Truly appalling. How can they not see that, and why aren't the taxpayers rioting en masse about that stuff? UGH!

I'm totally agreeing about the phones. If they're doing shoddy work on dishes and such, I'd take the phones away. Phones are a privilege, not a right. I'd also spend some time going over with them exactly what "cleaning the kitchen" means (or whatever chore). Make a checklist for them if need be. And if they don't do the job well, you interrupt their leisure time to make them come and fix it.

Back in high school, I took some classes at the University of Delaware. One was Math for Elementary Ed Teachers. This wasn't a methods class; it was a content class, up to about fourth grade level math. I was bored out of my mind and struggled not to fall asleep every class. There was a woman in there for the third time because she had not yet passed the class. And she wanted to be an elementary teacher! I went home, called my boyfriend who was away at his second year of college, and said, "That homeschooling thing we talked about doing with our children? Yeah, we're doing it. I can't possibly do worse than stuff like this." (Thankfully, he agreed that I could certainly at least top that, or I likely wouldn't have married him.) ETA: I should add that while math is indeed my strong subject, and of course we aren't ever going to be college level experts in every subject. But as homeschooling parents, we get outside help when we need it. If you can't do third grade math, okay, you get your child a tutor, or video lessons, or your other half teaches math, or whatever. But how does a public school teacher get away with not being able to do the math?

Priceless!

I wanted to add to the discussion my thoughts on Henle. I looked at it at a fair this year. It looked good. But the type was small, and the book was short and fat. For other people, that's not a problem, but I wasn't thrilled by it, and I knew it would be an instant turnoff to my daughter. I know, I know, sometimes school isn't fun, and you suck it up, buttercup, but Latin is her favorite subject. I'm unwilling for it to make her miserable. So I decided that I didn't care if Henle was the absolute best there is; if it's not a good fit for us, best doesn't matter. I ended up buying CAP's Latin Alive to use after we finish Latin's Not So Tough, and both she and I liked the clean, tidy look to it. It has historic and culture stuff too. I have read that it is based on Wheelock's.

Tibbie is right; two minutes is about right for preschoolers, open ended toys get a ton of mileage at my house. Duplo/Lego, trains, blocks, the kitchen set, and the Imaginext Batman stuff are favorites. (But the best toys of all are his brothers; there is one 33 months older and one 25 months younger, so he's rarely bored or lonely.) However, my preschooler asks to do school like the big kids do. He wants actual papers to hold and to show Daddy at the end of the day. He does a lot of finger paint, water colors, crayons, etc., but sometimes he wants more. So I google "free printable preschool pack theme" (where theme can be dinosaurs, super heroes, fall, dogs, whatever), and lots of good stuff pops up. He gets little things he can sort and glue by size, cutting lines, stuff to trace, shadows to match, rows of things where he circles which one is different, etc. I generally pick ones he can do on his own if I tell him what to do (I'll tell him to sort them by size, and then I'll work with the next biggest brother, who sits next to the preschooler at the table, so I am right there. But I also spend some time doing the counting ones and helping him with the letter ones if he wants. If you're on Pinterest, PM me here, and I'll give you my Pinterest link, because I have plenty of preschool packs on my Pinterest boards.

TSC is one of them few stores closer than 20 minutes for me, so that's even better -- thank you!!

Oh, one other thing that would be hugely useful to families: checkout area in the children's area! Our favorite branch is tiny; I can check out at the front desk and still hear/attend to my children in the children's area. Another branch has a bigger children's room, but I can check the books out at the desk there, no need to check out at the main desk. Those branches are fine. But the big library with the biggest selection (and the strictest fines) has the children's room in the lower level. I wouldn't mind that, except that it has no checkout desk there. So we have to take everything to the main level, where the checkout desk is near the quiet study area and the automatic doors. It's very child un-friendly.

Oh, good to know! Although I hope we never need to know how to get rid of inside fleas again! Cheaper for the same stuff is always good, although one reason I did go with the Ultracide is because there is a place locally that sells it (that was before I was a Prime member, lol).

That would seriously have bothered me as well. I don't love the idea of the communal pot of supplies, because children who naturally take care of their supplies should be able to use their nice ones, and children who don't take care of things should have an incentive to do so, but I suppose in the name of everyone having something, maybe the communal pot is logical. But to suggest a name brand and then not care -- that's ridiculous. Today, school supplies that I buy for MY kids and that they know are theirs (because each of them has a pencil box full of their stuff, two boxes for my big two, who use lots of colored pencils) top my list of reasons to homeschool.

We had a flea infestation three years ago, and it was such a huge pain. We resorted to this spray. I'd vacuum and then get everyone out of the house. Then I'd spray all floor surfaces, and we'd leave the house for a few hours. Repeat in a week and another week, IIRC, maybe every two weeks (and mop after a bit). You need to kill the live fleas and then kill the not-yet-hatched ones when they hatch in a couple of weeks. It was a pain for about a month, but it worked. Nobody seems to have suffered any ill effects from the spray, and I was careful about their exposure. http://www.amazon.com/Ultracide-flea-Tick-Professional-Control-Product/dp/B002QS0WDO. (And we gave the cats flea baths.) We could tell they were decreasing because we put little bowls of water with a bit of dish soap by outlets at night, with night lights in the outlets. The lights attract fleas, and they jump in the soapy water and die. At first we saw a lot, then a little, and finally, none. And we didn't see them jump on us or bite us anymore either, after about a month. Since then, we have used Advantage on our cats monthly from about May to October. No more fleas!

Nobody's had formal lessons, so they haven't really abandoned anything. DD is teaching herself piano via our keyboard and computer programs and YouTube. All of my big kids (DD, DS1, DS2, and the biggest kid of all, DH) are teaching themselves electric guitar and bass.They're surprisingly good, considering they only started seven months ago.

Oh, man, this thread is hilarious! I am sure some of this is not just homeschool but the way they are, but some of my favorites: I'm not even going to try to describe seven-year-old DD and her colonial clothing obsession, making four trips, over two days, to the milliner's shop at Williamsburg, so she could discuss the minute details of the various types of stays with the proprietor. At one point, their favorite game was to dress up as Greek/Roman gods and set up a solstice meeting on our back hill. DD put on blue, with foil-covered big round buttons as fasteners, and was Artemis. DS1 wore black and stomped around, muttering that this meeting was taking too long, and couldn't he, Hades, please go back to the underworld? DS2 put on a bright red and orange shirt of DH's and sat in an iron chair, as Hephaestus, and they put a crown on toddler DS3's head and made him Zeus because his name starts with Z. We always say it's a shame they don't have more imagination. We live near Gettysburg, and three years ago, when my oldest son was seven, we visited a bunch of the Civil War sites. While touring Soldiers National Cemetary, we overheard a bunch of twenty-somethings talking (in American accents, so not likely foreign), and one of them said, "Wait. Lee fought for the Confederates??" Seven-year-old son's eyes about popped out of his head, and he and DD, then ten, started listing multiple generals from both sides. Also, that same son a few months ago (and this is especially funny if you know my son and his very literal sense of humor), when someone commented that something was taking a long time, replied, "Yeah, it's just like the American Civil War. Everyone thought it would be over quickly, so they just kept watching."

Oh, and as a side note, one of the coolest things about homeschooling is the flexibility to have special holidays. When our family birthday (aka our wedding anniversary) is not on a weekend, like it is this year, it's a school holiday. But also, I've scheduled one full day off a couple of days before Halloween and a full day off the first week in May. Because my children are costume nuts (and that's putting it mildly), they wanted a full day to devote to creating their Halloween and May the Fourth (Star Wars Day) costumes, without pressure. So I am planning for the days off on about Wednesday of those weeks. So do discuss with your DH the joy of being able to let the kids have off for their birthdays or other special days as their interests dictate, if they don't use up all their breaks in summer.

I agree with another poster who said that things are just different, and you have to deal with that. If the schedule you've proposed works for you, then he needs to come up with something other than "this is what I always knew" as his argument for the agrarian schedule. Different doesn't mean bad; it means different. My mom homeschooled my two younger siblings, and she kept to the public school calendar -- because my dad was a public school teacher and had a different summer schedule, and the other brother and I had the same public school schedule. It made sense for her (and I'd probably have done the same); it doesn't make sense for my family. We manage to swim and do martial arts camp during the summer, and go on a little vacation, but we don't have a lot of neighborhood kids around, and the ones that we do have aren't home during the day in the summer anyway. July and August are too hot to play outside for a good portion of the day, so we stay inside, in the room with the AC unit, and we do schoolwork and head outside in the late afternoon and evening when it's nicer. Last school year, our area had a ton of snow days, for extreme cold and ice, mainly; the public schools had off, but we worked through them. The kids complained a little, but I reminded them to keep their eye on the end of the year (we did allow some outside time, but it's also quite cold, icy, and windy here, so they don't go outside for long when it's that bad). When they were sitting on the beach the day after Memorial Day, completely done for the year, enjoying the nicest summer days, not too hot, not too cold, they thanked me for making them work when the public schools had off. I'd ask DH what he thinks the kids will be missing out on by not having a traditional summer break, and I'd explain that not taking that big break allows more flexibility, especially if you need to count a certain number of days. He might have some very good points, and if so, I'd consider honoring those, but he needs something concrete.

Pick what works for you. Our state allows us to start counting July 1, so I base things on that. In July, we start light summer work. (Well, this year, we got derailed by a home construction project.) Early August, we will start our regular work. We school four days a week because we take one day off for a martial arts class and errands. We take off birthdays and any day DH is off of work for a holiday. We will take a full week off at Thanksgiving and two weeks around Christmas and New Year's. We will also take a week off at Easter, and a week sometime in the spring, to be determined later. It'll be whenever the first really nice spring weather appears. We should still be done right around Memorial Day and should be able to take all of June off. Working through the hottest and coldest months gives us that flexibility to take off when it's nice. Other people like six weeks on, one week off. Others do nine weeks and three weeks. I found that life is unpredictable sometimes, especially with little ones, so I don't schedule those set breaks like that, but we will take off whatever days during the year that we need to.

There's a place here where admission to the park itself is totally free. You could walk around all day and watch shows, totally for free. Then you have the option of buying a few tickets to use on a few rides, or you can buy an all-you-can-ride-pass. You can choose different options for different people, so the adults can get a few tickets to ride a few things with the kids, and the kids can get the full pass. I think that's pretty cool! (In comparison, Hersheypark doesn't offer that, so several years ago, when my ILs took us, they had to pay full adult price for the two of them, who didn't ride many rides, and me, who was very pregnant and not able to ride many of the rides, and certainly no rollercoasters. I'd have loved to see a special limited rider option or something.)

My dear, sweet 10yo son has always seemed to have his head in the clouds a bit, the absent minded professor type. We often have to call his name more than once to get his attention, and he tends to start talking or making random noises often, without seeming to notice that someone else is talking. We thought maybe he couldn't hear well, but multiple ENTs and an audiologist declared him to pass a hearing test and for everything ENT related to be normal (possibly slightly enlarged adenoids, and he does have some environmental allergies, but nothing major). He's never been an auditory learner at all but is highly visual and kinesthetic. His language has always been normal, pretty average, neither delayed nor ahead. He did take a while to get some sounds, so he did do speech therapy for about eighteen months (from 7-8.5), which helped clear up his "r" and "s" sounds. His pronunciation is good, the occasional adorable mistake aside when he's read a new complicated word. He is a good and happy reader, if maybe on the slightly slower side (I'm a super fast reader, so I'm really not sure what's to be expected for age 10). His test scores a year ago for both math and verbal were extremely excellent, and he shows signs of being very smart, possibly gifted in some areas (he's very logical and engineerish). His handwriting has always been well above excellent for his age, very atypical for a boy. All that to say, I don't think dyslexia or other typical learning disabilities are concerns. Possibly ADD, but not the hyperactive type (I have one of those; this child is different). He can focus quite well on a task, whether it's something he's interested in or not. He does really well if I give him a list of work, and he sits down and powers through it. He is a bit prone to headaches if he's tired, hungry, thirst, etc., although not migraines. He did have reading glasses, and although at his last visit a few months ago, the eye doc said he didn't need them any more, he still complains of headaches after reading sometimes, so I want to try getting some new glasses. He's a little sensitive to textures and smells but not generally to sounds, although he hums, taps, etc. a lot (which drives me, who probably has a mild SPD, batty, but such is life, LOL). I mention this because I'm not sure what's relevant. I'm concerned about slow auditory processing speed. He's not great at following a readaloud story, and he really didn't retain any of SOTW 1 when I read it aloud a few years ago. We switched the following year to having him read SOTW to himself, and he began to thrive, reading happily and quoting parts to me. He adores Singapore math, as it thinks the same way he does. But if I try to explain a concept to him, he has trouble following, even while I'm pointing to the examples. He does best if I open the book and tell him to study the example, while I sit next to him and don't say anything unless he has a question. If I give a list of directions or steps in a story orally, he's likely to get lost. The martial arts teacher has never complained that he doesn't pay attention, but I think there are a ton of visual clues there, and not a lot of directions given at once. So do I seek some help for him, or at least a formal diagnosis in case he needs accommodations later? Who diagnoses this stuff? Our family doctor is fabulous and will likely write a referral to anyone I ask, and/or she would be likely to try ADD meds if they would help his processing speed. Does an SLP diagnose slow auditory processing disorder? We adore our SLP, and I could happily call her again, if she'd be the right person. Or do I ask for a referral to someone else? As a side note, this is the child who barely left my lap as a toddler, and he was nowhere near ready for a classroom at five. If I hadn't already been a homeschooled, I would have been after him! The best parenting choice I ever made was to give this child time to be the baby, to mature on his own timetable, and not to push him to grow up or do academics until he was ready. But now I'm afraid that he needs a little more help so that he can function when I'm not always there to provide visual clues, know what I mean? For his privacy, I will likely delete this later, so if you could avoid quoting, that'd be great. Thanks for reading, and I look forward to your guidance!

If your library isn't great, I would look for used copies of books, and if you have any sort of tablet, e-reader, or maybe even a laptop, the Kindle app is free, and there a LOT of public domain books available there. Several of the History Odyssey books have been free, though I don't know specifically about Middle Ages. You might also see if any of the libraries around you have e-books, or maybe suggest a subscription to the Free Library of Philadelphia, which has tons of e-books, as a gift? But again, if you have a list you'd like to have, post it, and maybe people will have them to give away.

In your other post, you mentioned that you're considering History Odyssey's Middle Ages 2. I just wanted to let you know, if you didn't already, that they generally have a big September sale, where their products are 25% off. However, the past couple of years, at least (that's as long as I've been buying them), they've also offered 40% off at Black Friday. If you can wait that long, it makes the e-book version very economical, although you need to print the maps and maybe the worksheets. They do give the first several lessons, which is several weeks of work, for free, though. You will need a good library to use HO, but the reading list can also comprise a large portion of your literature for the year. You need Kingfisher History Encyclopedia, but you will use it for all of middle school for HO. We didn't care for Story of Mankind, so we went with k12's Human Odyssey, which runs less than $10 a volume for good condition used from Amazon; you'd need volume 1 for Middle Ages (and you might need volume 2 also, for Renaissance, but you can wait on that).

I went and checked my emailed receipt, and it says ours is 50 gallons. (Since Rheem is the only one on Home Depot's site that fits our price range, I guess ours must be a Rheem.). 50 gallons is plenty for us. The only time it ever gets a tiny bit cool is if we've run the dishwasher, washed some cast iron by hand, run a load of laundry, AND had someone shower/bathe. Most days, we never notice it get cool.

If there is something in particular you are looking for, you might ask here and second else has it to give away. We've had some very lean years, especially when gas went up, our property taxes went up, and my husband's industry collapsed with the housing crash. It was rough. As Tibbie said, not even close to doing it on your own, but I do know how frustrating it can be. We joined a small support group that offered enrichment classes (like art study and PE), rather than academics, and I paid for them with my time by teaching classes. For a few years, that was the only extracurricular activity my children did, and they were fine! Kids don't need co-op classes or activities to homeschool successfully! For art, paper and pencil will get you pretty far. Maybe someone else can post the links to free art lessons online. At one point dickblick.com had some free plans too. If you join the free yahoo group, AOPrints, you will have access to very nicely formatted 8x10 prints of famous works, several per artist. You could even view them on a computer screen and not need to print them at all. A little time with Google for commentary, and voila, art study is covered for free. For a little more work, you can put together music study as well; I usually use Wikipedia to get a feel for the composer's most famous works, and then I use YouTube to find samples. Do you have a local support group? Ours offers a lending library where you can borrow books for free for a year, and we have a decent selection. We also offer a lot of free activities for our members. If you can't afford dues for a group, ask if they have scholarships available. We have scholarshipped some people for some of our activities, and I know that's been a blessing to them, as well as to us.

Hi Hunter! Always glad to see you!

I want to say that we bought a GE almost nine years ago for this house. We have crazy hard water, which kills all of our appliances, and about three years ago, the thing was so filled up with scale that we talked about replacing it. At that point, it had gotten a good six years of heavy use. But we didn't want to replace the water heater until we could buy a softener too, and we didn't have the money for that until this spring. This spring, literally the day we were planning to go buy a new water heater, the old one finally gave up the ghost. THREE full years after we'd thought it was on its last legs. (I think our new one is a GE too, but I'm not sure.)

It's a rebate, in the form of a Visa gift card, which can be used anywhere Visa is accepted. So it's almost as good as cash (and it'll be as good as cash for me because I'll use it for gas and just pay the account from which I borrowed the money the money back as I buy gas).