they have an amazing variety of subjects they can learn from individuals passionate in those areas. My mom teaches sewing there. -Everything from gymnastics classes to science museum classes catered to homeschoolers' schedules. -AOPS is even opening a school there.

dp

We lived in Southern California when I first started investigating homeschooling when dd1was a baby. I am so envious of all the options there!

My kids are younger, but I am a humanities girl through and through, and have lots of plans and ideas for the future. As a high schooler, taking AP Art History and English Lit at the same time and seeing the overlap in philosophies and movements and causation was an eye-opening experience. That interconnectedness is something I love about WTM's plan for history and great works. I want to use Art History materials split up over the four years of high school to add to the WTM way, and add another layer of connections. I've thought about doing something similar with the history of science during the middle grades. Also, visiting archaeological sites and museums, traveling, performing Shakespeare, meeting a Holocaust survivor, etc. would be wonderful to include in history. I have plans for a combined economics/personal finance/entrepreneur course for either late middle or early high school (before the age when they can get a normal job). It involves learning high school level economics, budgeting and things like balancing a checkbook, how insurance and loans work, managing the family grocery budget, hands-on investing, coming up with an idea for a mini-business, and developing and executing a business plan. It is a requirement of our homeschool that they each learn an instrument up to a certain point, to get past the difficult learning phase to when they can really make music, and then they can choose whether to continue. (I just have to figure out when exactly that decision point will be.) For foreign language, if money were no object, it would be awesome to have native-speaking tutors and extended travel to gain fluency.

With my oldest dd, we have gradually shifted from thinking of Singapore as the primary curriculum and BA as a great add-on, to thinking of BA as the must-have and Singapore as extra. I will go through and cross out questions or whole sections from Singapore when it is simply more repetition than she needs, and particularly when there is some overlap in topics. She loves BA and tolerates Singapore, mostly. She is 2nd grade age, and approaching the end of level 3 in both curricula. I am considering dropping Singapore and just doing BA. What do you think of BA as a stand alone? Will she be missing out on much if we don't do Singapore 4 & 5? I'm also a bit nervous about the prospect of her reaching pre-algebra twice as fast.

I started out with the home instructor guide, textbook, workbook, intensive practice, and challenging word problems. I dropped the instructor guide within a month. After a while I mostly dropped the workbook, too, though I have it and will sometimes use it for my second dd on topics that she needs more repetition on, like the multiplication facts. Dd1 and ds1 do not use the workbooks at all. So I would say textbook, intensive practice, and challenging word problems, and add in the workbook if your kid needs extra time to grasp the basic concepts.

I need them to pick up the pace! Older ds goes on and off math binges without warning, so there's no accurately telling when he will reach a certain point, but I am starting to get nervous that he might overtake second dd in math. (He is super competitive!) I don't want to move either one to a different math spine as Singapore works great for both. I figure I can use Beast Academy to shake up the order of things and make it feel less like a contest between them.

Planetino looks great, but pretty text-heavy for my dd. It might be great for once she takes off in reading, but I'm not sure how long that will be. Duolinguo, too. Tamburin looks less reading and writing dependent. How was it for you to implement? Are there many activities that require several students to do together? I found some cute little kid songs in German on youtube I think would be fun to include, along with German children's books. Does anyone have a suggestion for lists of great German picture books? Is there something like the Caldecott Award in German?

My dd6 has asked to learn German next year. I'm excited to be teaching a language I can actually speak, but I am definitely not fluent. What suggestions do you have for an elementary German curriculum? I would prefer to keep things fun and gentle to start. Something like Salsa Spanish or Song School Latin, maybe? Is there anything like that out there?

Thank you, all. Our situation is a bit complicated by the fact that we live very rurally, but dh is searching for a new job, and I'm hoping for somewhere with a Suzuki teacher with experience teaching littles. I'm going to get that book. I like the idea of having the violin out and stopping to practice whenever the kid wants to, but I'm a little concerned about keeping the instrument safe with a lot of energetic kids running around the house. My little guy is as sick as a dog right now. Last night as he was curled up in my arms, he was sleepily begging me to do violin with him even as he was wheezing and shivering with fever chills. :(

My littlest, ds2 (almost 3), has been begging for his turn at violin for many months. I finally gave in and made him a box violin from a macaroni box and a bow from a dowel, and started to teach him. He loves it! I am amazed how quickly he is getting the proper bow grip. As in, after two days his grip was about where his sisters' were after a week or two, and his brother's was after a month or so. He's also quite a bit younger. I'm excited that he is so excited, and very curious whether this interest will be sustained or not. (I treat music just like academics before normal school age--only by request of the child.) He's so tiny, but he's learning so quickly, I am thinking about getting him an actual violin for his birthday next month--but he would need a 1/32 size, which is hard to find in a decent instrument that won't be super frustrating to try to learn on. It would probably be a lot cheaper to wait until he can fit a 1/16, and there are more decent used instruments available--which was my original plan when I made the box violin, as I figured at his age it would be a while of playing with it before he had learned all he could on the box. (The smallest size we own from my older kids is 1/10.) And my ds4 needs a new instrument, too, and dd6 probably will within the next half-year or so. Does anyone have any advice for such a small one learning an instrument? I have been finding ideas for lots of little games to teach violin skills online, to try to focus on keeping things light and fun. My oldest started as an older three-year-old, and I regretted it, but that was before I had come to my current philosophy for preschoolers, and I pushed her to practice every day. She grew more and more resistant to playing the violin, until I eventually gave up. My middle two were 4 when they started. With my current little guy, more than anything I just want to feed his love of music and of the instrument.

My dd6, when wheedling to be allowed to eat the sugar snap peas we had just purchased on the drive home from the grocery store: "Please, peas please! I need peas to appease my hungry tummy!"

My girls enjoyed taking it. This was the first year for my 2nd dd (Ker). She is absolutely certain that she is getting a gold medal. I keep trying to talk up how it's just fun no matter how you score, but she is sure. The thing is, I know that she got at least one wrong (she answered with a Greek name when asked for Roman), and there were a few others I was uncertain of. I'm not sure whether to tell her or not. Older dd chose to add both the Heracles and Norse Mythology subtests. Norse mythology is her latest love. She had a Norse mythology birthday party for her eighth birthday on Friday. It was awesome. We played 'pin the legs on Sleipnir'. I haven't the faintest idea how she did, as she knows far more about mythology than I do.

I have made pretty significant changes based on info from assessments in the past, but I think once a year would be plenty. I'll discuss it with dh. Do the Math Mammoth placement tests just give a grade level to work in, or do they give any info beyond that?

I just picked mine up from the post office.

Ugh. Dh wants the kids doing regular assessments, so we do the ADAM and DORA twice a year. When oldest dd started, we just missed a group buy on homeschool buyer's coop, and I thought they'd be having more in the future. Six months ago, they had changed their pricing structure to be cheaper if you bought more tests at the same time, but we couldn't afford to buy extras at the time. I saved up so I could purchase 10 at once this time for a significant discount, but when I went to make the purchase I found that they've raised their prices since then. It's now $25 per assessment; you have to buy three just to get the old basic price of $20 each. And since buying 10 at a time now only saves you $3/test instead of $8, I can't afford to buy that many--and the next step down only saves you $1 each. I'm just so frustrated. This is getting too expensive with #3 starting schooling and another little one coming along, too.

Hmm. Surprised how many people include caveats along the lines of 'if they both know it's over. . .' Because, okay, I know I'm very literally minded, but--the marriage obviously isn't over if they are still married. Maybe they both believe it will be over soon, maybe they feel as though it is already over--but clearly, when it is actually over, in real life, they will no longer be married. In any way.

Every interaction is personal. There is no concept of professional behavior--which can be both a blessing and a curse. It's great when you realize you forgot your wallet, and you can walk into the bank and ask for cash without id, and it's no problem. Or when you didn't realize you had to have cash to pay for your Christmas tree tag (to cut down a tree from state forest land), and the cashier says to just take it and bring by the money the next time it's convenient. It's more of a curse when you have arranged for a babysitter and gone out on a rare date, only to find that the only restaurant nicer than Subway that doesn't shut down for the off-tourist season is closed "because the boss felt like it".

Thank you all. The sun came out this weekend, and dh didn't have to pull extra hours for the first weekend in a while. We went to the beach, and I just wandered around in the sunshine while the kids played with the driftwood and dh played his flute. It was so peaceful. Then dd2 got sick, and I stayed home with the kids today while dh went to church and taught my youth Sunday school class. I let my girls watch cartoons all morning, and wound up snuggling my two little boys who were feeling crummy in bed for a solid two hours while they slept and I read. It was so lovely. Things are going to be alright. I am going to trim down my plans and expectations for school and try to take things easier for a while--and especially, to try to give myself permission to just stop and relax when it's possible, no matter what else still needs doing. Thanks for listening.

I am really, really struggling. I burnt myself out juggling homeschooling my kids and taking a challenging college course during the Fall. I felt myself burning out, but just forced myself through it, figuring I would just have to recharge during a few weeks off over the holidays. (I actually spent the last few weeks of the class doing all of my work and reading standing up, because I fell asleep every time I sat down. I wound up taking almost a full month off of homeschooling, but it wasn't enough. My husband is losing his job in a few months, and I am majorly stressed out and also trying to make time to do things to prepare for that. Plus trying to be extra super frugal with meal planning and budgeting to save up for that, but there's really not much you can squeeze out when you are already living frugally and cooking from scratch, etc. I teach a friend's preschooler two mornings a week along with my boys. Everything feels so hard right now, I would frankly like to can preschool altogether but it is hard to give up that little bit of extra income with a job loss on the horizon. Not to mention that my ds4 (who is a very difficult child) is generally more manageable when we do that dedicated preschool time. I always struggle with Seasonal Affective Disorder this time of year to some degree since we moved to Oregon, but this is the worst it's ever been. I am taking vitamin D and put brighter light bulbs around the house, but just motivating myself to keep doing the next thing feels exhausting. I am also leading a chlidren's theater group to put on a production of Twelfth Night. This is something I absolutely loved doing as a kid, which ignited a lifelong love of Shakespeare for me. I have excitedly looked forward to doing this for my kids when we reached this period in history. Now it is just more grueling, exhausting work to force myself to prepare for and execute. For the first time, I seriously considered putting my kids into the terrible public school here this week. But I concluded that I really do not think they would learn anything. Educationally, it would be the same as just doing nothing for the rest of the school year. It would provide free babysitting for my two girls, but frankly, older ds is the one it would be most helpful to have a break from, and he is not old enough. (We can't afford preschool.). My kids feed off my stress and act out, and my stress feeds off their bad behavior. It creates a nasty cycle that I try to recognize and interrupt, but frankly, I'm not feeling like a very good mom these days. I am trying to find ways to lighten the load. I don't feel like I can take more time off school now, as we are only half way through my plans for the year, plus we have relatives coming in to town in a few weeks for oldest dd's baptism, and I thought we'd take a week off then. I pulled the girls from their tumbling class. I stopped trying to do their subjects of choice (botany for younger dd, Latin and Greek for older). I dropped all the projects from history and have just been reading the chapter and doing a narration. It feels like handing a cracker to a starving man. Good, but not enough.

I write 'mother', as that is what I consider my vocation.

I was a horse crazy kid who just rode my instructor's horses at her stable and did not compete. It was still the most expensive activity that any of us five kids participated in, but I lived and breathed horses. As I grew in competency, I got free extra riding time in exchange for helping out at the stable, got the opportunity to participate in the "horse theater" (we performed The Highwayman), and eventually had the opportunity to train a young, green horse for the summer when I was sixteen (free training for the owner, free riding for me!). But my instructor was just awesome that way--she was about character development, perfecting skills, and love of the creatures and the sport--no competition. She did all kinds of extra things to provide more opportunities for her girls, without making a dime on it. She also had no qualms about kicking out someone who wasn't following instructions or wasn't willing to put forth the effort.