Yeah, I would leave him alone. If he's missing problems, or not getting stuff done, or something like that, I'd correct him, but if this is just how his mind and body work, I wouldn't worry about it. My husband and I are much the same way, can't work on one thing for a large extended time, and while it's a little annoying to me personally that I work that way, unless it becomes a symptom of a larger problem, I wouldn't worry about it in your son. It does sound like he knows how he works and is working within that, and that's a very valuable skill. ETA: In me, it IS a symptom of a larger problem, because I do have trouble completing things, but in my DH, it's just the way he works. He's very, very good at what he does but just doesn't work linearly on one thing until it's done; he switches gears often. But he gets things done on time and does them well, so I think it's just that his mind needs to switch to something else for a while to renew itself.

Math The rest -- I'm not sure. I feel like, in my house, it would be: History -- because history is fun, because it's something that DH and I love, and because I feel like you look unintelligent if you don't know some basic history. Writing -- putting together a decent sentence, having at least somewhat decent handwriting. Latin -- because we like it, and because I think there are some good benefits to it. But then what about art and science and modern languages and music? I don't know. I guess I feel like it's easier to hit science topics organically, as they happen to come up in life, than it is to hit history topics (for instance, we had a new baby, so questions of development and anatomy came up naturally, but ancient Roman history is less likely to come up naturally), so I guess that's why I would prioritize history over science. And then there's Bible. I feel that that's very important, but it's also not a state-required academic subject. ETA: As for WHY I don't do just those? Well, for one, my state requires more. But two, I feel like those aren't the only things that are important. When things are busy, we do default to those four subjects, but ideally, there's focused art, music, science, etc. in there too. Also, my DH might disagree with me. He might see science as more important than Latin.

I have a dishwasher, but it currently doesn't work, and when it did work, it didn't work well and wasn't really worth the trouble. We have seriously hard water here, and it keeps killing dishwashers; even with hard water helpers added to it, the dishwasher still never worked very well. So we wash by hand; it's a pain but not more of a pain than having to rewash half of the dishes or having everything be all cloudy. And with a large family, we'd have to run it twice a day anyway, and someone would have to unload it, which is kind of a pain, because since this old house wasn't wired for a dishwasher, when we added one, we had to put it across the room from the sink. It is far easier to wash by hand, but I'll also admit to not being the one who washes most of the dishes; DH does most of them, in the evening -- he puts on his headphones with an audio book and does the dishes while I do the bedtime routine.

In my house, dawdling means screen time gets lost, so perhaps you need a different consequence? I like the idea of sending him to bed earlier to send the message that he obviously needs more time in the morning. But at my house, they actually do better with less time -- 30 minutes to get dressed, tidy their rooms, make their beds, and do their morning chores. If they fight or dawdle, I drop it to 20 minutes, because if they have time to fight or dawdle, they have too much time. Losing out on screen time is a powerful motivator at my house. For a while, I did walk them through the routine -- as in, I stood with them and made sure they were doing what they were supposed to be doing, until it became more automatic.

I'm sorry this is frustrating you so much! It sounds like you've put a lot of effort into what you've chosen to use, and how you're choosing to use it, and it is very disheartening when your child just doesn't have the same love for the materials that you do. I think you're right to be examining what you might need to change, if anything. I like 8FillTheHeart's suggestion of asking her what she wants to learn. And some choices -- even if it's "do you want to read book A or book B?," it can still feel like they have some control. What does make her eyes light up? I'd incorporate that as much as possible. Does she like the computer? If so, maybe you can find some games to cover math and geography for a while, so that they're more fun. (Sheppardsoftware.com has a lot of good stuff.) Or if your library subscribes to Mango Language (if they do, it should be free for you), maybe she'd enjoy learning a language. 30 minutes of memory work seems like a lot to me. We typically spend 5-10 minutes over breakfast doing memory work, and that's for three (sometimes four) kids. That's still getting some science vocabulary, a few Bible verses, and some other stuff (right now, they're memorizing the books of the Bible in order) into their brains. We do a lot of reading aloud, especially before about age 10, so if you're not already doing that for history (even SOTW), you might give it a shot. Even if she is a solid reader, she might just prefer to listen than to read herself, and to a degree, I think that's very reasonable. I would have no problem with just putting a few subjects on hold for a while, maybe until January or so, in order that she doesn't feel overwhelmed. Also, I suggest this all the time, but perhaps a workbox approach might help? I like it because it's organized, for one, but also, it is a very clear visual of what they still need to do. Even though I'm the one who fills the workboxes each night, I think the boxes remove me from the equation a bit -- the boxes are right there for them to see, rather than it feeling like I'm pulling out book after book and piling work on them. It could just be that she says she hates things because working on new material can be hard work, and some kids are resistant to that. And then I try to make it easy when I can (like doing things orally if possible), but I also have no problem saying, sometimes, "Sorry, but this is what you need to do."

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie! There are a couple of Mouse ones, but the mouse makes appearances in some of the other books too, which my preschoolers thought was just fantastic! (Like, in one, the mouse and moose appear at the carnival, and the main character, the pig, I think it is, brings them home to play hide-and-seek.)

My preschoolers tend to just come along for the ride with the big kids in science and social studies, but I often make a point to use picture books; everyone, even the big kids, enjoys them, and they help the younger kids to feel connected and to learn at least a little something. Some of the series we have enjoyed: -anything by Thornton Burgess (ie Burgess Bird Book or Adventures of ____) -state books by Sleeping Bear Press -If You Lived. . . books -You Wouldn't Want to Be. . . series of books

DH, who works with construction crews a lot, suggests baking something. Or providing beers at the end of the day if that's allowed.

I agree with all of Bill's statements in this thread.

We do it because languages are fairly natural to several of my family members, and therefore, Latin is a good route for us for teaching organization and logic. It's enjoyable work for us. If it isn't enjoyable work for your family, move on to something different; there are other ways to teach organization and logic, as well as Latin roots. I do feel that at least some conversational ability in a modern foreign language is essential in today's world, but that doesn't apply to Latin.

DH told me that there is a fair amount in some of them about animal husbandry, but I think they should still be okay for my 11.5yo; I'm going to have her read one and see how it goes.

Congratulations, and welcome to your baby boy! I took 800 mg of ibuprofen starting as soon as the placenta came out, and then every 6-8 hours around the clock, plus AfterEase every few hours, with my last two babies, and it helped a ton with the afterpains. We took about ten days off this time and about two weeks last time; I had intended to take three full weeks off if needed, but my kids were getting bored, and a little structure was good for them. I was doing pretty well, though, and the newborn is a very good sleeper, so that helped a LOT. Plus, the second week after he was born, DH was working from home, which meant we all really needed to be hanging out downstairs rather than up by the office (although I did go to take some naps in our bedroom, which is connected to the office by a doorway). I spent most of the time in my rocking chair downstairs. Be gentle on yourself -- take the time you need, whether that's a little or a lot.

Another thought: can you wait until her babies are actually here (and home from the hospital, if they end up staying for a while) before buying the diapers? If she has them earlyish, they may come home at around 5 or 6 pounds, and the ones that go up to 11 might be perfect.

I would probably get the larger size. But my 11-pound 3-week-old is wearing the smallest sized prefolds; they're getting small to go around him, but they work well for laying in the middle of thinner prefolds. Even with frequent changes, one prefold isn't quite enough absorbency for him, but a folded-in-thirds one is. So I don't know. If they're fitted diapers, I'd probably go with the larger ones.

We do it orally. I discuss the new info with him, and one of us reads the practice exercises. He translates them orally. We usually do one lesson a day, although for some of the early lessons, we've done a couple in a day. We usually do it about twice a week (and he does Italian via Mango on the other days of the week). This is what I did with my daughter a few years ago, and she learned it really, really well. My son seems to like reading the sentences himself, whereas my daughter liked listening to them, but this is typical for them.

I know it pretty well, but I'm going to hear Rich Mullins singing it in my head if I recite it! ETA: I'm a Protestant Christian; I currently don't have a home church, though.

As a PA resident, I think it was rather a pointless move, because the SD is the one who sets the budget, and this doesn't really seem like the way to effect change. It galls me to no end the amount I pay in school taxes, which are separate from my county and township taxes (I don't mind those, because they pay for my roads, my police and fire services, my state parks, my libraries); we pay a lot in school taxes because of a tax restructuring a few years ago, and still, the SD chooses to take its 3% or whatever increase every year (it's allowed a certain amount of increase without putting it to a vote), and the teachers complain that they haven't had raises in several years. Guess what? Neither has my husband, who makes the money we pay in taxes. PA has kind of the best and worst of both worlds. We have a lot of SD oversight, but they also have to provide us with books, as few or as many classes as we want, services such as speech therapy, sports, and activities. I have heard that the SD doesn't receive state or federal funds for hs'ed students in PA, but I don't understand how that could possibly be true, if they have to then provide services and such for us. I think it would be really nice if they gave us a portion of whatever funds they receive, as a gesture of goodwill, but no luck. Unfortunately, it's just the way it is that we pay in for a system we don't use. We pay in for other people's health and auto claims too, even if we never use our own health insurance or auto insurance. C'est la vie!

I think riding his bike to the store and needing to pay for more out of his own money is a good idea. It's not the biggest deal in the world; it's just some croissants, but it IS aggravating and inconvenient. So an extra bit of aggravation and inconvenience on his part might help him to be more mindful in the future. I really like the PP who suggested that he also be in charge of shopping for and preparing a week's worth of meals for the family. He may just not get that you sometimes buy things specifically for meals; he may have just thought "ooooh, Mom bought a special treat." I have heard of people putting a red dot sticker on things that are specifically being saved for a meal or are otherwise not for general snacking, and/or you could put general snacking items in a particular spot or bin. The fact that he snuck the food because he knew you'd say no is more worrisome to me, because it suggests that he knew the croissants would be off-limits. I guess I'd be discussing with him whether he was bored with the regular snacks, or something. (My little bunch of munchkins is the opposite of yours -- one girl followed by four boys -- feeding multiple teenage boys at once is scaring me!)

I assign my kids to whatever grades they'd be in if they were in our local public school; those grades, however, have little or nothing to do with what they're studying or the level at which they're learning. Since our state requires standardized testing in certain grades, we use the 1970 CAT, available online from Christian Liberty Press. $25 and done.

Huh. Will try that. Thanks! Ah, I should have read it first. ;)

I vote "not overprotective." I'm 36 and wouldn't want to walk to my car alone in that situation either. I think part of being street smart is recognizing when it would be better to have someone with you; for her, it might mean you coming along, or it might mean asking one of the other women or their DHs/boyfriends to walk with her. Sometimes growing up means knowing when something is beyond your skills and NOT tackling it on your own.

The only way I know of to print from it is to email it, then download it, and print it. I don't think you can print directly from the app.

Okay, how do you do that? I know about Guided Access and love it, but locking out parts of the screen? Would like that.

For anyone wondering about this program, I bought Levels 1 and 2 of early modern, and I am so impressed! I'm looking at the Level 2 for 6th-7th grade, and I'm thinking, "THIS is what I want for that age, the jump between just learning the facts and learning to apply them." There's writing and synthesizing and *thinking* included in the program that is stuff that I wasn't directed to do back in 7th grade, even in a pretty good school. I'm reading assignments out loud to DH, and he's nodding along with me. I think this is going to have been money well-spent. (Although, I do think it'll be a jump for both kids in workload, so I expect I will need to do some serious hand-holding at least for a while.) As for the timeline, I think I am just going to print pages with dates in 25-year increments across the top, and we'll see how it goes.

Almost seven years ago, we got a chance to move from the suburbs of DC to the farm country of south central Pennsylvania, and we jumped as fast as we could to take it. Have never regretted it. Being rural has its drawbacks, mainly that it costs time and gas to go anywhere; there are no quick trips to anywhere, and we turn down free events sometimes because the gas is expensive, or the trip is just too long. And when we do go out, it's a long day. We're 30 minutes from WalMart (but only 30 minutes, so it's not terrible), and it's a good thing we planned homebirths for our last two babies, because we wouldn't have made it to the hospital. DH's commute is 45 minutes each way, which is time-consuming and expensive. Sometimes winter in the country grates on my nerves -- stomping through snow (although if we had a garage it would be easier), DH hauling firewood for the furnace, etc. (We have an 1830s house too, so there's quite a bit of the Little House on the Prairie thing going on here, LOL.) We have well water which is very hard, and therefore hard on appliances and clothing. At the same time, we're only 30 minutes from stuff. It's not insurmountable. I plan better because of it. We are selective with what activities we choose to do, only those that are truly worth the time and gas, not just anything we can. We don't buy a lot of random stuff, because we're not in stores very often. I keep my freezer stocked because I don't guarantee I'll get to the right store when the right stuff is on sale. (I plan which direction I'm going based on which one meets the greatest number of errands that day.) We like having a wood-burning furnace more than we liked paying for oil heat, and although the well water is hard, it is also very clean and doesn't have the concerns that we'd have with city water. We don't have neighbors right on top of us. We have room for a garden and chickens (which we plan to do in the next few years). DH's commute is a pleasant one, far nicer than when he was in stop-start traffic for 1.5 hours each way to go 15 miles; 45 minutes each way on a straight road through the country is so much nicer. We have tons of room for the kids to run and yell and dig and explore. Sunsets are stunning. We've sat outside several times this summer on our back hill, cooking dinner over an open fire, while the boys tumble down the hill, the sun setting over the mountains, quiet, peaceful, stars twinkling clearly. . . and I think, "THIS is why we do it. So worth the extra effort." We've lived in various places. I don't miss urban, suburban, or even small town, life at all.