Slow cooked pork roast with black-eyed peas, homemade macaroni and cheese, and the last of the okra from the garden which I am frying.

Auburn

In the mid-60's and sunny with white, fluffy clouds, light breeze with the crisp feel of fall on the air, and leaves on the ground to crunch under your feet while you're wearing a cute jacket, boots, and jeans. A really raging thunderstorm every month or two and gentle rain showers about once every two weeks. I could live forever in a place like that and never complain.

I've seen one for Doctor Who and Young Indiana Jones, but not Merlin.

Please PM me as well if he agrees to share. My dd12 and I love reading HP fan fic. What an awesome dad your girls have!

We awoke to find our air conditioner had gone out overnight. The kids and I have escaped to the library for the day while dh waits for the A/C man. Heat index is supposed to be 112 degrees today so there was no way we were staying at home.

LOE, as you've already noted, is really amazing at what you are describing. When you have a review lesson it even tells you which activities from previous lessons to keep working on if your child struggles in a specific area. Really well done.

This book would be an excellent place to start: Childcraft How and Why Library #9 Holidays and Birthdays I own the above book and it is laid out by month. In that month there will be 3-4 holidays mentioned from various places around the world including how the holiday is celebrated and the history behind the holiday. I don't remember any crafts or recipes, but you could probably come up with things via an internet search. Each holiday is about a 2 page spread with pictures so not too long at all.

It's going to be the only formal science I use for my 4th grader. I will let her choose one mystery to do each week. Watch the mystery and form hypothesis on day one, do the experiment/demonstration on day two, notebook on day three. and supplemental reading on day four.

Miquon can be this way if you buy all the books and follow one thread (addition, subtraction, fractions, time, etc.) through all the books before going back to the beginning and starting a different thread. Miquon covers first through third grade concept wise.

For early elementary I love the Hymns for a Kid's Heart series that you already mentioned. We would read the background story the first week and learn the first verse, and then we would add one subsequent verse each week until we completed the song. This helped to drag the series out over many years. Now that my girls are entering middle school and upper elementary, I am planning on using this for the coming years: http://www.christianbook.com/still-inspiring-stories-behind-loved-hymns/randy-petersen/9781414379722/pd/379722?dv=c&en=google&event=SHOP&kw=books-0-20%7C379722&p=1179710&gclid=CjwKEAjwz4u9BRCbioK3stnBznESJADA75xbBaTSG86xVcHUEoADbbbmHLdSz5dkgwyuJ4QwgoV-VxoCWa7w_wcB

If you can borrow login info again (this is what I do as well), then you can download the NBC Sports app onto your TV through Roku or another streaming device. Login to the NBC Sports app with your borrowed login info. It will be showing all of the Rio stuff including what is shown on NBC primetime. That's how we're going to watch this year.

Tuesdays at the Castle series

For attendance I made my own table in Word with months across the top and numbers 1 through 31 down the side. When we do school that day I put a check mark in the appropriate box. For keeping track of what we do each day, I made a checklist template where I write in what we complete each week. You can see a picture of it here. I lesson plan by subject so that it doesn't matter if we get behind or ahead since it's easily adjustable. You can read about my process of doing this here on my blog and see pictures of my subject lesson plan pages from this year's planner here and here and here. Last year was the best year I've had planning. It was super simple and didn't fail me all year long!

I've been thinking about this thread quite a bit over the past few days. I have in the past, most recently about a month ago, told my dh two items of information that other women have shared with me in confidence in our entire 14 years of marriage. Both times they were confidences that were deeply troubling to me on a personal level based upon my knowledge and interactions with these friends. I desperately needed to clear my head space and ask for advice on how to proceed in these two situations so I shared with my dh. He would never tell, nor would he let it alter his interactions with these friends. He's a gem in that respect. I would never share with him anything that I've been told in confidence that I feel I can handle on my own emotionally. I have been confided in by friends about marital troubles, miscarriages, abortions, abuse, adultery, porn addiction, and about a thousand other things. None of which my dh knows about because they were not troubling enough to me to necessitate me sharing with him. I kept the confidence and truly tried to help the friends who shared those things as much as I could. I would assume most women would treat confidences the same way and only share when it was something truly difficult to deal with, not a general gossip type situation of, "You'll never believe what Mary told me today at lunch about her ex-boyfriend and her's love life!" My dh could care less about things like that and would shut me down quickly. He only cares if it impacts me in a troubling way because he cares about me. I would have to say, yes, that I would possibly share with my dh a confidence, but the odds are highly unlikely that I would need to do so.

Met at 22 (me), 25(him). Married in less than a year from meeting 23(me), 26 (him). I wish we'd dated/been engaged longer. I don't know that we would have gotten married if we had. There were some major deal breakers that I didn't know about him until after we married that still cause problems.

Girl Scouts for a couple of years (I hated it!) Piano lessons from 6th-12th grade (I enjoyed it, but haven't really played at all since I graduated high school.) Softball and Pee Wee Basketball until we all discovered my genetically jacked up knees wouldn't let me play sports. (I loved softball and liked basketball.) Compared to all the things my kids are involved in I was a hermit, but they just didn't offer as many out of school activities back then as they do now, IMO.

Personally, I think 9 is pretty young to expect independence. One thing I learned from our stint with Heart of Dakota is leading to gradual independence. Each year HOD adds a new subject maybe two as independent and moves some subjects to semi-independent (teacher started, but child finished). even though we don't use HOD anymore, I keep that idea in the back of my mind. I have a 9 year old as well and she's very academically inclined, but I still don't have her doing anything independent at this point. Almost everything is started with me and finished with me close by so she can ask questions. The only thing I send her off to do by herself is her required reading. Honestly, I think your answer to all your troubles is in the bolded above. I don't believe your fears in the last line are founded in the reality of what other homeschool moms on this forum have shared. At least I'm holding to that hope since my oldest is in 7th and still does quite a bit with me as well. :D

It took me a long time to learn this, but curriculum is not your master; it's a tool. I let go of the need to finish a curriculum in a set amount of time a couple of years ago. Our homeschool is much better for it. It will all even out in the end and about the only thing my kids don't finish in 36 weeks is history or science (usually because we go off on bunny trails about something). I think it's really important to figure out why you are timing subjects in the first place. You might be struggling with timing subjects because you aren't convicted about it's usefulness. It's absolutely okay if you find it's not working for you and you decide to toss the idea, but it might help, as well, to look at what you hope timers accomplish for you. Here is why I time subjects in our homeschool: 1. I want their best work. Most people can only intensely focus on a task for a certain amount of time, usually not super long. I found when I tried to force my kids to finish the lesson their work would drop off and they couldn't focus as well as they did for the first 30 minutes or so. Basically my push to make them finish was taking more time than if I'd just stopped the lesson after 30 minutes and picked it up again the next day when their brain was fresh. 2. I don't want "school" to take all day and neither do they. Before I started timing our subjects or when I slack on timing subjects, I find that the kids and I drag things out. With timers, we stay on task and more productive giving all of us afternoons to explore further interest in things we've studied, pursue hobbies, time outside, etc. 3. It is a natural way to increase attention span. By using timers I can slowly train my children to increase their focus on the task at hand. I am starting my KIndergartener with just 15 minutes on his timer with a nice big 15 minute break following. My oldest, who will be in 7th grade, has an hour as the most time for a subject. Slowly, year by year, I increased the time which made it a gradual progression instead of jumping right into things with an hour of school work at a time. Sometimes I do struggle with getting the timing right for a subject, so usually the first week of school, I time them as they work through their lessons to get an idea of how long it would take. This helps me be more realistic of what I should expect based on the work load they have for that year. Of course, you can adjust as the year goes on and increase or decrease time as you see fit. Hopefully something in there helps!

They are pretty and my favorite tree to look at, but if you have to mow around them they are a PAIN. The limbs get in the way and grass has trouble growing under them because of the shade unless you plant a special kind of grass under the tree. ETA: This was in the Southern US so it might be different in another area of the country/world. As for the OP, I LOVE sycamore trees because of the white bark and beautiful golden leaves in the fall I probably wouldn't mind having one in my yard. The messiest time of year for a sycamore is when they lose their leaves because they have large leaves and it takes many bags and much work to clean them up. However, it's not enough to make me not plant one in my yard. I'd take it over the magnolia we have in our yard any day. That tree is a MESS!

The Hobbit was the one time I broke my hour rule as well! We read through it two years ago and my daughter was insistent that we had to finish the last quarter of the book in one sitting. I had never read the book either (shocking, I know) so I was just as engrossed as she was. The most recent movies made us both furious. My daughter was actually loudly exclaiming in the theater during the last movie, "He doesn't die in the book! He's not supposed to die!!!" :lol: I need to try and find the old Hobbit cartoon movie that I remember watching in elementary school and see if it's any better.

I can read aloud for hours if I have to, but I usually limit it to an hour at a time. I read for an hour at lunch (all fiction during this time) and then for about 40 minutes in the morning during our Power Hour. Mostly non-fiction during this time, but I try to find very engaging non-fiction, aka living books, to read. I would not be able to read straight from a text book or an Usborne non-fiction style book for very long at all, nor do I think my kids would listen to one for very long either. That's all of the "scheduled" reading aloud during our day, but I know I do more than that, but it's little bits here and there.

I made my own as well. My weekly checklists for my kids: https://www.dropbox.com/s/m27kzifd0dhft06/Weekly%20Checklist.jpg?dl=0 My subject plans for the year: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wjl3644yggob90u/Subject%20Planning%20for%20the%20Year.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/tskgpfxj16pz6fo/Subject%20Planning%20for%20the%20Year%202.jpg?dl=0 I keep these at the back of my homemade teacher planner and as we complete each lesson I mark it off. I transfer these plans to the weekly checklists each day for that day's work.

After starting Fable with a third grader and having to slow her up because it was getting too difficult for her age, I actually think 4th grade is a good age to start the program so I wouldn't say you are behind at all. I'm also using Treasured Conversations and W&R with my 4th grader this year as well. Right now my plan is this. Use Part 1 of TC while doing Fable. W and R Narrative I TC Parts 2 and 3 (5th grade or during our month long summer break before 5th grade) W and R Narrative II (5th grade)

We started back this week and my 4th grader is doing the following: Power Hour (Bible, Latin or Geography, Picture Study or Music Appreciation or Memory Work, and Content Read Alouds that are rotated) = 1 hour with siblings Math (30 minutes) History or Science (30 minutes) 15 minute break Spanish or grammar (20 minutes) Writing or literature (20 minutes) Spelling (10 minutes) Copy work/Cursive (10 minutes) Lit for Lunch Afternoons I set up to be more CM in flavor this year. The only required things in the afternoon are for the girls to do their assigned reading and narrate to me. One day a week they do art with The Virtual Instructor or Home Art Studio, two days a week we go out for some nature study/walk around the neighborhood, one day a week we're getting in the kitchen and I'm teaching each of them some basic kitchen skills and cooking, and one day a week we have poetry teatime. The rest of the afternoon is theirs to enjoy and do what they wish, but no screens unless it's educational on the computer (Prodigy math, typing, DIY, Scratch coding, etc.) The relaxed afternoon lasts until dinner prep time, and then they have to do their household chores while I make supper.