My kids are young, but here's what I did. I started first grade over the summer and schooled up until the week baby was born. I took a month completely off after the birth, then we started in, slowly for the first 1-2 weeks. I have an "easy" baby and school has gone well. There are no issues caused by the baby, only things I would have had to deal with anyway--dawdling and attitude in my ds being the biggest. I am sure we would have done art more often, and a few more science experiments and history projects this year, without the baby's arrival, but I still accomplished just about everything I wanted to. I have heard that it is much more challenging when the infant becomes a crawler and then a toddler. Last year trying to do K when I had a young 2 year old-- ack! Or trying to read my then-4 year old chapter books with a one year old screaming and trying to rip the books-- THAT was harder.

I am hoping those of you familiar with Latin can help me out. :) I am not seeing the reasoning for starting PL in first or second grade, when the material will be repeated again the next year. Is the purpose to go more slowly, so that you can "overlearn" it? Is it mainly for younger siblings who want to follow along with the older ones? Is it to replace some of the English grammar instruction? I'm trying to decide whether to purchase PL for next year, and I feel like I am missing something.

Has anyone tried the science kits? I'm wanting to add a couple of fun things to my RR order and would like some feedback on these. Thanks!

I think omega 3 is a good idea, but I second (third?) looking into food dyes. We notice a difference when we keep all artificial colors, flavors, and preservatives out of our diet. Also avoiding added sugars, except for the occasional treat. I'd add that my preschoolers do best with hours of outside play. Hours. More time cooped up inside = more problem behaviors all around.

Yep, and not JUST elementary aged children, either.

My ds is average when it comes to writing and it fit exactly right. He was almost 6.5 at the start of first grade. Now at the end of the year, we are doing more writing than WWE, so it is definitely not too much IMO. You can also take it slower. It looks like level 2 steps it up a bit but I think level 1 has him prepared.

I second the olive oil or coconut oil. Let it sit for 15 minutes, then shampoo out with a small amount of shampoo. When mine gets like that, though, what really fixes it is a good haircut. You don't have to get it all cut off to get rid of the bristly ends. Even 1-2" helps me a lot.

I wrote them out on separate hw paper for my first grader. I think the lines are standard size for first grade, depending on which hw program you use. But I read elsewhere that some children develop better handwriting if you use smaller lines from the beginning, and I tried it and using slightly smaller lines was helpful. Since I also used copywork for the purpose of handwriting, rather than using a separate hw program most of the year, I wanted him to see what the letters would look like on the lines, with proper spacing. That was my other reason for writing it out. By the end of the year, though, I can give him pretty much anything to copy from, so it hasn't seemed to hurt anything by doing it this way.

discontinued at some point, too? I am guessing the Standards edition will continue. But is Standards and Primary Math and CWP and IP all done by the same publisher? What's the scoop?

I'm glad you asked, because I was wondering the same! I think we're going to start cursive mid-way through 2nd grade. The last two days ds's writing was so messy I made him re-do it. Usually I just pick out a few letters to rewrite, or a few words to fix the spacing.

Yeah, this. :tongue_smilie: At 5 the only thing I required he sit for was phonics. At 6/7 I have gotten "stricter" but there are still times where we call it a day and just go outside. He is required to do his best when it is school time this year, though. But for kindergarten, I just figured, he was learning to read and learning so much more outside of "school" time, that it wasn't worth struggling over.

I am surprised by the responses that say not to give a gift. If it were me, I would probably give something nice, but not necessarily expensive--something personalized and where it was not obvious how much you spent on it. I agree that it is incredibly tacky to send registry info with the invitation, but I have seen that more often lately. When DH and I get such an invitation, we NEVER buy off the registry. ;) Maybe instead of a week at a cabin, an overnight at a nice hotel or B & B? I think that people who are planning a wedding are often not thinking, or even have no concept, of how much it costs people to attend their wedding. Especially a family, and all that it involves.

I have done half day camps for the oldest. I would not want to spend that much, though. I like to have him do things that I wouldn't normally be able to do with him-- like physical things, horses, group games, or art. It is a pain to drive back and forth, and that is why I won't do ones that are more than 15 minutes away at this age. Honestly, I like it for the break, too. I still have the little ones with me, and last summer I had special things that I did with my 3 yo during camp time. My oldest and I do need short breaks from each other now and then.

My son at the end of first grade (was 6.5 at the start of the year) writes several sentences from dictation for spelling, and does either two sentences copywork from WWE, or copies his narration from WWE, up to about 5 sentences. But at the beginning, one sentence a day was it. In my state your son would still be in K in the fall with a September birthday, so you will have a very young first grader. There is such a huge difference in fine motor, attention, ability to focus and follow directions, in my son over the course of the past year. Be patient! I'm only saying that if you are like me and expected a bit too much to start out, and became frustrated with him. :)

I think "When Children Love to Learn" is probably the one I thought came closest to sticking to the original writings. "For the Children's Sake" was good for the overall ideas, not as much for the practical applications. Andreola and Levinson seemed to add a lot of their own opinions. I found A Charlotte Mason Companion tough to slog through. I loved "Real Learning" by Foss. I don't think it is completely CM, though. She does a lot of unit studies, for example. It is also very much about incorporating Catholicism into the homeschool. I still found plenty of good ideas, even though I'm not Catholic.

I think this is hype. I am sure this is not the last we'll see of mass emails of questionable truth.

I am going to have to visit there one day. When I was in second and third grade, I had two best friends and we were often playing Betsy, Tacy, and Tib. :)

We do almost all of the maps, plus periodically use our wall maps and globe to find the countries we are studying. I do have him narrate but I don't use the comprehension questions in the AG. We do the occasional coloring page, but not many (ds isn't very interested in coloring). I get as many of the supplemental books as my library has available, and we go through a few of them a week. Especially the ones he can read himself. Activities-- well, we have done a couple, but I have an infant and a preschooler and I am just happy that we cover some history, science, and lit. at all every week, kwim? :) Especially as my preschooler isn't too interested in our studies or activities and wants activities of his own.

Oh gosh, how I love these!

I probably wouldn't today unless she became sicker. I don't consider 100 a fever, though. And if she isn't acting sick, then ?

We don't use most of the coloring pages. But I'm not bothered with the discussion of other religions. We talk about other ancient peoples in the Bible worshiping false gods (meaning, other than the Judeo-Christian God), and I treat the stories of ancient gods in SOTW the same way. We have had some good discussions. But other people feel differently about it and don't study ancients until much later.

The China Study did affect my eating. I already ate almost no meat and some fish, but I cut fish even further. I also cut dairy further down to cheese once in a while, and have cut eggs way down. I do have some questions about the book. I wish it was possible to read this study online, because the book gave very little info. on it. For instance, there are some cancers which are higher in Asian countries compared with Western, such as stomach cancer, and he didn't address that. I have questions about seafood and its omega 3 FAs being shown to be important for health. These would be extremely limited in a vegan diet. And then I have questions about his conclusion being veganism. I think he argued well for a sizable reduction in animal products in the diet, but I don't think he can conclude that the optimal diet is zero foods of animal origin, at least from what he presented in the book. Even in his huge study, the villagers eating the least amount of animal foods weren't vegan, as far as I could tell ftom what he communicated. Then there are the questions about other factors in their lifestyle which could be just as important as diet: physical activity, family networks and social support being a few. Like the women in my family ancestry who lived disease free into their 90's while consuming milk and meat every day, but did vigorous work and walked a LOT every day of their lives from childhood on.

Tentative plans: FLL2 WWE2 -- I have the wb but I'm going to re-do some of the weeks with our own history and lit. SOTW2 with AG Reading-- from history, plus selections from SL readers, plus whatever of the lit. he is ready to read alone; reading log per TWTM Singapore Math 2A/2B REAL Earth Science, though will probably do just some of this and plenty of unschooly science, just like this year All About Spelling selections from AO year 2, for read alouds and lit. picture and composer study piano lessons, sports, scouting

This is helpful. Hmmm. While I generally prefer to tweak things and do our own thing, there are times when it is nice to have one or two subjects all laid out. Using AAS is teaching me how to teach spelling, so after I go through it with dc#1 I wil probably be able to use any program easier and tweak it for my student -- kinda like learning phonics the first time as an adult! :tongue_smilie: I am also anxious to see levels 5 and 6 and what they cover. It may be that some kids won't need all 6 levels and that after 3 or 4 levels we may be able to go to word lists along with the rules from ABC's and all their tricks.

Just agreeing with everyone else. My TSH was "only" in the 7's when I was diagnosed, but I felt AWFUL and could tell something was very wrong. I had positive antibodies and was put on synthroid by my family doctor. You don't need an endo unless you have a doc who is behind the times. I only see and endo when I am pregnant or ttc, otherwise my family doc is great. Oh, and I wouldn't see an OB for thyroid problems. There are thyroid problems where they will "watch and wait". Sometimes postpartum thyroiditis can get better. Or, you might have some other kind of temporary thyroid inflammation. A friend of mine had this, and she cycled from hypo to hyper (off meds) for a few months then got better. But you would need further tests and an exam to diagnose the problem.