Honestly, once I started researching just how much educational material was available for free online I was horrified that I'd ever spent any money at all on buying curriculum or fiction books. These days our homeschool budget is generally spent on 'wants' and not 'needs'. The 'needs' all come from open source material found online. I don't even consider printing these out, instead the children get some handwriting practice taking notes or writing problems out themselves. We purchase pencils and paper and that is pretty much it. Post the grade levels and subjects you are planning to teach while you are overseas, and you will very likely receive multiple responses with excellent free resources to load onto your kindle before you leave. I've got years and years worth of language arts, math, history, and science (not vintage, either) on mine as well as art, music, and foreign language. If you will be able to charge your kindle you should be fine.

Yes, my grandmother (I'm 48, and my mother graduated high school in 1955) wore a lot of wool. Wool tights, with wool knee socks and wool slippers, wool camisole and even a wool slip. If it got really cold she wore two wool slips. I don't remember seeing long johns. She wore a heavy tweed skirt with a blouse and the wool cardigan. When she sat down she had a wool blanket to pull over her legs. She also had hot tea pretty much constantly, or at least it seemed so to me. They had coal heat in the basement that ran up the old fireplace (which had a grate in the living room and one in the upstairs hallway. There was no other heat source other than the stove in the kitchen. A bathroom/kitchen addition was added to the house in the fifties and the bathroom was put over the kitchen and a round hole with a grate was in the ceiling of the kitchen to provide heat to the bathroom. I grew up in the same house. It was never upgraded, but my parents did put a kerosene heater in that bathroom. It was normal to have ice on the inside of the windows during the winter. I remember chipping at it with my toys and throwing the ice pieces at my brother....

My first husband was from a town in Maine that was so small they didn't have numbers on their houses. There were no stores for miles. We were married in the tiny church in the town and my mother-in-law organized the townsfolk (everyone was invited) to a potluck reception in the church basement. Not only did the whole town fit in the church basement, all of the matriarchs brought their 'signature dish'. It was wonderful. Later when my husband passed away the town had another potluck in the church basement after his funeral. I guess that marriages and funerals really were community affairs in that town. I married my second husband in my hometown with less than a dozen close friends in attendance, and it was again a potluck. This time it was a potluck because one friend insisted on making the wedding cake, another insisted on making lausagna, ect. I didn't ask anyone to bring anything. I've been invited over the years to catered weddings and potluck weddings. I prefer the potluck weddings, because I can cook or bake something nice but we rarely have much spare cash to buy a nice enough gift. I think that a potluck is easier on the guests in that way, especially since the attitude among the catered wedding people seems to be that the gift has to be 'worth' the cost of paying for your meal. I've turned down some wedding invitations because I have an idea of how much the caterer costs and I know we just don't have a hundred bucks in the budget for a gift.

We have those people around here, but the funniest one I've come across is the secretary in the district office where I have to turn in our portfolios and affidavits. She doesn't say anything, but she stares at us the whole time (every time) like the way a bank teller would stare at group of folks who walked in wearing ski masks and toting weapons. It's hilarious. I totally need to video tape her. :laugh:

:" Frankly, dear, it was far more difficult to potty train the little darlings".

We all hang out in the living room together. I did have enough seats for everyone, but then one of my older daughters moved back home with her toddler and that was that. We can't fit more furniture in the living room (single-wide mobile home), so I got some bean bags for the three youngest kids. They seem to like them but they do prefer the chairs. DD moves out (after 18 months) next month and we'll be good again. We're all also looking forward to getting that bedroom back........

They make kool-aid without the dye now too if you want that. It can be hard to find, though. They call it 'invisible kool-aid'. Really. You can also dye hair with kool-aid. I, um, may have done that a time or two.........:)

Oh, heck yeah! I've had kids in a variety of school settings. Public and even private school did not provide my kids the kind of education that I can give them at home. It isn't that I'm such a great teacher, but it is more that my kids thrive in an environment that allows them time to read widely and think deeply, while limiting busywork and interruptions. My kids get to read real books, even for history and science, instead of garish textbooks with a superficial treatment of bits of information and too much fluff and junk. My kids tend to need extra time with math, which they are able to get at home. They do NOT get to use a calculator. They do get to learn Latin (not even on the radar at public school) and are formally taught critical thinking and logic (again, not taught in pubic school). I question whether sitting isolated at a desk for hours every day is good for anybody, adults included. Further, I don't think anything beats 1:1 interaction for teaching. At least one of my kids was seriously damaged by the negative aspects of tween-teen social interaction as well. I even see a significant difference in attitude between kids who attend public school with all of the pressures of homework and social demands and my kids at home who get a lot more rest.and less stress. My younger kids have never been in a classroom setting, and they do behave differently as they have only had adults to model social behaviors for them. They are a lot easier to get along with than my older kids were, since the older ones did attend both public and private school before being homeschooled and they had picked up some unpleasant ideas about appropriate behavior along the way. It would be a whole lot easier to put them on the bus in the morning and let the school take responsibility for educating them. I would have a lot more time for my own work and my own projects. I've thought about it. I just know my kids would not do as well there as they are doing at home.

My state does require records, but for myself I've found the most useful way to keep track of what is going on is to have a blank journal (a pretty one) and I just start a page with the date and write down what we did, what my thoughts were about that, any ideas i have to try in the future, ect. I write down what we read, what we talk about, and list the worksheets we get done. I have found it is easier to have a separate journal for each child. I guess it is sort of a narrative of what we are doing. I find it more useful than a log or a list because i write down my personal impressions, for example "Child X is having a hard time distinguishing between the short vowel sounds of i and e when he sounds out a word, but he can identify them correctly if I just ask for the letter sound. We'll spend a little more time on sounding out cvc words with i or e as the vowel and see how that goes". I do objectives for the state, and I keep a log for the state, and some work samples. I don't think this really helps me much at all (the objectives are useful). But the journal helps me look back over time and see patterns of behavior, learning issues, and strengths as well as giving me a clear idea of what we have covered.

Why in the world would you ask a stupid question like that anyway? This is the PUBLIC SCHOOL here, the best school possible for your child, so just shut up and put 'em on the bus already! You should just KNOW because this is public school that your child will be educated by professionals to the highest standards and you certainly are not qualified to know the details. Oh, and make sure you pay those property taxes promptly and get going on those PTA fundraisers. (Geez, parents! I hate it when they act like they think they know something! This lady should go get a teaching degree and twenty years experience in the classroom before she dares to have an opinion on what we do, and until then she needs to shut up and let us educate her kid the right way without interfering in the process.) :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

We didn't stick with K12 for a whole year. We could have, though. I just mainly wanted to add that my public high school was not accredited, and neither is the local public high school in the district where I live now. There is only one public high school in our entire county that is actually accredited and about a dozen that are not. I wouldn't worry about that issue.

I'm 48 and I do the purple stuff you can wash out. Well, actually I mix the pink and the blue to get the purple shade I want. it washes out, so if I feel a need to be conservative, I take a shower. I really like it. What the heck, you only go around once. Maybe I'll try blue or green next.

Median income for a household in my area is $32K, per capita income is $22K Average home price is 100K but, actually, you can get a perfectly nice house in a decent part of town for a lot less. Lots of independent tool and die shops here and they do hire. The cost of living seems low. Not a bad place if you are into watching the grass grow.

We have a tight budget. Anything I buy or make that is for snacking goes in a particular place in the kitchen, but the kids still have to ask before having any. That rule is to make sure everyone has a chance to have some. If it isn't in the snack place don't bother to even ask. With all of my kids, I've had some that 'helped themselves' to something that was intended to be dinner for everyone, and I've had kids that would invite a couple of friends over and pretty much eat everything in the house. We just don't have the income to buy that much food and have it on hand like that. We simply cannot afford to have the kids (and their friends) rummaging around in the kitchen and helping themselves. It would literally mean we would not have enough food to make it to the next paycheck. We do have some emergency backup foods, like bulk rice and beans, but the kids don't think ahead to how much they would not like to have to eat plain rice and beans for several days until dh got paid again.

I hit a nun on the head with a bottle rocket when I was a kid. I grew up in a city, on an alley that opened out onto the local Catholic church complex complete with convent. The nun and all of her nun sisters were out drinking beer and watching the neighborhood fireworks with everyone else. Good thing I didn't attend the Catholic school there.....

Woiw, what kind of intrusive psychos do you live near? I wouldn't be able to reply politely to that one, between laughing hysterically and all the four letter words that come to mind........ I don't have any words of wisdom for you, but my kids do more chores than yours and the adult ones mostly turned out okay :)

This is something that has come up. My oldest grandchild is in third grade. I've always maintained my willingness to homeschool my grandkids but their parents have to be responsible for dropping them off at my house and picking them up, as well as purchasing materials. I've had some serious discussions with my stepdaughters about it and we've come close, but ultimately they decide that the logistics don't work for them (ie too far to drive to drop the child off at my house). But oddly enough they think it is just fine to drive to my house for babysitting. Maybe babysitting is okay because it isn't an every day thing, I don't know. I'm getting older and I am less interested, so if the topic comes up again in the next five years or so I'm not sure if I'll still be willing.

Click on your 'start menu', which is the little round multicolor ball thingie in the bottom left part of your screen. A list of some programs should come up. At the bottom of the list it will say 'all programs'. click on 'all programs' Now you should have a whole list of programs with a slider bar thingie on the right. Slide down the list to a folder named 'Accessories' click on the folder 'accessories' Inside that folder near the bottom is another folder labeled 'ease of access' click on the 'ease of access' folder and you should see in there 'windows speech recognition' That's what you want. It has a tutorial for itself and everything. DD was 'teaching' this to a friend just this afternoon........pretty soon every tween in the county is going to be dictating their writing assignments........I'm just going to blame DH.

I was an RN, but going into my forties I just didn't have the stamina to work nights and weekends and homeschool during the day. I guess it didn't help that I kept on having babies too. I quit for a few years to be a stay at home mom. Just because I was home I got a few babysitting jobs which seemed like the ideal thing to bring in some money of my own but for various reasons I quickly became disillusioned with that. I enjoyed tutoring when I was in college and particularly enjoyed math and science so I've given some thought to doing tutoring at some point. I also have an undergrad degree in business along with the nursing and I've thought about doing some part time office work as I really enjoy organizing paperwork. I think I was really meant to be one of those super efficient assistant-types you see in the movies all the time, but I accidentally went into nursing after college instead. I'm working on a manuscript for a nonfiction book right now and that should keep me busy over the summer and then I guess I had better learn something about marketing it. I hope it sells, but it may not. I'm not broke enough to be desperate about it and I'm really enjoying the process. I'm not a good writer but i love my topic and don't have a problem doing the multiple re-writes it takes to get it right. I'm also looking into writing apps for the android market, just for fun.

Darned if I know. Apparently Dh showed it to dd. It is something that is supposed to help make the computers more accessible to people with handicaps as far as I understand it. But I'm the only one here who is feeling handicapped right now.....

DD, age nine, was given a writing assignment today. Instead of screaming and melting into the floor and whining, she actually giggled and ran into the kitchen to the laptop. I just thought she had finally figured out that typing a written assignment out on the keyboard was faster and easier than writing it by hand........ Nope. What she had figured out was how to use the speech recognition function along with Microsoft Word. The little dear dictated her assignment, ran the spellchecker and the grammar checker, and then saved the darn document in dropbox all by herself. It took her like five minutes. I'm feeling old, out-of-date, and nearly obsolete right now. :ohmy: :scared: :sad: :blink:

Hah! Got you beat! MY UPS driver is my son-in-law...............:)

I was starting to be swayed by all the concern our friends and family had shown regarding my homeschooled kids and their lack of experience in dealing with bullies and other social situations common to public school like being pressured to try drugs and alcohol. So, I called up the local public school and arranged for a tour. There in the lobby were large colorful posters announcing the new "Bullying Prevention Program" that the school had just instituted. "Oh darn!" I thought. Then I turned around and saw the "Just say no" posters. I sighed and just walked out. I don't know what I'm going to do now......

Thank you for the reminder!