Hey techies . . . or normal people who know more than I do about computers (psst: that's probably almost all of you)! DH and I are getting to the busy season of the year. I want to use my ipad to record read alouds and lessons for my kids after they go to bed so I can prop them up with the lesson and not worry about my personal interruptions pausing the whole progress of the day for them too. Obviously this is going to be longer than a short audio memo. I need to record in 15 - 30 minute increments depending on the child. Anyone ever tried this or know of an app that is suited for this kind of thing? Free or low cost preferred. I'm not looking for HD quality. Just length and ease of use so the kids can look up my recordings and listen.

I think it's all just reactionary. Just like there are idiot women who try to get "respect" by bullying through the feminist movement, there are men who react to the bullying they have actually seen or been the brunt of (or even just perceived) by bullying right back to get their "respect" back. Every social cause attracts bigots and idiots.

So we are due this summer with our first daughter. So excited! But a little unsure about how the adjustments to the family will affect HSing since my boys are all still quite dependent academically, though at varying degrees. I am thinking I will really want to babywear just so I can keep up with the rest of the family. My thing is, I have never been able to do it before. I have mid and upper back issues (mild scoliosis) so that I simply can't handle the strain of the carriers I have tried in the past. I haven't been able to go for more than 30 min. to an hour a day without throwing my back out and dealing with pain for days on end. I have heard that the Moby wrap is a good option for women with back issues and also the Ergo carrier. But I haven't actually heard what kind of back issues it helps. Is it better for women with lower back issues? Upper back? Neck strain? Advice please!

Since early preschool age ds been sort of detached about giving hugs and stuff. I figured it was because he was a boy and didn't push it, though we are an affectionate family over all and I do expect him to at least give good night hugs and put up with mommy's occasional need to give him a squeeze and a peck. Within the last couple months, DH and I have both noticed that he is suddenly becoming almost overly affectionate though . . . well, for him at least. He tackles me to give me hugs when I least expect it . . . sometimes with almost disastrous results since I'm carrying a hot drink or pulling something out of the oven. (We cracked down on staying away when the oven is involved or mommy is doing something that might make hugs dangerous IMMEDIATELY of course). DH noticed that he comes up behind him to wrap his arms around Daddy's neck and say "I love you" at the most random moments. It is soooo sweet and we're both soaking it up. At the same time, I can't help but wonder if the suddenness of it all may be a sign of insecurity? Are phases like this common with boys? He's nearly 7 years old. There have been a few changes in our home environment that may be influencing it: we are housing an exchange student (which has not been a cake walk of an endeavor) and I'm expecting again.

Take them somewhere else for hsing? That's an option?!! Why didn't I ever think of that before? I need to try that next week on our science/history day. It would be fun for the kids to spend the whole day at the library for a change! That playground out back will be great for "recess" at the library too.

A few things pop out at me based on what you have said. You said he seems to be doing it for the shock factor. Can we say, looking for attention through negativity? Also, the obsession with the grotesque and violent. That may be simple boyish love of gross and gore due to over exposure to violent TV and video games, or it can be a window into a mind that has been violated by the violence of others and this is how he tries to work it out. It can sometimes be an angry cry for help. It might be nothing and normal. I can't say based on just the little that you have mentioned. Have you considered recommending a professional psychologist to evaluate the artwork and look for signs that could help make a fair diagnosis? I haven't read what everyone else is saying, but I was a jr. high teacher for a time. This sort of activity and expression is not common since it continues even after it has been addressed and may be a sign of problems that run deep. I had one student that used art and writing to express herself similarly. I became concerned and pursued it by recommending professional evaluation. She was found to be very depressed and in 7th grade had already contemplated suicide on multiple occasions. I want to say it's nothing and don't worry about it, but I'm not equipped to make that call. If you are concerned, please consider the child with compassion and consider asking for professional advice for his sake.

We currently have a Google phone which is an Android device. Would the Windows stuff work on that? And we don't have I-phones, we have I-pads. Does that mean parental controls are not going to work on those. Those are the ones I especially wanted set up with since the kids use those most for games and movies.

How effective are they? How do you monitor your children's internet usage? If your kids are smarter than you on the internet and can figure out how to get around these controls plus delete history, how do you check up on them for their protection? Especially now with so many handheld devices, it seems it would be easy for kids to hide and go to the wrong sources for information or make friends with the wrong people without mom and dad's awareness unless we are really, really vigilant to know our way around better than they do. Am I right here? I am asking because, I have very young children who are gaining internet sense much faster and younger than I imagined. This issue is coming around the corner sooner than I hoped and I'd like to be ready.

Those are some big questions and I'm not sure I can answer all of them. First place I'd go for laws about my state is Home School Legal Defense (HSLDA). We are in NJ, the state where everyone has an opinion about how you conduct your life. Opinions that they don't mind sharing . . . anonymously . . . with the law (with or without evidence), but certainly not directly with you because that might be considered rude. Ahem. So one of the first things we did as new homeschooling NJ parents was to get a lifetime membership to HSLDA, and we didn't blink at paying the price because we knew by experience that it would pay for itself easily. HSLDA was there for my folks when they were homeschooling me and my sisters K-12 many, many moons ago. We had a run-in with a local school administrator that probably nearly gave my mom and ulcer. HSLDA put it to rest in a jiffy. HSLDA's reputation and experience is unmatched in the realm of both educating you concerning the laws that pertain to you and defending you against those who might try to intimidate you into following more rules than you have to. How to keep little ones busy? I really recommend giving that question its own thread. You will get lots of great ideas if folks know what your specific question is. Also, there are tons of HSing blogs out there for this age group. I Can Teach My Child, 1+1+1 =1, Mama Jenn, Confessions of a Homeschooler, are some of the blogs I followed most for the K level. They have lots of ideas for what to do with the little ones. Look up "Busy Bags" for some great ideas for keeping chillin's quiet for 10-ish minutes at a time. For the 5 year old, I would recommend doing most work while the littles are sleeping (assuming you can kind of synchronize their naps, LOL). And then just post alphabet and number things around the house so you can grab any moment and make it teachable. Life skills are so important at that age. From character training to learning how to make the bed and pick up toys, it all takes forever to teach and has to be taught ALL DAY LONG. Teach by playing at that age as much as possible. It helps to include the little ones in all the reading aloud that they can stay still for. One thing that worked with my kids was to let the little ones play on "quiet mats" for a few minutes at a time while I would teach my oldest. Quiet mats are just an afghan on the rug that I'd lay out with some toys. Have them stay on the mat. Drill that for a few days rewarding them for staying on the mat. It's worked for some moms, though I know of more than one toddler that would likely not comply. Still, it's worth a shot for a few moments of peaceful focus, anyway. When you say programs, do you mean curriculum? Or methods of approaching homeschooling? Or extra curricular activities? Or something else entirely?

Well, that doesn't work for spelling so far since he is still at the stage where he just copies one letter at a time and doesn't think about the sequence. AAS tiles have been a big help instead of copying words in the spelling arena. So I think copywork won't work for memorizing at this stage. I think relating the selection to him personally makes a difference. He had to memorize some lines for a church program and learned it in no time flat because the situation was putting him temporarily at the center of attention. Suddenly he was really focused and enthusiastic about it. But for most things, I can't have all memory work recited by him in a church program, obviously. So I need to figure out a way to make this really relevant to him so that he turns on to the subject. I need some out of the box strategies to test out.

My ds1 (1st grade) seems like a naturally right-brained kid. He loves to get the big picture of whatever he's learning and hates the details that build it. We are working through that, of course, in many areas since it's important to develop both the right and left brain skills even if we are naturally dominant on one side or the other. And the area that we are focusing on now that is primarily a left brain skill is memorizing. It takes FOREVER for him to memorize even small sequences of words or phrases. I personally can't connect with that at all. I can memorize a full speech in an evening if there is enough fire under my seat to do it. Not so with ds1. And I have no idea where to start to help him. For a while, I chalked it up to maturity and development or age level appropriateness of the selection to memorize, but my two younger children developed this skill set much earlier and find memorizing a breeze (even if there is zero comprehension of the thing we are memorizing). I have tried all kinds of mnemonic devices to help. First, it is really important that he understands what we are memorizing. Second we have tried various mnemonic tricks for memorizing. What really is amazing to me is that I would think that something like music would help in this area as a mnemonic device of sorts. Nope. There are children's songs and nursery rhymes that I have tried to teach him since toddler-hood that he still sings the first and last words of the phrases and mumbles through the rest of the song because he doesn't know the words. I'm looking for ways to help him make the connections and help him develop this skill. It's kind of important no matter what job he gets into. Tips from folks that either think like this or have children that think like this would be much appreciated!

My sister is the last of us siblings to be homeschooled by my folks. I am almost 20 years older than she is, so my parents have been homeschooling since the dark ages of the movement. She is going into 10th and my father wants to add Latin to her language skills since she has a good foundation in Greek already and likes learning languages. They are both really excited about it, but mildly uncertain where to begin since my father has never pursued Latin with the rest of us. When he was putting me through school, we just stuck to Greek and some modern languages since resources were more readily available in modern and he is pretty good at Greek. He seemed intrigued when I mentioned that I think there are now lots of sources out there for teaching Latin that are homeschool friendly. This would not have been the case when I was in high school; or at least, it would have been hard to find them since internet was still rather novel and new. Since my kiddos are elementary level, I wasn't sure where to direct him for starting at her level. I'm more up on elementary resources than high school. Where should I send him?

I was HS'ed growing up. We took off 1st snow day and then we knew we were not getting any more. Mom laid down the law and that was that. She had mercy and gave us some time in the snow other days, but when it came down to it, school trumped play. She would even time our snow breaks and gave little mercy for how long it took us to get on our snow gear. LOL! She was very disciplined about it and we knew we didn't have a chance with arguing. Now as a HSing mom, I have way less discipline than that. I wanna call a snow day if I see just a flurry or two. :lol: Still, I think there is sense in setting a standard that the whole family knows to expect, like, we take off no more than ___ snow days per year.

The Kindle edition got it right. And it's on sale for $.99 right now FWIW.

Great idea, thanks! LOL! My little guy likes the independence the journals afford and I like that it separates him from his brothers while they get dressed. Staggering when they are dressing/making beds/etc. means less fighting and a more streamlined morning. His Bible work is really just a brief unsupervised copywork session. He copies a few highlighted words into the Bible journal and then I read the devotional aloud to him later. I like the idea of his getting the idea of "personal" devotions time even though the independence of it is really over his head at present. But his calendar journal has been a big help in getting him to understand the calendar and relevance of days of the week. It helps that he likes doing the activities independently. I wasn't going to push spelling, but then I thought it might help him and compliment the phonics. It has been helpful, but maybe I should treat it as penmanship/copywork and not expect so much from him in that subject? Guilty as charged. How ever did you guess? Guess it's time to go back to the basics and keep the main thing the main thing. I can see I really need to pare back for both of our sakes. Combining subjects, looping the schedule, and cutting some things out entirely are all things I will have to work out (and quick before Mt. Laundry turns into a volcanic mountain range that takes over the dining room in addition to the living room). Thanks all!

Littlelzumi, I didn't even know there was an HIG. I'll check it out. I have just been using the text books and work books. I love the idea of having him teach me the problems. That would make him apply his understanding at the same time as showing what he knows. Thanks!

I actually have those at the end of the day because to him, those are the fun subjects. Grammar, writing, piano, and P.E. are what I get the most drag from him over; so we put those in the morning to get them over with. Plus, the "intensive" subjects are the ones that need more of my time to work with him. I have found that I work with him better in the afternoon since the younger two are settled down for quiet play at that time or can do the activities with us without being too much of a distraction. The younger two are both pre-school. I do "school" with them several times a week in between ds1's lessons. They are past napping and while I am a firm believer in a quiet hour, they aren't. My children are all 15 months apart from each other. They are all put to bed by 8 or 8:30 and get up about that time in the morning. Our morning routine is excruciatingly long so that school doesn't start in earnest till about 10a.m. I have tried to speed that up so we can get an earlier start, but it backfires every time and we still end up starting at 10-ish.

I have set goals for ourselves for the school year that requires us to at least try to stay on schedule with our subjects. My husband and I run a business, so if I don't stay on top of things, the business and life and schooling goals start to interfere with each other. I have to be really organized to keep thinks running smoothly. But (as I'm sure you are going to guess) kids don't always get or cooperate with clocks and schedules and priorities. I'm pretty sure that what I am about to describe is probably normal and I'm just too Type A. I am trying to get over that, but I can't help feeling guilty like he's not getting everything he should by the end of the day if I don't do EVERYthing. I am using schedules for myself and my son. I keep lesson plans. I've tried timing our subjects; (that ended up pretty much being a joke), but I cannot get us into a rut that gets us through all the subjects on my 1st grader's daily docket each day. Something, or several things, get left out and then it's time to make dinner and start our bedtime routine. I have tried setting the timer to get through our subjects, but with having little ones, we are repeatedly interrupted, distracted, etc. And if it's not the little ones then it's a bump in the learning road or a discipline issue with my ds that slows us down. One thing that I have made myself do is pay attention to bed times. Ds is a 12 hour per night sleeper and falls apart if that schedule is not maintained. So if life can't all be accomplished in the 12 hours of the day that are left, we don't do it. I think I just need help prioritizing better so I feel like when that end of the day comes, I know we have at least accomplished what's important. Here's what's on his list for the day: Get up, dress, make bed, pick up clothes Do calendar journal and Bible journal Eat breakfast Practice piano P.E. Grammar Lunch Penmanship/Copywork Spelling Math Phonics/Reading Science OR History OR Geography Educational game OR story time Dinner prep (children play) Get ready for bed Family Devos Bed Meanwhile, I switch back and forth between tutoring him and doing my other responsibilities and keeping up with the littles. On two to three days a week we have evening activities to attend. On top of that there is the inevitable unexpected that interferes with at least one or two other days. By Saturday I feel like we shouldn't have a day off of school and we should go back and finish everything that wasn't finished before. Which means we don't get caught up with housework and chores. So I have to choose between getting behind in one or the other. I just feel so frazzled by the choice. I have considered year round schooling to pacify my perfectionism and pace our lives better. But, realistically, our business won't allow for that as that kicks up into high gear for 3 months per year.

What is the HIG?

O.k., so I know it's a tool. A necessary tool. What I'm really getting at is, how can I be sure our math manipulatives are being used as a tool to build/reinforce concrete ideas and not just a complicated form of a calculator that saves the student the trouble of actually thinking? And how do I draw a young student (the kind that prefers caveman communication skills to actual conversation) into a discussion that might reveal whether he is actually thinking through the problems with the manipulative or whether he is just looking for the fastest, most thoughtless way of getting his math homework done?

Guys, all of this is so helpful both with making me feel that it is normal and that it's surmountable. I'll be looking up both Miquon and Mammoth. Maybe I'll get both. Liping's book is now on my list too. I have the RightStart game set and also Activities for AL Abacus which I refer to often. I think I may turn to math games and the abacus for a couple weeks to see if that helps. Also, my FIL is a 12th grade math teacher. His method of teaching mental math was helpful and similar to what some of you suggested: round up or down to the nearest five or ten and then subtract/add accordingly. Either way you are dealing with addends of ten and breaking down the problems from there. At first I was afraid of approaching it with ds from another angle for fear of confusing him further, but now I see that I probably should do that to see if it helps him get it more. One thing I have noticed as I use the abacus though, I think my son is using it as a crutch rather than as a tool. He seems to let the abacus do the thinking for him and does not want to think through what is actually happening to the tens and units as he adds/subtracts. I guess I should make him communicate the steps to me more as he does his work, but I'm not sure how to draw out his words as to what is actually happening in his head. I have a feeling he is, ummm, an "efficient" thinker? He likes to think as little as possible about the problem and let the manipulative do the work for him. Maybe this is o.k. at this age, but how do I make sure he is actually focusing on what's happening with those beads rather than just reading the numbers as they slide across the abacus?

My son doesn't get the order of operations for subtraction and addition involving what we would have called carrying and borrowing in school. The way that SM teaches it, I can see as being helpful in the long run, but in the mean time it adds an extra step that is HUGELY confusing to my 1st grader. Here's a sample problem. 24 - 9 = Rather than teaching the student to borrow and count up, they want the student to separate the tens and units and then subtract 9 from 10, get 1 and add it to whatever tens and units would be left: in this case add the 1 to 14 and get 15. In addition it is the opposite of the same idea. 25 + 6 = 5 + 6 = 11; and then add the tens column to that to get the answer: 31. To me this is incredibly sensible and breaks the steps down for the sake of mental math. To my son, this is a mind boggling, frustrating, order of operations. How should I be teaching this? Should I just teach him the old way of carrying and borrowing and introduce this method later? He is currently sitting at his desk wailing, resigned to utter failure. This has been going on for several days. I cannot advance him and I am afraid to push him more for fear of convincing him he can't do math. Actually, he is very good with numbers. I'm almost thinking I should put math away for a few weeks and see if this blows over.

It's sensible and straightforward, which I like; but it is so visually unappealing that I think it's almost oppressive to my son. The pictures and pages are sloppy and crowded and soooooooo bland. Looking for a more appealing alternative that still has a similarly logical approach. Suggestions?

When my 1st grade son reads, he really struggles through the decoding of words. It takes him a while to get from beginning to end of a sentence. I usually reread the sentence back to him after he reads it so he can get the context of the story he is reading. Is this good, or will it end up being a crutch in the long run? Should I have him reread the sentences himself till he can get the context on his own? I'm concerned that having him reread it till he gets it on his own will discourage him from reading even more. The program we are using is A Beka. I really like the program, but I think I may have been pushing him through it too fast. We slowed down a bit and have been taking more time to review and do some remedial reading practice too. We are using A Beka's Handbook for Reading as well as Florence Akin's Word Mastery on the side to help out with the phonics practice as we go and it is helping. I'm wondering about how to go about bolstering his comprehension goals in the meantime since this should theoretically be taught at the same time as decoding words, right?

What does RS do differently than other math programs? I understand that their program works well with Singapore. What about the two compliments each other so well? Why are they in a category separate from others?