My English language learner nephew is comfortable reading Magic Treehouse Fact Trackers and Who Was? books. What other series of non-fiction (geography, history, science, doesn't matter) are at that level or slightly more challenging? I've got some Simon Basher science books and Magic School Bus books on hold (MSB are short, but they're listed as grades 2-4). Dn can decode well and his English vocabulary is rapidly expanding. It turns out most of the "hard" words tend to have Latin or French roots and he can usually figure them out from Spanish cognates. It's all those common, little Anglo-Saxon words that he still needs help with sometimes. He says he doesn't like fiction and I want to honor that preference because he has enough stress in his life right now. However, if you know of any boy friendly books that are at the Magic Treehouse level (but not Jack and Annie, sniff, I loved those books when my kids were little), I'd like to sneak a couple into the book pile and see if he bites.

That's precisely Reeves' point! Many men would be good at nursing, teaching, social work, PT, OT, SLP, etc. but they don't even consider them because they're "women's work". As a society we need to address that psychological barrier to men seeking professions that pay well and are challenging because in the past they were dominated by women.

That is not at all what Reeves' book is about. His whole argument is that we need to encourage boys to go into caring professions (HEAL fields: Health, Education, Administration and Literacy). When I was googling what the L in HEAL stood for I found Reeves' substack. It's free and is a good overview of his suggested solution to the gender imbalance in higher education and professional fields. It's not enough to encourage girls to enter STEM fields, boys have to enter fields that were previously seen as "pink collar" jobs. https://ofboysandmen.substack.com/p/men-can-heal

This isn't a stereotype, it's a lived experience. @Matryoshka's dd personally witnessed this behavior. My dd had a similar experience at a Latin summer school program (of all the bizarro places!!!) Guys really do this all the time. It was constant in my professional life, but I had hoped it would have died out among Zoomers. Nope, they still do it.

Dd's ex-fiance is Black. They broke up when dd was stationed on the other side of the Earth and he cheated on her. Tale as old as time... I honestly expected more drama than we got. That's probably due to @YaelAldrich's observation that sometimes the Black partner just doesn't want to talk about it. In Cheatie McCheaterpants' case, his mom is married to a White guy and his brother is biracial so I think maybe he was just used to being in a family where everyone isn't from the same background. Or maybe the kids these days are more used to being around people who aren't from the same background and it just doesn't matter to them as much as it does to the more geriatric set. Both dd and CMcC are in the Navy in similar rates and that culture probably overshadows the broader American landscape. Plus Autism Land brings its own cultural norms and walking around being stared at all.the.time because GW (6'1" dude) is carrying his large plush brontosaurus can make other issues seem less urgent. It was much more important that dd prepare CMcC to know what to expect with GW before he met us than any other cultural thing that might have come up. In any case, @Lecka's right, don't borrow trouble.

Yeah, but in America many people can't afford to see a doctor. That's a national embarrassment, but it's also the truth. So influencers are better than nothing.

Sure, but you could say the same of squirrels and raccoons and armadillos. Habitat encroachment is not more or less lamentable because it happens in a tropical climate than in a temperate one.

Nope, they live in city parks in tropical countries. They're like squirrels or raccoons or armadillos, if you don't mess with them they won't mess with you. A lot of cool ideas will be local things that you find out about on local social media. For example, in Houston, some local stuff that might fit your cool stuff would be participating in the calf scramble at the Rodeo (no one gets stomped), canoeing down Buffalo Bayou or learning to sail in Galveston Bay. Further afield would be a bike trip along the Mission Trail outside San Antonio, tubing the Guadalupe or the Comal or going to South by Southwest. Some stuff that isn't tied to geography is scuba lessons, Civil Air Patrol, joining a hiking club or BSA Venturing or a CC adventure club depending on what's available. They could try out an out of the ordinary sport like rowing or rugby or water polo, learn to ride a horse, volunteer at a museum or archaeological dig, join a citizen science project, volunteer with an adult organization, learn how to draw or paint or do pottery, learn a musical instrument or join a choir. I'd look for groups that have a wide range of ages involved in them and draw from different parts of your community. Being treated like a contributing adult is a great experience for a teen no matter what type of activity they're doing.

The same thing is happening with military recruitment. It's tanking even though we're not actively fighting any wars and the benefits are very attractive. The GI Bill is a four year full ride to any public university and many private ones and if you've already got some credits, you can use the extra time for a masters. The VA Loan program makes buying a house a realistic goal. You can start building a retirement account with 5% matching before you can legally buy a drink. But there are still massive shortfalls. Part of the sudden drop off is the introduction of Genesis, a program that pulls all of your medical records. It makes it harder to enlist because every broken arm or mental health diagnosis (even for situations that are temporary and expected, like divorce or death of a parent) will need a waiver. But there's another part that is young people settling for living with their parents and working low wage jobs. I don't know if it's the effect of the pandemic that just stunted the maturation of a half of a generation of kids (very likely) or social media influence (somewhat likely) or its just "kids these days" (popular among boomers but not very likely.)

This article is a short version of Reeves' book, Of Boys and Men. I read it a couple of weeks ago and it was brutal. I had no idea that boys underperformed girls so drastically that the gap is similar to the gap between rich and poor students. It's pretty universal too because the author cites Finland and Iceland too. It's not true that there is no help for boys. One of the chapters covers the silent affirmative action male applicants receive so that schools don't tip "too female". I'd highly recommend reading the entire book, it's very interesting.

95% is good enough for me. I guess we could go to a friend's in Austin but is it really worth it with the traffic?

Another thing they could do to boost their self confidence is use Modern States to prep for a CLEP and take the test this summer. Modern States has fee waiver vouchers and online prep classes, so they wouldn't have to worry about cost. https://modernstates.org/freshman-year-free/

I guess you can't see my signature and didn't read my previous post in this thread. Geezle has autism and some learning disabilities. He was homeschooled until 7th grade and then attended special ed at our public school. He's very fortunate to be able to hold down his current job and a large part of that success is the transition services he received at public school and that a homeschooler can't provide for all the money in the world. @Melissa Louise didn't say whether or not the child in her post has learning disabilities or if he has just missed some critical lessons and can't catch up.

This has not been my lived experience. Geezle has no number sense, even after years of trying different programs in different settings. He just can't relate to numbers past rote memorization and that's very unreliable for him. This means that he can't work as a cashier. That means that most minimum wage retail jobs aren't open to him. It's life limiting in a way that you probably wouldn't imagine if you haven't had to deal with it.

Back to OP's question, I have seen families fall into the not-really-homeschooling trap at around the 4th or 5th child. Sometimes they've also hit a wall financially, sometimes the mother's health gives out, sometimes the older kids hit high school age and the mom is spread so thin she just can't handle that level of work and lets it slide. I've known 3 families IRL who didn't manage to educate their now adult children well enough for them to launch. Two planned on joining the military and could never meet the physical standards. They fell into minimum wage work and gave up on CC when they got stuck in remedial courses. They live at home and don't have any solid prospects of moving out. Another was a girl who was trained to be a SAHM but now is a single mom who can't earn enough to move out of her parent's home. She did enroll in CC but wasn't doing well the last I heard. These kids could easily have fallen through the cracks in PS too, but they weren't well served by homeschooling either. I don't know what would have salvaged the situation.

Humble ISD in the Houston burbs. They actually do a good job of providing job training and helping special needs young adults get jobs and develop independent living skills. They didn't do a good job of providing appropriate preschool education to neurodiverse kids 20 years ago, but they have improved in the meantime. They obviously can't cure autism or ID or profound dyslexia but they do a decent job of helping students find work arounds. They also help parents wrangle the Social Security system to get their kids signed up for disability. I don't regret hsing Geezle when he was little, but I also don't regret enrolling him when he was 12. School helped him achieve his potential in a way I couldn't not even with an unlimited budget.

My dd feels like this too even though she does speak Spanish well but with an American accent and not with the current slang from any country including Venezuela. A kid who grows up here and goes to school in English will find it very difficult to be a native speaker of Spanish. It's happened to all of our friends' kids too even the ones who grew up with their parents speaking to them in Spanish. They start answering in English when they're in elementary school and it just becomes normal. The only people I know who grew up in the US and speak native level Spanish are from areas of Miami where literally everyone is an immigrant or child of an immigrant from a Spanish speaking country. When dd was in Boot Camp there were a couple of women from Puerto Rico who needed some explanations in Spanish. Her instructor asked her to do it because although she is Hispanic too, she speaks Texas Spanish not Puerto Rican Spanish. Even Selena Quintanilla had to learn Spanish, she didn't know it growing up. Your girls are far from alone. You are not alone in the "Please watch TV camp." We have to schedule my nephew to watch TV in English with English subtitles as part of his daily requirements. His English is pretty good, he can follow the story when we read, but he just isn't interested in watching TV (not even in Spanish). Kids these days!!!

Yes, I've noticed this in the swampy city to your south. I don't know what the heck has gotten into people. I used to be able to cruise down the fastest lane at 80 to 85 maintaining several car lengths in front and having people behind but not right on my bumper but now it seems everyone drives right up to me. It's not even a question of wanting to go faster, when I get out of the lane they don't speed up. It's very strange. I like the Mario Kart hypothesis!

Hugs, Yael. It's hard being away when your parents are suffering.

I'm doing Singapore Math 3 with my nephew right now. We use the textbook, workbook and Intensive Practice. I found them on Amazon with Prime delivery. I really like IP, I used it with dd 12 years ago and it prepared her really well for the SAT, AOPS and the Calc 1-3 college sequence. I hope they don't phase it out although it could do with a bit of graphic design updating. SM3 assumes you've already introduced multiplication and division. They do a quick review and then teach carrying and remainders. If you need to start from the beginning, you'll need to start with SM2. If you just want to supplement, it's probably a good idea to step back a level anyway so you don't run into topics that you haven't covered yet. IP has challenging problems even if the math topic is something you know well. You have to think to solve them. For math facts, I bought addition cards at the Dollar Tree, made subtraction cards through 18-9 (the ones they sell are weird and don't go into the teens???) and made "Make a Hundred" cards (1-99, 37-63, 85-15, etc.). Nephew knew his facts but was slow when we started 3 weeks ago. Now, he's not. The "Make a Hundred" cards in particular make a kid's life so much easier. We're starting the multiplication/division review and carrying chapter next week and I'll just make my own cards to focus on the harder facts because he knows his 0x, 1x, 2x, 5x, 10x well. We also do timed math fact sheets I made online at a free site. We spend about 5 minutes on math facts a day. It doesn't take long but it makes a huge difference in how quickly he can get through 2-step word problems when he doesn't have to think about 7+8 but just knows the answer immediately.

Thanks, @Harriet Vane, this is a timely comment for me. I've got easter eggs for the first time in years for my nephew and I mentioned to dh that we should do a hunt for GW too. He was opposed because GW is an adult although he would definitely enjoy an egg hunt. I'm going to go ahead and do it and now I've got backup. (I'll have to do two separate searches because a tiny, wily 9yo and a 6'1" run and grabber do not mix well.) I'll have to ask Geezle if he'd like an egg hunt, too. It's not as much fun to do by yourself and he'd feel crummy taking eggs from the 9 yo and knows better than to get between GW and chocolate. We'll see what he says. I've always served a "Bunny Bar" as dessert for Easter. This is a big hit with everyone old or young. I buy a bunch of different flavored bunnies and we chop them up and serve them buffet style.

There's a shortfall of HMs right now because of the recruiting crises. It used to be one of the most overmanned rates in the Navy and now it's suddenly not. Part of the reason for the recruiting shortfall is that the military now uses a medical information system called Genesis to pull recruits' entire medical history so many more people need waivers for past injuries or ADHD or temporary anxiety or depression, and of course, many of those waivers are denied. If any of your kids is seriously interested in enlisting, take a look at the physical requirements to make sure they'll be eligible. It's pretty crushing to have your plan in place and then find out you can't enlist.

You need to get them on a college transcript that awards them credit. I attended a DE orientation at my local public high school and they recommended taking a class at our local CC and having them transcript all the AP or CLEP credits so that a degree granting institution had recognized them.

The Marines don't have Marine medics, they have Navy hospital corpsmen. A person who wants to be a Marine medic joins the Navy as an HM and then expresses interest in going FMF (greenside) during their A school (the medic training after Boot Camp). The one thing your dd might want to think about is that the Navy isn't big on teaching sailors to shoot. My dd has spent a grand total of 3 days learning to/refreshing her training on how to handle a pistol during her almost 2 years in the Navy. She's never stood an armed watch in all of that time and isn't likely to, although she does have a spiffy marksmanship ribbon. If your dd's career goal is private security, she might be better off joining the Marines, although that would mean not being a medic. (The reason the Navy supplies the medics is that they do not carry a rifle which contradicts the "Every Marine a rifleman" ethos of the Corps.) You can get an immense amount of information about Navy HMs on the New to the Navy subreddit. There is a similar subreddit for Marines where you can read about different MOSes and their pros and cons. If she does want to be a Navy HM, there's no point in getting an EMT or LPN before joining. HMs do the basic EMT training as part of their A school and then can get further training depending on what specific job they're assigned to. You can get a contract that specifies what further training you will receive after A school, so it's worth exploring those options. If your dd or either of your twins decides to go the military route, it is very advantageous to get as many DE credits as possible during high school. You automatically get promoted to E3 if you go in with 48 semester hours (E2 with 24). This saves more than a year and half off the time to promote and means you earn about $400/month more starting the first day of Boot Camp. You can also finish a BA or BS quicker and save part of your GI Bill for a master's degree or career training (like flying lessons or IT certificates, etc.) The Post 9/11 GI Bill is a fabulous deal. It's basically a full ride to any public university (and some private ones that participate in the Yellow Ribbon program). It pays in-state tuition (and a recent vet is considered in-state for every state) and a living stipend that is equal to the Basic Allowance for Housing that a military member would get in the college's location. Neither BAH nor the tuition is taxable. It's worth spending some time investigating what careers are available in each branch and learning about the GI Bill, VA home loan program and job opportunities for veterans to understand what's available and trace out some possible paths. There's a lot to learn about the military and if you don't put in the time you can end up losing out on some excellent opportunities. It's important to research possible MOS/rates and not just take what the recruiter tells you is available right now. It is worth waiting a couple of months to get the job you want. I tried to define the military jargon, but some might have slipped through. If you have any questions, just quote me so I see them or feel free to PM me.

I have never seen tartan trousers on a real, live human being before. They are a very unique fashion statement. That should be burned on a large bonfire.