My paternal grandfather had served in WWII. He was one of only five men in his company to return alive. He never talked about it. Ever. We found out more about his time in service at his funeral from other vets that attended. When the draft began for Vietnam, my grandfather was adamant that my father would not go. In fact he told my dad that he would smuggle him across the Canadian border himself. According to my dad his exact words were, "No boy should have to see the things that you see in war and I'll never let my son be one of the ones to see it." My dad joined the National Guard instead and never had to go overseas at all. I was shocked when my dad told me the story because my grandfather was one of the most patriotic people I'd ever met. I don't know what he experienced in WWII but whatever it was, it definitely haunted him.

Southern style biscuits. The same kind you'd put sausage gravy on, but instead do chocolate gravy.

This is my grandma's recipe: 1 cup of sugar 2 Tbsp of flour 2 Tbsp of cocoa 1 tsp vanilla 2 Tbsp butter Whisk together the sugar, flour, and cocoa really well in skillet. On medium heat add warm water. As it's cooking add more water if it's too thick or more flour if it's too runny. When you have the consistency you want (kind of a thick syrup, but not as thick as pudding), add the vanilla and butter. Serve over biscuits. It's thicker than chocolate sauce but not as thick as a pudding. Kind of in between those two consistences.

I recently made chocolate gravy and biscuits at a church potluck here in Texas. They had never had it even though it is very common for breakfast in Arkansas where I grew up. Anyone else ever had chocolate gravy? As for your guests, since they've been in the US a while, I'd probably just make something that your family really loves or something with a story behind it, like a recipe passed down in your family.

Let's see.... We don't have set wake up times which we probably need, but even I can't stick to them so it is what it is. I divide our school day into three large chunks of time. Those large chunks of time are what we loop. On a good day we will get to all three blocks. On a normal day we'll get to two of them, hence the loop. :thumbup1: Our loop looks like this: Power Hour (aka Morning Meeting, Morning Time) 1 hour Skill Subjects (math, language arts, foreign language, independent reading) 2 hours Content Subject (block schedule of either history (first semester) or science (second semester)) 30 minutes-1 hour Skill Subjects (see above) 2 hours My goal is to hit Skill Subjects every day and either Power Hour or Content Subjects depending on what we did the day before. If things are going well then we will do all three blocks in one day. On the days that we get all three in, I cut the content subject time to 30 minutes or one day of work. On the days when we only get to skill subject and content subject, I bump the content subject time to one hour and do two days of work. I hope that made sense. :tongue_smilie:

Yes, I was initially planning on only using part one of TC, the grammar portion while completing W&R. I had planned to do a language arts loop with her where we hit grammar/literature twice a week and writing/spelling three times a week. However, I will need to amend the curriculum I'm using because she found the Treasured Conversations lessons and insisted on starting them now so it looks like she'll actually finish the grammar portion before we even technically start 4th grade. Now my plan is just to replace FLL 3 or PLL for TC in the language arts loop. I already have both, but I haven't decided which one I want to use. Right now I'm leaning toward FLL 3.

The U2 song has been in my head for two days straight thanks to this thread title!!! And I agree with Treasured Conversations!

I'm one of the teachers at our co-op this fall. It's not a large co-op so I can't do much about the way the classes are divided up. I received the reading list for the upper level (7-12th) literature/worldview class. My oldest will be in this class next year and the majority of the books I believe will be too difficult for her. I was talking this over with the director yesterday and she agreed that the younger grades in that class might have trouble. She suggested I come up with alternatives for the difficult books and bring them to our last planning meeting before summer break. I need help finding alternatives! I'm assuming the teacher would want books subbed in that are similar in topic/theme so the younger grades could join in discussions in class. Here's the list: To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee) Animal Farm (George Orwell) The Law (Frederic Bastiat) The Richest Man in Babylon (George Clason) The Diary of Ann Frank (Ann Frank) The Great Divorce (C.S. Lewis) Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain) The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (Ben Franklin) I'm thinking Animal Farm, Tom Sawyer, Diary of Anne Frank, and To Kill a Mockingbird would be fine. It's the others that I'm worried about. Any suggestions?

Another thing to consider about trying to finish books or curriculum within a certain time is to design your loop for that. So if you need to do three lessons of grammar a week to finish the curriculum in 36 weeks, then make sure grammar shows up in your language arts loop three times. If you are really concerned about finishing I would not try to loop anything that must be done 5 days a week for 36 weeks because you would not be able to finish that in 36 weeks on a loop schedule. The only thing I'm looping right now subject wise is language arts for my oldest. The goal is to complete the loop four times in a week. IMO, language arts and extras make the best loops.

The Sentence Family is the fun, intro to grammar that we use! I print the pictures out in color and print the story on the back so I don't have to do any drawing.

Here's a link to my 3rd grader's school checklist for this year: https://www.instagram.com/p/BB-_IMQLd6G/?hl=en Here's a link to my master checklist page in my planner where I have checklists for all three kids: https://www.instagram.com/p/BFXAVv4Ld7B/?hl=en These are basic, bare bones templates that I fill in with what is completed each day.

My signature has a link to a long list of Kindergarten read aloud books pulled from The Read Aloud Handbook.

My dh would never initiate because he doesn't notice things like that. I guess I'm too good at looking like I have everything under control! :lol: My strategy was to be logical and present my wishes to him. I started with pointing out that homeschooling on top of mothering and taking care of the house adding a full time job, a full time job with no days off. I told him that I needed some down time each week that could be counted on for me to get out of the house and get away for a bit. I told him I would be taking three hours every Monday evening unless there was another day that worked better for him during the week. During that time he would be responsible for feeding the kids (I could grab whatever he needed from the story on grocery shopping day) and putting them to bed. I needed this to happen every week barring an emergency or something with work that he absolutely couldn't get out of. Basically I didn't give him a choice, I told him I had a need (personal time), why (all day, every day with the kids) and how (three hours every Monday). He was fine with it and totally supportive. Even if he hadn't been I still would have done it because as others have stated, they are his children too and it won't kill him to spend three hours with them alone each week. To be honest, it's turned into something the kids look forward to as much as I do. They ride bikes with dad, eat ice cream and frozen pizza for dinner, play board games, etc. They love spending time like that alone with their dad and I get time alone to just be Chelli again not mom or wife for three hours. Win, win. My vote is to not ask, but tell him this is what is going to happen. You can compromise on the details.

I have stick straight fine hair and the way it worked for me was to have it cut in layer in the back that were pretty short. I would just put some mousse or gel on my hands and run my hand up the back of my head to make it stand out, then just let it dry that way. I knew it was time for a new cut when I couldn't do that any more and had to break out the flat iron to curl it up.

It's alive and well here in my part of Texas! I can think of 10 of my friends and acquaintances who have that exact cut off the top of my head and probably more if I really thought about it. I did get that cut once and really loved it, but my hair grow crazy fast, and we don't have the money for me to be getting it cut every 4-6 weeks.

I get three hours on Monday nights totally alone. I usually don't do anything except work on my writing or read at our local coffee shop. It is necessary for me and I told my dh as much. He was 100% on board and glad I told him I needed that time. I also have an entire week every summer where I'm totally by myself (no dh, no kids). It is fabulous. I watch whatever I want on TV, work on projects around the house, spend a day going through privately owned booktores in Houston with my bff, sleeping in and staying up late, working on homeschool planning, etc. Sheer bliss every year.

We have the game you linked and really enjoy it. I'm hoping to get more of the sets so we can mix them all together and play. Games are pretty short so it's not too time intensive. My only complaint is the cards are small. They are not normal playing card size. It's not so awful you can't read it, but it would make them easier to hold.

ESFP the party animal checking in! :party: And so far I'm the only one!

Logic of English Foundations! Any program that lets kids shoot nerf guns at the letters as you say the sounds is a win around here! Plus there are lots of other get up and move type games and also some board games built into the program too.

It wasn't sickness, but sleepiness that caused me to separate my two oldest after Christmas. My oldest would sleep so late that by the time we got around to their combined subjects it was really late and was never getting done. I'm really glad I put them in their own studies for science and history. Now they can each do their own thing at their exact learning level.

We are Olive Street School. I wanted a name that sounded like it could be a real school in case we ever needed to use it. It does have a religious meaning for us as well but it's not apparent in the name.

I'm using Beautiful Feet and Quark Chronicles Botany/McHenry Botany in 8 for my 6th grader for history and science. Like you, I love to plan but sometimes I don't have time. Both of these programs give me enough structure that I if I don't have time to add more, then I know the bases are being covered, but if I have time, it's easy to add more without it feeling like too much. I've been really pleased for the first time in a long time with how our content subject studies have gone this year.

Here is my upcoming 4th grader's schedule for next year: We do regular school 4 days a week and then 1 day of very light school. On regular days: Power Hour with siblings (Bible, geography, Latin, poetry, art/music appreciation, special studies, etc.) 45 minute block of math (this dd LOVES math so she's working through various math curricula) 15 minutes of Spanish 45 minute block of LA (writing, grammar, literature, spelling on a loop) 20ish minutes of assigned independent reading 30-45 minute block of history or science depending on the term (I block schedule these so history in the winter and summer and science in the fall and spring) Total time: almost 4 hours On light day: Nature study art Thinking Tree homeschool journal computer learning (prodigy math, dance mat typing, reading eggspress, etc.) No time limits.

New American Cursive was going to be my suggestion as well.

Dance Mat Typing