OhElizabeth, you have some great ideas and advice. Thank you! :). I'm taking notes and I feel some better about knowing we have to work with WHO she is as a person but I also see where (you were spot on) we need to add in more structured time with more accountability. I will look into your recommendations. If you think of any other options to help, links or books, please share. We have been digging our way out of bad debt so I have to opt out of co-ops and classes that cost too much for our budget. Sports is usually played through our church, other than softball with a league and working with animals has been free because she's willing to work hard and feels being with the animals is her pay. Anything that you find free would be a great help! I'm out of the loop with most options available so I'm trying to figure these out.

AngieW, thank you for responding. You're absolutely right. I have not had to push her in any way with sports. That's just what comes naturally to her and I want so much to help guide her towards her strengths. She gets frustrated knowing how much her friends are able to accomplish but I am trying really hard to help her see past what they're doing and see what she's able to do.

Charleigh (love the way you spell your name), I needed to hear that! :) I will check into a vet tech program for our area. She only tells me that she needs to be active so I can see her working with animas, farming or athletics. You have given me several options to ponder. Thank you!!!

I have a 10th grader who is not academically driven. She is athletic, busy and loves to be on the go. She loves to help people with physical labor type jobs and has lots of opportunity to spend much of her time doing church activities, sports, working with animals and helping people with projects. I'm really trying to go with her strengths but have found that her "academics" are found wanting at the end of each year. She's technically oneover a year behind as far as curriculum goes. I don't want to compare her to other kids her age that we know and what they've accomplished but I often wonder if she'll be able to graduate with them because she is not keeping up academically. She has a really hard time sitting still and focusing when it comes to curriculum. What I would like to know is how I can help her get through high school understanding that academics are not her strength? She says that wants to have a farm with animals when she moves out on her own but she has also mentioned becoming a veterinarian. I really feel that the Lord is leading my daughter and sometimes in a different way than her peers but I also carry some guilt knowing that if she wants to go on to college, I want her to have every opportunity to do so. What direction do you think I should take with her and is there a way to take academics really light so that she can just move through and graduate with her peers? I'm at a loss as to what to do.

Oooh, a pirate cruise sounds really neat!

Thanks for all the quick responses. We went through the lists and decided, for different reasons, to go to the Museum of Science and History in Jacksonville instead. Tomorrow is $5 admission and there are several exhibits we're excited to see. If we decide to go to Saint Augustine on Saturday, I'll have some great ideas for places to visit and things to do.

We're trying to find neat things to do in the St. Augustine area. We'd like something kid-friendly, cheap or free and indoors. Any ideas?

I really enjoyed looking at all the pictures of your rooms and reading through the different posts! We have gone from using a school room to the kitchen table and now back to our school room. I prefer having a school room. It seems easier to contain all of our stuff and I'm not as distracted by chores that need to be done. We can shut the door if company is coming over and the room is too messy. And we can leave things out to break for lunch or use again the next day. The room that we use is our bonus room and posed a little bit of a problem because it is long and narrow with about 5' walls due to a sloping ceiling. I would like to have more upper wall space but it is a good size room so I tried to be creative with what we do have. We also keep ALL of our craft supplies in this room. If you check out my pictures, you'll see that my girls and I love to scrapbook and all of us enjoy notebooking or lapbooking. Most of our library books and current read alouds are kept in our living room in baskets. This is because we do not have a comfy couch in our bonus room. I have some pictures posted here if any of you would like to check it out.

If you're willing to do the research and are serious, PM me and I'll tell you what I'm doing. It has changed my life and the way that I look at food. I've lost 20 pounds in 28 days, so far.

Thank you all for posting your pictures. I've been gone most of the day so I will not be able to really ooh and ahhhh until tomorrow after we get home from church. I also have some older pictures of our room from last year that I'll try to figure out how to post here. I'll be back! :D Oh, and you can bet I'm one of many that'll be scoping the titles on the shelves...hehehe.

I thought it would be neat to see pictures of school rooms or areas in which you store and keep most of your supplies. I'm also trying to gather ideas for organizing and maintaining them because our room needs to be revamped over the summer. Thanks!

Sahamamama, Thank you for all the links! I'm off to check them out. :D

Shannon, your Jesse Tree ornaments are beautiful and I'm sure they will be cherished for many, many years.

Thank you all for your replies. I am considering all my options at this point and these are great ideas. I have 2 weeks to make them so I guess I had better figure out real quick what I'm going to make. Susan, I love the idea of using beads and wire. Hmm, I wonder if I can find a how-to video or instructions on this to help me out.

I have signed up to do a Jesse Tree Ornament Swap with some ladies from our co-op. My ornament is a cross and I have to make 25 of them. I was wondering if any of you may have ideas on how I can go about making these crosses and with what materials. I wanted to make these special for the ladies to have for years to come and maybe a little more elegant than if we were creating these with our children (not quite as precious, though ;) ) I have been to several sites that have suggestions for making your own Jesse Tree ornaments but none of them struck me as something I'd like to do. I was thinking about making something shiney and pretty to glisten in the lights of the tree. Any ideas? Pictures of crosses you've seen that were beautiful? ANYthing that would be helpful would be much appreciated. Thanks! :)

Tide was the detergent that I was having problems with. We have used Arm & Hammer in the past and I don't recall having an issue with odor like we did with Tide (sorry to all the Tide lovers out there). We're now using Cheer and the odor is gone after one load! We believe it was the detergent. Something else we tried before changing detergents was eliminating softener in the washer. That didn't seem to help at all.

Have you checked out teachingmom.com ? I have pulled so many wonderful ideas from that site. It's just an idea that I thought I'd share with you. Hope you find what you're looking for. :001_smile:

I was having the same problem with my towels until I switched laundry detergent. Actually, it was all of my laundry but the towels smelled the worst to us. What kind of laundry detergent are you using?

Hello! We're so excited that we may possibly (very likely, God willing) be moving to the Memphis area. I've already checked out the homeschool laws but I would like information on the surrounding areas. We would definitely prefer living out and away from the city but close enough to shopping and work. My dh would be working at the airport. We would like to have a few acres of land but probably somewhere around 10 acres or less would be fine. Do you have any advice and which areas would you target in your search if you were me? Also, are there any areas that you would stay away from? I appreciate any input that would help us out. :) Thanks!