I had my second shot of Pfizer on Tuesday. Felt OK until Wednesday morning when I started getting achy and developed chills which lasted all day. No fever, but I was quite fatigued. I’d been skiing the day before and was already sore from that, but the shot seemed to magnify the soreness. I woke up Thursday with a slight headache and have been fine since. My DH had his first Moderna shot on Wednesday and had no reaction.

Agreed. I have an 8 year old child who is very high risk for Covid complications due to medical issues. We’re able to get his older brother (16) vaccinated as well as ourselves, but neither he nor his middle siblings are able to get vaccinated, obviously. The child in question is being homeschooled this year, but he would really be better served in school because of his profound disability. I have a feeling it won’t be safe to send him back next year, either. :(

Our oldest son asked to go to school in 8th grade. We sent him to the large public middle school where he already had friends. Based on his experience there, we decided to send him to a small private high school. While our district’s schools are ranked very highly, and seem to be well-liked by parents, we were not impressed with the constant screen time, student behavior and low academic expectations. Had we not had the experience with the public middle school, we probably would have sent him to our large public high school and would have been dissatisfied there. The small private high school has had many benefits: they have been 5 days a week, in person all year. There have been some Covid cases, but not many. They are doing a great job with social distancing and masking. He is playing varsity basketball and football as a sophomore, whereas in the large public school, he likely would not have the same opportunity. The school is small enough that they know him well enough to know when he needs to be pushed to achieve more. There is a strong, supportive community and in these times when our church is not even open, it helps me to know that he has chapel at school twice a week and his teachers integrate our faith into their classes.

My grandpa always told the story that his grandpa used to chop wood with Abraham Lincoln. I have no idea if it’s true, and obviously no way of verifying it, but in tracing my family history, my great-great-grandpa did live in the same area as Abraham Lincoln and around the same time.

Peter Pan, I don’t think she has a SLD in math. She definitely has anxiety and likely ADHD. Her anxiety has worsened considerably with Covid although it has improved in some ways more recently. I tried to pursue an anxiety diagnosis with her ped, but he suggested counseling. Which may very well be the right decision, but between Covid and her unwillingness to talk to other people about her anxiety, it didn’t happen. She meets a lot of the criteria for ADHD as well - I’ve wondered about this for years. Maybe now is the time to pursue this with her doctor. I’ve used quite a few of the Evan Moor books as supplements for my older kids, so that’s a good suggestion - I’ll look at adding that in.

That’s good advice. Word problems are hard for her, and I probably do need to focus on them more than I have.

I actually used the Math Mammoth topical series with her last year, when we only had certain topics to cover at home and school was supposed to do the rest. So that’s definitely an option. She said she just blanked on the test. We’ve been working on fractions all year, and she tells me how incredibly bored she is with them, but she couldn’t remember how to multiply them. She couldn’t remember how to do a subtraction problem where she had to borrow twice. She couldn’t remember how to do long division. To be fair, with the weird scope and sequence she’s had, with two years at the school and this year with MUS, there were some concepts she hasn’t had a lot of exposure to - like decimals and percentages.

I just got my daughter’s Stanford test scores back and they show a need for some remediation, especially in math. She is in 5th grade, but testing at the 18th percentile overall in math. Now I realize that standardized tests don’t show the entire picture, but throughout the test, she kept saying she couldn’t remember how to do various problems that should have been familiar. Even without taking her test scores into account, I see some deficits in math and have been trying to find a way to address them - the test scores just reiterate the need. Some background: she spent 3rd and 4th grade attending a private school part-time in their homeschool hybrid program. She was in school 3 days a week, home 2 days. School divided math as follows: they covered math operations in those 3 days, sending no homework, and parents were supposed to work on math facts, time, measurement, money and word problems at home. In hindsight, she was not getting nearly enough instruction OR practice there. This year, she has completed 3/4 of Math U See Epsilon but she is DONE with fractions every day. She wants more variety, but when I show her something like CLE, she gets overwhelmed by the variety of different problems and the length of the lesson. I had some old Singapore books on hand (3A and 3B, which I had bought for her before we decided to send her to the private school) and she’s doing those but a) it’s 3rd grade and b) I’m not sure if there is enough practice or review. Her teacher at the school reported that she was diligent in her work there and understanding things well. At home, she shows signs of ADHD and also has some anxiety at play. I’d posted a few days ago about whether to allow children input in choosing curriculum and I think we’re at the point where I need to make an executive decision, although I’ll definitely take into account her learning style. Recommendations for resources that could help me bring her up to grade level, taking into account her need for review? I personally think CLE would be good for her, but it will definitely be a challenge for her.

Yes, you absolutely can start them in SWI-A without watching the TWSS videos!

I have not been in the stores lately because we do curbside pickup from Walmart and Aldi. We have a Walmart order ready for pickup today and for the first time in awhile, we’re not able to get a large number of items because they’re out of stock — bananas, tea, sausages, a toothbrush, English muffins, avocados, etc. We had quite a few substitutions, too.

Yes - great suggestion. We are working on the Multiplication book now, but it’s taking longer than I’d hoped. I do have the Division book on the shelf as well.

This just seems wrong!

I think it sounds like a great idea. Add in some discussion, documentaries, if you like, and you’d be fine!

In winter, we generally keep it at 68 during the day and 64 at night. We used to keep it lower at night but it would get ridiculously cold downstairs at night where we have one bedroom. During this cold snap, it’s set at 68 degrees 24x7 and it doesn’t get much above 62 downstairs, even during the day. I’d prefer to keep it the house at 70 during the day and maybe 66 at night but DH disagrees ... In summer, we usually keep it at 78 during the day and I’m not sure what it is at night. Again, I’d prefer it cooler but frugality wins out.

My pedals came entirely preassembled.

I’m in a similar situation with my 5th grade daughter. I’m leaning towards CLE right now, because it’s what I’m most comfortable using and it worked well with my two older boys. I do have Learn Math Fast but I’m not sure it’s the best fit because there’s not enough review for her. I really think she needs the spiral that CLE provides but I don’t think she’s going to like it. The lessons are longer than what she is used to doing, but she probably needs that. With CLE, there are ways to accelerate. My daughter, for example, knows some things that are above her grade level and yet doesn’t know some things that are below her grade level. She went part-time to a private school that has a unique scope and sequence for math. CLE has a short section of new material and then a longer review section. If my daughter knows a particular concept, I plan to possibly do two sections of new material and then just one review section. You can also cut out the tests and quizzes, but I find them helpful.

Our church isn’t even meeting right now, except for online, because of the pandemic. Once I am fully vaccinated, I am toying with the idea of going back to church, possibly a different one if ours is still not in-person. But I would not go to any church that is not masking, nor would I allow my children to attend any activity where masking is not required. (We just tried a new co-op and pulled out after one hour because few people were masked.) It really stinks, but it’s necessary for us to be pretty cautious since we have another child who is high risk.

A friend and I used to attend a small Catholic homeschool convention in our area, even though we’re not Catholic. We liked the smaller size and cost compared to our state’s larger convention. It was a good time for us to connect and talk about homeschooling. We see each other at other times, but usually with another friend who doesn’t homeschool and so we don’t want to bore her. The Catholic conference has now been cancelled for two years in a row. The larger state convention has moved locations to a neighboring state with less restrictive Covid requirements. I’m not quite sure how I feel about that. Not going, for sure.

Yes, I have been able to get my first dose. I qualify under the healthcare umbrella. My second dose is in a few weeks. My mom got hers and my dad has an appointment scheduled, but they worked very hard to get appointments. Things seem to be loosening up in the last week or so, with more options available at pharmacies, clinics and mass vaccine sites. Other family members have gotten it through their employment.

This is all great feedback. Thanks!

I’m definitely seeing similar things in my 11 and 14 year olds. It’s hard. My extrovert has become very cautious and says she now has social anxiety. My 14 year old was already introverted and has become more so, not wanting to go anywhere that might be risky in anyway. They’re both concerned about their little brother with an immune deficiency, and I have no idea when he will be able to be vaccinated or if it will even make a difference for him (he tends to not hold onto his immunity from vaccinations — he gets immune infusions weekly as a result, and while I suppose people donating plasma will eventually have Covid antibodies in their blood, I don’t know if they do now.)

When I started out homeschooling, I only had enough money to buy CLE math and language arts, SOTW and Mystery Science. We read a lot of books, watched a lot of documentaries and my two older boys did just fine. They both have a solid academic foundation even if the work wasn’t always riveting. My daughter is younger and much more opinionated on what she does for school. She is now in 5th grade. For 3rd and 4th grade, she went part-time to a homeschool hybrid program, primarily for social reasons. She loved it at the time, but now I’m finding some real gaps in her education, particularly in math. She likes things that are hands-on, so we’re using MUS Epsilon this year. She is so bored doing fractions every day. At the same time, she’s not strong on mental math or her math facts which make everything so much harder. I pulled out a CLE 4th grade light unit to try out today and she had trouble with it. But honestly, I think it might be what she needs — more review, the spiral, more variety. It’s just that the lessons are so much longer than MUS and she thinks it’s boring. We also have Beast Academy online that we use for review/variety and while she likes it well enough, she gets tired of it when she does it too often. We’ve tried Math Mammoth and Singapore, too, and she didn’t care for any of them. I guess my question is: do you just get to a point where you say, this is what we’re doing and suck it up, or do you continually try to tweak and find what is the best fit for a particular child? I don’t want her to hate math, but I do want her to have a strong foundation, and she’s not where she needs to be as a 5th grader at this point.

My brother had the same experience, having had Covid a few months ago, and then a strong immune response to the first Moderna shot.

Mystery Science was a big hit for us at those ages.

Meaning adults, right? Or at least those 16 and over for the Pfizer vaccine?